RHYTHMS: Rest

Chris McCurley: Thank you, Steve. Thank you for all of you singing out. We're in a series. We're looking at rhythms. Everyone's life has a rhythm. And that life may be a rhythm that is sort of out of rhythm with God and a gospel-shaped rhythm to life, which is what we're trying to get to. Last week we talked about work. This morning we're going to talk about rest. Next week, play, Bible study, prayer. You get the idea. Trying to get a God-shaped rhythm in our lives. so that we are living according to his beat and not our own. You know, in 1993, the Michigan Wolverines took on the North Carolina Tar Heels in college basketball's national championship game. It was an interesting matchup because you had Michigan, who was youthful and athletic. They started five freshmen. And then you had the legendary Dean Smith coaching North Carolina. They were a veteran club. They were They were experienced and it came down to the final seconds as Michigan looked to kind of have the game in hand. They inbound the ball to Chris Weber, an all-American center. A center shouldn't be bringing the ball up, but he's dribbling down the side and he gets double-tamed and he panics. He picks up the I actually traveled before that, but they didn't call it. He picks up the ball and he calls a timeout. Well, Michigan didn't have a timeout. And so they're assessed a technical foul. North Carolina goes the line, hits the free throws, up winning the game 77 to 71. And everyone pointed at Chris Weber as the reason. It just highlights the fact that a timeout is key many times and whether a team wins or loses. And the truth of the matter is timeouts are key in our daily lives. as to whether we win or lose the moment or maybe even the bigger game. Timeouts are not only a difference maker in sports, they can also be highly beneficial in daily life. Everyone needs a timeout from time to time, don't they? We live in a 24-7 culture. We literally push ourselves to the ragged edge in order to squeeze out every last bit of work and energy possible, we wonder how thin can I spread myself before I don't exist anymore. We're always in a hurry, but for all of our new inventions and our new technology at our disposal for all of our time saving devices and all of the shortcuts and overnight deliveries, despite our microwave fast food culture, we still never have enough time. In a world of multitasking and time management, we are constantly trying to squeeze 25 hours into a 24 hour day. But warp speed is warping our soul. We need a time out. And you say, well, of course we do, Chris, but that's not happening anytime soon. Have you seen my schedule? And to that, I would say, I hear you. We're all busy, aren't we? But I'm going to say something I hope you won't dislike me for saying this. I hope you understand it comes from a place of love. But if you're too busy. It's your fault, right? Because it's your schedule. There are things on your schedule that you have to do, but there are a lot of things on your schedule that you get to do. You devise your schedule, which means that over time, you either become the master of your minutes or you become a slave to those minutes. In some ways, we're just a product of our culture, aren't we? I don't have to tell you that one of the highest virtues in our society is busyness and conversely one of the most despicable vices is that of laziness. But between the virtue and the vice, there are two important truths that we need to grasp. Number one, busyness doesn't mean that you're valuable and number two, resting doesn't mean that you're unproductive. We live in a culture that resists rest and relaxation. by society standard in order to be productive and thus valuable, you must be doing something all the time. If you slow down, even for a moment, the world is gonna pass you by. I had coaches that would say, your other team, the opponents you're gonna play this week, they're not working as hard as you are. The idea being if you're in the gym and you're working hours upon hours, the other team is not, then you're getting a leg up and that didn't really work because we lost every game my senior year. So obviously, Coach didn't know what he was talking about there. You know, it's not always the case that just because you're busy, you're being productive or that you're valuable. But that's what the world has sold us on and many people are drinking the Kool-Aid, aren't they? Many people have bought into this idea that as long as I'm busy, then I'm valuable. And if I slow down, if I relax, if I rest, well, then people will not see me as productive. You think about our conversations with one another. You ever been talking with someone and you get an argument about who's busier? You talk to someone, they say, how are you doing? Oh, I'm just busy. Oh, you don't know busy. Right? And it's saying we get into this back and forth about who's busier, right? Because if we're busy, it means that we're productive. If I'm busier than you, then I'm more productive than you. We even talk about like my time and my day. So and so cut in. to my day, so and so took too much of my time. Where do we ever get the idea that days and time belong to us? Because they don't. Look with me at Genesis chapter two. Genesis chapter two, beginning of verse one, it says, thus the heavens and the earth were completed and all their hosts. By the seventh day, God completed his work which he had done and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it because in it, He rested from all his work, which God had created and made. God rested and the world didn't crash. Even God, the almighty creator of the universe and the one who never grows weary, the one who never sleeps, the one who never slumbers, never runs out of power, even he takes a day off. And if the world didn't fall apart when God rested, The world's not going to fall apart when you rest either. I was a young, overconfident coach of a small school in Northeast Arkansas. And we, for some reason, scheduled a game with a team that was two classifications bigger than us. And so we go to their place to play, another mistake. We go over there to play. And not only were they bigger in classification, they were just bigger all the way around. 6'9", 6'7", my tallest player was 6'3". I didn't have any shortage of 5'10' scrawny guys, but I didn't have any tall guys. But despite all of that, despite that they were two classifications higher, despite that they were much bigger than us, we were in the thick of it. Going down to the final minutes in the fourth quarter, we had a chance to win the game. And so I call a timeout, I bring the team over, I talk to them for a second, and then I go and I talk to the referee. Now I'd been coaching for a couple of years and I'd gotten to know most of the referees that did our games. And this one gentleman I knew pretty well, name was Tim. And I went over to Tim and I said, Tim, I want you to give me a technical. And he said, are you serious? And I said, yes. I said, you can either give it to me or I can earn it, but I want a technical. And he kind of smiled and I went back to the huddle. And once we broke that huddle and the game started again, I acted like a lunatic. And I got a technical, but I felt like in that moment, that's exactly what our team needed. We needed something to kind of spark us to get to the finish line and to beat this team that was Goliath and we were David. And so I get the technical, they're shooting the free throws and I bring the team over and I start into the old coach speak stuff. know, nobody thinks you can win this game. The refs are against you, the crowd's against you and we end up winning the game. Sometimes as a coach, Very few times, you look like a genius. Most of the time, you look like a fool. But every now and then, every now and then, you look like a genius. But a time out, well-placed, can make all the difference. Jesus began His ministry with 40 days of solitude, and throughout His life, He would hit pause, He would exercise crowd control, and He would get away and be one-on-one with God. Jesus is often looked at as our savior, the anointed one, the messiah, which he should. He should be exalted for that. But how often do we miss that we're supposed to exemplify his life in our life, that we are followers of his, which means that we imitate him. And certainly that is applicable when it comes to rest and focusing on God. Jesus was a master of minutes. Listen to some of these passages. In the early morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house, and went away to a secluded place and was praying there. When day came, Jesus left and went to a secluded place and the crowds were searching for him and came to him and tried to keep him from going away from them. So Jesus, perceiving that they were intending to come and take him by force to make him king, withdrew again to the mountain by himself alone. But Jesus himself would often slip away to the wilderness and pray. Our Lord modeled for us what godly dedication in the midst of busyness and hurriedness looks like. Jesus was busy, but he never allowed the busyness and hurriedness around him to get in the way of godliness. He never allowed society to impose priorities on him that were not from God. No matter how busy life got, he always made time for God. Society imposes hurriedness and busyness and other priorities that are not from God, which is precisely why we need to get away on a regular basis. And you think about this, if Jesus needed a time out from time to time, well then how much more do we, right? If He needed to exercise crowd control from time to time, then certainly we do as well. But busyness doesn't necessarily mean progress. You can be busy every waking minute of your life and still not accomplish anything worthwhile. Folks, hear me on this. You will never accomplish more than when you get alone with God. Won't you notice what is in Mark chapter 6, verses 30 through 32? The apostles gathered together with Jesus and they reported to Him all that they had done and taught. And he said to them, come away by yourselves to a secluded place and rest awhile. For there were many people coming and going and they did not even have time to eat. They went away in the boat to a secluded place by themselves. Jesus the coach called a time out for his players. The apostles had gathered with him to talk about how busy they had been and Jesus stops the game. He had a legitimate reason to keep going and to push his players because he was only going to be with them for a limited amount of time. There was plenty of work left to do. Plenty of people who needed healing, plenty of people who needed to hear about Jesus and the coming kingdom. But Jesus pushes pause. He calls a timeout because good coaches are like that. They understand when their team needs a breather. They know that No player can be conditioned well enough to play the entire game without stopping. At some point, you gotta have rest. That's got to factor in to the equation if you're gonna perform at the highest level. And some of you are running on fumes. Some of you are absolutely exhausted, exhausted, I should say. Some of you may be exalted as well. And somewhere inside of all of us, there's... This sense of pride, right? Because we are so busy, and because we are so busy, we feel productive. The exhaustion is kind of a badge of honor, right? It proves your value and your worth. But what about God? What about Jesus? What about your prayer life? What about Bible study? What about worship? What about the spiritual disciplines? Chances are, Your coach is calling a timeout and you're ignoring it. Psalm 23, one and two, the Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He makes me. I don't want to, but He makes me. Psalm 46 and 10, be still and know that I am God. I use the NASB and the ESB. The NASB reads like this, cease striving and know that I am God. We often talk about direct commands that are found in the Bible and you better you better listen to their direct commands. You better obey direct commands. Well, here's one. Be still. Pause stop. In fact, if you read 40 Psalm 46 verse 10 and following, you'll find that little word say law that you find in the psalm several times. You know what say law means at the end of a stanza? It means time out. Actually, it means pause. Consider meditate upon what was just. What we just said, think about what you just read. Stop. How can we do that unless we see striving, right? Timeouts are essential for helping us regain our focus, to re-prioritize, to re-calibrate, to recharge in all of our striving. We must make ourselves available to God. James said draw near to God and He will draw near to you. How do you do that unless you cease striving? And the problem is for me, I find a great deal of satisfaction in being busy for the Lord. I get paid to be busy for God. I love to come into the office early, shut the door, get my coffee, and just dig into God's Word. I can spend an entire day or week doing the Lord's work, know, from putting together a sermon to doing a funeral, going to the hospital and visiting, and I can lay my head down at night completely exhausted and thankful, and also, pretty proud of myself. And then I have to stop and recalibrate and think, how's my relationship? Can a preacher be so busy for God that he forgets God? Let me tell you, he can. Because I've lived it. You can be so busy for God that you forget the central focus of why you're busy in everything that you're doing and what you're doing it for. You forget your why. That's happened to me. And it probably will happen again where you have to recalibrate and say, Chris, what about the relationship? You can be busy, but what about the relationship? Because this is the most important relationship you or I will ever foster. And so we need to have a timeout. need to take a rest and we need to refocus. We use our timeouts wisely. Paul said this, therefore, be careful how you walk, not as unwise men, but as wise, making the most of your time because the days. I don't think Paul intended for us to translate this as making the most of your time means squeeze as much busyness and hurriedness and work into your day as possible. Although that's often how we operate, right? We have so much to get done in only so many hours in the day to do it. And so, you know, we drink our energy drinks and we grind and we get our bold coffee and we pry our eyes open with toothpicks and... We skip lunch and we do whatever is necessary to make the most of our time when the best use of our time is being still, being alone with God. And I'm speculating a little bit here, but I don't think that Paul had work in mind when he exhorted the Ephesians to make the most of their time. In fact, when you consider the context of Ephesians five, he's talking about staying away from immoral and impure things while seeking to imitate Christ. So to walk wisely in the footsteps of Jesus, making the most of your time is putting the emphasis on what's most important. A good coach uses their timeouts wisely. A good coach understands that a timeout well spent can help kind of get the team refocused. It can help them to draw up a play at just the right time. It can help them to just get a rest. Sometimes you just need a rest. and a good coach will regularly pause. Like Jesus, He exercised crowd control. And if we're going to talk about following in the footsteps of Jesus, then if we're going to be serious about it, we must start by slowing down and being still. In fact, let's do that for just a few moments. He's and in Hebrew, there's one word, rapa. It refers to a muscle that has lost its tone or its flex. It's gone limp. That's last time you went limp before God. That you just ceased striving. That you just got still and were alone with God. You looked at Him, He looked at you, and you were both happy. In the game of life, we as players must understand what the goal is. Every game has an ultimate prize. In any game, you're trying to win something. And ultimately, in the game of life, many are striving for the wrong goal. Like we talked about last week with work, many are working themselves to death to build an empire of dirt that they can't take with them. And all of our striving, we're like, The folks in shot are building this massive tower that reaches high into heaven, but never considered once if if God is impressed with our tower building, right? The goal is to be Christ like and the prize for us is heaven. And if you're making that your your goal, then you're winning, right? Sadly, many people think that they're winning because they're doing a whole lot and they're racing through life and they're careening through life, chasing after the wrong prize. The only way we're going to win this game is if we take regular timeouts. You look at another Psalm, Psalm 119, verse 97 says, ⁓ how I love your law. It is my meditation all the day. Verse 99 says, I have more insight than all my teachers for your testimonies are my meditation. Verse 148, my eyes anticipate the night watches that I may meditate on your word. We don't talk about meditation a lot, maybe because we think it's a little too new age or sometimes. when people talk about meditation, they talk about clearing your mind, but that's not what we're talking about here. When we're talking about meditation, especially as a biblical concept, it's considering God. It's getting still and focusing on the one who has given us so much. And you cannot read the Psalms without coming to the conclusion that there's a whole lot of meditating going on here. And this meditation is deep thinking. It's contemplating and it's weighing what God has said. And so we meditate for the purpose of learning what God knows and because we want to be what He wants us to be. Meditating on God's Word takes time. It's not about hurrying through it. It's why Bible reading plans I have kind of a love-hate relationship with because Bible reading plans, while they're good and I engage in them, it's easy to get caught up in reading through them quickly so I can check it off and move on, right? And you can cause stress if you miss a day, right? It's about sitting alone with God. Shutting out all the white noise. Turning off the TV, turning off the cell phone, and just being still. What is true of Bible study is true of prayer. Prayer is spiritual breathing. It keeps you alive spiritually. Rest and prayer go hand in hand. And we can pray while going down the road. We can pray while standing in line at Walmart. But at some point, You've got to get alone with God and find that closet. And Jesus talks about that inner room and just just be still. Talk to him. You've already mentioned passages in which Jesus got away to be alone with the father, and we need that solitude every bit as much as he did, perhaps more. So don't let the pace of life deter you from what's most important. Don't allow the world to dictate your priorities. Play a different game than what the world is playing. Devote yourself to God first and foremost and let that devotion drive everything else in your life. You know, one of the most exciting things as a coach is when I would call a timeout and maybe it was a crucial part of the game and the team would come over and their eyes would be so buried on you and they would just focus in on you and they were staring at you, hanging on your every word because at that moment they were bought in. All the training that you did, all the practicing that you did at this moment, They were focused in because they felt like you had the words that they needed, the play that they needed to go out and execute. And I would purposely only talk for about half the time out. And then I would walk away and talk to the assistants or somebody else because I wanted them to have some time just talking amongst each other. And it was a beautiful thing to see them put their arms around each other and to motivate one another, to pump each other up, to go out and to execute the game plan. and hopefully win the game. That's a beautiful thing. Do you think that's how God as our coach sees it? I think he loves our huddles here. I think he loves to look down and see us gathered here, worshiping him, edifying and encouraging one another. Because in the truest sense of the word, we're a team, aren't we? A team is defined as a group of players united in a common goal, to win. But just assembling the correct number of players Doesn't always equal success. Ask the Tennessee Titans. Just because you put together a collection of people doesn't mean you're going to win. But we know who we are, right? And more importantly, we know who our coaches. and we're huddled together and we're figuring out the game plan as we listen, as we worship, and then at some point we've got to break this huddle and we've got to go out and we've got to execute the play, don't we? Unfortunately, too many people take regular timeouts, but they take them from the stuff that they should be involved in more than anything else in their life. Unfortunately, many people take a timeout from church, and they let the other things in life overshadow their huddle on Sunday. And so they're busy, they're active, but they're busy and active in the wrong things. when the most important thing should be being with God, being with the saints, worshipping, encouraging, edifying. I'm not even talking about worship as a, you better come or you're going to hell. I'm talking about it as this is a free spiritual buffet that is offered every week. Why would you not take advantage of this, right? This is a motivator for the rest of your week. This is an opportunity not only to worship God, but for us as a family to come together and to be encouraged and to be motivated to carry out the game plan, to win. Church is a time out well spent. There's no doubt about it. It's a break from life that should change us. How many of you know who David Atchison is? Anybody keep up with history? Anybody hit any history buffs? You know who David Atchison is? So he was historically considered the person who served as president of the United States for the shortest amount of time, apparently for 24 hours. Because back in the 1800s, James Polk was leaving office and Zachary Taylor was set to be inaugurated on I think it was March the 4th of that year 1849. Well, March the 4th was a Sunday. And Zachary Taylor said, I'm not getting inaugurated on Sunday. I'll be at church on Sunday. I'll be worshiping on Sunday. That's a day of rest for me and my family will worship will rest on that day. So David Atchison served as President Pro Temp. For that day for 24 hours. Now you can go and look that up and you'll find disputes either way. Some say, yes, that actually happened. And others will say, no, that's not really how it happened. But one thing seems to be certain and not debated, and that is that Zachary Taylor was not going to be inaugurated on Sunday, March the 4th, because it was a day of worship and rest. What could be more important than being sworn in as president of the United States of America. Apparently for Zachary Taylor, there was something that was more important. Let's pray. Most kind and gracious Heavenly Father, thank You for this day. Thank You for this time to come, to be together, to worship You, and to rest. May we regularly rest this week. May we pause. May we take a time out and just be still. May we regularly practice that in our daily lives to foster the most important relationship we will ever have. And God, help us to slow down. Help us to be more like Jesus. We love you. We thank you. It's in your Son's precious name we pray. Amen. How can we help you this morning? We're a family. Family is there for one another. So if we can pray with you, if we can... If we can study with you, if you'd like to know more about what it means to be a disciple of Jesus, then certainly, let's talk. Maybe you've studied, maybe you've contemplated, maybe you've thought about it. You're ready to put on Christ in baptism this morning. We say it every week, there's no good reason to leave here without being right with God. Can we help you this morning? Steve's got a song coming as we stand and as we sing. Yeah.

Mark 6:30–32 Psalms 46:10 Psalms 119:97