Finding True Rest in a Busy World

Where do I start? It's July. It's July.

And we're over halfway through the year. And who feels it?

Who thinks they've squeezed more into the first six months of the year than we should have?

Yeah, yeah. My baby daughter has been married for a year today.

I've got a new grandchild coming. We've got a new grandchild coming.

I lost my job and got a new job all in the first six months of this year.

Church is growing. It's just awesome. But Who feels like they're ready for a

little bit of rest and relaxation?

Yeah, okay. No, please. You've got to say it. You've got to say it. Speak it out.

We're ready. We're ready for some rest and relaxation. And the good news is

I know where we can find it.

I know where we can find true rest, true relaxation and true recovery.

And, you know, in the world today, the thought of rest and, you know,

I think of you guys, As you're getting married in only a few short months as well,

and what you're going to squeeze into the next, what is it, January,

so another five months or so, it'll be ridiculous, but you'll do it.

You'll do it. And rest these days seems fairly elusive when you think of today, of today's society.

You think of our lightning speed culture that we live in, news at hand,

on the spot for us. There's technology, there's our work, there's demands of

daily duties, there's childcare.

Isn't that right, Andrew? Childcare, there's children's activities,

there's church commitments.

And then with all of that, we still try and add a little bit more as well.

We keep pushing the envelope and pushing it. And often we feel obligated to

attend each and every one of those things that I've just mentioned, don't we?

Regardless of our already busy schedules.

And all of this business, all of our busy schedules, it all mixes into what

I describe as a corrosive cocktail of conflict, strife, and stress.

Who's there? Who's there? Yeah, yeah. So, and it's good to see a lot of you aren't there.

And I saw a few hands, which is great, but it's good to see that we're getting

some answers. We get burnt out, don't we?

Emotional burnout. We get physical burnout. We get spiritual burnout.

And sometimes you just want to take a nap.

In fact, this week I saw a t-shirt that I want Josh to put up there,

which all of us need to wear.

I love Jesus and naps. That says it all, doesn't it?

It says it all. That's me. I'm going to wear one next week if I can get it in time.

So let's, you know, you can leave that up there for a little while,

Josh, I reckon, just so we get it straight in our hearts.

And, you know, let's not push the point too far. You know, last week I preached

about, who remembers what I preached about last week?

Elaine asked me last night what I preached about last week, and I've gone,

I'm still trying to get tomorrow's ready, but I preached about a very simple

subject, and it was this, God is good, the devil is bad, okay?

And that's all we need to know on that subject, but I want to talk about a few

more of these symptoms of tiredness, and you may be able to say amen or preach

it brother or yeah I agree but you know feelings of being overburdened.

Overburdened, chronic fatigue, insomnia.

Who's there? Who's there with insomnia? Yeah, yeah. We should text each other

in the middle of the night.

Although that's probably bad because they reckon screen time at the middle of

the night is just going to keep you awake.

Forgetfulness. Hallelujah. Preach it, brother. Impaired concentration,

loss of appetite, anxiety.

I'm seeing Catherine go, that's you, that's you, Vic, that's you, Vic.

It's all of us, I guarantee it. Anger, anger, depleted immune systems,

making you more vulnerable, obviously, to colds and flus and other immune-related medical problems.

I love it when Angela, you know, people say, oh, I've been out in the cold and

I don't want to get a cold. And Angela goes, you don't get a cold from being

in the cold. It's a virus.

Anyway, when your immune systems are down, that's what, yeah, anyway, there you go.

But on the other hand, when we get that rest and relaxation,

it restores our energy, doesn't it? It repairs our bodies.

It clears our thoughts. It improves our minds and our bodies and our focus.

It lifts our moods when we've had a bit of a rest. It stimulates our creativity

and allows us to get much more accomplished with a lot less effort. Amen? Who agrees? Yeah.

Now, before you take the opportunity to sleep through the rest of this sermon...

As much as we need physical rest for our minds and bodies, I want to talk about

a rest that's deeper and more revitalizing than simply having a sleep or a holiday.

I want us to think about rest for our souls. Because if you get rest for your

souls, it will flow on to the rest of your body and your mind and your spirit.

And do you ever feel weary and worn out deep in your soul? Do you ever feel that? Yeah.

Drained souls send desperate messages. Okay.

They send snarling tempers, waves of worry, festering guilt and fear when we

have tired and worn out souls.

Insecurity. These are warning signs that we need to keep an eye out for.

Symptoms of a weariness deep within, proof that something within you is starting to suffer.

Okay. But there is good news because where do you find rest for your soul?

From Jesus, from him. We find rest from Jesus.

Jesus gave the answer in Matthew 11 about rest for our souls.

And just as a bit of an assist here, I'm going to get Josh to play from the

chosen when Jesus preached this message.

So let's have a quick look at this. I thank you, Father.

Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things.

Hallelujah. Angie and I, most afternoons after work, we come home,

we light the fire, we grab Poppy, we put her on the couch with us,

and we watch The Chosen. And it's so good.

It's so good to hear things like

that. You know, we know it's a dramatization, but it's based on Bible.

And let me read the Bible to you from Matthew 11, 28 to 30.

And it says, as we saw there, then Jesus said, Come to me, all of you who are

weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you because I am humble and gentle at heart,

and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear,

and the burden I give you is light.

Now, if we flick back, if you can go back to verse 28 for me there,

Josh, the first screen, who is the invitation open to?

Everyone. Everyone that invitation is open to. Everyone.

Get that. It's open to everyone.

And Jesus' gracious invitation is available and open to all of us. Nobody's omitted.

Nobody's neglected. If ever you felt weary and worn out deep within,

the invitation is for you. It's for you.

And with this invitation, Jesus actually gives us some simple steps to experience

rest for the soul. And that's what I want to talk about this morning.

What are these simple steps for experiencing rest for our soul?

First of all, verse 38, Jesus says, come to me.

Come to me. Experts make all sorts of suggestions for experiencing rest and

overcoming exhaustion, don't they?

They offer you sleeping pills at nighttime and energy supplements during the

day, don't they, Elijah? Yep.

They recommend diet and workout programs that promise to make you healthier and happier.

Eastern philosophies encourage you to find peace and rest through meditation and or yoga.

But this deeper spiritual rest, it's not a pill. It's not a program. It's not a philosophy.

It's a person. It's Jesus himself.

That is our answer. Jesus himself. So Jesus begins by saying simply, come to me, come to me.

And the simplicity of Jesus' promise is both striking and refreshing,

isn't it? It's refreshing.

Jesus doesn't offer us a fourfold path to peace-giving enlightenment as Buddha does.

He doesn't give us five pillars of peace through submission as Islam does,

nor does he give us a clickbait headline,

10 ways to relieve your weariness that you might find if you scroll through

social media, which self-helped 21st century people are so drawn to.

Unique to anyone else in human history, Jesus simply offers himself.

Jesus offers himself as the universal solution to all that burdens us.

And his simple promise, it's quite audacious, isn't it?

If you're tired, if you're weary, if you have burdens, come to me. How audacious is that?

And the only way that this isn't lunacy is if Jesus is who he claims to be.

The omnipotent, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent son of the living God.

So he can make that call.

He can be that bold. He can be that audacious because he is our rest.

He is our relaxation His simple promise implies a power behind it More than

sufficient to lift what weighs us down Jesus is the answer If you want to experience

real rest It starts when you come to Jesus,

But how do we do that?

What does it even mean to come to Jesus?

If you want to experience real rest It starts when you come to Jesus Have a

look over the Gospels and your Bibles, and you'll discover all sorts of people

coming to Jesus for all sorts of reasons.

Some people come to Jesus for healing. Some people come to Jesus for forgiveness.

Some people come to Jesus because they're hungry. Some people come to Jesus

because they have big questions about God and about life.

What all of these people had in common is that each one of them believed that

Jesus could meet their needs.

They had faith that Jesus could heal them. They trusted that he could feed them, and he did.

They believed that he could forgive them, and they had confidence that Jesus

could answer life's biggest dilemmas.

That's what coming to Jesus means. That's what coming to Jesus means.

It's not about repeating a sinner's prayer.

Well, that helps. It's not about walking down an aisle.

It's not about walking down the aisle, but it helps.

But it is all about putting our faith and trust in him, believing that Jesus

really is who he claims to be and that he alone can meet our needs. That's how Jesus.

This is the invitation to weary and weighed down souls. Put your faith in me, he says.

Trust in me and come to me.

But coming to Jesus is just the first step, okay? It's the most important step,

but it's just the first step.

As Jesus continues, he paints a very vivid word picture.

He talks about, take my yoke upon you, for my yoke is easy to bear,

and the burden I give you is light.

He paints this word picture for you. And I'm sure as many of you know,

a yoke, when Jesus talks about a yoke, I think in part.

He's talking about a yoke being a heavy wooden harness that fits over the shoulders

of ox or oxen, and it's then attached to a plough or a cart that the oxen pull.

And since Jesus grew up in a rural area and trained as a carpenter who likely

produced and repaired farm equipment, Jesus was quite familiar with yokes.

Okay. Using this agricultural imagery, Jesus is inviting us to connect with

him, to link with him, and to learn from him.

But you know what? I learned this week there's more to a yoke than we all thought about.

You may know the answer to this, Sue, because I'm about to talk about another form of yoke. Okay?

For Jewish rabbis like Jesus, because we know Jesus was a rabbi and he was referred

to as rabbi, The term yoke carries a different meaning, okay?

Different rabbis had different sets of teachings or different specialities.

A rabbi's teaching was really that rabbi's interpretation of how to live.

And you know what they called it? They called it a rabbi's yoke.

So what he specialized in, what he taught, what he believed was his yoke.

And when you followed a certain rabbi, you were following him because you believed

that rabbi's set of teachings and interpretations were closest to what God intended

through the scriptures.

And when you followed that rabbi, you were taking that rabbi's yoke upon yourself.

Isn't that interesting?

Isn't that interesting? So when you take Jesus' yoke, when you take Jesus' yoke,

we connect with him when we embrace his teachings.

For Jesus' original audience, learning Christ's teaching would involve traveling

to remote locations and listening to him speak.

But today we have it really easy, don't we?

All we have to do is open our Bible and read it.

Some of you may have red letter Bibles. Who's got a red letter Bible?

Who knows what a red letter Bible is? A red-letter Bible is the pages of Matthew,

Mark, Luke, and John, and the red letters are the words that Jesus spoke to the world and to you.

That's what a red-letter Bible

is. But it's not all just the red letters that belong to Jesus either.

It was the black ones as well.

It was all his. He was the word.

They're all his. The whole Bible contains the teachings or the yoke of Jesus. Mm-hmm.

One of this reason, one of the reasons why I've only got my electronic one,

but one of the reasons, is this a Bible?

Thank you. You didn't bring the Quran this morning. Good.

One of the reasons this book has endured throughout the centuries is that it

dares to tackle the toughest questions about life.

That's what it does. What happens after I die? It's in there.

What happens? Is there a God? It's in there.

What on earth am I here for? It's in there as well.

What do I do with my fears? The Bible answers all of the life's most important

questions and more. Okay.

The problem is, here's the problem.

Many people actually don't read their Bible.

In response to many surveys that have been conducted, it was once said that

people revere their Bible.

They revere their Bible, but by and large, they don't actually know what it says.

Does that sound, that sounds right, doesn't it? You know, oh,

drop the Bible, pick it up, kiss it, be careful with the Bible.

Don't know what it says, but you've got to revere this book.

You've got to revere this book.

That's unfortunate. It really is unfortunate because in it is the teachings

of Jesus that by reading them, we will find rest for our souls.

When the pressure, have a listen to this, when the pressure and stress of life

build up, many people like to relax with a good book, don't they?

Yeah? They like to relax, sit down, put the fire on and relax and read a good book.

How much more restful is it to relax with the good book? The good book.

So we need to start with, we need to come to Jesus and we need to connect to Jesus through his word.

They're the first two things, but there's more, but there's more.

It's not just enough to listen or read the teaching of Jesus.

We need to learn from them as well.

Again, Jesus said in verse 29 of Matthew 11, take my yoke upon you.

Let me teach you because I am humble and gentle at heart and you will find rest for your souls.

Now, going back to agricultural imagery, farmers in ancient times and even more

recently often yoked a younger untried oxen or ox with a older experienced one

so that the younger one could learn,

could learn from the experienced one and could copy the behavior of the older one.

And by yoking them together, joining them together, the younger ox became like the older ox.

You don't know where I'm going with this, do you? Yeah, you do.

You do. In the same way, when we yoke ourselves with Jesus, we not only listen

to him, we learn to be like him.

That's what we're doing. We're not just reading a good story.

Learning about what Jesus is and who he is, but we are learning to become more like him.

The Bible says in Romans 8, 29, for God knew his people in advance and he chose

them to become like his son.

And the NIV version says to be conformed to the image of his son.

In short, we're all here. We're all created to become like Christ.

That's what we're here for. That's why Jesus is hinting at when he says,

I am gentle and humble at heart.

He's not simply saying, I'm a kind, patient teacher.

He's inviting us to have a heart like his. That's what he's doing.

He wants us to have a heart like his.

Only then will we experience soul-deep, satisfying rest.

Just imagine, let's get our imaginations running here a little bit,

okay? Let's get our visualizations happening.

What if for one day Jesus lived your life for you? Wow.

All of it? Yeah, all of it. What if for 24 hours, Jesus wakes up in your bed,

walks in your shoes, lives in your house, and assumes your schedules?

What if your boss becomes his boss?

Your kids become his kids. You can have them. No, I don't mean that. Well, not all of them.

And your headaches become Jesus' headaches. Imagine that.

Your health doesn't change at all. Your circumstances don't change.

Your schedule isn't altered. Your problems aren't solved.

Only one thing changes, your heart, because it's Jesus' heart. in you.

What if for one day and one night, Jesus lives your life with his heart?

With his heart. What would you be like? Would people notice a difference?

Your family, would they see something new in you?

Your co-workers, would they sense a change? And how about you?

Would you notice a difference?

What alterations this heart transplant would have on your stress levels,

your mood swings, your temper? Would you sleep better?

Would there be a little more spring in your step if it was Jesus' heart in you?

Now, you've got all that pictured in your mind, haven't you?

Okay. Now, what I want you to do is this.

Adjust the lens of what you're looking at until you have a clear picture of

Jesus leading your life.

And then what I want you to do is snap the shutter and take a photograph of

it and frame the picture.

What you see when you take that photo is what God wants.

It's what he wants you to be like. The Bible says in Philippians 2 verse 5,

Philippians 2:5

it says, have this same attitude in yourselves, which was in Christ Jesus.

Look to him as your example in selfless humility.

Think and act like Jesus. The heart of Christ's likeness is having a heart like

Christ. That's what it means.

Jesus felt no guilt, no guilt at all. God wants the same for us.

Jesus had no bad habits. God wants the same for you. Jesus had no fear.

God wants you to be fearless too. Jesus had no anxiety about life or death,

and he knew what was coming.

God wants you to be fearless too. You don't need to have any of that in your life.

But the thing is, you can't reproduce the heart of Jesus on your own strength.

You know, things like New Year's resolutions and willpower and best intentions, they're not enough.

They're not enough. The only way for us to conform to Jesus is to first come

to Jesus and then connect with Jesus.

It's a three-step process.

And you've got to get it in order. When you do, you will experience real rest

like you've never experienced before. Come on up, Josh.

Now, think about Christmas time for a little bit with me. You know,

we're halfway there, if you haven't noticed, this year. Far out.

Because we're halfway there. And it's ironic Christmas time, isn't it?

Jesus is the reason for the season at Christmas time. Yet at Christmas time,

actually setting time aside for him and with him can actually feel impossible, can't it?

It's a bit ironic. But if your spirit is weary and worn out,

if you're feeling burdened and burned out, if you're sluggish and stressed out,

then you need some rest, okay?

And if you haven't already, then you need to come to Jesus.

You need to come to the answer. Lay your burdens and your baggage at his feet

and trust him to help you carry them. That's what Jesus will do.

If you've already come to Jesus, then awesome. That's fantastic.

Now you need to connect with him. You need to connect with him.

You need to tune out the world and turn your attention to Jesus.

Get into his word and let his word get into you because that's how we conform

to Jesus and develop a heart like his, okay?

Now, I've got a little bit of an invitation for you here, okay,

as Josh continues to pray. I need you to listen very quickly to me for this.

If you've heard nothing else this morning, if you've heard absolutely nothing

else this morning, you need to hear what I'm about to say.

You need to be refreshed and revitalized deep within your spirit.

If you walk out of here today going, I need to be refreshed,

I need to be revitalized deep within my spirit, then you've got the keys. You've got the answers.

And soon we're going to finish the service and we're going to have some morning tea out there.

And please stay with us and share it with us. But before we do that,

I wanna give up people the opportunity to come and let me pray for you.

Wherever you're at today, I'd like

to help you take the next step towards experiencing rest for your souls.

As Josh continues to play, as we go out to have morning tea,

I would like you to come to the front as Josh plays and let me help you and

pray for you and pray with you.

Amen. Let's stand together.