Living Easy-Rest

Good morning.

I like this chill morning.

Chilling with God is uh pretty restoring.

Well, welcome.

If it's your first time here, we're glad you're here.

Hope you can tell you can just relax and be yourself.

If you if there's anything you need to know, there's an info desk uh in the big lobby in the front.

Probably the main thing you need to know is there's restrooms on either side of the side doors.

But uh, we're really glad you're here.

Uh the college age group is off to a great start.

And uh Justin and Megan are leading that.

It is uh it meets again this Tuesday at 7 p.m.

in the fireplace room, and it's for anyone kind of college age through age 25.

There's a full month left of Wednesday nights at his hands.

There's something uh a great group for for everyone.

There's child care.

And so even if you haven't been able to go before now, just uh jump in, you will love it.

And this Friday at 10 a.m., mom's rock groups uh mom's rock group meets uh in the uh play area and his kids.

And uh that's a great time.

Moms get together with the kids and uh bring food, share food, and and uh share about uh God.

And again, that's 10 a.m.

this Friday.

Uh please remember about giving.

We don't pass a plate, so sometimes it's easy to just forget, but it is obviously important to uh for us to do what God has us doing uh together, and it's also just an important part of our relationship with God and um and learning to walk with him and and uh him teaching us that we can trust him with uh with our money.

So uh thank you for that.

Let's uh pray.

So, Father, we do praise you.

We just thank you for being such a great father, our Abba Father.

We thank you for adopting us each as your very own children.

And Holy Spirit, we just thank you for for teaching us and and just ask you that this morning that uh that each of us would leave with something that we know is for us and directly from you.

And Jesus, we just uh thank you for teaching us too and for being our Savior and our friend.

Well, we have a special guest teacher this morning.

I think you're gonna like him.

Um his name is Jesus.

Um he knew that life would get hard and we might feel worn out and feel burdened.

And so he said, Come to me, and I will give you rest.

He said, Let me teach you.

So Jesus says, I will teach you.

I mean, what an offer.

And so we're taking them up on it.

And we're spending some weeks uh in the red letters, looking at what Jesus said, some things Jesus uh did.

And we're asking Jesus to do that, to teach us how to live easy and how to live lightly.

If you weren't here last week, we talked briefly about Captain Franklin's uh expedition ex expedition.

It was a Ford vehicle.

Actually, I just made that up.

Sorry.

It was in 1845, and he led two ships exploring the uh Canadian Arctic, and both ships got trapped in the in the ice, and eventually none of the men survived.

But when the ships were eventually found, they were weighed down with things that were luxurious but not helpful to the expedition.

Two men in particular salvaged some wood from the ship and they built um what'd they build?

Man, I'm struggling this morning.

Yeah, like like uh sleighs.

What's another name for a sleigh?

Sled.

They built sleds, they did.

These two men.

These two sled-building expeditioners.

Okay, so these two guys built these sleds and they loaded them up and they drug them through the ice and the snow and and the wind for over 65 miles, and eventually they collapsed and they died.

And and when the search uh party found the sleds, what they were loaded up was with engraved silverware.

And you know, it seems like a bad plan.

But honestly, I'm sure it made sense to them at the time.

There was a reason that they were doing that.

And that is kind of the challenge for us.

I mean, are we living life heavy, pulling a lot of things we aren't that aren't really going to be helpful, carrying weight that we don't need to carry?

You know, it could be anything, it could be attitudes, could be possessions to take care of, worries or grudges or addictions, anything that's weighing us down.

Jesus did not intend for our lives to be a torture test.

You know, maybe an obstacle course, an adventure.

You know, of course life is hard at times, but Jesus knew something that I haven't learned exactly how to do yet.

Jesus said, Come to me, all 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.

So a couple months ago, when when I was reading this, the part that really jumped out to me were the four words, let me teach you.

You know, and when Jesus says something, we can take it to the bank.

You know, so there is a way.

There is a way to live easy and lightly, and there is rest for our souls.

You know, our souls is our mind and our will, our emotions, our personalities.

Does anyone have trouble turning your mind off?

You know, it's hard to go to sleep at night because your mind's just uh racing.

You know, if you wake up in the middle of the night, it's hard to go back to sleep because you start thinking about things and and and everything that that you have to do.

Um do you ever worry about something and you tell yourself not to, but you can't stop?

You know, you you you tell yourself, okay, that's probably not gonna happen, or I can't do anything about it, or or whatever it is, but still it just sits there.

You know, there's that that underlying um worry.

You ever take a vacation and it takes you days just to unwind maybe the whole vacation just to unwind?

See, all of these things are our soul.

Jesus says, You can trust me.

I am gentle, I am humble, and you will find rest for your soul.

I shared last week this is something that I need to learn, and I'm glad that maybe this is the next thing Jesus is going to teach me because we're all in process, you know.

We come to Jesus and He fills us with His Spirit and starts transforming us from the inside out, but He's got a different priority list for all of us, you know, and so we learn constantly as we go.

And so when I get to something that I really want to learn, and uh and I feel like that's the next thing.

It's exciting, and I'm excited about this because I get too busy and I get too many things uh weighing on me, and sometimes it feels very heavy, sometimes it feels like it's just way too much.

But Jesus says, Come to me, I will give you rest.

So last week we we saw how quickly he started.

He said, Let me teach you.

Then immediately he got into a discussion about the Sabbath.

I mean, it was his very next words that he said.

He was walking with his disciples as he was talking to them.

His disciples reached down and they picked some grain because they were hungry.

And the religious leaders that were around immediately just condemned them because they had broken the law of the Sabbath.

And so Jesus says, you know, uh, even David broke the law of the Sabbath, and Moses broke the law of the Sabbath.

And then he says, But you would not have condemned my innocent disciples if you knew the meaning of this scripture.

I want you to show mercy, not offer sacrifices, for the Son of Man is Lord even over the Sabbath.

And so the first thing that Jesus teaches us is what he said in his offer to teach.

He said, Come to me.

It's not about religion, it's not about rules, it's not about the law of the Sabbath, it is about love, and it's about mercy and a relationship with me.

Come to me.

I am Lord even over the Sabbath.

And that's where we stopped last week.

And the reason I recapped a little is the very next thing that Jesus says also has to do with the Sabbath.

It's the very next verse, Matthew 12 and 9.

Then Jesus went over to their synagogue where he noticed a man with a deformed hand.

The Pharisees asked Jesus, Does the law permit a person to work by healing on the Sabbath?

They were hoping he would say yes so they could bring charges against him.

And he answered, If you had a sheep that fell into a well on the Sabbath, wouldn't you work to pull it out?

Of course you would.

And how much more valuable is a person than a sheep?

Yes, the law permits a person to do good on the Sabbath.

Then he said to the man, Hold out your hand.

And so the man held out his hand and it was restored, just like the other one.

This story is compelling just by itself, this uh single story.

And we talked about it back when we were looking at Proverbs and we were talking about controlling anger, because Mark kind of adds more uh color to the story, and he talks about how uh when they challenged him, Jesus brought the man up in front of everyone.

You know, he kind of made a big deal of this.

And it says that he looked at the Pharisees angrily.

I mean, he was really uh frustrated.

They had completely missed the point.

They didn't understand the point of the Sabbath.

And so it's not a coincidence when Jesus says, Hey, I'm gonna teach you how to live lightly, how to live easy, that he immediately has two life-giving interactions, both involving the Sabbath.

The Sabbath was a very big deal in Jewish life.

It was one of the Ten Commandments.

In Exodus 20, it says, Remember to observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.

You have six days each week for your ordinary work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath day of rest dedicated to the Lord your God.

On that day no one in your household may do any work.

This includes you, your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, your livestock, and any foreigners living among you.

For in six days the Lord made the heavens, the earth, the sea, and everything in them.

But on the seventh day he rested.

That is why the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and set it apart as holy.

There was even a Sabbath rest for the land, for earth had a Sabbath rest.

In Leviticus twenty five it says, While Moses was on Mount Sinai, the Lord said to him, Give the following instructions to the people of Israel.

When you have entered the land I am given you, the land itself must observe a Sabbath rest before the Lord every seventh year.

For six years you may plant your fields and prune your vineyards and harvest your crops, but during the seventh year the land must have a Sabbath year of complete rest.

It is the Lord's Sabbath.

Do not plant your fields or prune your vineyards during that year, and don't store away the crops that grow on their own or gather the grapes from your unpruned vines.

The land must have a year of complete rest, but you may eat whatever the land produces on its own during its Sabbath.

You know, all of creation was designed for scheduled rest.

Tired people, tired land.

God's creation needs to rest.

And you know, kind of as an aside, there's no real historical evidence that the Sabbath rest for the land was ever really followed.

Because you can imagine in tough economic times in an agriculture economy how difficult it would be for every seven years not to plant your fields.

Um and so it looks like most of the time they didn't.

Um but imagine if they had what a blessing they would have uh received from God.

But the weekly Sabbath was embraced.

The religious scholars had taken the work, do not work, which is what God said, and they had, of course, added to it and refined that, and they had uh 39 specific things that you're not allowed to do on the Sabbath.

And the Sabbath started just before sunset on Friday and ended just after sunset on Saturday.

And so some of the things you couldn't do were planting, plowing, gathering, sorting, grinding grains, sifting, cooking, laundry, spinning wool, weaving, tying, untying, sewing, Zumba.

You could do jazz or size.

Um, I don't know if you could do Zumba or not.

But uh trapping, riding, erasing, building, demolition, extinguishing a fire, lighting of fire, moving things.

That was just half of the list of the things that you're not allowed to do on the Sabbath.

And they observed these things, I mean, super strictly.

I mean, to keep it perfectly was vital, they thought, in order to please God.

So Orthodox Jewish people observe the Sabbath strictly today.

I have a friend who is Jewish and Orthodox, and we were on a business trip three weeks ago and traveling back on Friday, and he was scheduled to fly on uh Luftanza and they went on strike.

And so he was scrambling to get a flight because he can't fly on the Sabbath.

You know, and so it involved a mini emergency and getting a hotel with a kosher restaurant right next door, and then coming home after the Sabbath.

The uh, and you know, and I mean, I really respect uh that uh conviction and adhering to uh his conscience.

But what Jesus taught about the Sabbath is a perfect example of Jesus teaching the tree of life, not the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

You know, the tree of life in the Garden of Eden is an important part of what Jesus has kind of ingrained into our culture here.

You know, we talked about Mom's Rock on Friday.

The play area is a tree of life tree house and his kids.

Holy Spirit inspired Marlin to paint the tree of life.

Now there's these beautiful paintings of the tree of life all over the building.

God's original desire was a relationship.

And so Adam and Eve would walk with God and talk with God.

And in the center of the garden, there's two uh prominent trees.

There was a tree of life which they could stay at and they could eat freely from.

And then there was a tree that was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and they were forbidden to eat from that tree.

And when we think about that um occurrence, you know, in the forbidden fruit, you know, for some reason I feel like we think of uh just worldliness and sexual sin and what you know that forbidden fruit represented.

It was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

We would call it the rules tree, or the religion tree, or the law tree.

Tell us the rules, and we'll be like God.

Adam and Eve thought.

Godly is how we might say it.

It didn't work for them, it doesn't work now, because we can only be more like Jesus in a relationship with Jesus.

You know, He is the tree of life.

He said, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

And that is where fulfillment is, that is where joy is.

And Jesus is going to teach us that there is rest and there's living easy and lightly at the tree of life as well.

You know, not a literal tree now, but the constant choice we face between a relationship with Jesus or just give me the rules and I'll try and be godly on my own.

That was the fall of mankind.

Rules and religion instead of life and relationship.

And that gets us back to the Sabbath.

You know, the Sabbath was established before Adam and Eve chose the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

It had been a principle forever.

First observed by God Himself.

In Genesis 2, it says, So the creation of the heavens and the earth and everything in them was completed.

On the seventh day, God had finished his work of creation, and so he rested from all his work.

And God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy, because it was the day when he rested from all his work of creation.

See, the Sabbath was never intended to be part of the tree of the knowledge in good and evil.

It was always part of the tree of life.

And so when Mark gives his account, this exact same story of Jesus walking with his disciples, they reach down and they grab some uh grain because they're uh they're hungry.

He includes a comment that could be life-changing for some of us.

Now it could be reinforcing for some of us, you know, it could be something we already know for some of us, but for some of us it could be life-changing.

Then Jesus said to them, The Sabbath was made to meet the needs of people, and not people to meet the requirements of the Sabbath.

The Sabbath was meant to meet a need we have.

Not for people to prove their commitment to God.

It was something for us.

You know, originally the Sabbath was a beautiful time.

It included three festive meals, they'd have a little church together, they'd go to the synagogue, they have a lot of time with family and friends, people enjoyed each other.

You know, married couples could make love on the Sabbath.

I asked Susan last night what she thought about that, and she said, right now I think it's gross.

So that'll let you know where our relationship is.

But I haven't given up.

But it was a time of enjoying God, enjoying each other, and literally just stopping and appreciating life and what God had done.

The Sabbath was made to meet the needs of people and not people to meet the requirements of the Sabbath.

So I said last week that we would be talking about something that I'm trying to get my mind around and how to apply in my life.

And honestly, this is it.

Jesus says we are created to need a day of rest.

It's for our benefit, our wholeness, our happiness, our relationship with God.

It's for us.

And it's such a simple, you know, statement, but I'm a little dense in some areas.

And sometimes the simple things, you know, are the most difficult really to apply.

But honestly, I've never even really thought about applying this.

You know, I'll take days off from time to time.

Um, people talk about do we take the Bible literally?

And of course, the parts that are meant to be literal, we take literally.

You know, there's other parts in the Bible.

There's there's things that are metaphors, there's uh poetry, there's history, there's dreams, but there are parts that are meant for us to take literally.

And so when Jesus says we're created to need a day of rest, he means that literally.

And a Sabbath is different than a typical weekend.

You know, a typical day off for a lot of us is you know, it's half getting caught up, running errands.

You know, I have a list of projects that I'm trying to uh get to.

If we have kids, it's a lot of running around, you know, games and practices and and uh and things to do.

You know, a typical day off can be as hectic as a work day.

Now the difference between the Sabbath and what many of us are used to is that the Sabbath was a whole day without any productivity.

And so my immediate reaction is, of course, who wouldn't want a day you know like that, but I've got too much to do.

And that is part of my problem.

I mean, God made me to want to accomplish things and to work hard, and that's a good thing.

And we talked about that in Proverbs, you know, how God blesses uh hard work.

But there's other principles that apply as well, like Ecclesiastes 3 1, where it says, for everything there's a season, a time for every activity under heaven.

And so there's a time to work hard, and if we're gonna work, we might as well just bust it.

But there's also a time to rest, and if we're going to rest, maybe we should really rest.

Every six days is what Jesus says, we could use a day of real rest.

And what if we had a day?

And with without feeling like we had to approve something or earn something or accomplish something?

What if our inherent value to God is simply who we are, not what we do?

I heard a quote at work last Monday.

It's your system is perfectly designed to produce the results you're currently getting.

So if we are tired, worn out, burdened, we are going to have to change something.

Moses talks about the Sabbath in Deuteronomy 5.

He says, Remember that you were once slaves in Egypt?

But the Lord your God brought you out with his strong hand and powerful arm.

That is why the Lord your God has commanded you to rest on the Sabbath day.

See, God doesn't want us to slave our lives away.

There are a lot of things, just like Susan talked about when we were taking the Lord's Supper.

There's a lot of things that God created us to do and created us to enjoy.

And so I've got a long way to go on this.

You know, God tried to teach it to me once.

I have talked about it before.

When I first started a company, it was difficult.

It was in the basement of our house, it was a card table and a phone and a computer.

And that sounds romantic if it works out, but at the time it's not fun at all, as many of you know.

And so I was working down there all the time.

Susan's grandmother came and stayed a month with us.

And from then on, she called me the man that lived in the basement, which I took as a compliment.

But now I see how that wasn't so balanced.

But the outcome was what you would uh expect.

After a few years of that, um, you know, I physically broke down.

You know, I wasn't sure why I couldn't breathe and and and and uh why my blood pressure got high and all this stuff.

And so I ended up going to a pulmonologist and a cardiologist.

And eventually what they said to do was stop working for a while.

You know, and so I did that and I felt much better.

And I read a verse then that I kind of held on to.

It's uh Psalms 127.

And it says, Unless the Lord builds a house, the work of the builders is wasted.

Unless the Lord protects a city, garden of his centuries will do no good.

It is useless for you to work so hard from early morning until late at night, anxiously working for food to eat.

For God gives rest to his loved ones.

And so I kept working hard Monday through Friday and decided that I was going to take Saturday and Sunday off.

And honestly, it was then that the business started taking off.

And so God's changed me a lot since then, but I've still got a long ways uh to go.

I was working on this uh Friday.

I've got an uh office at home, but it's not in my basement.

It's uh upstairs.

And so I'm working on this, and I'm on my laptop, and right next to me I've got a stack of books, and on top is the one that I'm gonna read next.

Okay, so I'm working on this uh sharing about rest.

And look at this book next to me, and the book is the 12-week year.

Achieve more in the next 12 months than most will achieve in the next 12 weeks than most will achieve in 12 months.

That's the book I'm gonna read next.

How to get a year's worth of work done in three months.

That's crazy.

Um see, I probably instead should read an interaction Jesus had with two friends.

As Jesus and the disciples continued on their way to Jerusalem, they came to a certain village where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home.

Her sister Mary sat at the Lord's feet, listening to what he taught.

But Martha was distracted by the big dinner she was preparing.

She came to Jesus and said, Lord, doesn't it seem unfair to you that my sister just sits here while I do all the work?

Tell her to come help me.

But the Lord said to her, My dear Martha, you are worried and upset over all these details.

There's only one thing worth being concerned about.

Mary has discovered it, and it will not be taken away from her.

The real purpose of the Sabbath was not to impress God with our self-denial, it was to take time to enjoy what's most important.

Family, friends, nature, and God.

You know, it's also time just to rest in the truth that God loves us and we have great value and a time to remember and thank him for what he's done for us.

The 92nd Psalm is a psalm that was written specifically to be sung on the Sabbath day.

It says, It is good to give thanks to the Lord, to sing praises to the Most High.

It is good to proclaim your unfailing love in the morning, your faithfulness in the evening, accompanied by the ten-stringed harp and the melody of the lyre.

You thrill me, Lord, with all you have done for me.

I sing for joy because of what you have done.

Sometimes just stopping and remembering what God has already done for us and thanking him can give us peace.

Now, Jesus came to fulfill the law, so he is not saying we need to keep the actual Sabbath.

He's teaching us that we all need consistent, real rest.

So, how can we apply this in our lives?

You know, to today or tomorrow or over the week?

I don't know.

I mean, I really don't.

I mean, I'm thinking about it a lot.

I've got some ideas.

Uh, I think it's different for all of us.

We're all wired different.

This is a bigger issue for some of us than than others.

Um, I think I may need to transition into figuring out a day of rest.

Um, you know, it could be us really protecting our Saturdays or really protecting our Sundays or scheduling some time off, or maybe it's a more of a daily thing where we restructure our days a little bit.

But I am gonna calibrate to learn what Jesus is teaching us.

You know, and that's the great thing about relationship instead of religion, is that we can all ask the Holy Spirit and just say, show me, show me what it means in my life to have real rest.

In the message, Matthew 11, 28 and 30 says, Are you tired, worn out, burned out on religion?

Come to me, get away with me, and you'll recover your life.

I'll show you how to take a real rest.

Walk with me and work with me.

Watch how I do it.

Learn the enforced rhythms of grace.

I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you.

Keep company with me, and you'll learn to live freely and lightly.

So Jesus said he would teach us, and he's going to teach us a lot of things about how to live freely and lightly.

The first thing he taught us was to come to him.

And now that a day of rest was created because we need it.

You know, we're created in the image of God.

He rested.

The earth was created to need rest, and obviously we need rest too.

And so we'll stop there this morning.

And if the worship team wants to come up, let's stand and get ready to sing the last song together.

So that might be hard, but there's certainly worse things I've had to try and figure out.

Incorporated more rest into our lives.

You know, it starts just with what Jesus said.

Come to me.

How refreshing to have Jesus.

You're not a bunch of rules to memorize, not a bunch of things to do.

Come to me.

I will teach you, I will give you rest.

And that's what happens.

You know, it's it's simple.

I mean, there's no uh religious requirement, nothing to get notarized, not an aisle even to walk.

It's in our own words, in our own way.

Jesus, I want to be with you.

I want to be connected with you.

You know, we're or wherever we're at today, you know, save me, help me.

I'm tired.

You know, whatever it is.

And when we turn to Jesus, we're created in the image of God with the Spirit.

Our spirit really comes alive and it connects with God's Spirit.

And then He starts transforming us from the inside out.

And one of the ways He's going to transform us is to teach us how to live lightly and easy.

So let's pray.

Father, we praise you.

We thank you for being such a great God and for loving us enough to uh to show us and teach us.

And Jesus, thank you for teaching us this morning.

And just uh speak to each of us in our lives, in our situations.

You know, there's a lot going on in people's lives today, God, and we just ask you to to bless everyone in whatever way that they need it.

And so we thank you and we trust you.

And Jesus, your great name.

Amen.