Finally Finding Rest
Sunday, April 23, 2017
Rest
Scripture: Matthew 11:28-30 (pg. 1482)
Theme: Finding the rest Jesus offers.
Series:
I don’t know how you will feel about this…
But some of the federal tax dollars you just paid
last week go to help the CDC figure out who is and who
is not getting enough rest…
Those of us in PA are in the ‘not’ column…
Among all the 50 states… we are #38 on the list…
So there are only 12 states in which people are
more sleep-deprived than us…
And if you’re curious, those states worse than us
are, in order, Delaware (39), Ohio, New York, W.
Virginia, Indiana, S. Carolina, Georgia, Michigan,
Alabama, Maryland, Kentucky, and worst of all, Hawaii.
Even New Jersey beats us in sleep.
The 5 most well-rested states are S. Dakota,
Colorado, Minnesota, Nebraska, and Idaho.
Anyway, apparently, more than 37% of us
Pennsylvanians are not getting enough rest…
And although I feel sorry for you if that’s you…
NOW is not the time to get caught up.
We have been learning about rest… which is about far
more than just getting enough sleep: It’s a soul issue.
-2And I’m going to attempt to do something I’ve never
done in almost 35 years of doing this job…
I want to do a review.
I want to take a brief walk through each of the
lessons we learned…
Because in truth – none of these lessons are standalone, although that’s the way you heard them…
Instead, it is the accumulation of rest-wisdom that
will make a difference in our lives…
It’s a package… and having the whole package
offers us our best hope of finding rest.
So, because I believe and because I truly care and
want you to find rest… pray, then invest our morning in
bringing together what it took us 6 weeks to do.
[Pray]
We began with an invitation… I want to read that
invitation again: Matt 11:28-30, (pg. 1482) SLIDES
Rest comes to you, and to me, as an invitation from
Jesus.
To weary, burdened people, Jesus said, “Come to
me. I can give you rest.”
I think all around him, Jesus saw (and still does
see!) people who are weary…
Weary & burdened w/ regret… w/ lonliness…
w/ boredom… w/ hopelessness… w/ despair &
depression…
-3-
-4-
He sees people who are afraid… who are drained & just
tired of life…
People who are bullied… abused… hurt by others.
People who sometimes think, “It would be easier
and it would hurt less to just not be anymore…”
People who sometimes think, “I just want to go
home…” and by home, they don’t mean an address, but a
place that isn’t on this earth…
People who do not know joy and can’t find
happiness…
And so, we set out to do just that… to learn from him
what exactly is this rest he is offering, and how do we
get it?
To these people, Jesus offers rest.
Not a vacation… not a nap… not a day off…
Rest.
Now, you must understand, this is a personal invitation
from Jesus…
It comes from him and it is about him.
This invitation doesn’t come in the form of a selfhelp book…
It isn’t 13 chapters in a book… it isn’t 3 points, all
starting w/ the same letter…
It isn’t a series of videos you can watch on your
own when you have free time…
It’s about him and you... Him and me.
“Learn from me,” Jesus said.
He is inviting you to learn his kind of life…
And empowered by him, live his kind of life.
Week 2, March 12… read Luke 6:6-11, want to read it
again…
Now… if you’re going to figure out what this ‘rest’ is
that Jesus is offering… you’re going to have to deal with
the Sabbath…
Because at the core of every Biblical discussion of
rest… there’s the Sabbath.
There’s a good reason for this: the word,
“Sabbath” is not a name for a day of the week, as we
often think…
1 meaning of the word is, “rest.”
The Sabbath was given by God in order to give
weary human beings rest.
Now, in the account we dealt w/ - we learned from Jesus
that he understood that the Sabbath isn’t just a break
from work… it’s not just a day off…
Jesus understood that this day is meant to give life
to human beings…
That’s the nature of the day: It’s a life-giving day.
It restores life… it renews us… refreshes us…
Re-creates us… re-energizes us.
That’s what rest is meant to do… give us back the
life that gets sucked out of us and makes us weary.
-5-
-6-
Now… more importantly: This is about restoring life to
our souls… our spirits…
I can have a body that is exhausted from a very
long day of splitting firewood…
But if I have a rested soul… if my soul is at
peace… if I am calm in my soul… if I’m not afraid… not
worried… not despairing…
If my soul is at peace… then I am at peace…
I am at rest.
So, to find this rest – we have to learn to disconnect –
Even if we just disconnect for moments… for
specific periods of time…
We disconnect from those things & activities
which normally consume our lives and drain the life from
us.
On the other hand: I can have a body that is at rest…
It can be 3 in the morning in the middle of a week
of vacation when I’m doing nothing but spending the day
lying on the beach…
But if my soul is not at rest… if I’m worried…
anxious… depressed… lonely… burdened…
Then I am not at rest.
So – when we ask, “What kind of rest is Jesus offering
us?” –
He is offering the rest we really need…
A rest for our souls.
Life for our souls.
Now – the concept of the Sabbath also tells us how we go
about getting this rest that Jesus offers…
Because the word ‘Sabbath’ means not only ‘rest’ It also means ‘to cease’ or to ‘disconnect.’
And here’s what we learned – this is important…
All of us – all of us live in a world that is always
offering to us false, inadequate things to prop up our
lives…
It might be our looks… it might be grades…
It might be sports… it might be career success…
It might be money… it might be a sense of
importance that comes with busyness… it might be sex…
And not one of these things is bad or wrong…
But what they are is inadequate…
They are not enough.
Every single one is temporary… not one… not one
can carry you your whole life long.
You cannot build a life on them.
When we do… we end up surprised, wondering
why we feel so empty and so weary.
Now – some of the things we use to prop up our lives are
not good things…
Porn… addictions… promiscuous sex…
These will always disappoint & weary you & lead
to a burdened life – 100% guaranteed.
-7-
-8-
So… what rest does… it creates the time/space to
disconnect from those false, inadequate props… we
unplug from them – even if it’s only temporarily, for just
small moments of time…
And by disconnecting from them, we create the
time and the space necessary to reconnect with what is
most important and real in life.
We create the time and the space to plug into what
is enough to carry you for a lifetime.
Likewise, busyness will always, always, always, drown
out love.
So, according to Jesus – the rest he is offering is the
restoration of life for our souls…
And the way we get it is to disconnect from the
empty props of life so that we create the time and space
to reconnect with what is real and brings life.
Now: what are those props from which we all need
to disconnect?
Well – you probably don’t know that this was the
plan… but we spent the next three weeks discovering 3
of the most common & dangerous props…
This is the life Jesus often found himself living: Either
having to meet the demands of people around him…
Or, being interrupted by people who were making
demands on him.
And like Jesus, there are certain stages of life when
you’re almost trapped by the demands of other people…
Being a mom or a dad is one of those times…
Particularly during the early years.
The first one – Week 3, March 19… when we read from
Mark 6:30-34 -What’s the first prop?
Well it’s success… but more specifically… it’s the
hurry, or the busyness that we find ourselves in as we
chase success… or that success brings w/ it.
Here’s what we discovered: You cannot… you
cannot love in a hurry…
Now- here’s the problem we face: It’s likely impossible
to manage the demands people will make on you.
Even Jesus couldn’t…
He and his disciples often found themselves so
busy they didn’t even have time to eat…
When they tried to get away, they couldn’t.
Here’s the thing about Jesus --He never seems to be hurried… he’s never
rushed… he’s never impatient with people…
He’s never overwhelmed by busyness.
So, what did Jesus know about life that we don’t
necessarily?
He knew that hurry… busyness… often comes not
because of a full schedule… Jesus lived w/ a full
schedule…
-9-
-10-
It comes because of empty hearts… we’re trying to jam
things into our hearts that we expect to fill the emptiness.
And they never will…
Distractions seem important… but they are not.
Distractions often come disguised…
They are the white elephants we talked about on
that Sunday…
But distractions suck the life out of us because
they demand our time… our money… our energy… our
resources…
And in return they give you nothing of value.
Jesus had a heart filled with love from the father and trust
in the father…
And it really is possible to discover and live with
both… knowing you are deeply loved… and growing in
trust…
And I invited you to practice eliminating hurry by
finding time to just review and reflect on a very famous
Psalm 23…
JoAnn has since made these bookmark-y kind of
things…
Take one phrase at a time:
Take as much time as you need to read a phrase
and ask, “What if this is true?”
This was failed prop #1 – eliminate the hurry from our
lives by growing in our experience of love and trust.
Here’s the next thing to eliminate, Week 4, March 26We read a marvelous little story from Luke 10:38-42.
Distractions.
Do you remember what distractions are?
Distractions are substitutions…
When a lesser thing takes the place of a better
thing.
We live in a sadly, sadly distracted world.
And in our world… the world you and I are living in
every day…
We are surrounded by distractions…
Everywhere we go…
You can’t pump gas without being distracted by
messages that say, “You need me.”
Now, these distractions fill holes in our lives…
If they didn’t… they would have no appeal at all.
So, what we discovered was that sometimes it is better to
receive than it is to give…
Fact, there are times when we must receive…
Mary got the gold star on this day because of her
willingness to simply be w/ Jesus and allow him to pour
his life into her…
This is extraordinarily hard for most of us to do…
We want to be do-ers…
We want to be givers…
We want to accomplish things, big things…
-11-
-12-
But unless we learn to receive life from Jesus…
Then distractions will have an appeal because
we’ll always be trying to fill the empty spots in our lives.
Now – here’s the deal:
Many of us are afraid… we live w/ fear…
Many of us are managing our lives, really, based
on fear… we are!
Lots of our decisions are really fear-based
decisions.
So… on this week, we discovered the need to eliminate
distractions.
Week 5, April 9 –
We read from Mark 4:35-41…
This is a favorite of mine… and here’s what we
discovered: At the center of his life, Jesus had a calmness
and a confident trust in his father…
That allowed him to be at rest in the boat when
everyone else was terrified.
The world was as scary as it could possibly be…
And yet Jesus was able to be at rest…
While everyone around him is going to have to
change their underwear… truly.
And why is this so?
Because we don’t trust God w/ our lives or the
lives of people we love.
God does not seem to be doing what we think he
should be doing…
We’re like the disciples shouting in the storm,
“Don’t you care?”
Now – Jesus chided his disciples for their lack of faith…
And this is a really important idea for you & I…
We discovered there is a reason for their lack of
faith – get this…
What if, our fear could be replaced with faith?
What if instead of reading God as unconcerned or
doing nothing… or at least not doing what we want him
to…
What if we could begin to see it for what it is:
A calm, confident certainty that He will win.
They looked at Jesus sleeping – they saw his calmness &
his confident trust…
However, they misread that as unconcern.
What was really calmness and confident trust…
Caused them to say, “Don’t you care?”
But what if… what if we are misreading God’s calm,
confidence as unconcern?
Doesn’t that change things?
If we are ever to find rest… we must overcome fear.
Fear must be replaced with faith…
But for that to happen…
-13-
-14-
The object of our faith must be found to be worthy, right?
The object of our faith matters, right?
Faith in something, or someone who cannot
actually perform… is really, in the end, foolish.
In their minds – faith was born…
Faith – hope – had a reason…
So, our faith needs to be reasonable…
Which brings us to last week…
Week 6, Easter Sunday…
We read John 2:13-22…
Now… here’s the thing…
This conversation, as far as we can tell… took
place several years before Easter weekend…
However, Jesus, as he often did… is talking about
the events of Easter weekend…
When Jesus said rather strange things about the TempleHe was really talking about himself…
Destroy him and in 3 days he will be raised up.
Now, at the time… that sounded like talk from a nut-job.
John’s testimony is this – v. 22…
Years later… after his resurrection, it was
conversations like these plus the fact of the resurrection
that made them believe…
That’s what John says…
That Jesus had a plan for a resurrection…
And that he was resurrected… caused them to
believe…
They knew that a plan for a resurrection w/out a
resurrection was a failure…
That’s just a miserable disappointment.
And there is no faith or hope in that.
However, a resurrection w/out a plan is just some giant
fluke… some trick… some anomaly that goes viral &
everyone talks about it…
But there is no hope in it for me…
It doesn’t inspire any faith for me personally.
However, put them together…
That there was a plan for a resurrection…
And that there was a resurrection…
John said, “Now we believe. Now we have faith.
It’s not just that Jesus was resurrected… it’s that he said
he would be.”
“Now,” John says, “Now our faith has a reason. Jesus,
now we understand that we can trust you w/ our lives.”
So, you must wrestle with this as well…
Do you trust Jesus with your life?
And, which brings us back to the beginning…
This is an invitation from Jesus.
-15-
-16-
Have any of you seen the new, Beauty & the Beast?
Disney remaking all classic movies as live action –
“Do you trust me?”
Now she knows…
“Yes,” she says… and steps onto the carpet…
Because she knows she can…
Read – one struggling w/ is Aladdin –
Who can replace Robin Williams as Genie –
Heard Will Smith – not sure if it’s fake news or
true news…
One of my favorites… 2 scenes love…
Early in movie, Aladdin (street rat) –
Rescues Princess Jasmine…
Scene where she must make a leap – really a leap
of faith… Aladdin holds out his hand, “Do you trust
me?”
She has no choice… she chooses to trust him…
Reasonable – works… she is saved by her trust.
Later… Aladdin shows up at her window disguised as a
fabulously wealthy prince – one of many trying to win
her hand in marriage & of course her heart…
Princess Jasmine doesn’t recognize him as the old
street rat…
He is on a magic carpet… inviting her for a magic
carpet ride…
She looks at carpet… wonders if it is safe…
He holds out his hand, “Do you trust me?”
She, of course, has heard that before… there’s
recognition… “What?” she asks?
This is the invitation of Jesus…
Holding out his hand to weary people:
“Do you trust me?”
This isn’t a blind leap…
You aren’t asked to leap into the unknown…
There’s plenty of evidence…
It’s reasonable…
He’s asking, “Do you trust me?”
All of you who are weary & burdened:
Only you can answer that wonderful invitation:
“Do you trust me?”