Rest for the Weary

How was your Christmas?
Restful?
Refreshing? Haha yea right!

From the shopping melee that started on Thanksgiving this year, to the cooking and entertaining, to the attending of parties; Christmas has become a very hectic time of year.  Once you reach a certain age, I am pretty sure that everyone prefers Thanksgiving (otherwise known as Black Friday Eve) over Christmas, because with Thanksgiving you just eat and hang out with family.  Not nearly all the drama and craziness, not to mention expense, that goes along with Christmas.

Busyness and anxiety seem to rule our society and not just around Christmas time.  I read recently that the average high school student today has the same anxiety level as the average mental patient did in the 1950s.  That's crazy to think about! pun intended.

But seriously we are a culture on the go!  Between work, children's activities, church and other commitments people are run ragged.  Think about the last time you actually sat quietly for an hour.  When was it?

I bet it was either in class, church or when you were sleeping.  And even then we try to multitask (i.e. sleeping in church).

Even vacations, which are suppose to be restful, can be busy and stressful.  I just got back from spending 11 days in California.  And even in the 80 degree winter weather out there, there was no time for rest, relaxation or reflection.

In fact, the most restful time of the whole 10 days was surfing.  An activity that includes having cold waves pound my head, huffing and puffing because I am so out of shape, and trying not to get caught on the inside or in the rip current.  Though you may have never surfed in your life, I am willing to bet you would rather try to brave the Pacific Ocean on a surfboard than Walmart on Christmas Eve.  Which I also did, and that is a story for another time, but lets just say that it looked like Baghdad after Shock and Awe.

But rest is so important... even the world knows it...  After combing through tons of articles online about rest and dealing with anxiety, I found some common themes that emerged.  The first being the obvious: a good way to deal with anxiety is to rest.  duh!

But how does one rest? The world seems to think in order to rest we either need to remove "unnecessary" things from our hectic schedules or add things to them.

The idea of adding things to my schedule increases my anxiety immediately, especially if that thing is Yoga (an all to often addition suggested by many articles).  The idea of putting on Yoga pants is anything but restful.

And though removing "unnecessary" things seems like a great idea, in reality, things are on our schedule because we have deemed them necessary.  Thus, it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to remove anything from our schedules.

Though we may see resting as a pipe dream we are only able to achieve every once in a while, it is a command of Scripture and vital to our overall spiritual health, not to mention our physical health.

In the book of Matthew, Chapter 11, After rebuking the Pharisees, Jesus prays, thanking the Father for revealing himself to the "little children", and then further reveals the heart of the Father, starting in verse 28.

He says, "Come to me, all you who labor and are heavily burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart; and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."

To rest, throughout Scripture is a command and a promise.  It is a promise because the Lord promises rest to those He loves, but it is also a command that the Lord takes seriously.  Going all the way back to Genesis chapter 2, on the Seventh Day, the LORD rested and so he blessed that day and set it apart as holy.  Israel refused to heed God's command to rest and went into exile in Babylon for 70 years.

How do we, in this culture of do more, try harder, go, go, go; find rest?

This is what I love about Scripture.  It isn't some rule book that we try to interpret and live by.  No, we let the Bible interpret us, read us, and help us do what it says.  For in these little verses we find how we can rest, when the whole world is laying burden's on us that neither they, nor their fore-father's could bear.

Christ, in this passage tells us how to find rest.  First he says, "Come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden"

This cry of our Lord is repeated constantly in Scripture.  The Spirit says through the prophet Isaiah "Come, everyone who thirsts, to the waters!  Come, he who has no money, buy, and eat!  Yes, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price." (Isaiah 55:1)

God wants those who can't help themselves to come to him...

My brothers and sisters, are you weary and heavy laden?

Come to Christ.  Come to him with open hands and an open heart.  Many people come to Christ for salvation and then venture off as if they can do everything else themselves.  No!  Come to Christ and stay there and let his joy and love warm your soul.

The Psalmist in Psalm 127 insists that without the Lord, everything we do is in vain.  He says
"Unless the LORD builds the house,
    they labor in vain who build it.
Unless the LORD watches over the city,
    the watchman guards it in vain.
It is vain for you to rise up early,
    to stay up late,
    eating the bread of toil;"

 He further says that a mark of one who comes to the Lord is rest, because "[the LORD] gives sleep to his loved ones"

But how do we come to Christ?

We do it by faith.

And what is faith?

John Calvin says faith is "A firm and certain knowledge of God's benevolence towards us,
found upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ, both revealed to our minds
and sealed upon our hearts through the Holy Spirit."

you got that?
me either.

Let me put it another way:  Faith is trusting God.  Do you trust God with your anxieties and fears.  With your busy schedule?  Do you?

Do you expect as the Scriptures say, "the goodness of God' (Psalm 27:13)?

The Psalmist in Psalm 55:22 says, "Cast your cares on the LORD and he will sustain you; he will never let the righteous be shaken."
Do you believe that the Lord can sustain you?

Peter summarizes the words of that Psalm when he says, "Cast your cares on him, because he cares for you" (1 Peter 5:7)

Do you believe it?  Are you willing to trust God with those things that make you toss and turn at night?

Having faith and trusting God can be tough a times.  How do we increase our faith and trust?  It's through experiencing the faithfulness of God.  Let me give you an illustration:

A guy from California was going to La Pointe, WI on vacation in the dead of winter.  He had taken the bus from the airport to Bayfield, but was told he couldn't get to La Pointe till the morning.  So he wanders into a little place there in Bayfield and gets a drink.  While chatting with a local, he finds out that his hotel in La Pointe is just under two miles away.  In fact, he can see it from the bar!

So after a couple drinks, the guy ventures off towards the light that the local pointed out.  After about a mile,

he realizes that he is walking on a frozen portion of Lake Superior and becomes worried that he might break through the ice.  Every steps he hears crack, crack...  He remembers watching a nature show that said to spread your weight out over the ice, so he lays on his stomach spread out over the ice and begins to inch along.  As he nears the end of his journey he hears a loud horn and turns around to see a semi truck driving over the same ice he has been crawling on!

You see the man and the truck were both supported by the ice.  The smallness of the man's faith had no bearing on the support that the ice was giving.  But the experience taught the man that he could trust the ice and not be fearful.

So we come to Christ in faith, and trust that he is faithful and will do what he has promised.

The second way we can learn to rest in Christ is found in verse 29 of Chapter 11.  It says, "Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me... For my yoke is easy and my burden is light"

The Lord, the Sovereign of the Universe tells us that the way we rest is by participating with Him in His work.  We do this by obeying him and following his lead.  1 John 5 says "Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God. Whoever loves the Father also loves the child who is born of him. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. His commandments are not burdensome."

You see, we participate in the Love of God by obeying him and his commands aren't burdens.  They are freeing.  The Psalmist in Psalm 119 says that he walks about in freedom because he obeys the precepts of the Lord.  I recently read a book called the Tyranny of Choice.  It puts forth the idea (from a secular view point), that all the options that we now have through technology are oppressive, rather than freeing.  This is what the Bible means when it says "You are a slave to the one you obey" (Romans 6:16).  When we obey ourselves, we end up in sin and oppressed by our own desires.  When we obey God, we are freed.

When we turn from trusting God and resting in Him, we even hear the scriptures differently.  In Isaiah chapter 28, God had been speaking to his people through the prophet, yet the refuse to hear.  They were prideful and relied on themselves.    God's Word said, "This is the resting place. [I][g]ive rest to weary, here is refreshment"(v. 12), but they wouldn't listen.  So instead of hearing God's Words as rest and refreshing, they heard, "Do this and do that. Do that and do this.Obey this rule and obey that rule.  Obey that rule and obey this rule.  Learn a little here and learn a little there." (v. 13)

God meant His Word to be refreshing and not burdensome, but when we don't listen to God and rest in Him, we begin to hear His Word as rules and gibberish.  When we trust God, it is a resting place for our souls.

And what is it that God commands?

"believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another..." (1 John 3:23).  When we operate out of Love, we are participating with God in His work in this world.

Stop striving to live up to others standard, stop trying to out do your neighbor.  As the psalmist says, "Stop striving and Know that the Lord is God.  He is exalted" so we don't have to be.  Trust that the Lord will provide, the Lord will satisfy.  Come to Christ, lay your burdens down, throw off that yoke of slavery that the world gives to you and put the yoke on that Christ gives us.  You are not working alone, you are working along side Jesus Christ in this world.  His yoke is easy and his commands are not burdensome.

Happiness and the Beatitudes (Sermon Audio)

Here is my sermon on the Beatitudes.  It comes from Matthew 5:1-13.
Click here to download or press play to stream

Hebrews 10:26

One passage in Scripture I have been asked about a lot is Hebrews 10:26; which says, "For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remains no more a sacrifice for sins,". This verse has weighed down many people's consciences and played mind games. So, I would like to step through Hebrews 10:26-39 and see what this passage is saying in it's proper context. The actual text from scripture (WEB version) will be in bold. I do not use verse numbers at times because they can sometimes complicate things that are simple and straight forward.

After going to great lengths to explain the priesthood of Christ and how much better His sacrifice for sins was, being once for all, than the sacrifices for sin that had to be offered continually; the writer of Hebrews (starting in verse 19 of chapter 10), exhorts his readers to have confidence to go directly into the presence of God through the blood of Jesus Christ. He tells them that we can approach God with a clear conscience, because we have been cleansed by the blood of Christ. He further exhorts them, as in other parts of the book, to cling to this hope and encourage one another in this hope. Then comes the warning in verse 26:

For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remains no more a sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and a fierceness of fire which will devour the adversaries.

What sin is being spoken of here? It is the sin that changes our hope into a fearful expectation. It's the sin that insults grace and turns Christ's blood into an unholy thing. The sin that the Israelites (and all of us) struggle with the most, the sin that Calvin calls the "very fountain of all sin", the author of Hebrews rails against in chapter 3 and equates it with disobedience: it is the sin of unbelief (Hebrews 3:19).

The writer now explains why your hope is turned to fear through unbelief:

A man who disregards Moses’ law dies without compassion on the word of two or three witnesses. How much worse punishment do you think he will be judged worthy of who has trodden under foot the Son of God, and has counted the blood of the covenant with which he was sanctified an unholy thing, and has insulted the Spirit of grace?

Here the writer calls unbelief an insult to the grace of God.

This is a perfect example of the difference between a believer who has hope and an unbeliever who has an expectation of fear:

For we know him who said, “Vengeance belongs to me,” says the Lord, “I will repay.” Again, “The Lord will judge his people.”

The writer quotes from Deuteronomy 32:35-36. This further strengths the writers argument against unbelief. In the Deuteronomy passage, vengeance is promised against those who hate him and rely on themselves, where vindication (judgment) and compassion are promised to his people, those who have no strength in themselves (Deu 32:35-36).

It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

For those who don't know about his tender mercy.

But remember the former days, in which, after you were enlightened, you endured a great struggle with sufferings; partly, being exposed to both reproaches and oppressions; and partly, becoming partakers with those who were treated so. For you both had compassion on me in my chains, and joyfully accepted the plundering of your possessions, knowing that you have for yourselves a better possession and an enduring one in the heavens.

The writer reminds the reader of times in which the struggled, but God was faithful and their faith was strengthened by the experience.

Since the people had seen the faithfulness of God, the writer urges them:

Therefore don’t throw away your boldness, which has a great reward. For you need endurance so that, having done the will of God, you may receive the promise.

“In a very little while,

he who comes will come, and will not wait.

But the righteous will live by faith.

If he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him.”

But we are not of those who shrink back to destruction, but of those who have faith to the saving of the soul.

We can have full confidence before God because of Christ.  Our sin, even the ones we do on purpose, has been covered by the blood of Christ.  No other sacrifice can give you such eternal confidence.

Why are you eating garbage?

Whenever the pure message of God's love and acceptance is taught, enviably someone objects saying, "You are giving people a license to sin". I always laugh, because people sin just fine without a license. But, anyway this objection to the message of God's grace is not new. Actually, Paul asked and answered this objection in Romans. "What shall we say then? Shall we continue is sin that grace may abound?... Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace?" (Romans 6:1, 15). Paul's answer to both was "Of course not!".

It's a ridiculous question when you understand the love and grace of God and the fact that Jesus Christ lives in you. Let me give an example:

There was an owner of a buffet who was going out back to throw away some trash, when he saw a homeless man digging through the dumpster eating the scraps that had been thrown in there. The owner tells the bum, "Hey, why are you eating garbage? Come in to the restaurant and eat the buffet."
"I ain't got no money" says the bum and continues rifling through the trash.
The owner replies, "Don't worry about it, you can eat at my restaurant everyday for free, come on lets go."

They go inside and there are mountains of fruits, veggies, fish, steak, rice, and cakes. The owner turns to the homeless man and says, "Eat all you want"

the homeless man says, "I can really have anything"

"Anything and everything free of charge"

"Can I go back and eat more garbage?"

Can you believe that? Faced with a beautiful spread of food, the homeless man asked if he could go and eat garbage. How ridiculous!

Jesus laid down His life to take away our sins and make us free from the bondage of sin and death. He was also raised from the dead and gave us His life so that we could live life with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness and self control.

We have missed the whole thing. Jesus offers us the smörgåsbord and we are asking about eating crap. Jesus says that He came "so that we may have life and have it abundantly" , and all we can do is ask, "Does that mean I can sin more". How ridiculous!

We are obsessed with sin. Most preaching is telling people to stop sinning, instead of directing them toward Jesus. It's like yelling at the homeless guy to stay out of the trash instead of telling him to "Come and eat". 1 Corinthians says "The sting of death is sin and the power of sin is the law". Just like the rotting food in the garbage can, sin looks pretty good when all you hear people say is "Don't sin... Quit sinning... It may look good, sooooo goood, but take it from me it's horrible... blah... blah".

Luckily Jesus did not come so that we would quit sinning. He came that we could "have life, and have it more abundantly". Garbage loses it's appeal to a hungry person once he starts experiencing the food from the restaurant. Just like sin loses it appeal once a person begins to experience the reality of knowing Christ and walking with Him in a vibrant relationship.

The grace of God should never be thought of as a license to sin, but as an emancipation proclamation from the bondage of sin and death. This freedom allows us to experience the abundant life in Christ.

Living Free

"I strive to live my life with so much freedom and joy, that uptight religious people will doubt my salvation, and the world will see Christ".

This quote from one of my favorite authors, Dr. Steve Brown, has become a motto for my life.  The Bible teaches us that we are in bondage to sin and to this worldly system.  That is why Christ came, "to preach good news to the poor... to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim release to the captives, recovering of sight to the blind, to deliver those who are crushed" (Luke 4:18).  He came to proclaim the acceptance of the Father! (Luke 4:19).  If that doesn't make you want to get up and dance, I don't know what will!

The Scriptures continually tells believers that we are free (Gal 5:1, John 8:32, Heb 9:15, 2 Cor 3:17, Psalm 119:45, etc) and implores us to live as free people (1 Peter 2:16).  So lets live as free people!

Freedom of a Praying Mother - Sermon (audio)

Here is the sermon I preached on Mother's Day 2013.  The scripture is 1 Samuel 1:1-2:10.  At the end of the sermon I read Hannah's prayer found in 1 Samuel 2:1-10
Click here to download or press play to stream