Mark Medley: So I'm going to start this morning where we normally end the service.
Mark Medley: And that's in Numbers chapter 6.
Mark Medley: If you want to turn there, that's great.
Mark Medley: You can look on the screen behind me.
Mark Medley: Numbers chapter 6.
Mark Medley: The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, Speak to Aaron and his sons, saying, Thus you shall bless the people of Israel.
Mark Medley: You shall say to them, The Lord bless you and keep you.
Mark Medley: The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you.
Mark Medley: The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.
Mark Medley: So shall they put my name upon the people of Israel, and I will bless them.
Mark Medley: Lord, thank you so much for your word.
Mark Medley: We thank you so much for your heart of blessing.
Mark Medley: Thank you that we see here, Lord, a little picture of who you are and what your motivation is for us, Lord.
Mark Medley: Lord, I'm going to ask you this morning that you would highlight just one thing in this service, Lord, that you want us to hear individually, whatever you're speaking to each one of us, Lord.
Mark Medley: And give us grace not only to hear it, but give us grace also to do it, Lord, to be hearers and doers of your word.
Mark Medley: Open our eyes, Lord, by your spirit.
Mark Medley: We're hungry for you, Lord.
Mark Medley: So teach us in Jesus' name.
Mark Medley: Amen.
Mark Medley: Okay, so the Lord give you peace.
Mark Medley: Peace.
Mark Medley: This word peace is the word shalom.
Mark Medley: It's a really uh an untranslatable word.
Mark Medley: It's one of those words in Hebrew which can't be really translated into English in one word.
Mark Medley: It's peace, yeah, but it's a whole lot more than just peace.
Mark Medley: It's really well-being, it's wholeness, it's completeness, it's like a restored state of being.
Mark Medley: It's like a vision of a world that's been put back together in perfect harmony with God, with God's purpose, with each other.
Mark Medley: It's perfect health in all the areas of your life and your relationships.
Mark Medley: And so it's a picture of the heart of God for us, even in a broken world.
Mark Medley: It's, I think the point I want to make this morning, the big point, is that God wants us healthy.
Mark Medley: He wants us healthy.
Mark Medley: That's his heart.
Mark Medley: Not that we would be sick or frazzled or anxious, but that we would have shalom, y'all.
Mark Medley: That we would have peace.
Mark Medley: And theologians and rabbis have wrestled with his word.
Mark Medley: What in the world?
Mark Medley: How you even make meaning of this word, especially in English.
Mark Medley: Sometimes they've defined it as the webbing together of God and humans and all of creation in justice and fulfillment and delight.
Mark Medley: It's like a tapestry of health from chaos.
Mark Medley: So here's a picture for you.
Mark Medley: You think about our lives in a world are often like scattered threads in this broken world that we're in, just thrown upon a table, right?
Mark Medley: Frayed and broken and disconnected.
Mark Medley: There's a lot of potential there for beauty, right?
Mark Medley: Um, but it's it's kind of brokenness.
Mark Medley: We've experienced broken relationships and chaotic circumstances, and inside of us, there's kind of this turmoil.
Mark Medley: I mean, life is beautiful, but life is hard.
Mark Medley: It's both.
Mark Medley: And I'm and I know that in my life, in seasons of my life, I have experienced these periods of chaos and brokenness.
Mark Medley: For me, there's serious, there's seasons when the world just kind of rubs off on me.
Mark Medley: And I think you're probably the same.
Mark Medley: It's hard to face sickness and death and heartbreaking situations and relationships, and finances are tight, and expectations from people are unrealistic, and we're trying to like live up to them.
Mark Medley: And my own soul is being constantly drained, and my fillers are less than my drainers.
Mark Medley: You know what I mean?
Mark Medley: I'm like being drained, and I'm not being filled, and I find myself spiritually empty and kind of carrying this burden all by myself.
Mark Medley: It's like feels like it's all on my shoulders.
Mark Medley: Anyone else?
Mark Medley: You know, I feel like maybe some of you woke up this morning and saying, God, I just need you to help me.
Mark Medley: I just need you to give me some kind of a word.
Mark Medley: I think he has a word this morning.
Mark Medley: Uh, in the midst of all this stuff, you kind of lose your joy.
Mark Medley: Sometimes you're just doing the next thing, you're just surviving.
Mark Medley: And in those times, I can begin to question my own identity, my own purpose, my own significance.
Mark Medley: What's my life even for?
Mark Medley: And my fears go in many directions.
Mark Medley: I can fear myself because I know my frailties, and I doubt my abilities.
Mark Medley: I can fear other people.
Mark Medley: I give too much weight to what you think about me.
Mark Medley: I can fear circumstances because things are unsure, unstable.
Mark Medley: You don't know what tomorrow's gonna bring.
Mark Medley: It's unpredictable.
Mark Medley: And then, as a pastor, me personally, um, the church doesn't expect me to be weak.
Mark Medley: You know, it doesn't expect me to get tempted or be discouraged or get lazy.
Mark Medley: It expects me to be joyful and be a model Christian and a model father and a model husband and be uh content with my pay and all of that, right?
Mark Medley: I'm not saying anything.
Mark Medley: I'm just saying, it's just this is like, you know, I'm not supposed to feel this way.
Mark Medley: I'm a pastor, right?
Mark Medley: I'm supposed to be strong.
Mark Medley: And all this stuff can beat you down, and your resistance wears down, and you get sick, like sick in your soul, sometimes sick in your body, too, sick in your spirit, weak in your spirit.
Mark Medley: So we feel all these brokennesses, right?
Mark Medley: Some seasons are particularly hard, harder than harder than others, but shalom is the presence of God in the midst of that chaos.
Mark Medley: It's peace, and God is speaking peace over his people.
Mark Medley: He says to Aaron and the and the priests, give them my peace.
Mark Medley: And God brings wholeness out of chaos, and God can weave those scattered threads into a beautiful garment, like this one.
Mark Medley: Can you imagine?
Mark Medley: He can pull all those threads together and he can make something beautiful out of it.
Mark Medley: And I was thinking about Jesus when he gathered his terrified disciples together after the resurrection, that they didn't know what was going on, but he breathed on them and he said, Shalom be with you, peace be with you.
Mark Medley: He wasn't just giving them like a little temporary relief, he was re-weaving their scattered world, their threads of their life into uh like a tapestry of wholeness.
Mark Medley: He was bringing health, he was saying, shalom on you.
Mark Medley: Because God wants us healthy.
Mark Medley: And this gift of shalom really is Jesus stepping into the middle of our chaos and our threads and weaving this fabric uh of his perfect purpose and uh his beauty into our lives.
Mark Medley: So the passage we read this morning and that we speak over you every week is called the Aaronic Blessing, because God told Aaron to put this blessing on the people.
Mark Medley: It's commonly used in Judaism, by the way, which is where our roots of our faith come from.
Mark Medley: But it's also used in Catholicism, it's used in Anglican churches, it's used in Protestant churches like ours.
Mark Medley: And it's interesting because in it we receive a blessing, but the whole focus is the Lord.
Mark Medley: God originates the blessing.
Mark Medley: God clearly shows his heart for his chosen people.
Mark Medley: He wants us to live in peace and wholeness.
Mark Medley: He God wants you healthy.
Mark Medley: May the Lord bless you and keep you.
Mark Medley: That is God's loving protection.
Mark Medley: May the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you.
Mark Medley: That's God's smile and his favor.
Mark Medley: The Lord lift up his countenance on you and give you peace.
Mark Medley: Shalom.
Mark Medley: That's God's attention on you, on us as his people, and give you deep peace, his presence, his wholeness, his health, a sense of rest.
Mark Medley: And that kind of blessing is an echo throughout the entire scripture.
Mark Medley: I mean, you think of Psalm 1, and it says, the man whose delight is in the law of the Lord, he's like a man planted by the river, right?
Mark Medley: The river, his roots run deep, the river is there, there's this life that's in him all the time.
Mark Medley: In the beginning, very beginning, Genesis, we see in the Garden of Eden, we see this garden, this beauty, this fruit, this uh nourishment, and this river that flows out of the garden.
Mark Medley: And in the end, in Revelation, we see a river coming from the throne and a tree and the fruit that bears all the time is fruitfulness.
Mark Medley: And we see that Jesus said, I've come that you might have life and you might have it more abundantly.
Mark Medley: It's abundant life.
Mark Medley: And John later on would write in his letter, I want you to prosper and be in health, even as your soul prospers.
Mark Medley: This is the heart of God.
Mark Medley: God wants us healthy.
Mark Medley: That's top point, right?
Mark Medley: But here's the problem: we're like, we're made in the image of God, and yet we're also like dust.
Mark Medley: We're just dust that he breathed into, right?
Mark Medley: We're fragile.
Mark Medley: So, what means does God give us to be healthy?
Mark Medley: That's what I want to talk about this morning.
Mark Medley: So, for pastor's choice, I would like to give you a gift out of my life and my experience that that really God has given to me.
Mark Medley: And he has shown me four gifts that he gives to me to be healthy, four four means, four ways that he makes me healthy and he brings healing into my life and strength into my life and restoration and and reorders and re-tapestries my life.
Mark Medley: And it's like an antidote in a broken world.
Mark Medley: So if you can visit Dr.
Mark Medley: Jehovah and tell him what your problem is, and he could call you in a prescription down to CVS, and you go by and pick it up, and you could take it, and you knew that if you took this thing regularly, you would be healthy.
Mark Medley: Would you do it?
Mark Medley: Would you?
Mark Medley: Would you, really?
Mark Medley: Okay, and I'm gonna ask you that again later on, okay?
Mark Medley: All right, I heard you.
Mark Medley: I heard you, and I think I think you I believe you, but you can pick up these meds and you can take them, okay?
Mark Medley: So four gifts that God gives us to keep us healthy.
Mark Medley: That's what I want to talk about this morning.
Mark Medley: And the first gift is the gift of the gospel.
Mark Medley: The gospel.
Mark Medley: Let me read this to you from Colossians 1, 5 and 6.
Mark Medley: Paul says, the word of truth, the gospel which has come to you, as indeed in the whole world, is bearing fruit and increasing, as it also does among you, since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God in truth.
Mark Medley: The gospel came, the gospel was planted, the gospel bore fruit, it continues to bear fruit.
Mark Medley: It always bears fruit in your life, Paul is saying.
Mark Medley: Okay, this is this is uh the gift, the first gift, like the source of all health for us is this gift of the gospel.
Mark Medley: And yes, it's the gospel, the simple gospel, the simple gospel message that most of us understand that God created us in fellowship with him, but sin separates us from that fellowship.
Mark Medley: But God loved us so much that he sent Jesus to live the life that we couldn't live, a life of perfect obedience to his commands, and to die the death that I should have died because I didn't obey his commands.
Mark Medley: And because of that, by faith, as God raised him from the dead, and by faith in what Jesus has done, God raises me back up with him, and I'm back in fellowship with him.
Mark Medley: That's the gospel.
Mark Medley: It's the simple message of the gospel.
Mark Medley: It's beautiful.
Mark Medley: And most of us agree and believe that, right?
Mark Medley: But there's so much more as you read the scripture.
Mark Medley: Uh, the gospel is like the deeper you go, it's like the mother load of the gifts of God.
Mark Medley: The deeper you go, the more gold you get out of it.
Mark Medley: You understand there's many things that that the gospel contains in it.
Mark Medley: For example, it's he God regenerates us, he makes us alive from the dead.
Mark Medley: We were dead in our sins, but God has made us alive in Christ.
Mark Medley: And so He we're born again into a new hope, a living hope, he says.
Mark Medley: So God makes me spiritually alive.
Mark Medley: And second, God justifies me.
Mark Medley: In other words, God, the righteous judge, who always judges correctly, has looked at me and declared me not guilty through the work of his son.
Mark Medley: God says, I'm not guilty.
Mark Medley: He makes me right with him.
Mark Medley: That's good news.
Mark Medley: And then we're accepted in the beloved one, in Jesus Christ, not just um, not just asserted, not just welcomed, not just um tolerated, but welcomed into his family, a relationship with God.
Mark Medley: So he not only takes my sin away, but he gives me his righteousness and accepts me fully.
Mark Medley: And even further than that, he adopted us, he adopted me and you as sons and daughters.
Mark Medley: He didn't just want servants, he wante sons and daughters.
Mark Medley: And so he's adopted us into his family.
Mark Medley: And so we have a place at his table.
Mark Medley: And you don't have to bring anything to the table to have a place at the table.
Mark Medley: That's the grace of God.
Mark Medley: That's beautiful.
Mark Medley: And then he sanctifies us, which means we can enjoy freedom from the power of sin in our lives every day.
Mark Medley: He breaks the power of sin in my life.
Mark Medley: And then there's a glorious future where there's not going to be any more death and any more sin, any more separation, no pain, no tears, a brand new body.
Mark Medley: He will fully restore our lives to what they were originally meant to be, reversing the effects of sin forever and ever.
Mark Medley: This is good news.
Mark Medley: All of that, or there's more too, but that's that's the gospel.
Mark Medley: Now, so what I want you to see though is that God has given me a gift.
Mark Medley: It's like he called in the prescription.
Mark Medley: I got to go down to CVS and pick it up.
Mark Medley: And I got to take it every day.
Mark Medley: I need to take the gospel and apply it to my life every day.
Mark Medley: I have to take it regularly.
Mark Medley: My understanding and my application of the gospel makes all the difference in my everyday life.
Mark Medley: It makes me healthy.
Mark Medley: For example, I could understand the basics of salvation through Christ and still live a life of condemnation.
Mark Medley: You can feel condemned because you don't, you've kind of attached your security to your own performance and not to the performance of Jesus.
Mark Medley: So you have this nagging little voice of condemnation that guy that kind of fills your life.
Mark Medley: I could understand the basics of salvation, and I can live my life bound by the approval of others.
Mark Medley: The fear of man, because I don't understand that I'm completely accepted by God, reconciled to him through Christ.
Mark Medley: I need to grow in the gospel.
Mark Medley: I could understand the basics of salvation, but I can live in fear of being abandoned by God.
Mark Medley: I can live like an orphan still in my mind, because I don't understand that I'm adopted into the family through the work of Jesus.
Mark Medley: I need to grow in the gospel.
Mark Medley: Day by day, I need to grow in the gospel.
Mark Medley: And I have learned that the most influential person in my life is me.
Mark Medley: Because nobody talks to me more than me.
Mark Medley: You know what I mean?
Mark Medley: And what I say to me is sometimes not what God is saying to me.
Mark Medley: I can say things to me that God is not saying to me.
Mark Medley: So I can beat myself down and condemn myself.
Mark Medley: I need to grow in the gospel.
Mark Medley: Or I can tell myself I'm not the problem.
Mark Medley: And I can make excuses, I can build arguments about my own righteousness.
Mark Medley: That's not the gospel either.
Mark Medley: I need to understand, I need to take that prescription every day.
Mark Medley: So God makes me healthy and keeps me healthy through the finished work of Jesus, my Savior.
Mark Medley: And this is the source of our health.
Mark Medley: It's the source of it.
Mark Medley: And we have to fight.
Mark Medley: I have to fight to keep the gospel the center of my life.
Mark Medley: Because if I don't, I begin to look for my hope or my security or my identity in people or in positions or in circumstances when I've already been given all these things in Christ.
Mark Medley: I already have them.
Mark Medley: God has given me all things in Christ.
Mark Medley: I don't have to look other places for them.
Mark Medley: And the gospel helps me finally be anchored in the understanding that Jesus is my never-ending source for everything that I need.
Mark Medley: And the gospel's a gift that keeps me healthy.
Mark Medley: God wants me healthy.
Mark Medley: The gospel's the way he does it.
Mark Medley: Second gift.
Mark Medley: Sabbath.
Mark Medley: The gift of Sabbath.
Mark Medley: Hebrews 4, verses 10 and 11.
Mark Medley: So then there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God.
Mark Medley: For whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from his works, as God did from his.
Mark Medley: Therefore, let us strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.
Mark Medley: Okay, Sabbath.
Mark Medley: It's interesting to me when you look at that, those two ver two chapters there, chapter four and chapter three, written to Hebrew Christians.
Mark Medley: These were people who were believers.
Mark Medley: It seems strange to me that Paul has to tell these believers to consider Jesus.
Mark Medley: Think about Jesus.
Mark Medley: Remember Jesus.
Mark Medley: He's pulling them back into alignment with what God's done for us through Christ.
Mark Medley: And he also says we have to work hard at entering into a rest.
Mark Medley: Strive to enter into the rest.
Mark Medley: It's kind of weird, isn't it?
Mark Medley: Work hard at resting.
Mark Medley: It's a little bit weird.
Mark Medley: Why would he say this to these believers?
Mark Medley: I think because it's our tendency to default to the works of man rather than to the rest of God.
Mark Medley: And the Sabbath is God's gift that teaches me to rest.
Mark Medley: So a simple way to understand the biblical Sabbath is Sabbath is a literal 24-hour period where I stop working and I delight in God and God's gifts to me.
Mark Medley: Jewish people do it from sundown to sundown.
Mark Medley: Friday, sundown to Saturday sundown.
Mark Medley: 24 hours.
Mark Medley: Every week.
Mark Medley: Two general ways that Christians approach the Sabbath.
Mark Medley: It's like either you think, oh, wait a minute, that's Old Testament.
Mark Medley: That's not really for us today.
Mark Medley: We don't really need that today.
Mark Medley: That's under the law.
Mark Medley: So they disregard it.
Mark Medley: Um and others legalistically observe it on a certain day in a certain way.
Mark Medley: And in that way they kind of exchange the life of the Sabbath, the meaning of what it's supposed to be, for law and for bondage.
Mark Medley: So there's two extremes, but neither one of those.
Mark Medley: Or Jesus' idea about it.
Mark Medley: Sabbath is a whole lot more than law.
Mark Medley: In fact, it predates the law.
Mark Medley: Sabbath happened way before the law.
Mark Medley: Sabbath happened on the seventh day.
Mark Medley: Because God created on the six days.
Mark Medley: And on the seventh day, he rested.
Mark Medley: God rested.
Mark Medley: Was God tired?
Mark Medley: No, he who keeps Israel never sleeps or slumbers.
Mark Medley: God does not grow weary.
Mark Medley: He doesn't get tired.
Mark Medley: He didn't rest because he's tired.
Mark Medley: He rests because he's a rester.
Mark Medley: He's a creator, but he's also a restor.
Mark Medley: He actually is a person, a being who is, not just a being who does.
Mark Medley: He's not the great I do.
Mark Medley: He's the great I am.
Mark Medley: That's a revelation for you.
Mark Medley: He does, but he is.
Mark Medley: And so part of who he is is he's a rester.
Mark Medley: In his nature, he rests.
Mark Medley: And so if we're going to be like him, as he and also he commanded us to rest, if we're going to obey him, we have to do it.
Mark Medley: We have to rest.
Mark Medley: So we don't need to do it as law, though.
Mark Medley: We're not a slave to the Sabbath.
Mark Medley: Jesus said this.
Mark Medley: And Jesus said unto them, the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.
Mark Medley: The Sabbath was made for you.
Mark Medley: You weren't made for the Sabbath.
Mark Medley: You don't serve the Sabbath.
Mark Medley: The Sabbath is a gift because God wants you healthy.
Mark Medley: He wants you to rest.
Mark Medley: He wants you to learn to rest.
Mark Medley: And we have to learn to rest.
Mark Medley: We have to work at resting.
Mark Medley: We have to.
Mark Medley: Sabbath serves us by giving rest to our bodies and our minds and our spirits and refreshment and revelation about God.
Mark Medley: So when I practice Sabbath, I rest or I play and I tap into the joy of God.
Mark Medley: So how's your joy level?
Mark Medley: You can there's joy in resting in God.
Mark Medley: At his right hand, there are pleasures forevermore.
Mark Medley: And when I practice Sabbath, I let go of control and I trust in God's sovereignty.
Mark Medley: Okay.
Mark Medley: Just like when you go to sleep.
Mark Medley: You know you can't go to sleep if you're worrying so much about stuff.
Mark Medley: If you're carrying burdens and you're you're anxious and you feel like you, I mean, you can't sleep.
Mark Medley: If you go to sleep, the world's gonna fall apart.
Mark Medley: How many of you slept last night?
Mark Medley: Okay.
Mark Medley: How many of you are just not gonna raise your hand no matter what I say?
Mark Medley: I see that hand.
Mark Medley: We all slept, I think we all slept last night, and we all woke up this morning and the world was still here, right?
Mark Medley: It was still okay, all right.
Mark Medley: So everything was okay.
Mark Medley: I mean, I mean, it was all right.
Mark Medley: If you checked out for seven or eight hours, it was all right.
Mark Medley: You can't sleep though until you really until you get in your head that the world's gonna be okay.
Mark Medley: My world's gonna be fine if I check out for a few hours.
Mark Medley: It's the same way with Sabbath.
Mark Medley: We relinquish our control.
Mark Medley: And honestly, our anxiety comes from our desire to control, or our feel like we need to control.
Mark Medley: That if I don't hold it together, it's gonna come apart.
Mark Medley: And that's a lot of pressure.
Mark Medley: It's pressure we weren't meant to bear.
Mark Medley: When I practice Sabbath, it breaks my addiction to activity and to work.
Mark Medley: And I understand my worth as a human being is in God's love alone.
Mark Medley: He loves me, it's not in my performance.
Mark Medley: So in Christ, I'm good enough, I'm loved enough, I'm safe enough, I can rest.
Mark Medley: Sabbath is a gift for us.
Mark Medley: And I and you know what?
Mark Medley: When I practice Sabbath, I can love other people too.
Mark Medley: The best way to love other people is to give them the best version of you.
Mark Medley: So when you when you're when you're healthy, you that's the best way to love people.
Mark Medley: No, Mark, I can't do this.
Mark Medley: That's not even realistic.
Mark Medley: 24 hours?
Mark Medley: Are you serious?
Mark Medley: My work, my family, my season of life will not allow it.
Mark Medley: I ain't got time to be healthy.
Mark Medley: That's what you're saying, really.
Mark Medley: I ain't got time to be healthy.
Mark Medley: If just go down to CVS and pick up the pick up the prescription and take it, man.
Mark Medley: Take this gift of God.
Mark Medley: Believe me, I understand busyness, I understand busy seasons, but I'm asking you this morning to see the heart of God.
Mark Medley: He wants you healthy, he wants you to live in his shalom.
Mark Medley: He wants all those threads to come together like a tapestry.
Mark Medley: And he gives you these gifts, and he's given you a gift of Sabbath.
Mark Medley: And maybe you're gonna have to just take a step of faith.
Mark Medley: I mean, 24 hours.
Mark Medley: Okay, I mean, eight of those probably are sleeping.
Mark Medley: So let's say 16 hours, okay?
Mark Medley: 16, 17 hours, you can give out out of 168, I can't give 16, 17 hours to God to rest.
Mark Medley: I just can't do it because my my life will fall apart.
Mark Medley: And I understand we've got kids to feed, I understand all that.
Mark Medley: But what I'm saying is you take a step toward integrating rest into your life.
Mark Medley: And if you take a step, I think God will give you a window.
Mark Medley: I think he'll show you how to do it.
Mark Medley: I think he will.
Mark Medley: If you just move toward it and believe that God will honor your effort and receive his gift.
Mark Medley: Lord, by faith, I'm gonna try to do this.
Mark Medley: I'll just, I'll just say, let's start with 12 hours, okay?
Mark Medley: That'll be all right.
Mark Medley: Let's do it.
Mark Medley: Um sometimes we use activities to push down and to numb the pain that God wants to remove through Sabbath rest.
Mark Medley: Sometimes we feel our schedules to overflowing, trying to meet our own needs and the needs of those around us in our own power, feeling like we have to hold it all together.
Mark Medley: If God himself rested, not because he was tired, but because it's part of his nature, Sabbath is like a call to imitate God.
Mark Medley: God rested and then God said, I want you to do the same.
Mark Medley: It's like he is saying, imitate me.
Mark Medley: And I would say you can think of it this way: Sabbath is imitating God in rest so that we try we stop trying to be God.
Mark Medley: Imitating God so we stop trying to be God.
Mark Medley: God wants you healthy.
Mark Medley: Well, so um, there's a couple of uh Chinese characters I'm gonna put up here on the screen.
Mark Medley: And this is a Chinese word.
Mark Medley: It's the word for busyness, not busyness, but busyness, like being busy, right?
Mark Medley: And one of these characters is two characters together.
Mark Medley: One character means heart, like your heart, the core of who you are, and the other character means killing.
Mark Medley: So the way the Chinese express busyness is killing your heart.
Mark Medley: I think they got it.
Mark Medley: It makes us stop caring for the things that we care about.
Mark Medley: It makes us stop being healthy.
Mark Medley: But killing busyness requires us to review our our day, our week, our yearly schedule, and to build Sabbath into it.
Mark Medley: And you know, sometimes if you if you think I can't do this, and you you go 24-7, seven days a week, and you don't do a Sabbath and you do that for four or five weeks, you know what's gonna happen?
Mark Medley: Your body's gonna go, we're done.
Mark Medley: We're done, and you're gonna be sick for four days.
Mark Medley: Those four days that you should have taken a Sabbath, you're probably gonna take a Sabbath.
Mark Medley: You could take it as you go, like maintenance, or you can just run yourself to death and then be sick.
Mark Medley: Your body knows you need it for sure.
Mark Medley: So maybe our minds need to catch up with our bodies.
Mark Medley: So God makes me healthy and keeps me healthy through Sabbath rest.
Mark Medley: This is the space of health, the space of health.
Mark Medley: And for some of you, God's just calling, he's called in this prescription that's waiting for you, and you're just gonna have to go pick it up and take it.
Mark Medley: Are you willing to do that?
Mark Medley: All right.
Mark Medley: You told me you were.
Mark Medley: So I'm I'm I'm taking you at your word.
Mark Medley: Number three, the gift that makes me healthy is the gift of spiritual disciplines.
Mark Medley: 1 Timothy 4, 7, discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness.
Mark Medley: Spiritual disciplines are practical habits of Christ followers that have been practiced by God's people since biblical times.
Mark Medley: We're talking about time in the Word of God, worship, prayer, meditation, silence, Sabbath, um, relationships, fellowship, service, all of these things.
Mark Medley: Okay, but you know, when we think of these things, kind of our default tends to be condemnation, like I am not doing that enough, I'm not praying enough, I'm not wording enough, I'm not worshiping enough, I'm not quiet long enough, I'm just not enough.
Mark Medley: I'm not enough.
Mark Medley: And so a lot of times we shy away from these things because it's a it's a law thing to us, it's a duty thing to us.
Mark Medley: But this is about grace.
Mark Medley: It's about grace.
Mark Medley: So let me ask you a question.
Mark Medley: How many of you believe Jesus is still acting and speaking today?
Mark Medley: All right.
Mark Medley: Almost all of us.
Mark Medley: That's good.
Mark Medley: Just those of you who aren't gonna raise your hand, I don't care what, didn't raise your hand.
Mark Medley: Okay, yeah, I believe it.
Mark Medley: God is still acting and speaking today.
Mark Medley: The spiritual disciplines are like my demonstration that I believe that statement.
Mark Medley: They're like, if if I truly believe God speaks and that what he is saying is worth hearing, what space am I creating to hear his voice?
Mark Medley: I believe God speaks, and so I take time to listen.
Mark Medley: I believe God is wise, all wise, so I take time to look for his wisdom.
Mark Medley: I believe God rewards those who diligently seek him, and so I want to seek him.
Mark Medley: I believe God is omnipresent, and so I make room for his presence, to acknowledge his presence in my life.
Mark Medley: That's where that's what the disciplines are about.
Mark Medley: They're the space that we create to encounter God's grace.
Mark Medley: The disciplines are the space that you create in your life to receive and encounter God's grace.
Mark Medley: It's not about law, it's not about performance, it's about grace.
Mark Medley: So Paul says, discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness.
Mark Medley: Okay, well, there's an understood subject there.
Mark Medley: The understood subject is you, you, discipline.
Mark Medley: Um there's an action, discipline, and then there's a goal for godliness.
Mark Medley: Discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness.
Mark Medley: Okay, so discipline, that's the word gumnazo, which is we get the word gymnasium from.
Mark Medley: It means work out.
Mark Medley: Okay.
Mark Medley: Work out.
Mark Medley: Uh make an effort.
Mark Medley: This is like a grace and a faith thing.
Mark Medley: The only reason we can go after God is God makes us alive and makes us hungry for him.
Mark Medley: He's already made the first step.
Mark Medley: But we have to take a step too.
Mark Medley: We have to actually go after him.
Mark Medley: We have to be hungry.
Mark Medley: We have to discipline ourselves.
Mark Medley: That's working out.
Mark Medley: And so discipline yourself.
Mark Medley: Yourself.
Mark Medley: This is self-imposed.
Mark Medley: This is not me.
Mark Medley: I can't discipline you.
Mark Medley: You can't discipline me.
Mark Medley: You have to discipline yourself.
Mark Medley: It's something you have to decide to do in yourself.
Mark Medley: For the purpose, there's an end.
Mark Medley: We're towards something, we're in the direction of something.
Mark Medley: We're moving purposefully toward godliness, devotion, being like God.
Mark Medley: That's the purpose.
Mark Medley: And as I think this is what Jesus meant when he said, abide in me, abide in me.
Mark Medley: And that's where fruit comes from.
Mark Medley: That's the river, brothers and sisters.
Mark Medley: That's the river that we're planted beside.
Mark Medley: It's abiding in Jesus.
Mark Medley: And this flow of water is constantly causing us to flourish, but we have to create space for it.
Mark Medley: So God makes me healthy and he keeps me healthy through the disciplines.
Mark Medley: These are the tools of health.
Mark Medley: And these disciplines will give me an accurate view of God.
Mark Medley: It makes him bigger to me.
Mark Medley: It gives me an accurate view of myself.
Mark Medley: It helps me to think soberly.
Mark Medley: And it gives me an accurate view of God's grace in my life as well.
Mark Medley: Okay, the last gift that I have seen in my life that keeps me healthy is the gift of relationships.
Mark Medley: It's the gift of you.
Mark Medley: And it's just as important as all of them.
Mark Medley: I mean, if you could just take a like a stool, you can think of a stool and have like a four-legged stool, you know?
Mark Medley: And if you cut one of those one of those legs off, it's like you're you're probably gonna fall over, right?
Mark Medley: You need all four of these.
Mark Medley: It's really important.
Mark Medley: Relationships.
Mark Medley: Look what it uh Paul says in Ephesians 4, verse 15 and 16.
Mark Medley: But speaking the truth in love, you may grow up in all things into him who is the head, Christ, in whom the whole body, joined and knit together by whatever joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth in the body for the edifying of itself in love.
Mark Medley: The part that you give to me, the part that I give to you, causes us all to grow together in love.
Mark Medley: I need you.
Mark Medley: You need me.
Mark Medley: The Holy Spirit baptizes us into the body of Christ.
Mark Medley: And the body is fitted together by the Holy Spirit.
Mark Medley: Each joint supplies the other joint.
Mark Medley: In other words, you supply me, I supply you, you've got what I need.
Mark Medley: We encourage one another, we confess our sins to one another, we pray for one another that we may be healed.
Mark Medley: God wants us healthy.
Mark Medley: And one of the means he gives us is relationships.
Mark Medley: I can't be healthy without you.
Mark Medley: I need your words and your prayers and your wisdom and your rebuke and your love.
Mark Medley: I need you.
Mark Medley: And you need me too.
Mark Medley: Oh, Mark, though, these people, those people, these are these are some of the sources of my biggest pain, Mark.
Mark Medley: These are the people who've hurt me.
Mark Medley: I know.
Mark Medley: That does not give you an exception clause.
Mark Medley: Sorry, I'm sorry.
Mark Medley: Jesus is not saying, oh, I didn't realize that.
Mark Medley: I forgot about that.
Mark Medley: You're right.
Mark Medley: You don't have to connect with my body anymore.
Mark Medley: You don't have to love my bride or receive the love of your brothers.
Mark Medley: You're right.
Mark Medley: You're special.
Mark Medley: I forgot.
Mark Medley: It sounds ridiculous, doesn't it?
Mark Medley: Because it is ridiculous.
Mark Medley: It's ridiculous.
Mark Medley: You're not, I'm not, I'm not the exception.
Mark Medley: I know, I know difficult, there's difficult relationships.
Mark Medley: I understand there's pain there too.
Mark Medley: Wherever there's a person, there's a rose and a thorn.
Mark Medley: And it smells great.
Mark Medley: And it hurts, right?
Mark Medley: But this is what this is part of what God gives you to be healthy, brothers and sisters.
Mark Medley: And the constant temptation of the enemy is to draw us away from fellowship.
Mark Medley: And hardness of our heart or offense can cause us to disconnect with people, not just physically, but emotionally, and not just withdraw from them, but to hide our hearts from them, to guard our hearts from them.
Mark Medley: Look what he says in Hebrews.
Mark Medley: God says, Hebrews 10, 24 and 25, let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another.
Mark Medley: And all the more as you see the day drawing near, all the more, all the more.
Mark Medley: All the more.
Mark Medley: Times are hard, times are bad, times are coming to a close.
Mark Medley: All the more.
Mark Medley: Gather together, encourage one another.
Mark Medley: We need each other.
Mark Medley: We need it.
Mark Medley: God makes me healthy.
Mark Medley: He keeps me healthy through my brothers and my sisters.
Mark Medley: This is the incarnation of health.
Mark Medley: Okay.
Mark Medley: All right.
Mark Medley: So we're going to finish by going back to the sixth chapter of Numbers.
Mark Medley: Remember the very last thing that God said there, because God wants us healthy, He's going to pour His peace on us.
Mark Medley: But He said, They will put my name on the Israelites and I will bless them.
Mark Medley: Interesting, isn't it?
Mark Medley: By speaking this blessing over them, you're going to put my name on them and I will bless them.
Mark Medley: We're the carriers of the name.
Mark Medley: And these gifts that God gives us for health, as new covenant believers, they come to us because we're under a name.
Mark Medley: A name by which no other name by which salvation comes.
Mark Medley: This name of Jesus Christ.
Mark Medley: We are in Christ.
Mark Medley: And Jesus is our salvation.
Mark Medley: He is the gospel.
Mark Medley: And Jesus is our Sabbath rest.
Mark Medley: And Jesus is the presence and the sanctification that comes through these disciplines.
Mark Medley: And Jesus is, it is the body of the very body of Jesus that is the incarnation of health, the incarnation of Jesus to each of us.
Mark Medley: And so through all these gifts, we get to see this ever-widening vision, revelation, understanding of Jesus more and more.
Mark Medley: That's where health is, brothers and sisters.
Mark Medley: It's in Jesus.
Mark Medley: And God wants you healthy.
Mark Medley: So, recap, God makes me healthy.
Mark Medley: He keeps me healthy through the gospel, that's the source of health.
Mark Medley: Through the Sabbath, that's the space of health.
Mark Medley: Through the disciplines, those are the tools of health.
Mark Medley: And through the body of Christ, my brothers and sisters, that's the incarnation of health.
Mark Medley: So, all right, so what we're gonna do, I want you to stand up.
Mark Medley: And I'm gonna just, if you guys would just keep that slide up there.
Mark Medley: So we prayed before we started that the Lord would just highlight one thing for us.
Mark Medley: And and almost all of you said, if if I knew God called me in a prescription, I'd go take it.
Mark Medley: I'd grab it, I'd bring it home, and I'd take it.
Mark Medley: So there's maybe one of these that is specifically for you this morning that God wants to just remind you.
Mark Medley: This is a this is um a provision for your health.
Mark Medley: So as they're singing this prayer blessing over you, I want you to just do business with the Lord and just say, okay, Father, I will do it by your grace.
Mark Medley: I'll receive what you've given to me, this manifestation of Jesus through these gifts.
Mark Medley: I receive your heart of health for me.
Mark Medley: I receive your means of health for me.
Mark Medley: So would you do that as they're singing this song?