Well, you may be seated.
Well, welcome to Christ the Redeemer.
My name is Russ Masterson, the pastor here.
Whether you are here in the sanctuary or you're watching online, we are excited that we are here in 2021 to celebrate again what we celebrate every week, and we have been for about eight years now, and that is we are more broken than we originally thought, but we are more loved by God than we could dare to dream.
And so what I want to do this morning before we jump back into the book of Hebrews, if you remember before Advent, we were in the book of Hebrews and we made it about halfway, so we will jump back into that.
But this morning I want to revisit a passage that we usually revisit anytime we kind of reset the calendar because it's a heartbeat passage for us.
It's the heartbeat of our church type of passage.
And this is Jesus speaking to us in Matthew 11, 28 through 30.
Come to me all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me.
For I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.
So in the next 20 minutes or so, I want to just tease that out.
Uh, teach some, get the implications of that a little bit, and get a few points for us to carry into 2021.
Point number one is this people get weary, and we are people.
Christians are people, uh, just in case you didn't know.
And so if you're a Christian, you're also a person, and we get weary.
We get weary.
In Confessions, Augustine wrote, You have made us, he's writing to God, you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they can find rest in you.
Now that was true before you were a Christian, and even as a Christian, you'll find that to be true, that anytime you're finding your heart placed somewhere other than the Lord, you're restless.
I'm restless.
And just because we're Christians doesn't mean we don't have weariness or burdens.
And in the grace of God, we don't have to sort of like put those under the rug of Romans 8.28 and just kind of like pretend like they're not there, right?
Can't just explain it away.
Well, that's just the sovereignty of God, what might be the sovereignty of God, but we can still face our weariness and burdens of what's going on in our lives.
And that's part of our growth in grace.
And Jesus actually speaks to our weariness, not just tells us to kind of push it aside.
Now, my normal method of coping with any sort of weariness or burdens is more TV and uh Reese's dark fins.
Do you all know the dark thins?
Not the cup, not the normal cup, but they make a dark fin, it's real thin, so it makes you think you can eat more of them.
And it's dark chocolate, so it means it's healthy, so you can really eat more of it.
That's how I made it through 2020, to be honest, is the dark fins in my refrigerators keep going by all day long and get another one one at a time.
The bag's gone at the end of the day.
It's how I made it through.
I don't know how you made it through.
Now, here's what I'm learning, because that's my normal coping mechanisms and stuff like that.
But what I'm learning is part of my spiritual maturity and growth is discerning the difference between my resting and my coping.
Or my resting and working.
Sometimes I'll just go to work instead of resting myself in the Lord.
You know, I feel burdened, I feel weary, I feel ashamed.
Go work, go exercise, go eat more, right?
Go do these different things.
Rather than go, no, no, no, my heart is restless until it is at peace with you.
Christian writer Gordon MacDonald, he hammers this home when he talks about even the ways in which we turn to leisure and entertainment.
He wrote this since we have not understood that rest is a necessity, we have perverted its meaning, substituting for the rest that God first demonstrated, things called leisure or amusement.
These do not bring an order at all to the private world.
Leisure and amusement may be enjoyable, but they are to the private world of the individual, like cotton candy to the digestive system.
They provide a momentary lift, but they will not last.
Right?
Leisure and amusement, we want that.
That's wonderful, that's good, it's good.
So much of it is good.
But it doesn't bring rest to the soul, right?
It's just something fun to participate in.
It's cotton candy.
And something good for us going into 2021 would be to ask the Holy Spirit, spend a little bit of time and ask the Holy Spirit, you know, in what ways can I find greater rest for my soul in you?
Because God wants that for us.
We're already at rest in Jesus fully, and yet at the same time, we're not yet even experiencing the fullness of the freedom God desires for us.
Point number two is this adding more burden to your life is not the way to have victory over burdens.
Like a lot of times we'll have a burden, okay, maybe we have a burden, well, the way I'm gonna do it is I'm just gonna like add more like religious burden, put myself to work in the religious world in order to get over some burden of mine in another area of life.
And we can just trade burdens all day long, is often what happens.
But when we look at this passage, he's talking to a religiously burdened people.
And he doesn't add for them more to do, he's explaining who he is.
This idea of yoke in verse 29, this is a harness put over ox.
Here's a picture of what a yoke is, if you're not familiar with that, and put over an ox, a couple of oxen, and that way they pull the load.
Now, this word would have triggered something in these Jewish listeners.
And we've talked about this before because a yoke at the time was a rabbi's teaching.
And so when they heard this word, they would have understood completely Jesus is using this imagery and this metaphor, and at the same time it was a built-in metaphor for their society that it was a rabbi's teaching.
A yoke was the set of laws, interpretations, and expectations laid upon a student by the teacher.
So here's a rabbi, this Jesus, who's claiming to be God, and he says, his yoke is easy, his burden is light.
He's saying to them, you aren't holy, but I am holy for you.
And our spiritual work is not for our acceptance with God, because we have that in Jesus, but it's because of our already acceptance with God.
And that would be why the yoke is easy.
Point number three is this.
We're already at point number three.
It's a long point, though, so don't get too excited.
Point number three: the person of Jesus is always our way to salvation, growth, and wholeness.
And it's all those things.
We don't have to separate them out.
The word salvation in the Bible actually means wholeness.
And that's the wholeness that we have for eternity with God, a whole, perfect relationship with Him eternally, that's secure.
And it's also us growing in the identity that we have in Jesus even now.
That we would become more whole now, comprehensive as a soul and heart and body as a person.
We have this phrase in this passage, ye shall find rest unto your souls.
You may not have noticed it's on the front table of our church out in the front lobby.
It's there painted onto the table because it's the heartbeat of our church.
We can certainly take those words and tie them to the words of Jesus when he says, I fulfill the law.
See, we're not held to routine religious acts or even our own performance to be loved by God or to be holy.
Isn't that good news?
That we're not tied to that.
He fulfills the law for us.
I think there's three implications of that coming out of all of that.
Three implications.
Because we are in Jesus, implications.
And when we say that, maybe you read that in the scriptures, you know, in Christ or in him, or we say in Jesus.
It's easy to just like keep saying that, never kind of pause it.
What are we saying when we say that?
What we're saying is the core of who we are, our heart and soul, the core of who we are, rests back in God's grace for us, in this person and work of Jesus.
God Himself for us.
So that is our identity and our growth, our forgiveness, all that we need.
And in that is God's regard to us.
So we are in Jesus.
All right, so here's the three implications.
Because we are in Jesus, we are already loved and holy, because we're in Jesus, we're already loved and holy, so we are as holy and loved as Jesus is.
So right now, also on Tuesday and Friday night and Saturday morning and next week and next month and last month, all of it, all the time, because you are in him, you are as holy and as loved as Jesus is.
Because God sees you, regards you, views you, and deems you through himself and his son.
Number two, because we are in Jesus, we're already accepted with God, so we don't have to fear acceptance with God or man.
So this speaks to all the ways we try to compare or like impress people or perform in front of people or perform before God.
All of that can settle down and we can we can be at rest.
The yoke is easy because we're in him.
Third, lastly, because we are in Jesus, we do not have to fear our own fear.
It means we don't have to fear our own emotions.
We do not have to fear our own depravity, and we don't have to fear our own woundedness.
See, in grace, when we're securely loved, we get to move toward all the emotions we want to avoid, all the woundedness we want to avoid, and all the propravity we want to avoid.
We get to live in confession and courageous curiosity toward those things.
That's our growth in grace.
This past week I read three different writings.
And what I want to do is just we're gonna pause mid-sermon, do something a little bit different.
I think you can handle it.
We're gonna pause mid-sermon, and we're gonna read these three different writings that for me are ushering me into 2021.
I think they're the heartbeat of Matthew 11, certainly.
And I want to read each one, and then we're gonna pause just communally, like a communal contemplative practice going on in the middle of the sermon.
We'll read one and we're gonna pause and we're gonna pray, just as a practice of asking the Lord to prepare us to move into 2021.
So the first is this Christy and I we were driving home from Florida just after Christmas, uh, down there with her parents, and listening through St.
Jim McCracken's new album, Patient Kingdom, and the song on High Places came on.
And here's some of the lyrics.
Oh, fear has been an old friend of mine working hard, making sure I stay alive.
Everybody feels this kind of holy fear inside.
Oh, I'm not afraid to be afraid.
On high places, here we go.
We will rise, we will rise, and pass through shadows.
Take it slow.
We will rise, we will rise.
Oh, peace has been my steady covering.
And I just love, I just I just love that line.
Oh peace has been my steady covering.
It falls like rain down from the mountain stream.
Every little hill is bringing it to me.
Oh, I'm not a stranger to the war, and I am not afraid to hold a peace.
So let's just pause together, right?
Come in into an admittance that we're not a stranger to the war of weariness or burden, sin, depravity, woundedness.
Yet at the same time, we don't have to be afraid to be afraid of any of those things.
Like we can move toward them because of the gift of Jesus.
We're so secure in him.
So let's let's pray together.
Ah, the Father, slow us down in these moments as we just pause, as we move into 2021.
Root us even deeper into the rest only you can give to our heart.
Help us not run from our fears or our coping or our sin.
But to face it all as to heal.
To know this peace that is our covering.
Help us not to be afraid to face our fear, and help us to know your peace all the more.
Amen.
So for our second prayer together, this was a reading for me.
It was New Year's Eve, and I was reading Scotty Smith's prayer book, Everyday Prayers.
And sometimes reading a prayer can be incredibly helpful because sometimes we just don't have the words, right?
You just don't have the words, or maybe you don't want to pray, but being able to read a written prayer, and that can be prayer.
Your eyes are open and you're reading, but you can allow your heart to connect to it and to begin to pray it.
Here's the prayer.
You can follow along.
You can eyes can stay open, by the way.
We'll still count it as prayer.
Heavenly Father, as I sit quietly on the eve of a new year, I've got a good case of sad and glad going on inside of me.
Both of these themes are at work in my heart as I reflect on the past year.
It's a good tension, one for which the gospel is more than sufficient.
Abba Father, you have loved me all year long with an everlasting, engaged, unwavering love, irrespective of anything I did or didn't do.
You loved me as much as you love your son Jesus, for you've hidden my life in his.
Thank you for your steadfast love and fresh mercies that came every single day this past year when I was aware of them and when I wasn't.
But, Father, it's because of your love for me and Jesus that I can also own my sadness.
I will not always be a man of two minds and a divided heart.
Father, you will bring to completion the good gospel work you have begun in me.
One day I will no longer even be tempted to worship anything or anyone but you.
Hasten that glad and glorious day.
But until that day, even on the eve of a new year, prepare me for twelve new months of groaning and growing in grace, bringing much glory to yourself as the gospel does its work in my life and through my life.
I pray in Jesus' faithful name.
Amen.
For our last prayer together, this was a quote that hit me as I was doing some incredibly uh healthy coping on Instagram over the weekend and just aimlessly scrolling through.
And I follow uh mainly um bears, people who like bears and fly fishing.
And then this one was kind of wedged in between.
A friend of mine had posted it, and it's a quote by Susie Larson.
Thank God for the tangible ways he took care of you.
Think about some of your favorite memories and sit with them for a while.
Ponder the challenges you faced and how you overcame them.
Don't be too quick to exit this year without building an altar of remembrance.
Your story deserves reflection.
And God deserves our praise.
So we just want to take a moment and build an altar of remembrance.
Whether you're here, maybe you're online and you're at home, just to build an altar of remembrance because last year had difficulty, maybe devastation for some of you.
But in there, there are things to be grateful for.
There was breakthrough in there somewhere.
Maybe through a sin, maybe through some woundedness, maybe within a relationship, maybe something, a gift came your way, you didn't expect it.
But but it he's worthy of us building an altar of remembrance.
So let's pray together.
Abba Father, slow us down to build an altar of remembrance to come before you.
Your work and our lives and our story are deserving for pause.
To know your peace and remember all the ways you took care of us.
And just a few moments of silence, would you help our hearts to remember the big and the small ways you took care of us?
Help us to remember perhaps a breakthrough we experienced here over a sin or emotional healing, a gift we didn't expect, and a few moments of silence.
Amen.
Now, what we just did, I sort of tricked you in a little bit.
What we just did is we actually did sort of like a contemplative practice.
Like we did a quiet time.
I grew up grew up hearing it called a quiet time.
I don't know if that's what you grew up called, or a devotional time, or a contemplative practice.
I just call it like slowing myself down.
Just I need to go be with the Lord and I need to slow my busy heart down.
And that's what we just did, right?
We read Matthew 11.
We we learned a little bit from it.
We allowed some devotional thoughts to come in.
We paused, we prayed, we just had a we had a quiet time together, is what we did.
And this is what you can do anytime.
You can do this on your own, anywhere.
For me, I come into greater peace when I do this, when I have this practice in my life.
I don't have to do it, right?
It comes out of because I'm already loved by God.
I get to do this.
And that's what this passage is teaching us.
One of the implications of Matthew 11 is our spiritual work is not pulling some religious load like an ox, like, oh, you know, this is what I gotta do.
Like that's not that's not what this is.
It's that we get to stop pulling all the loads of performance, our cover-up and coping that we've been pulling.
We get to stop and pause and grow still and let go of those and release them to the Lord.
That's our spiritual work.
To know Jesus greater in those ways.
Right before Christmas, I was writing this sermon.
I was writing the sermon for December 20th, and I was writing the Christmas Eve sermon.
So it was a heavy, heavy week.
It was a heavy study week and prep week, just like y'all have heavy weeks for your work and your job.
It's just one of those weeks for me.
Combined with like from a staff point of view, like we were just paranoid, one of us was gonna get COVID headed into Christmas Eve.
So we had like backup plans and backup, backup plans, and backup, backup plans, and you know, who fills in who, where, and all those things.
And then we're having the inside of our house was being painted, so we had strange men in our home, like up in our space during that same week, and I'm walking around with a lifestyle can right behind them, and you know, that's what was going on in our house.
And so doing some healthy coping on Instagram during that period of time, and this image comes up as I'm scrolling through, and this image comes up, and I see it, and I stop because I'm like, oh, I think I want to be there rather than what I'm doing this week.
And the caption said this, Could you use a drive like this right now?
And I was just oh, my heart just my heart just leapt.
It's like, yes, yes.
If I was on that road, right, particularly in a matte black Mercedes-Benz camper van.
My children are watching a movie in the back, so it's perfectly quiet.
I'm just sharing things with Christy, and she's half asleep, so she's just affirming me, you know, just affirming all of it because she's half asleep.
And we're on that road, like if I was on that road.
And it's really, I saw that image, and then immediately I went to this line that Pete Holmes, the comedian, he says, and he says, if you aren't happy on the plane, you won't be happy in Hawaii.
Right?
And the point is, is like, it's so easy to think like, oh, if I saw if I was on that road, like if I was on that road, then I would be at peace, then I'd be rested.
And the point, the point is this 2021 can't save us.
We were weary and burdened before COVID.
I mean, I I know it's hard to remember like last February or two years ago.
You were weary and burdened.
I was weary and burdened then also, and then this past year just sort of exposed it and multiplied it.
But we were weary and burdened before.
We will be weary and burdened afterward.
2021 can't save us.
Now we're hoping for a better world.
We're praying for that, we're working toward that, certainly.
But while we hope for a better world, it can't save us.
And we trust in the Lord.
Jesus' call.
Jesus' call is not come to me when your world gets better.
Come to me when you get better.
Come to me once you're doing a lot of good work.
Come to me when you feel good.
Come to me when COVID's over.
Come to me once you're attending church.
No, no, no, no.
It's come to me all you are weary and burdened.
That's such good news.
It's us, it's us, it's always us.
And he's always welcoming us.
Let's pray together.
Jesus, thank you for your call to us that tells us both who we are and who you are, that we are the weary and the burdened, exhausted by the law, and that we cannot fulfill and live up to.
We are not holy.
We are in need of your grace and your mercy.
Thank you that you are sufficient for us.
Help us in 2021 to find our identity deeper and deeper in you.
What is already true about us because we are in you.
And may we ask you and your Holy Spirit to have your way with us, to show us even more, to grant us greater self awareness, that we might confess more and be curious more about the ways our hearts are working, that we might know more freedom, and we might live through your honor in greater ways.
In Jesus' name.
Amen.