SPEAKER_00: This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.
SPEAKER_01: Your Bibles to our scripture reading this morning, which is found in the New Testament, Book of Matthew, chapter 11.
SPEAKER_01: Matthew chapter 11, verses 28 to 30.
SPEAKER_01: There we read, Jesus speaking, Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
SPEAKER_01: Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me.
SPEAKER_01: For I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.
SPEAKER_01: For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
SPEAKER_01: The word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Well, welcome here on this uh Labor Day weekend.
SPEAKER_01: And as Pastor Jason mentioned, this is a uh holiday that I was a little unaware of the background of it, but I was intrigued by the name, Labor Day, and uh on a day in which we uh take a holiday.
SPEAKER_01: But there's actually a day in which Americans uh were intended to recognize and celebrate the achievements and value that labor and work have created in our country.
SPEAKER_01: Our country was indeed built by great movements of labor.
SPEAKER_01: So labor and work certainly have, and they bring great value.
SPEAKER_01: And we Americans certainly love to celebrate labor and work.
SPEAKER_01: But ironically enough, we're going to be looking at a passage today that speaks about rest.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, in our passage today, Jesus is going to be inviting us into a kind of rest that will bring to our lives a value and blessing infinitely greater than work.
SPEAKER_01: So maybe I'd like to begin by just kind of asking you a question how tired are you today?
SPEAKER_01: I'm not sure why we have chuckling there.
SPEAKER_01: Well, actually, I am.
SPEAKER_01: How tired are you?
SPEAKER_01: And think of the kinds of layers of tiredness and weariness that we bear in this fallen world.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, you know that physical tiredness is only the tip of the iceberg.
SPEAKER_01: The real weariness and tiredness go deep below the surface, and they involve us at some of the deepest levels of our life.
SPEAKER_01: Well, today in our passage, I want you to know right at the beginning that Jesus is not merely dealing with people who are tired physically.
SPEAKER_01: He's going to be addressing people who are tired to their very bone, tired spiritually, who are wearied and worn out and needy in deep and desperate need.
SPEAKER_01: And there's no way out for them.
SPEAKER_01: They've tried every path there is, and there's just no way out for them in all of the offerings and the solutions of this world.
SPEAKER_01: But Jesus has a word for them.
SPEAKER_01: He has a word for us.
SPEAKER_01: Because I hope you'll see that this isn't just some passage that happened a couple of thousand years ago.
SPEAKER_01: Scripture is such that the Holy Spirit who speaks in Scripture when it was written still speaks today.
SPEAKER_01: So today God is speaking to us through his word in Scripture, through the words on this page, and through the Spirit of God moving in our midst and in our heart the truths that he wants us to hear.
SPEAKER_01: As we come to this passage, you'll notice if you had your Bible that, wow, this is kind of at the end of a paragraph.
SPEAKER_01: It's not like set off by itself.
SPEAKER_01: You know, we like to memorize passages kind of in isolation, and it's not a bad idea, but sometimes it's helpful to kind of see it in its context, in which it happened.
SPEAKER_01: Well, the context is quite complex and long and would take a while to really unpack all of that.
SPEAKER_01: So I really just want to kind of summarize a few things that you need to bring to this passage.
SPEAKER_01: Like, what was the occasion in which Jesus said these words?
SPEAKER_01: And um, the occasion was that his ministry was beginning to make a turn.
SPEAKER_01: And things were not going well for Jesus in terms of how he was being received.
SPEAKER_01: There was a lot of confusion about him.
SPEAKER_01: There was a lot of people who doubted him.
SPEAKER_01: There was an awful lot of active resisting and criticizing of him.
SPEAKER_01: There was a lot of outright rejection of him, appalling rejection in the light of the kinds of miracles and the kinds of things that he did to validate who he was and his message.
SPEAKER_01: And then, of course, there were all these people, these especially authority people, who were lying in wait to snare him, listening to his words and waiting to move in and catch him on something.
SPEAKER_01: Surprisingly, Jesus is not absorbed in all of this and in somehow defending himself.
SPEAKER_01: He continues to minister and he continues to have his focus on places where it will be fruitful.
SPEAKER_01: And there ends up being in this passage, there ends up being a place, in fact, where his ministry will be fruitful.
SPEAKER_01: And this is where he turns his attention with great compassion and with a great invitation.
SPEAKER_01: A great invitation.
SPEAKER_01: So I'd like to look at our passage this morning by kind of asking three questions of it.
SPEAKER_01: What kind of people get an invitation from Jesus?
SPEAKER_01: What kind of people get an invitation from him?
SPEAKER_01: Secondly, uh, what is it that Jesus is inviting us to?
SPEAKER_01: What's he inviting us to in this passage?
SPEAKER_01: And finally, a third question is how do you know if you have the kind of rest that Jesus promises?
SPEAKER_01: So let's begin by kind of looking at our text and dealing, first of all, with the kind of people that get an invitation from Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Well, in everyday life, um, invitations go out through the mail, and they go to worthy people who meet the criteria of either friendship or family to attend some kind of event or participate in something, right?
SPEAKER_01: I received an invitation this week to a wedding.
SPEAKER_01: And in a sense, I was a worthy recipient.
SPEAKER_01: I'm a friend of the family, and actually participating in the wedding.
SPEAKER_01: And so there's it was it was appropriate that I should have an invitation that comes.
SPEAKER_01: In this passage, though, we are looking at Jesus, the Son of God, who's giving an invitation.
SPEAKER_01: And so we might want to ask, who's this invitation to?
SPEAKER_01: And if we were to think of, well, what kind of people would be worthy of his invitation?
SPEAKER_01: Maybe you might think of, well, people who were very scrupulous about their walk with God, and maybe people who were very religious people, people who were disciplined in their lives and did what they were called to do in the law of God.
SPEAKER_01: They would be the people who would receive the kind of invitation maybe that Jesus is giving here.
SPEAKER_01: But in fact, this passage is kind of a surprising passage.
SPEAKER_01: Because the people that Jesus invites here are described as weary and burdened.
SPEAKER_01: Some of the translations have it to be who labor in our burden, but the idea here seems to be that of the result of labor.
SPEAKER_01: They were weary and burdened.
SPEAKER_01: They were weary and burdened about what?
SPEAKER_01: Well, the text doesn't exactly tell us.
SPEAKER_01: It's pretty open-ended.
SPEAKER_01: But the more you read about Jesus and the more you see what he's saying here and know about the New Testament, you know that he's talking about a broad kind of weariness and burdens that is far deeper than a physical weariness and burdenness.
SPEAKER_01: These are the people who life is just not working out for.
SPEAKER_01: Some of these people in this passage have actually had attraction to God and have tried some religious solution.
SPEAKER_01: They have gone to the Pharisees and the religious leaders of the day, and they've listened to them, and they've done what they have said to do as a way to get right with God and find worthiness with God and find rest with God, but in the end it has led to a deep, wearying and burdened way.
SPEAKER_01: There has been no rest for them.
SPEAKER_01: It's interesting, there's a similar kind of Old Testament invitation that we find in the book of Isaiah.
SPEAKER_01: Another one of the great invitational passages.
SPEAKER_01: Listen to the terms of this passage.
SPEAKER_01: Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters.
SPEAKER_01: He who has no money, come and buy and eat.
SPEAKER_01: Come and buy wine and milk without money and without price.
SPEAKER_01: Why do you spend your money for that which isn't bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?
SPEAKER_01: Listen diligent to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourself in rich food.
SPEAKER_01: Incline your ear, and come to me here that your soul may live.
SPEAKER_01: In that day, Isaiah, speaking on behalf of God, had issued an imitation to people who were thirsty.
SPEAKER_01: They were so thirsty and famished, and they were figuratively buying bread that would never satisfy them.
SPEAKER_01: And he tells them that there is a kind, there's a kind of wine and bread that they could have without money.
SPEAKER_01: It was counterintuitive.
SPEAKER_01: They needed to come to God empty-handed, and they would find it.
SPEAKER_01: And so Jesus is giving a similar kind of imitation here.
SPEAKER_01: He's calling out for people who are near the end of their rope.
SPEAKER_01: There's some other interesting overlaps of description to who these people might be or who might be contained in this kind of group of people who are weary and heavy laden.
SPEAKER_01: A little earlier in the passage, Jesus talks, he issues a prayer to God, and he says, I thank you, Father, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding, and revealed them to little children.
SPEAKER_01: Revealed them to little children.
SPEAKER_01: God was at work opening the heart and mind of people he called little children.
SPEAKER_01: And in Scripture, this is often a kind of metaphorical way or symbolic way of describing people who were insignificant in the eyes of the world, but teachable.
SPEAKER_01: Insignificant, but teachable and open.
SPEAKER_01: They were in contrast to the wise and learned, those who really were arrogant and not curious about Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: They really felt like they didn't have a need.
SPEAKER_01: They knew the way to have their need satisfied.
SPEAKER_01: And what Jesus was offering them, they just weren't interested in.
SPEAKER_01: There's even another way that these people who get this imitation are described.
SPEAKER_01: And it's even more surprising.
SPEAKER_01: It's a little bit earlier, it's in the beginning of the chapter, chapter 11.
SPEAKER_01: I've always been struck by this.
SPEAKER_01: The way that Jesus describes his miracles and the kind of people that he spent a lot of time with.
SPEAKER_01: It turns out that at this time John the Baptist was in prison, and John the Baptist was a forerunner of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: It was his ministry to point people to Jesus as the coming one.
SPEAKER_01: And he was the greatest of the Old Testament prophets because he was the closest to Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And he's in prison and he begins to doubt.
SPEAKER_01: He begins to question.
SPEAKER_01: What Jesus is doing doesn't fit the kind of patterns and categories that he has in his mind as to what the Messiah would be doing.
SPEAKER_01: And so he sends some ambassadors, some disciples to go and ask Jesus if he really was the one, or if he was just another forerunner of some kind.
SPEAKER_01: Would there be someone after him who would fit his categories better?
SPEAKER_01: And if you have your Bibles open in verse 11, look what Jesus says in verses four and following.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus says, Go and tell John what you hear and see.
SPEAKER_01: The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk.
SPEAKER_01: But really the thing that has always amazed me is that these works that he does are bigger than just healing.
SPEAKER_01: There is something we're to see.
SPEAKER_01: You know, we talked last week in the baptism that God loves symbols.
SPEAKER_01: Here's this Messiah going around healing blind people, deaf people, dead people, incurably sick people who are contagious with everyone else around them, and poor people with no money.
SPEAKER_01: Do you see it?
SPEAKER_01: Do you see the picture that's being presented there?
SPEAKER_01: That's the kind of people the Savior has come to save.
SPEAKER_01: Not just those who had that physically, the physical components of that were meant partly, partly to trigger some lights in our minds that we are among those people.
SPEAKER_01: We don't have sight.
SPEAKER_01: We don't have hearing.
SPEAKER_01: We're lame.
SPEAKER_01: We can't move and walk in the Christian life or in life with God in a way we're on our own.
SPEAKER_01: We are dead in our trespasses and sins, and we have nothing to buy what God alone can give us.
SPEAKER_01: And so what good news! That Jesus, who often hung out with sinners and tax collectors, and in this passage speaking to people who get his imitation, they are in fact the people who have the greatest need and are aware of their need and are sinking under their need.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus sends out this invitation to all of them.
SPEAKER_01: Come to me, all of you who are weary and heavy laden.
SPEAKER_01: I love artwork in not an artist, but I have some appreciation of art, and I especially love artwork where the artist has intended for us to kind of enter the narrative of the picture she has painted.
SPEAKER_01: The artist wants us to get into that picture and to kind of see where we are in there and to see things going on in this maybe complex picture.
SPEAKER_01: They want us to look at their faces.
SPEAKER_01: They want us to look at the lighting.
SPEAKER_01: There's a lot to see in really good artwork.
SPEAKER_01: There's a story being told in good artwork, or at least in a certain kind of artwork.
SPEAKER_01: As you come to this passage of Scripture, can you see this as a kind of snapshot, as a kind of picture?
SPEAKER_01: Can you put yourself in the crowd around Jesus?
SPEAKER_01: Can you enter the narrative of this passage?
SPEAKER_01: Where do you see yourself in this scene?
SPEAKER_01: That's the first thing this passage is beckoning us to deal with.
SPEAKER_01: Where do you see yourself in this passage?
SPEAKER_01: Are you, in fact, one of those?
SPEAKER_01: As those ladies on the screen, burdened down, and weary in this life.
SPEAKER_01: Because life doesn't work for you in a fallen world.
SPEAKER_01: And the brokenness of your body and your even your soul and mind are so deep and so discouraging at times in your own self that there's just no hope if you had to be your own savior.
SPEAKER_01: There are people in this scene who aren't going to come to Christ.
SPEAKER_01: They don't feel they really have a need.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe some of you here are in that place.
SPEAKER_01: You don't really see your need.
SPEAKER_01: You've got a good job.
SPEAKER_01: You've got good health.
SPEAKER_01: You've got a good family structure.
SPEAKER_01: You've got a lot going for you.
SPEAKER_01: You're secure.
SPEAKER_01: You feel secure.
SPEAKER_01: If we could talk at length, I'm fairly certain that that security that you have would be seen and even felt by you as being a really frail thing.
SPEAKER_01: But some of these people who were in that place.
SPEAKER_01: Didn't come to Christ.
SPEAKER_01: They hesitated.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe they knew that what he was saying rang true in their soul, but they hesitated.
SPEAKER_01: Where do you see yourself in this passage?
SPEAKER_01: I love one author who made this famous saying, he said, God's address is at the end of your rope.
SPEAKER_01: You want to know where God lives?
SPEAKER_01: God's address is at the end of your rope.
SPEAKER_01: Let me just invite you today that if you are here today and you have some sense of your own neediness and your weariness of soul and heart, and you are discovering that any other kind of way you try to make it to God is not working out for you.
SPEAKER_01: But you've never come to Jesus, you've never really considered who he is and what he's offering.
SPEAKER_01: Let me encourage you to look at Jesus today and to hear his imitation that's still speaking today, a word of tremendous soul rest for you.
SPEAKER_01: Well, I want to move on now to our second question.
SPEAKER_01: What is Jesus inviting us to?
SPEAKER_01: What's he inviting us to?
SPEAKER_01: Gives this invitation to a certain class of people.
SPEAKER_01: Well, what's he inviting them to?
SPEAKER_01: You know, it's always good to know the terms of an invitation before you accept it.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, it's more than good, it's actually vital.
SPEAKER_01: There is no shortage of unscrupulous people who love to invite vulnerable people, like the kindness in our text today, into opportunities that really aren't what they appear.
SPEAKER_01: They're actually opportunities for you to be exploited and taken advantage of, and perhaps to lose everything.
SPEAKER_01: We have a name for these kinds of people in certain aspects of society.
SPEAKER_01: We call them groomers.
SPEAKER_01: Groomers.
SPEAKER_01: The entire sex trade that is out of control in our world functions on this principle.
SPEAKER_01: Invitations are made to vulnerable young ladies.
SPEAKER_01: Promises are made of rest and life and money and prosperity for your family and to get out of that poverty that you can't get out of for generations.
SPEAKER_01: You can be the one to deliver your family.
SPEAKER_01: Just come with us, trust us.
SPEAKER_01: And so, what is Jesus offering here?
SPEAKER_01: What makes him different from the voices of people who prey on vulnerable people?
SPEAKER_01: Opening up to them the hope of a path of success.
SPEAKER_01: Well, what he offers to them is three things.
SPEAKER_01: Three things.
SPEAKER_01: And again, he's not just offering it to them, he's offering it to us.
SPEAKER_01: The first thing he offers in this passage is himself.
SPEAKER_01: He offers himself, come to me.
SPEAKER_01: Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden.
SPEAKER_01: He's not offering them a program.
SPEAKER_01: He's not offering them a path, a degree, of something they can go somewhere and do and have.
SPEAKER_01: He is offering them to come and to be with him, to be in his presence, to walk with him, to follow him, to keep company with him.
SPEAKER_01: He's offering a kind of personal relating here.
SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, this might be a fine offer if Jesus wasn't who he said he was.
SPEAKER_01: He said he's the very Son of God.
SPEAKER_01: The very Son of God who came down from heaven and became one of us.
SPEAKER_01: The one who sees us and knows us to our very core, all the way to the bottom.
SPEAKER_01: And you see, one of the things Jesus is offering for us here is to come to him as we are and with an authenticity about us.
SPEAKER_01: He's not asking us to come anonymously.
SPEAKER_01: You know, if I invite you to church, you might come in, you might come in that door over there five minutes after the service starts, and you might make your way to the back, and then you might three minutes before the service leaves, you might just kind of go out that way, and that would be okay if that's where you were.
SPEAKER_01: That would be just fine, but it's not just fine for Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: You know, he is inviting us to come to him.
SPEAKER_01: He's gonna look you in the eye.
SPEAKER_01: You're gonna be held by him.
SPEAKER_01: He wants you.
SPEAKER_01: In all that you are.
SPEAKER_01: He doesn't want any mask on.
SPEAKER_01: He doesn't need you to get cleaned up or anything like that.
SPEAKER_01: He wants you to come as you are.
SPEAKER_01: Come out of hiding.
SPEAKER_01: Come out of hiding and meet your creator.
SPEAKER_01: You've been hiding all your life from your creator.
SPEAKER_01: Come out of hiding and meet your creator face to face.
SPEAKER_01: Well, he goes on from there.
SPEAKER_01: He offers something else.
SPEAKER_01: He offers to lighten our load.
SPEAKER_01: To lighten our load.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus didn't come to weigh us down.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe if you've been in the church and you've been around the Bible, maybe you've read the Sermon on the Mount recently, right?
SPEAKER_01: Wow, that's a high standard.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus goes, Jesus looks at the law and then he even applies it into the heart, into the inside of who we are.
SPEAKER_01: You might think, wow, Jesus really gives us a heavy load here to be a follower of his.
SPEAKER_01: That's not what he says.
SPEAKER_01: He says, I have come to lighten your load.
SPEAKER_01: I want you to swap your yokes.
SPEAKER_01: You already have a yoke.
SPEAKER_01: That's why you're weary and heavy laden.
SPEAKER_01: The idea of a yoke in Scripture, it's just a symbolic idea.
SPEAKER_01: It has to do with some kind of bondage or very often a kind of authority that you're submitting to.
SPEAKER_01: Everybody has a yoke in life.
SPEAKER_01: These people had a yoke, but it was a yoke that they couldn't bear.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus says, I want you to swap.
SPEAKER_01: I want you to swap yokes.
SPEAKER_01: I want you to come and submit yourself willingly to my authority.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not going to force this on you.
SPEAKER_01: There's no exploiting going on here.
SPEAKER_01: You come and you step into what I have to offer you.
SPEAKER_01: What does his yoke look like?
SPEAKER_01: It sounds scary to go from one yoke to another.
SPEAKER_01: Are you really any better off?
SPEAKER_01: With another yoke.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus says you are.
SPEAKER_01: Because of the nature of who he is.
SPEAKER_01: He is gentle in lowly in heart.
SPEAKER_01: Again, in the Old Testament book of Isaiah, there was a number of songs that were written to foretell hundreds and hundreds of years before Jesus came what the Savior would look like.
SPEAKER_01: And listen to this part of this song.
SPEAKER_01: Behold, my servant, this is the Savior coming, whom I uphold, God says, my chosen in whom my soul delights.
SPEAKER_01: I have put my spirit on him, and he will bring forth justice to the nations.
SPEAKER_01: He will not cry aloud or lift up his voice or make it heard in the street.
SPEAKER_01: A bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not quench.
SPEAKER_01: He will faithfully bring forth justice.
SPEAKER_01: Can you imagine a Savior who's going to right all of the wrongs?
SPEAKER_01: And yet, amid all of that, people who are contributing to the wrongs and who are sinful and rebellious and who are at the end of their rope and weary and burdened and like a candle that's barely flickering.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus said, I'm not going to snuff that out.
SPEAKER_01: People who are like a bruised reed, who are just barely hanging on by a thread, I'm not going to snap it off.
SPEAKER_01: That's the way the authorities in this world work.
SPEAKER_01: That's the authorities of other religions.
SPEAKER_01: There are plenty of other faiths in the world that are harsh taskmasters.
SPEAKER_01: You come to them.
SPEAKER_01: You come to them as a bruised reed.
SPEAKER_01: And you'll lose the top of your reed.
SPEAKER_01: You know that.
SPEAKER_01: Some of you know that.
SPEAKER_01: But you come to Jesus, and he is gentle.
SPEAKER_01: He is gentle.
SPEAKER_01: Yes, he brings justice, and yes, he has a fierceness about him of holiness.
SPEAKER_01: But he is gentle to those who are wearied and burdened in their deepest places, whom he sees to the core of who they are.
SPEAKER_01: That makes me want to come to him.
SPEAKER_01: I feel safe coming to a Savior like that.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not going to be hit and blindsided by a surprise.
SPEAKER_01: This Savior knows me.
SPEAKER_01: And not only that, he's inviting me into something really great.
SPEAKER_01: Finally, the final part of the offer here is that Jesus is offering to refresh our soul.
SPEAKER_01: The whole invitation here isn't into something that's going to be exploiting for him in a negative kind of way.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is offering us a refreshment.
SPEAKER_01: Not just kind of stopping from work for a while, but being refreshed.
SPEAKER_01: Many of you do.
SPEAKER_01: If you don't have one, try to get one.
SPEAKER_01: You need time off, but you know that mere time off won't bring you rest alone.
SPEAKER_01: It's not the same thing.
SPEAKER_01: You're just stopping working.
SPEAKER_01: It's different from being refreshed.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is offering a refreshing of your soul at the very deepest places.
SPEAKER_01: How is Jesus able to offer this level of ultimate rest?
SPEAKER_01: How is he able to do that?
SPEAKER_01: You know, in this passage, he's not laying all of that out.
SPEAKER_01: He's really using these images that were familiar to these people for their sake and for ours to teach us that he is the one who has come to weary and tired people who are tired of trying to be worthy before God and earn their righteousness before him.
SPEAKER_01: Then in fact, he has come to do a work on our behalf.
SPEAKER_01: He has come to earn a righteousness.
SPEAKER_01: He has come as the worthy one.
SPEAKER_01: And he has come to give us his status of worthiness before God.
SPEAKER_01: And so we can have that in a kind of imputed way if we're in him and if we come to him.
SPEAKER_01: Empty-handed in faith, trusting in him.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus says that he knows the Father alone, and he reveals the Father to these little children who come to him in this kind of way.
SPEAKER_01: I want us to end with this question of how do you know if you have this kind of rest?
SPEAKER_01: When do you get this rest?
SPEAKER_01: And what does this rest look like?
SPEAKER_01: This is a complicated subject, and I think if you've lived the Christian life for very long, you'll know that depending on where you are in this life, you may read Jesus' words with a kind of second look.
SPEAKER_01: Because as we enter the Christian life, we come to him with this kind of burden and this kind of emptiness.
SPEAKER_01: And if we really come to him in faith, looking to him alone, there is a rest that we experience right away.
SPEAKER_01: God gives us his own spirit, he'll tell us later in the New Testament, to dwell in us, and who testifies in our own heart that we're adopted children with him.
SPEAKER_01: We have peace with God that surpasses understanding.
SPEAKER_01: We've been born from above and born again.
SPEAKER_01: There's a million ways that the Bible declares this, and that as God's children, those of you who are, we have experienced this.
SPEAKER_01: There is a beautiful rest that's here and now, today, for the children of God.
SPEAKER_01: We also know in Scripture that there is the fullness of rest that's yet to come.
SPEAKER_01: It's future.
SPEAKER_01: It's going to be a glorious rest because then every ounce of burden that you have in this life and weariness is going to be removed.
SPEAKER_01: Can you imagine a day?
SPEAKER_01: Can you imagine a day when you won't desire one thing contrary to what God Himself desires?
SPEAKER_01: Can you imagine a day that when you encounter a brother or sister, and you will encounter brothers or sisters in glory, that you will have nothing, not a single thought or desire that will be anything contrary than love and giving and celebrating and affirming and blessing?
SPEAKER_01: You know, it's more than we can really get our minds around.
SPEAKER_01: There is coming an ultimate rest when all is going to be restored that was lost.
SPEAKER_01: But what about now in the gap?
SPEAKER_01: What about now between the already, what we already have in part, and the not yet, what we in fact will have in its fullness?
SPEAKER_01: Well, as we labor on in the Christian life over the years, you know, it could be that what you have in your mind, or maybe what you've been brought in into training with in some kind of way, depending on your religious background, maybe our idea was that this rest that we began with was going to just keep on mounting in such a way that we were going to be knocking down progress in the Christian life where we're conquering one sin after the other.
SPEAKER_01: We're putting to death, we're just going down this list and we're knocking them off.
SPEAKER_01: You struggle with jealousy, work at it long enough.
SPEAKER_01: Boom, it's off your list.
SPEAKER_01: You struggle with anger, you struggle with desire, run adrift.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe in your heart you're thinking that, wow, I'm going to get a handle on all of these things someday.
SPEAKER_01: So that my life in this world is really going to be a kind of rest from all of the burden of these sins that are within me.
SPEAKER_01: But it turns out that it's not that way.
SPEAKER_01: It turns out that God doesn't reveal that to us all at once either.
SPEAKER_01: I think if he did, it would be a crushing blow.
SPEAKER_01: He begins to show us ourself, little by little.
SPEAKER_01: And it takes an entire lifetime for the kind of rest, the deepest kind of rest that Jesus is talking about in this passage, to sink down into us.
SPEAKER_01: Because the kind of rest that we're ultimately getting in this life is a kind of rest where we begin to see that it really is all of God.
SPEAKER_01: All of our worthiness is in Him.
SPEAKER_01: Without me, you can do nothing, Jesus said.
SPEAKER_01: That will take you a lifetime to get your soul around that.
SPEAKER_01: In the meantime, there is something in our hearts that scrambles.
SPEAKER_01: I picked this word up from another author on this passage.
SPEAKER_01: I love the word.
SPEAKER_01: It's the opposite of rest.
SPEAKER_01: Scrambling.
SPEAKER_01: Man, I am a scrambling man.
SPEAKER_01: Can I tell you that?
SPEAKER_01: There's a song about that, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01: I'm a scrambling man.
SPEAKER_01: And here's how my scrambling looks like.
SPEAKER_01: My scrambling happens every day.
SPEAKER_01: Because my heart is rebellious, and yes, I have the Spirit of God, and there are good desires, and God's at work in me.
SPEAKER_01: He is putting to death sins, but it's so much slower than I thought.
SPEAKER_01: And the rebellion arises in me, and I'm deceived by it.
SPEAKER_01: I'm led astray by it.
SPEAKER_01: I hide from it.
SPEAKER_01: I hide from seeing it.
SPEAKER_01: I don't want to know about it.
SPEAKER_01: I don't want to explore it.
SPEAKER_01: I feel shame and guilt.
SPEAKER_01: And I immediately want to run from God.
SPEAKER_01: I want to hide from Him.
SPEAKER_01: I want to put fig leaves on and be in the bush.
SPEAKER_01: That's where I want to hang out.
SPEAKER_01: That's scrambling.
SPEAKER_01: And there's a million ways that I can do that.
SPEAKER_01: And where the scrambling leads to, besides hiding, it leads to positive trying to do things that actually would reinvest me in the favor of God.
SPEAKER_01: I've learned some of this from bad, unhealthy relationships in life with parents and with families.
SPEAKER_01: You know, when you go out of favor with your spouse, maybe your spouse is the kind of person that kind of requires you, this kind of unspoken rule there, that you're going to earn back their favor.
SPEAKER_01: You do enough.
SPEAKER_01: Then you'll get their smile again.
SPEAKER_01: We learned that as kids.
SPEAKER_01: Parents, we we don't do well.
SPEAKER_01: Parenting often, we often teach kids this kind of thing that our love is conditional.
SPEAKER_01: For them.
SPEAKER_01: If they want to, if they break a rule, if they rebel against us, if they do, don't do what we ask them to do, then maybe we can make them feel bad, and maybe we can, if they're good enough, if they do that chore and come back and say, Dad, Dad, I mowed the yard for you.
SPEAKER_01: And really, really the ask is, Dad, can I be in your favor now?
SPEAKER_01: Can we make it right again?
SPEAKER_01: That's scrambling.
SPEAKER_01: I hate it when my kids scramble.
SPEAKER_01: I hate it.
SPEAKER_01: It shows me that my parenting isn't where it needs to be.
SPEAKER_01: They're hearing the wrong message.
SPEAKER_01: I'm sending the wrong message to them.
SPEAKER_01: And I hate it when I scramble with the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Whether it's trying to read more in Scripture, whether it's trying to take on more disciplines, whether it's time to do this or do that.
SPEAKER_01: Those are all important things, and this subject can get really delicate, can't it?
SPEAKER_01: You know, not going too far here, not going too far here.
SPEAKER_01: I hope you're not hearing me as kind of over in the heresy lane.
SPEAKER_01: But I'm telling you from real experience, from real Christians.
SPEAKER_01: Scrambling is what we do by nature.
SPEAKER_01: And God wants us to put that scrambling down because that is the biggest burden in my life right now is scrambling to gain his favor.
SPEAKER_01: The biggest burden in my life is the own disappointment of how far short I fall of him and thinking, hmm, am I going to be used by him anymore?
SPEAKER_01: Wow, the unrest that comes from that is heavy.
SPEAKER_01: So heavy.
SPEAKER_01: But I'm learning, I'm learning, I'm learning in new ways that I can come to Jesus face to face.
SPEAKER_01: I can come and name my rebellion right before him.
SPEAKER_01: I can come knowing he's safe, he's gentle and lowly in heart.
SPEAKER_01: I can come knowing that my worthiness is from him.
SPEAKER_01: It's alien to me.
SPEAKER_01: And I have a father who loves me and who doesn't want me to scramble any longer.
SPEAKER_01: And you know what else I'm learning?
SPEAKER_01: And I'll end with this.
SPEAKER_01: I'm learning that the way to really love people comes out of this place.
SPEAKER_01: When I'm scrambling, I'm not loving you very well.
SPEAKER_01: My wife knows this full well.
SPEAKER_01: She's very intuitive.
SPEAKER_01: She's very clued in to inside things.
SPEAKER_01: She can see the scrambling.
SPEAKER_01: You know when I love people the best?
SPEAKER_01: Is when I'm secure in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: And there's nothing else to do.
SPEAKER_01: But love people and love God.
SPEAKER_01: Doesn't mean I'm casual with the commands of God, take them very seriously.
SPEAKER_01: I fight for them.
SPEAKER_01: But I fight harder.
SPEAKER_01: I fight harder to stop scrambling and to sit in the love of God for me.
SPEAKER_01: I fight much harder every day to be at rest in Christ and to reaffirm to my soul that I am his.
SPEAKER_01: And I can be like a ping pong ball, and some of you can too.
SPEAKER_01: You're there, and then tomorrow you're not.
SPEAKER_01: And if we could only just believe his words, I hope today, for those of you who are believers who have come to Christ, and your life has a lot of scrambling in it, like mine.
SPEAKER_01: I hope you can hear this invitation of Jesus today to come to him for rest and to enter into his yoke, his light yoke, his light burden, his light authority, and to know this Savior who is kind and gentle and safe for you to rest in.
SPEAKER_01: You join me as I close this in a prayer.
SPEAKER_01: Our Heavenly Father.
SPEAKER_01: I never thought rest was so complex.
SPEAKER_01: I love your words in Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: Faith, love, life, rest, holiness.
SPEAKER_01: These are deep, deep words with deep paths and trajectories.
SPEAKER_01: And Father, we ask that you would you would work today in fresh ways on this labor day to teach us some new truths about resting in you alone for all of our peace and worthiness with God.
SPEAKER_01: We ask it for Christ's sake.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.
SPEAKER_00: Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.com.