The Habit of Rest
The Power of Spiritual Habits September 7, 2025 Matthew 11:28-30 Notes
This time of year, school’s back, sports are back (travel ball never left), maybe work is ramping up your work load, the holidays will be here before you know it. We live in a state of stress … an overwhelmed sort of just getting by until the next weekend, the next vacation, the next glass of wine, the next night of doom scrolling, or sadly until next summer. But these “nexts” are not real rest but merely distractions.
Many of us are trying to numb the problem with distractions but the problems remain. True rest is not living for distractions but walking in Jesus. What if we could find rest in the midst of our work, what if we could even live, work and play out of a state of spiritual rest?
In Matthew chapter 11, Jesus invited the crowds to find rest for their souls not in laws or rituals but in relationship with Him. When we build the habit of rest in Him, we can discover rest for our souls.
Audio
Morning, church. Good to see you today. I'm Pastor Stephen Kumps. I'm the worship pastor here at Eastgate Church. And it's my pleasure to be up here for this is my fourth Sunday in a row getting to preach and to introduce this series called the Power of Spiritual Habits.
And for those of you, I had people legit asking, like, is Pastor Gary all right? Like, is he okay? Like. Cause we ain't seen him in a minute. No, he's.
He went on a mission trip to Mexico and he's also taking some time off to prepare for the fall season. We got a great series coming up that he's preparing to preach as well. And so gave him a little bit of time to rest and to refresh and to be prepared for the fall. And so. But hey, in the meantime, I've thoroughly enjoyed getting to be here with you and I'm usually up here with the band and I'm thankful for the band for how well they've done of leading us in worship.
Every week we are continuing in this series. This is part four of the Power of Spiritual Habits. Part one, we saw the habit of devotion where we're looking for a personal relationship with God. In week two, we saw the habit of fellowship, where now we're looking for relationships with others as we follow the Lord. And then last week we saw the habit of service, whereby we are learning to put ourselves way beneath others, put ourselves last, so that way we would be first in the kingdom of God, serving him.
And so this week we're talking about the habit of rest. And I think I find that it actually has worked out pretty cool how this is. I don't even think we meant it to be this way. But the very first week of devotion, that was personal. And then fellowship kind of like the pendulum kind of swung the other way of like, now I'm learning relationship with others.
Last week it was how can I pour out for the kingdom of God? And then this week in the other side of this is how do I then find rest while I'm doing this? Well, as we know, we've talked about this the last few weeks with how phones are so have so much potential, so much capability, but have this built in need for power. They can't create power on our own. And so like the phone, we also have to find ways to power ourselves.
And so what we've seen here in this series is that the spiritual habit acts like as the conduit, the power that the Holy Spirit can empower us through the spiritual habit that we put in place. But then also through that habit that the Holy Spirit would change us as a person, but then use us to serve the kingdom of God. And maybe somebody's here this morning and they're looking for, in this habit of rest, they've been looking for a place to plug in. And finding that like nothing seems to satisfy, nothing seems to give me rest. And man, this is a timely message for some of us today, I think, especially because it is the fall.
And fall is kind of, it's not notorious time of the year, I think where everything wants to get started at the same exact time. As a parent, I've got kids in school and I know that school just started back this month. I also know that a lot of sports are kicking back off and some of us have been. They didn't get a break from sports because your kid's doing year round sports. There's things like plays and there's things like music lessons and there's things like dance.
And it just keeps adding up. Not to even mention that the fall has three holidays back to back with Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and there's all the stuff that goes inside of that. As a parent, I'm wanting to try to take advantage of. I want to take my kid to a pumpkin patch. I want to enjoy the festivities that come with the fall.
But when I look at my schedule, I find that it's incredibly busy. And so here in this series, our theme verse is Ephesians chapter 4. It says instead, let the Spirit renew your thoughts and attitudes, put on your new nature, created to be like God, truly righteous and holy. So our prayer today is that as we have open hands to the Spirit, that he will empower us, he will change us, and then we will intentionally put on this habit of rest, which is going to be something that we intentionally do. Maybe your steering wheel looks like this picture right here where you're like, you've got all the post it notes of all the different hundred million things that you feel like you need to be doing and you're trying to balance it in life and you're finding that you're drowning right now.
You're finding that you're like every day has way too many things on the schedule, not enough time to do it. And then you're like some part of you is like just looking forward to the weekend and then the weekend gets here and then you've got so much else that you've put in front of yourself to do. And so now even thinking about the fact that Sunday is almost halfway over. You're already thinking about that you got to go back to work tomorrow. And so there's this grind, there's this rat race that we find ourselves in, and we try to do things that will take our mind off of it, that will maybe numb it, that will distract us from the rat race.
And so maybe you're just always thinking about the next weekend. Maybe you're just always thinking about the next vacation that you've got planned. Maybe you're just thinking about a night where you can just sit there and do nothing. But then that turns into just scrolling through social media and kind of numbing yourself. And maybe an hour goes by and you're like, what am I even doing right now?
And so I think what we're going to see today is that Jesus wants to pull us out of just trying to numb the problem, to just distract ourselves from the real root need. And that is that I need rest. And true rest is not living for distractions, but it's going to be found in walking in Jesus. What if you could find rest in the midst of our work? What if we could find rest even while we live and work and play?
What if we could do all these things out of a state of spiritual rest? Well, Scott Hubbard says in this article from desiring God, the world, and the devil would have us work even while we rest, but Jesus would have us rest even while we work. How many times am I sitting there trying to maybe relax a little bit, but my wheels have. My brain just can't seem to turn off. And so I would say that for me, working while I rest translates to worrying while I rest.
It translates to me trying to solve 100 million things and just feeling more and more and more bogged down. But I'm supposed to be resting right now. I've set aside this time right here so that way I could rest. But all I'm doing is sitting here working. All I'm doing is sitting here worrying.
That would be what our enemy, the devil, would have us do to drain us even while we're trying to rest. But Jesus would say, rest even while we work. And we're gonna see more about that. So as we study the words of Jesus today, I believe that we will be encouraged to find that Jesus offers a superior rest, that it's a spiritual habit of resting in him. That's gonna empower us to work, to engage with our families, to engage with our communities, and just to do life in a state of rest.
In Matthew, chapter 11, Jesus invited the crowds to find rest for their souls. Not in laws or not in just rituals, but in relationship with Him. When we build the habit of rest in him, we can discover rest for our souls. But how? Well, in today's passage, we're going to see three invitations that lead us into a state of rest.
And before we open the Word, I'd like to pray for us, Jesus, somebody here this morning, and including me, I mean, this is a sermon aimed at Stephen. We need rest. And it's really timely right now for somebody in this room because they've just about hit their wits end trying to balance it all, trying to do it all. And it's something that you built into us, that we need. So I pray God, that your Word would speak, that it would be your words, Lord, that would pierce the heart, Lord, and that we would be able to come away from this today saying that I want to be more like Jesus and I want to follow his word and I want to rest like Jesus has called me to rest in Jesus name.
Amen. Let's stand to our feet right now. We're going to read from the Book of Matthew, chapter 11.
And if you're new to us today and you don't have your Bible with us, there's the church center app, and you can actually click on events there and it'll point you to this sermon. You can find all your scripture there if you're wanting to take it and continue studying at home. It says in Matthew, chapter 11, starting in verse 28. And I'm going to read these two, the first two verses. I'm going to let y' all read verse 30 with me.
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. Let's read this together. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.
May God bless the reading of His Word. Amen. You may be seated. So, as is our practice here at Eastgate, we try to let the word speak for itself. And here, as we dissect, what Jesus is saying here is that we can practice the spiritual habit of rest and Jesus by first coming to him with our burdens.
Coming, coming to him with our burdens. Now, right off the bat, he says, come to me and we see this Word. It's an imperative. It's a command. But I think to the person today who maybe you have not surrendered your life to Jesus.
Maybe somebody here today came to church and it's because you're still trying to search and try to figure out, like, there's got to be more to life than what I've been experiencing, because I've been in this rat race and I feel like it's getting me nowhere. I feel like it's not satisfying. Well, friend, that's an invitation to you. Jesus is saying, come to me. But if you already have made the decision to follow Jesus, this is a command to you.
This is. It might need to be like a little bit of a. Like a shove or a nudge. It's like, hey, come on, come on, come. And then what does he say to do it?
Well, he's describing your state. First of all, he says, come to me all who labor. And this is the Greek word kapiyao, which means to grow, to weary, to be tired, to be exhausted. So if that describes you, then come to him. If you labor, if you're heavy laden.
And this means to have a burden on it means that you're carrying a load. And then he says, I will give you rest. And there's the word we're looking for here today. And so this idea of rest is to be able to come and to. To cease movement, to cease labor in order to recover, to collect your strength, to be refreshed.
It has this picture of being quiet, to be calm, and then to be expectantly waiting for what's going to come. And so just know when we were originally titling this sermon, we were originally thinking that the habit was going to be called the habit of Sabbath. And I think it's because the Sabbath rest is certainly in view when we consider this idea of stopping. In fact, it's a habit that's been around since, you know, the Garden of Eden. And in Mosaic Law, it was an actual command that you keep the Sabbath.
But then Jesus comes and he. He speaks to us and says, I am Lord of the Sabbath. And so Jesus has become in himself our Sabbath rest. And so it is no longer a requirement for us to keep Sabbath. But we'll see here in a couple of scriptures here that there are elements of it that are still very, very useful to us.
It says in Colossians 2, therefore, let no one pass judgment on you. And questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath, these are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Jesus. And so here Paul is telling us that as far as commands are concerned, he's equating Sabbath to all the festivals. And if you've read Leviticus. If you read numbers, you know that the festivals were also a command.
They had all these rituals. Well, he's saying that now Jesus is lord of the Sabbath, the Sabbath. You found your Sabbath rest in Jesus. And so now it's not a requirement, and nor should you judge one another. It says in Romans 14, one person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike.
Each one should be fully convinced in his mind. So here I think this quote from Got questions helps us a lot. Should a Christian practice Sabbath keeping? If a Christian feels led to do so, absolutely yes. However, those who choose to practice Sabbath keeping should not judge those who do not keep the Sabbath.
Further, those who do not keep the Sabbath should avoid being a stumbling block to those who do keep the Sabbath. So I love that quote because it's got all the references in Scripture to what it's saying right here. But without getting too bogged down right here, here's what I want us to see, friend, is that it's not a command, but that there is value in it. And that if you're a person who keep. If you practice the Sabbath, don't judge those who don't.
And if you don't practice the Sabbath, don't judge those who do. But here's the essence of it. It says in Mark 2, the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord, even of the Sabbath. The Sabbath was put in place because we needed it.
And the first day of rest we ever see in the Bible is the seventh day of creation. So God creates the heaven and earth. It takes him six days. And on the seventh day it says that he rested. Now, does God physically need rest?
No. He is all powerful. And the energy that was spent, he didn't run out of energy. And did Adam and Eve need rest? Well, they were fresh out of the factory, just literally like a day before.
And now it says they're going to rest for a day. So this kind of rest is not just a rest that has to come from being physically tired. It's a rest for our soul that I believe is still. It's a good thing to add into the rhythm of your week and the rhythm of your day that you would rest in the Lord. And it's not just something that you do alone, it's something that you do together.
And so I believe that there are some really great elements here that we can see inside of it. What it calls us to do, it calls us to stop. And that is so countercultural. The world just says, you gotta go, go, go, go, go. But here, here he is calling us to stop.
It calls us Sabbath rest calls us to rest. It calls us to delight in one another and just to enjoy the fellowship. It calls us to worship together. And I think here Jesus is calling us, before we do any of that, to bring your burdens to Him. He says in Psalm, or the psalmist says in chapter 55, cast your burden on the Lord and He will sustain you.
First Peter says, give all your worries and cares to God, for He cares about you. This is a God who knows and cares about you, friend. And he promises that he will sustain you. Cast your burdens on him, give him your worries and cares, and then seek rest. He says in Hebrews 4.
So then there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from his works, as God did from His. Let us therefore strive to enter that rest so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. So here's he's just re emphasizing what we've been saying here is that the Sabbath was a law until Jesus came. And now here we can find Sabbath rest not in a day, but in a person.
And so the writer of Hebrews is saying we should strive for that rest, strive for rest in Jesus, not in just a simple practice so we can come and we can celebrate the rest that we have in Christ. And as Christians, the church decided when we were going to come together that no longer would they come together on a Saturday, which would be considered the Sabbath. But they created a new day of worship. It was the day that Jesus rose from the dead it Sunday, and they changed the name of it to the Lord's Day. And here I love this quote from Andrew Lincoln on what this can look like.
In the Old Testament, the literal physical rest of the Sabbath pointed to future rest. But since Christ has brought fulfillment in terms of salvation rest, it is the present enjoyment of this rest that acts as the foretaste of the consummation rest which is to come. In other words, it is the celebration on the Lord's day of the rest that we already have through Christ's resurrection and now anticipates and guarantees the rest that is yet to be. Friend, I love this image here because I know that in Jesus there is Sabbath rest. But I'm also aware that inside of this earthly body that this thing is constantly wearing down and constantly distracting me from the Sabbath rest.
But if I will come together and make a point to be here on a Sunday and to now enter in not just with worship, not just bringing my service, as we were talking about last week, not just coming for fellowship of believers, which we talked about the week before, but now looking intentionally in this environment for rest. And it starts with a mindset of saying, I know because of Jesus, that no matter what kind of crazy week I just had, no matter how difficult this life may be, that there lies an eternal rest, and that those who have died and gone before me, that what makes heaven heaven is the fact that it's a rest for my soul. And that's Sunday mornings is a reminder of that. It's the foretaste of that.
One of the most stressful things to me is when I go to an airport and I've got all my luggage with me and just the stress of, like, man, how fast can I get to my seat and have all this stuff off of me? The picture here is one of my parents and my wife And I in 2009, went to California for a worship conference. And I showed that first picture there because it's got my two guitars. And that trip was especially stressful from a luggage standpoint because I didn't want to put my. My guitars under the plane because they'd get beat to death.
But also they wouldn't fit in the rack above your chairs. Turns out there's a closet that every plane has on it that you can put an instrument like that, but it runs out of space at a certain point. So it was always like, I just hope the closet's going to have some space in it. And so the stress of going to the airport with these guitars in hand because I'm going to a worship conference and I'm going to get to play at it was just so heavy on me. And there's no better feeling that, hey, it worked out.
Hey, I'm in the seat. Y' all know that feeling of like, oh, my goodness, we made it. How great would it be if I could just afford to just have a guy show up at my house, take the luggage from there and shoot, just drive me to the airport, because I don't want to have to think about parking either. And then from there, can you just, like, carry me to the plane?
But, friend, I think that there's a desire here that, you know, really, when it comes down to the burdens of this life, I wish I could do that with my burdens as well. And here's what Jesus is saying. You can do that. I can take those burdens from you and the best, simplest way. And somebody here is going to be like, duh, is praying about it.
Now that's not meant to be a cop out because I personally have experienced this of feeling the grind of my day and feeling so overwhelmed with worry and anxiety and pressure. And I can sometimes, friends, this is a sad thing to admit, but I can go 24 hours of wrestling with something and forget to pray about it. And then all of a sudden it'll dawn on me, maybe at 2am Where I'm still not sleeping over it, and go, duh, did you pray about it? And then as soon as I pray, I kid you not, I will feel this weight lifted because he promised us this. He promised if I came to him with my burdens, he would give me rest.
And so rest in Jesus is going to begin where your striving ends. It's going to going to begin by you handing over the weight to him. And that is actually something you have to intentionally do. And it starts in prayer by saying, God, here it is. And so somebody here today is going to experience Sabbath rest for the first time in your whole life.
You're going to experience what it looks like to have rest for your soul itself, to have rest in salvation, knowing that no matter where this life leads, I know where it ends because I'm in relationship with the one who gave his life for me. So somebody here is going to experience that rest for the first time. But then there are others here that have already given their lives to Jesus and we're going to learn how to come daily for restoration. And so that starts with identifying what's weighing you down. Go ahead and say it out loud to God.
Tell him exactly what it is. If it's guilt over something you did regret, maybe it's anxiety over the things that you can't control, but just you wish you could. Maybe it's something, something a pressure at work that maybe you're having a hard time with that co worker or maybe you feel like, hey, I'm just not making enough money. And so there's more month than there is money. And so I'm just constantly worried about the fact that we just are in such we're swallowed in debt right now.
Maybe it is strained marriage, a strained relationship, just the future itself stresses you out. If that's you in any of those ways, name it and say, God, here's the thing and I'm going to lay it before you right now. I'm just going to trust that just by me telling you this by me laying it for you in prayer, that it's going to begin something in me where I'm going to now stop relying on myself to fix all the problems, but I'm going to depend on you. And so our default, what do we do by default? We push harder.
I got to fix it myself. But Jesus says that rest begins not by working harder, but by coming to him and laying before him. So make prayer the first move. Make prayer the first thing you do, not figuring it out. And then I really wholeheartedly believe that we have a weekly opportunity to come together and to stand in worship on a Sunday morning to sing songs like I trust in God to be reminded.
Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right, man. How did I forget that I trust in God? Like preaching almost to my soul as I'm singing those words out, but also singing to him and declaring it like, I need that weekly rhythm in my life to get the right words in my head. I need the weekly touch of my brothers and sisters here to be reminded. Oh wait, you struggle with that too, man.
Thank God I'm not alone in this. I need the weekly reminder of where I'm going one day. Because if I stay in the grind, man, I just feel like I'm going nowhere. I would challenge that we are better to take one day a week and go to church than we are to work seven days a week and try to get ahead. I would be better to make a commitment in my life that Sunday is non negotiable than to go buy a place at the beach and spend all my weekends away looking for rest with sand between my toes.
How many vacations have I come from after all, where I was still tired, maybe more tired before I left. And how disappointed in my heart that I'm still tired because I don't really know how to rest, that I'll make the environment perfect for rest. And I still can't figure it out. And it's because this thing never stops. And that's what I need to surrender over.
Amen. So the second way we can practice the spiritual habit of rest in Jesus is by submitting to his will. Submitting to his will. Now he says in verse 29, take my yoke upon you. He's not talking about hitting you in the face with an egg yolk.
He's talking about here a yoke that you would put on cattle. And so this is a metaphor that's actually really, I think as Christians when we've read this passage, we're like, oh, sweet cattle, you Know, it's a yolk, it's a good thing. Like, this is a metaphor for another kind of burden. When you put that yoke on the cattle, you're putting that cattle in bondage. It has in view here that, like, I'm letting myself become a slave to Christ.
And so I think that that is so countercultural, it's so un American, because I think as Americans, we want to believe alive autonomy, which is, I can be my own master. I don't have to submit or surrender to anybody. I can run this. And to quote the famous great philosopher Bob Dylan, you're going to serve somebody. And I think that's absolutely true.
I think we are wired to worship. And if we don't aim it on purpose, it's going to aim itself by accident. And so here we're saying, okay, Jesus says as a command, take my yoke. And I think we're going to find that it is inside of that yoke that we're going to break out of a cycle that King Solomon teaches us in Ecclesiastes 1. He says, Meaningless, Meaningless, says the teacher.
Utterly meaningless. Everything is meaningless. What do people gain from all their labors at which they toil under the sun? Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises and the sun sets and it hurries back to where it rises.
The wind blows to the south and it blows to the north. Round and round it goes, ever returning on its course. You want to read a book that will just full on depress you. Read Ecclesiastes sometimes. I read it this past spring and my takeaway kept on being every day as I was just taking notes on what I was reading was, yep, life without Jesus stinks.
And this is what it looks like for life without Jesus is that everything is meaningless. So in Jesus I find purpose. But if I try to follow my own way of doing things, it's meaningless. I will toil and I will toil. I will live for the weekend and the weekend will come and go, and guess what?
I will breathe my last breath here on earth one day. And then people will soon forget about Stephen and the earth will just keep on spinning. And so what a depressing thought, that without Jesus everything is meaningless. That the world would just keep on turning. Yet that is where so many of us are today.
Whether or not that's actually true for you and the fact that you haven't given your life to Jesus, friend, you haven't found your purpose yet if you haven't given your life to Jesus. But how many of us today know better. And we're still pursuing this meaningless life that the world holds out for us. When we serve anyone other than the Lord, our toll is meaningless. And so Jesus says to us, learn from me.
Once again, an imperative. This is a command. Here he's saying, learn from me.
He's inviting us to submit to him. True rest isn't found in doing nothing, but it's being yoked with the Master. And it says in Romans 6, but now you are free from the power of sin and have become slaves of God. Now you do those things to lead to holiness and result in eternal life. Here we are again.
And we dealt with this last week as well, where Jesus said, who would be first among you must be your slave. And here we have again, he's saying, you're free from the power of sin and have become slaves to God. But this is not a burdensome kind of place to be. In fact, it says in First John, chapter five, for this is the love of God that we keep his commands and his commandments are not burdensome. So by laying down our burdens before him, in a sense, kind of taking off the yoke that I've been plowing with, and to now take on his yoke and submitting to his will, it is not going to be burdensome.
I'm reminded when I think about this idea of submitting of an experience I had in 2004, I believe it was my wife and I and some friends went down to Florida and went to the Everglades. And there's a picture of us canoeing on a river there in the Everglades. It was super neat. Saw alligators and all kinds of things. And for about an hour we just kind of coasted down the river.
And everybody's all smiles and having such a good time, man. And then it kind of went out to this big open water area. And I kind of laid back in the canoe and started to kind of fall asleep a little bit. And I was like, all right, I guess. Guess we ought to go back.
So then we begin the process of trying to paddle upstream to where we had originated. And I posted that second picture, and you can see that one. Canoes turned sideways. This is what I ended up being in the back. I ended up seeing my brother and his wife Nicole are way up there in the front.
But the canoes are doing this the whole way. And it's not because they wanted to do that. It was because it was so exhausting just trying to paddle up river and to paddle straight that they Just kept on doing this. And sure enough, mom was doing the same thing. And so Caroline and I had to work out an agreement.
I was like, carol, your paddling is not so strong. I need you to just keep the engine cool. And so she just kept on just splashing water on me. And I'm just dying back there, just trying to keep us, you know.
So an hour coast down the river was a two hour return. And I just was dead when that was over. But how many of us here today, if we're honest with ourselves running the rat race, all the stuff that we have on those little sticky notes on our steering wheel, they feel like you're canoeing upstream. It's just so exhausting. And at times you feel like you're getting nowhere.
Is it because God is trying to tell you there's a better way? Will you just turn around, stop going that way and I will. My yoke will then take you downstream. So for somebody here today, this rest is not going to come from living life your way. It's going to come from surrendering to Jesus leadership, to just letting his river take you.
So this is going to have this idea that not many of us like, and that's to surrender some things to Him. To find rest in Jesus, we're going to need to surrender some things. We're going to need to surrender our marriages to him. Where we are choosing selflessness over selfishness, where we're choosing to forgive rather than to be bitter, we're choosing to serve our spouse rather than to keep score. Maybe it's surrendering our parenting that we're raising our children according to God's word and not the cultural standard that I want my kid to make good grades in school.
But more than anything, I want my kid to be discipled to follow the ways of Jesus. Am I putting as much effort into that as I am making sure they're a good student at school? I do want my kid. If they have athletic gifts, I want them to be able to use it. But if it's going to mean that it's going to push me out of church so that way my 7 year old can become a professional athlete, then now I might have to surrender something here and say that maybe my lack of rest is because I didn't just want my name to be big, but I wanted my kid's name to be big too.
And surrendering that the surrendering the what if, the wrestling that every parent has to deal with of if I don't say yes to every single opportunity my kid's given, will I be responsible that they didn't get to do something? That's a real tension that I have to deal with as a parent. What if I'm the reason my kid didn't become professional? Is it because I didn't say yes to that thing? So I think in this, quit trying to figure it out all the time, surrender it and say, well, you know what?
God, big rock church, that's got to be a big important thing in my life. And if something's going to conflict with it, I'm going to surrender it to you and just say, it must not be your will. Because I think it's incredibly important that my kid be raised in the Lord.
So in these things, we're going to surrender our work. We talked about service last week. Surrender your work and view it as a service to the Lord, not as just a platform for making your ego bigger and then surrendering your life. We all, you know, in the title of this series, we have the Power of Spiritual Habits. And I think we've been seeing all along the way that there are habits that you and I naturally have, because I think as human beings, we're kind of wired to form habits, but not all habits are good habits.
And so us saying, I'm going to surrender and say, I'm going to intentionally take on some habits here that our church has challenged me to. And that means surrendering possibly some bad habits that I've had that have been my coping mechanisms for trying to give me rest, but they're not working. And so maybe it means surrendering your finances that in order to work, in order to stay afloat, I got to work seven days a week. Well, are you working seven days a week to get money to appease a selfish desire, or is it actual real needs in your life? Because I would argue, friend, that you're better to work six days a week and to celebrate the Lord's Day with us than you are to work your tail off seven days a week.
I think it's in the same kind of mindset as our giving, that when we give our offerings to God, I'm saying to him, I can live off of 90% of my income better than I could 100%, because there's a shift that has to change up here today. Jesus is calling you to stop plowing over here with this heavy, burdensome yoke, and you're reaping the fruits over here, and they quickly rot and they don't satisfy. He's saying, take that yoke off. Put this yoke on and plow over here and you're going to experience some fruit that's going to satisfy you for the first time in your life. And then finally, we can practice the spiritual habit of rest in Jesus by trusting in his promises.
Trusting in his promises. He leads us off in verse 29 by saying, I am gentle, he's mild, he's meek. That's what we see here. And I'm lowly in heart. I'm humble.
And you will find rest for your souls.
I think it was important that he tell me that because he just told me to put on a yoke. He just told me to put on a burden and to see myself as his slave. So if I'm going to see myself in that mindset to somebody, please tell me you're not going to just beat me to death. No, I'm gentle, I'm humble. You will find rest for your souls.
And friend, that's so much deeper than the best physical rest we could ever experience. I remember when Pastor Gary, in 2013, he took a sabbatical and he was gone for the whole summer. I remember when he got back, a lot of work was laying in front of him and he worked so hard that week. And I remember asking him like, how you doing? And he was like, boy, if you could just bottle rest, like, you could just bottle up the.
I had so much time to physically rest and I can't. I can't just like store it up and drink it later. And I've experienced this. I've been on weeks at the beach and then come back and the grind hits me and it almost can just undo everything I just did. And it's because, friend, I'm looking for soul rest and I'm looking for that in the wrong places.
When I say soul rest, I mean the being that is going to live forever in a place. And to find that soul rest, the only place to actually find it is Jesus. I'm gonna keep grinding. And listen to this too. My brother Jonathan and I, he's our lead pastor at Rocky Mount, we were talking about this this week.
I was like, jonathan, does Sunday mornings rest you. Because I crash super hard when I get home from church. I nap like it was the first, you know, the most important thing I could possibly be doing that day is that nap. And then I've been helping our youth ministry out. So I've been coming right back and doing that.
So it's like a super hard 30 minute nap. And so physically very tired. Eyelids heavy, but from a spiritual stance, I'm on like the highest of highs because my rest meter was filled all the way up. I poured out so hard in service that my physical body's tired, but my soul is at rest. And that friend, I want to experience that on a weekly basis.
I want us all to experience that together. Because you're a big part of my rest, that my fellowship with you, the Spirit has built it into us, that it's part of the delight of the Sabbath, is the being together.
And so I would find this rest for my soul. And then he concludes it and he says in verse 30, my yoke is easy. And when you look at that word, it means useful, means better. It's a better yoke, but it's an easy yoke. And my burden is.
He's actually saying, when he says light, he means it's light. It hardly weighs anything. And so he's promised us this. What are we trying to do here in this point? Trust in his promise.
And if Jesus says that if I would come before him, lay my burdens before him, and I will take on his yoke, I'm trusting that yoke is going to be easy. I'm trusting that my soul is actually going to find rest. Because I'm giving up the rat race. I'm giving up a lot of things, but I know that those things, the path I was on, was meaningless. But I'm trusting here that his promises are true.
And here's one reminder here that it is Psalm 145. The Lord is trustworthy in all he promises, and he's faithful in all he does. So rest in when I give him those burdens. When I take his yoke, I rest in the fact that I know he's going to keep his promise. He's going to give me rest for my soul.
And then. I love this quote from Louis Giglio. It's a book I read a while back called I Am Not, But I Know I Am. I have heard it said that waiting on God ascribes to God the glory of being all to us. For when we tirelessly toil as though that's what it takes to keep our ship afloat, we steal God's glory, elevating ourselves as sole providers and sustainers of all we have and are.
By refusing to slow down and bring things to a halt, we're telling God he's not powerful enough for us. When we trust in him, by resting in him, we exalt the Lord, championing Him as an all powerful in our purposeful inactivity. And so here we see that the resting is an act of worship to him. The pausing is saying, I'm better off to let you take it than me to keep grinding. And I'm in my heart saying, it's because your way is better.
It's because I don't want to steal your glory and try to say, this is the provider right here. And then there's this other imagery inside the word yoke where he says, my yoke is easy. And I think that something that came to light when we were studying this this week is that I've always kind of pictured the yoke as like this single oak, single oak, single yoke. Where it's like, hey, here's one. Take it now, go.
But I think there's a bigger, better picture here in that Jesus is like, this is a two person yoke. It's a two oxen yoke. And I'm going to be on one side and I'm gonna be right there next to you. And we're gonna do this together. I'm not just sending you out alone, but you've got me right here by your side.
Let's do this work together. And that's part of the big. Part of the reason why it's gonna be a light yoke, because I am carrying the heavier burden of this. It puts in view here, Second Corinthians 6, where it says, do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness or what fellowship has light with darkness?
When we read that scripture, we're usually thinking about marriage and that I wouldn't marry somebody who is an unbeliever because in our heart of hearts, we are not the same. I'm following Jesus, they're not. And so that can create problems. But here I think I try to marry my personal desires and my goal to see Stephen's name made great. To see Stephen's kids be the greatest.
To see Stephen's kingdom be the one that all y' all want and are jealous of in my dirty, horrible heart, that I just want to build a little mini Stephen Kingdom. And I really badly want to pair it with this yoke that Jesus has given me and say, can I do both? Can I be all about me, but then be all like Jesus who says he's humble and he's lowly. The Jesus who didn't take on a wife and kids, The Jesus who didn't have a house of his own. The Jesus who the kingdom he built was the Lord's kingdom.
Is it Wrong for me to try to build two kingdoms. I would say, seek first the kingdom of God. All these things shall be added to you. If my heart of hearts is to build my own kingdom, then I'm unequally yoking myself. I'm trying to say, jesus, I want you to build your kingdom, but you got to build mine at the same time.
And I'm going to be like paired up with this ox who's that big, and I'm this little useless ox. And our yoke, we're just constantly going in circles because I'm trying to build two kingdoms at the same time, and I'm exhausted of it. And it's meaningless and the earth just keeps on spinning.
Friend, this rest is probably going to mean for many of us dying to something in myself that's just. Honestly just working me to death. And to say, your kingdom first. I'm building your kingdom above all else. And if my kingdom should grow, it'll be because I surrendered to you.
It'll be because I sought you first and you added it because you love me. So rest in his promises. Rest in the promise that he accepts you for where you're at, friend. It says in Romans 8, there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. It doesn't matter how dirty and distant from God you feel this morning.
He does not condemn you. Would you rest in the promise that he sent His Son to die for you? That you can find Sabbath rest in Jesus today? Soul rest. Would you live them from a promise of strength?
That his yoke is easy because he provides the strength to carry what he calls us to. And this was hard. I was talking about between first service and second service. I was talking to people like, I can't tell you what your yoke is because God's called you to a specific kind of yoke that he's called you to carry. But the yoke he's called you to, he will empower you to do.
Amen.
So anchor your hope in his promise that he will give you eternal rest in Jesus. When life feels heavy, just rehearse this in your head. One day all striving will cease. Christ is secure, eternal rest. And let it be said of me whenever I get to heaven, well done, good and faithful servant, that I have just rested in him and let him do his will in me.
And so I think we see this as a potential in the habits we've already talked about before. Now that you can find rest while you're in devotion personally with God, you can find rest While in the fellowship of believers, you can find rest even while you serve. Because I think when I look at heaven, I don't look forward to getting up there and just playing harp with little angels all day. And just like that, I might be questioning, like, did I accidentally go to the wrong place? Because this doesn't feel like rest.
God wired me with a desire to do. He wired Adam and Eve and he gave them jobs in the Garden of Eden. He said, go name the animals to have domination over the earth, to be fruitful and to multiply. He didn't just say, go in there and just chill out. God wired you and I to work.
But here's the shift is the work now is a work that he's called you to. And it's going to be a work that while I do this kind of work, I rest. That I. Even while I do, there's this. It's like it's generating rest inside of me.
So would you come to Jesus with your burdens? Would you submit to his will and trust in his promises? Let's pray together.
If you're here today and you know you're being God's calling you right now. He said, come to me, and you're saying, I'm ready. I'm ready to come to Jesus. I'm ready to stop. I'm ready to quit this rat race and to follow his way.
If that's you right now, would you pray with me, Jesus? I surrender to you. Here it is. I'm stating my surrender to you, and I'm tired of doing things my way. I've seen the fruits of my labor.
I'm exhausted and I don't. And everything feels pointless. I lay it before you now. My biggest burden is my sin, and I lay that before you. And I ask, would you forgive me, Jesus?
Forgive me of my sin. And as I surrendered, I want you to be the Lord of my life. I want to be a slave to righteousness. I want to be a slave to your yoke because I believe it's so much better and bigger.
Maybe you're here this morning and you've given Jesus your life, but you're reminded right now that you've been taking some things back into your own hands and it's exhausting you. And you've put yourself in a yoke with desires for worldly treasure, and it's spinning in circles. Would you pray with me, Jesus? I'm sorry that I took this back on again. Would you help me now to rest in you, in your Sabbath rest, God, to just experience soul rest and to help me, God, I know that it's important that be a good father, a good mother, a good husband, a good wife, a good person.
But I keep building these little mini kingdoms and wearing myself out. God, would you, as I lay those before you and just trust you with it, would you help all these things to work out for your good and let me just rest in knowing that you're in charge. Help me God now to carve out some time on a daily and a weekly basis to rest in you, Lord. Convict me now and help me to take action today. Jesus name, amen.
Audio
All right. Good morning, church. I'm so thankful you're here today. I'm very thankful to get to preach again today. This is just a wonderful part of my week, every week is to get to study and prepare.
And we're in a series right now on the spiritual habits, the spiritual disciplines, and the power that you can have in Christ Jesus when you practice these disciplines that have been around since the beginning of Christianity. And we're bringing some light to them. And so if it's your first time with us or you're just popping back in, don't worry. Every one of these habits kind of stand alone in a way. If you want to go back, you can check out where we've been at Eastgate Church.
We've got our sermons up there, but we're in a seven week series right now talking about these spiritual disciplines and habits. This week we're talking about what I would say is kind of a peculiar one in the mix, and that is the power, the spiritual habit of rest. Some of you are like, okay, I like this sermon. I need that. I need a little moment.
Good news. I think you're gonna feel encouraged today. Maybe a little sense of challenge. But I think mostly you're gonna feel very encouraged today as we dig in. What we're trying to do is kind of have a balanced approach to how we walk with Christ Jesus.
If you were with us week one, we talked about this personal, intimate, devotional life with God, and then we moved straight into fellowship. So we had this individual aspect. And then to balance that with fellowship and the corporate aspect of the habit of community. And then last week we talked about the habit of service. So now we're going to talk about the habit of rest.
So we're trying to keep things in balance. Our series text is out of Ephesians, chapter 4 and verse 23. It says, instead, let the Spirit renew your thoughts and attitudes. Put on your new nature, created to be like God, truly righteous, holy. So what I want you to understand today is something I hope we've made clear week in and week out, is that the power for Christian living comes from letting the Holy Spirit renew you.
It doesn't come from, I gotta try harder, I gotta do more. It comes from yielding and submitting and saying, not my will, but yours be done. That's really going to be at the heart of our text today, is that in order to find true rest, it means God, your way, not mine. And I pray that you'll be able to hear that and receive that today. Now here's what I know school's back in.
Sports are back in some of you. Sports never left. You just do them all year. Schools maybe. Work's ramping up.
You're feeling a pressure that we often feel this time of year of this rat race. I have four kids. I feel like I'm never home. It's exhausting sometimes, and I know you might be feeling that too. You're living in a sense of frustration, maybe a stressed sort of overwhelm that's just getting by until next weekend.
Sadly, today's Sunday, it's gonna be over. And Monday's coming and you're thinking, well, I can't wait till Friday. Maybe the next night of doom scrolling or sadly, you're waiting until next summer. I don't know. These necks, unfortunately, are not real rest, though.
They're just distractions. And most of us, including myself, get really good at distracting but not real rest. And so many of us just try to numb this problem, but the problems just remain true. Rest, though, is not living for distractions. It's walking in Jesus, what if.
What if you could find the kind of rest in the midst of your work, not the kind of rest that says, the only way I'm going to feel comfort is if I'm not working, if I'm not doing anything. That's not true rest, though. True rest isn't putting off responsibilities, it's putting on something better. And so what if you could find a new way to live, work and play out of a state of spiritual rest? I love this quote from A. Scott Hubbard.
In Desiring God, he says, the world and the devil would have us work even while we rest, but Jesus would have us rest even while we work. There's a huge difference there. And as we're going to study today, some of the words of Jesus, I believe you're going to be encouraged to find that Jesus offers a superior rest, a spiritual habit of resting in him daily that empowers you to work and engage your families. Be a good husband, wife, good son, good parent, helps you engage your community. So let's go.
We're going to be in the Book of Matthew, just a few verses, Matthew, chapter 11, right there at the end of chapter 11. And what we're going to see here is Jesus talking to the crowds. And he invited them to find rest for their souls in a place that maybe they didn't expect, not out of laws or rituals, but in him, which is very unusual. We can build this habit of rest, too. When we come to Jesus, we can discover Real rest for our souls.
So listen up. This might be a familiar text to you, but if not, I pray it really feeds you today. Matthew, chapter 11, verse 28. It says, Come to me all who labor and are heavy laden. Got any laboring, heavy laden folks in the room today?
Any of you here, come to me 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. This is God's word. Amen.
Very thankful for this word to you today. This practice of the habit of rest begins with these first words from Jesus. Come to him with our burdens. Coming to him with our burdens.
I want you to understand what's unique about Christianity in the world of religions. What's unique about it is that we come to a person and his name is Jesus Christ. What's unique about it is it's not about perfect obedience, but perfect submission. It's not about getting everything right or some amount of works in order to earn. It's about saying completely yes to Jesus.
This is really the heart of the gospel right here. And what he said here. Now, all the details aren't there. I understand that the cross of Christ and the resurrection that's coming later in the Gospel of Matthew, but the idea of come to me is the heart of the gospel. Jesus says, I don't need you to practice this or that.
I need you to come here. Come to me. This is an imperative here. It's a command. But I would say this, I hope you can hear this today.
Some of you have come in the room today and you don't know this Jesus like that. You've not said yes to him. Maybe you got dragged in here today. I'm thankful you came. No matter how it was you came.
But I want you to hear something. The words of Jesus to you, my friend, today are come to me not out of sense of anger, not out of some kind of must. Come to me. He says it's like an image invitation. It's an offer and I'll give you rest that you've never experienced.
Believers in the room, though, I think you ought to hear it a little differently. Believers in the room, this is a command. You're hunting for rest everywhere else. Church. I got bad news for you.
You're going to the wrong places. Jesus says, come to me. So this is a word for both of us. For one, it's a sweet invitation for the believer. It's a come home.
All who labor, and I will give you rest. All who are heavy laden, this is all of us. This is meant to capture you all. I imagine every single one of you at times feel a weight on your life. You feel labored and heavy, like you're carrying something beyond you.
Some of you are experiencing this in a powerful way right now. You're going through some really difficult time. We often around here call these D days. There's a death in your family, there's a divorce. You're experiencing.
There's these hard times where you feel so much weight. It's to you and to all of us that Jesus says, come here. Come to me. I've got great news. Rest for your souls.
This idea of calls to rest, it's funny the way it actually unpacks in the Greek. Jesus is really saying, come to me and I will rest you. I will cause you to rest. Such an interesting way of phrasing it. I will bring you a calm, a cessation from movement and labor where you can recover.
That's the idea of this rest. Now, when I initially was planning out the sermon series, me and our team in Wilson, when we were planning this out, we thought we might title this the Habit of Sabbath. And I want to give you some reasons why I chose rest instead. I think because Jesus brings a rest that is on a larger scale than the first century understanding of Sabbath. Now, this isn't for me to say, hey, don't Sabbath.
That's not the point. But I chose, I think, a larger context that the rest we have in Christ Jesus really is the culmination of everything that the Sabbath was supposed to be. In fact, Paul, I think, writes this plainly in Colossians, chapter two. He says, therefore, let no one pass judgment on questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. These are.
Listen to this church. These are a shadow of things to come. But the substance belongs to Christ. So where do we get our Sabbath rest? In Christ Jesus?
This is why he writes to the romans in chapter 14. One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his mind. Now, let me just say this to you, just as my personal opinion. I think you ought to take a day of rest every week.
I think that's a great habit that first we see in the book of Genesis, long before we ever see the Ten Commandments. We have God himself resting on the seventh day. So I think there is great Value in this. But I want you to understand something. In Christ Jesus we have a superior rest.
And you can't Sabbath without Him. But guess what? You can have a Sabbath rest, if you will, every single day. You can start there, you can in the middle there, you can finish there. Sabbath rest in Christ Jesus.
Scripture teaches us, in fact, we have freedom in Christ to practice the Sabbath. So we chose to teach on a bigger habit. I think, and I pray it blesses you today. A bigger thing where Christ calls us into his rest and he says, lay all of your burdens at my feet. I will give you rest.
This is really what the whole of Scripture teaches us, that we find true rest in God in the person of Jesus. Psalm 55, it says, cast your burden on the Lord and he will sustain you. First Peter. Peter writes, give all your worries and cares to God. Why?
Because he cares about you. Seek this rest in Jesus. Obey this call. Come to me. Hebrews 4 says it very plainly as it finishes.
It says, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from his works, as God did from his. Listen to this. Let us therefore strive to enter that rest so that no one may fall again by the same sort of disobedience. Strive to enter rest in Jesus.
Part of what we're doing right now should be restful. Someone asked me this this week, do you think Sunday morning is a Sabbath for people in the sense of a restful day in the Lord Jesus? I said, for me it is. For me it is. And you might think, well, that's supposed to be.
Some people say this to me. I just want you to know I wish it were true. It's not true. It's not the only day a week I work.
And I would even argue it a little differently. I'm not even working now. So this is me getting to do the thing God has called me to do. And I love nothing more. It's awesome.
And so for me, this is an opportunity for me to rest in Jesus with you. That when we come in here and worship, we. There's people all throughout the room, all throughout the building. They are serving God. And there's a sense of work there.
But we ought to be working from a sense of worship that absolutely. Church Sunday should be a day of rest for the people of God. I pray it is for you. Listen to me right now. Whoever in the room, if you're serving at our church and you feel like, boy, it's hard work here, let's talk after service.
Let's fix that. I want you to come into this place and have a heart of worship that is resting in Christ Jesus, because that's where I'm trying to be. I love what Andrew Lincoln in this book called From Sabbath to the Lord's Day. He makes a compelling argument that in some ways we Sabbath now on the Lord's Day. Here's what he says, that it is a celebration on the Lord's Day of the rest we already have through Christ's resurrection that now anticipates and guarantees that the rest that is yet to be.
So we get in here and we celebrate the resurrection in such a powerful way that we're anticipating heaven. That's what he's arguing for. You know, where you're going to find ultimate rest and glory. But now we can begin to practice it. Even in this place, there's this moment that happens to me, and I haven't flown a whole lot in my life, but I've flown at least once with my family, with my whole family.
And I don't know how you feel in this environment, but for me, I feel absolutely stressed out. It totally wigs me out. Now, this probably says a lot about who I am, but until all of our bags are checked, until we've made our way through these terminals with these little munchkins and everybody's seated, I can't relax. I'm freaking out, man. I really am.
I'm losing it. And this is probably how a lot of you feel, that until everything's in order, until the bags are checked, until everything's ready. Even on long trips, I take with my family, until I've got the car packed. And I've got some habits, y', all, that are starting to help me. I get up, I get most everything packed, and then I shower after.
Because I also have the spiritual gift of perspiration. So I'm not trying to. I'm not trying to sweat on the whole journey. So I get everything ready. But I've got this angst about me, and it made me think of that this week, this idea that I'm living life.
A lot of times I'm living life like I'm going through a terminal, carrying weight, dragging it through the terminal, and I'm not handing it over. That part of coming to Jesus is saying, here's my check bag. Take me where you want to take me. Here's my destination. That I think, lord, you change it.
But here's all my stuff. Some of you, even Christians in the room have said yes, to Jesus. But you've yet to say, here's all of it. And you're trying to go through the terminal and you're feeling anxious, you're feeling stressed because you've yet to say, here's all of my mess, God, take it, deal with it, and deal with me in such a way that I can finally find rest. It's insane, in fact, how often we stress over our burdens, but delay in prayer.
It's embarrassing for me to say this, but I do it too. It's embarrassing how often coming to Jesus comes last.
I might call a friend, a mentor. I might call my dad and say, hey, what do you think about this? And a good, you know what a good disciple or a good mentor is going to say first, have you prayed? And you might think, oh, gosh, like that's the best advice you can give me, friend? Yes, it's the best advice first, so don't come to me.
Hey, don't even call me. I love you. Hey, don't call me first. Call him first and then call me and we'll work it out. But I have just a belief that the Lord wants first to take your yoke, to take your baggage and give you rest.
Every time I do this, it's funny, I begin to feel my burdens lifted. If you've never experienced this before, it doesn't always work the same. Sometimes you say, God, here's all my mess. And he doesn't remove any of the mess, but he gives you peace. Sometimes for me, I almost get a no from God.
I come saying, hey, can you make all this go away? And he's like, nah, because some of this I put in front of you. But I'm going to give you the strength to handle it. I'm going to help you manage it. And then I still feel a peace.
Friends, some of you in the room, you need to enter this rest for the first time. Come to Jesus means two things, one for the nonbeliever and one for the believer. For the non believer, it is an invitation to salvation. He is saying, come to me and I will give you rest like you can't imagine, both here and forever. There's this wonderful thing at church we call the gospel.
And I want you to hear this today. This is a savior, a sacrifice. This Jesus, he says, come to me. And what he's saying, come to, is a man who has sacrificed himself on the cross for your sin, for your shame, for your guilt. It's paid for.
Do you understand this? When you come to Jesus, you're saying, I believe. And I believe that God raised Jesus from the dead. Some of you need to enter that rest today for the first time and say, hey, I'm living my life my way, and it's hard and I feel all this weight. I'm going through this terminal and I'm freaking out, man.
Come to Jesus the Savior, and then believers in the room. He's not just Savior, he's Lord. Believers in the room. Come to Jesus by identifying the things that are weighing you down. Some of you can really work on your prayer life this week by.
By taking time to be specific with Jesus. Quit with these, why are you doing this? If you're alone doing this and you're praying these fluffy prayers to God, don't you understand? He knows your heart. Don't you know that he knows your mind?
Why are you saying, oh, God, bless me, and you start breaking out the thees and thou's in your own personal prayer life. Why are you doing this? Oh, thou art great. I'm not saying you can't do that, if that's like your heart language or something. But I ought to be praying, hey, God, I totally said the wrong stuff to my wife this morning.
I'm in a bad mood. And God help me, I'm not being a good dad this week. God, why am I feeling so much pride? Why am I feeling. I mean, this thing can fluctuate.
Be specific, take time to pray the things that are weighing you down. I don't know what to do about my finances right now, God. Some of it is I just don't make enough. And some of it is I. I make mistakes with my money. God already knows this.
Why are you hiding it like God? I'm making so many mistakes in the way I walk with you. You know, he's happy to talk to you about that, too. My relationship with you, Lord God, is so incomplete and so hit or miss, identify what's weighing you down. Move from self reliance, dependence.
Move from this place of I've got to work harder, I've got to do more, I've got to pull up my boots. I'm not saying that those things might not be the things God tells you to do, but start with him, not with, hey, I've got to be more, I've got to do more. Maybe that's true, but let's ask him first. Let's go there first. Jesus says rest begins not with working more.
He says it begins with coming to me. Make your first move prayer and then come together and worship. Notice Again, Jesus is inviting a crowd, not a bunch of individuals. He invites us together. We get to share our burdens together.
And here's the second, the second move that Jesus makes. And I think you are happy now. We're having fun so far. Verse 28. Wonderful.
Yes, come to Jesus. I'm going to get rest. Take my yoke. What? Verse 29 comes like a curveball to what he's just said.
I want you to understand something, Church. In order to truly find true rest, it means submitting to his will, coming to him, and then submitting to his will. Oh, I know you love that word. Don't you? Love it?
Submission, surrender. Boy, we love that word, don't we? The quiet tells the story. I know. I know how much you love it.
He says in verse 29, another imperative. First he says, come to me. Then he says, take my yoke. This word is. It's not meant to be misunderstood.
This is meant as a metaphor for bondage, for a burden, for slavery. This is the same yoke that you put between two oxen and they plow a field. Jesus says, take my yoke.
Man, that was good until that part. There's a lie that you've probably been believing, and so many of us do, and I even find myself falling back into it. In fact, it's a very American thing to do, to say we are free, we. We are independent, we can do what we want and live how we please. And in actuality, that's just not true at all.
It's this lie we believe, this lie of autonomy, that the actions we do we can just do based on our own self interests. But to quote the famous theologian and philosopher Bob Dylan, you're going to serve somebody. That's how he put it. You might serve the Lord or you might serve the devil, but you're going to serve somebody. That was the song he sang.
You know what? He's actually right about that. I mean, he sang all kinds of stuff, but he was right about that one. When you believe that you're serving your own interests, you are going to discover you are serving the world. You are serving worldly things.
But, Jonathan, you don't understand. I'm doing everything so that I might retire and have a nice place. Then you're serving that stuff. Then you serve the dollar. This is what you serve.
I want to have enough when I'm 65 to drive off into the sunset and never be seen again. Then you serve something so empty. I'm sorry, friend, that might hurt your feelings today. This is dust and to dust, it will return. And you might be thinking, well, I want to leave a legacy for my kids.
Well, if you don't do all the parts right, all they're going to remember is that you were a money bag and nothing more. Oh, thank you, dad, for the handouts. And you've taught this child no hard work, no way to actually interact in this world.
I really was loving this message until we got here. Jonathan, you're going to serve something.
There's already a yoke on you, whether you have agreed to it or not. Jesus says, I've got a better way. This is what I love church. This is what I love about Christianity. This is what I love about the truth of the Bible.
Is it's not some kind of lie presented to you that, hey, you can just live completely free and do your own thing. That's not really true, but you can serve the Creator, the one who knows you. The one who's actually good. The one who actually loves you and cares about you. The one that has a plan for eternity.
I'm down with that. The one that understands the purposes of everything that's going on him. That's a better yoke. King Solomon describes this worldly effort so well in Ecclesiastes, chapter 1. He says, Meaningless, meaningless, utterly meaningless.
He says, everything is meaningless. What do people gain from all their labors at which they toil under the sun? Generations come and and generations go, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises and the sun sets and hurries back to where it sets. The wind blows to the south and turns to the north.
Round and round it goes, ever returning on its course. Some of you are. This is what we call the rat race. You're just doing what everybody else doing. But I'm doing what I want.
No, you're not. You're doing what the world and the evil one wants.
There's a better way. Jesus says, take my yoke. And next imperative, next command. Learn from me. Learn from me.
True rest isn't found in doing nothing. It's found in being yoked to the right master. Romans 6:22, it says, but now you are free from the power of sin. Amen. And have become slaves of God.
Now you do those things that lead to holiness and result in eternal life. This is the good news of the gospel, is not that you're free to do as you please, but that you are now aligned with the God who created all things. And now you get to live a life with real purpose and real meaning. You've been hunting for it all the time you've been saying, I want to know what I'm supposed to do with my life. Here it is.
Say yes to Jesus. Submit to his will every day and get ready for the most fun you've ever had in this life. Not because it's easy, not because there won't be burdens. Because Jesus says, my burden upon you is light. Which is insane, by the way.
We're going to dig into that in a minute. But he's not promising. Burden free. He's not promising, hey, believer, guess what? Now that you've come to faith, no more problems.
Everybody be signing up for that. Signed up for something better. Actually, though, real meaning, real purpose. The thing at your core that you've been longing for, that abyss that only God can feel. First John 5.
It says, this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome.
This is a better way.
There was this crazy thing I did when I was still in college. We took a trip over spring break down to the Everglades. You can pop up this image and just kind of leave it up for a little while. But me and my fiance at the time, now my wife Nicole, and my brother and his. I think they were engaged at the time, too, and a couple other friends, we decided to go canoeing in the Everglades.
I wouldn't recommend this, honestly. I'm just saying. Siskel and Ebert, two thumbs down. But it wasn't that great. It was hot, and it's not supposed to be hot.
At spring break, it was like, that's March or April. Whenever we went, it was blazing. And just so you know, when you first drive into the Everglades, they have this chart on the way in that tells you the level of mosquito. And none of them sound good. Like, the lowest level is really obnoxious.
The highest level is what they call total bedlam. We were just under total bedlam. And I can tell you, the moment we opened the car doors, they swarmed, and we shut them and went, what was that? And there was 20 of them already in the vehicle. The Everglades is a crazy place.
Some of y' all have been there, I bet. But crocodiles and mosquitoes, it's nuts. Alligators. Sorry, I don't think they have crocs. I know somebody's gonna correct me later.
Chill out. Is it both? Who's saying both? Where's both? You might be right.
I have no idea. Pointy nose, rounded nose. One's pointy, one's round. I know the word Of God. Pretty good.
I don't know my crocs. But anyway, anyway, we saw some phenomenal creatures down there. And we're canoeing down there. There's gators. There was even manatee in one area.
They were like, don't go that way. They'll flip your boat. Yes. But we did this wonderful thing. We were going down the river.
It was kind of picture, you know, a little bit hot, but, like, we're just chilling. The current's kind of taking us out and takes us out into this big lake, and we're like, neat. And then we get closer and closer to the other edge and went, wow. We got a long ways to go back. We probably should turn around.
When we turned around, we realized not only is the current against us, the wind is against us. And I'm in the boat with a very tiny woman. Some of you are going to be offended by this. I don't really care. She's not good at paddling, and it's because she's not strong enough.
She's not very good at it. It's not just a strength issue with this one. It was a technique issue, too. She might could have made up with it, but she would just stay on one side. I'm like, can you alternate or anything?
You know what we started doing? This was the most effective strategy we had. Every once in a while, you do nothing. Just sit up there. Every once in a while, just take the water and splash me with it just to cool the engine.
And I got us out of there. But we were like, paddling like our lives depended on it, with the wind and trying to get back to the river and had to paddle against current all the way back. It was exhausting. It was scary. In fact, we were like, we're going to die out here.
Some of you are living life like that. The current of faith, the wind that God has put behind your sails, you've decided, I don't like it. I'm going to row against it. I've never heard a sailor, not one time, say, you know, I know the wind's going this way, but I'm going to prop my sail to do what I want. I've never heard anybody say that.
And some of you are living life like this. I know. I know what the Bible says. I know what scripture says about surrender and submission. And I know that you make this promise that God's way is better, but.
But I'm going that way. And you wonder why. You're just under the pile where you can't find Rest stop. Stop paddling against the Lord. Stop saying the opposite of what Jesus.
Here's what Jesus said. The Son of God himself said this in the Garden of Gethsemane. He says, not my will, but yours be done. We see submission even within the Trinitarian God. We see the Son of God saying to the Father, and it's not up to me, it's up to you.
And if he has to do that, then how much more do I? Instead, I'm going through life saying, not your will, but mine be done. And I wonder why things are a mess, why there's chaos in my life, and why it just feels like I'm paddling against the wind. I felt this too, friend. I'm not just blaming you.
I'm not just putting on you. I know this sounds harsh, but you will not know true rest in this life until you say, not my will, but your be done. You won't.
Rest doesn't come from living life my way, but from surrendering to Jesus leadership. Nor does rest come from escaping responsibility, but from walking in the purposes of Jesus. So I'm going to lay a minefield out real quick because I love you so much. Some areas that I find people just choose to paddle against the wind. You know, the Bible speaks very plainly to several things.
It speaks very plainly to your marriage. Some of you today need to make the decision to submit to the will of God for your marriage and no longer say, my will and not God's will. Surrender it. Choose God's way over my way. Here's what the Bible says very plainly about this.
In Ephesians, chapter 5, it says, Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord. And then it says to husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. This means we are putting selfishness away. God's way says, not my way, but God's way. And now we say this to one another in marriage.
The wife says, not my will, but yours. And the husband says, not my will, but God's. And there's a great unity that occurs when the husband says, I'm going to lead us where God is taking us. And the wife says, I'm going with you. You understand this.
It doesn't matter if you don't like it. You can keep paddling against the wind. I've got my ways better. Good luck. God's way is in fact better.
Forgiveness then over bitterness. Service over score keeping. Some of you are keeping a tally of. I took out the trash this time. I washed the dishes this Time.
Follow me. Deny yourself. Take up your cross. That's the words of Jesus to you. He came not to serve, not to be served, but to serve.
Go back to last week. You want to know what might save your marriage? Not my will, God, but yours. I bet it will make a big difference. Some of you need to surrender your parenting.
Prioritize discipleship over your kids grades. Prioritize church over sports. Christlikeness over some achievement. Bring them up. Ephesians doesn't ever say, hey, make sure they get all the trophies and get all the opportunities.
It doesn't say this. I know that might bother you, but Ephesians 6 says simply bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. That is your primary purpose. You have one purpose, parents. It is your job to teach them.
To teach them really important things. Like the reality that we are all sinners in need of a savior. You do this by not by telling them every once in a while. No. Some of you have never told your kids no.
And it shows. We can see it. It's wild. Some of you are negotiating with your five year old. They don't know what they're talking about.
Why are you playing this game?
It's your job to show them their need. And guess what? It's your job to teach them to obey and to honor you. Because what they learn there will teach them how to obey and honor a heavenly father. You're so important.
Do you understand the importance of your task? Fathers and mothers, it's huge. If I haven't offended you yet, I want to say what Proverbs 13 says. Those who spare the rod of discipline hate their children. Those who love their children care enough to discipline them.
Do you love them? Then every once in a while you got to say no. And sometimes it results in punishments so that they would stop going this way. If I can do anything right in this life, maybe I sometimes will paddle against the wind. But I hope I can at least help my kids not to.
Surrender your work life. View work as a service to God, not as a platform for your ego or just for your paycheck. Colossians 3 says, Whatever you do, work heartily. As for the Lord and not for men. Surrender your work.
Surrender your life, your marriage, your parenting. Surrender it all. Bring your habits, your desires, your decisions. All of it comes under Christ's authority. So that what I view, when I view the world, I view it through the lens of scripture.
And I don't say anymore. I. I'm going to go my way. I'm going to Say, alright, God, wherever you're leading, I'm going. And guess what comes with that? Rest, Real amazing rest, where you can do the work and you can live your life and say, at the end of the day, I know who's leading me.
I don't have to be afraid anymore. I don't have to live out of a sense of fear. I can have courage that where God is leading is where I should go.
Lastly, we see this. So he says, come to me. He says, submit to my will. And then he gives us some good news to which we can trust in those promises by thirdly trusting in his promises.
Church, I wonder something. Do you really believe that Jesus is gentle, lowly in heart and gives rest for your souls? Do you really believe that at your core? Do you really believe that his yoke is easy, his burden is light. It's interesting that one of the only places where Jesus describes himself, he describes himself as meek.
It's the same word here, gentle. Translated, it's the same word from the Sermon on the Mount where he says, blessed are the meek. Jesus describes himself as humble and meek. Do you believe that? Do you believe in fact that that's the only place where I will find rest for my soul?
And then he says something wild. I just have to admit it. Verse 30. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. I think the words burden and light feel like antonyms.
This feels like an oxymoron to me. Like, how can you say something is pretty ugly? And we do that a lot. But how can you say burden and light together? Jesus does it very plainly here.
He's saying, in fact, this yoke is ready made for you. This word easy is the word chrestos, which means useful, good, better. He's saying a couple of things and this is really good news, Church, that when you come under my will, when you come and surrender and submit to me, I've got a useful purpose and it's good. In fact, it's better and it's fitted to you and it's light.
Jesus always follows through with his word. He promises, how do I understand this? How do I understand that his burden is light? Well, I think it all hinges around the word my. Here, the word my.
He says in verse 29, take my yoke. He says, my burden, my yoke is easy. You might say that Jesus is really illustrating something important here. He's illustrating the idea that the yoke that we're having is shared. My yoke, he says, so friend, if you might for a second picture what Jesus is truly saying, on one end is you, on the other end is the Lord Jesus, who promises right after the Great Commission, lo, I will be with you always to the very end of the age.
We just read this earlier when we were baptizing. He says, go and make disciples and baptize them. And then he finishes with, and I will be with you. This yoke, I think the reason it's light, the reason it's easy, is because he's on the other side. The Holy Spirit of God walks with us.
The Lord Jesus is with us.
We have the best. We have the best, buddy, if you will. The best. This brought to mind an illustration that I had heard. My dad, I never observed this myself, but my dad, when he was young, his father died when he was, like, 8.
And so a lot of the summers he spent with his granddad and my great granddad up in the hills of Virginia and what we called a holler. I don't know if y'. All. You're probably familiar with that word, but Northerners, hey, it's like a little cutout in the side of a mountain anyway. And so out there, they had a couple of oxen, and they would yoke them together.
And I can remember him telling me about how they would. How they would angle it. You didn't want to put this one on the left and this one on the right. There was a way that you had to align them because one of them was stronger than the other, and one of them listened better than the other. Right?
But the other one helped in the sense that, like, it was a good follower, and it helped to stay straight, because if you had too strong, they were both trying to do this. And if you had too weak, they're just not going to help. They're just not any good. So this illustration came to my mind this week because God has offered us the best way to live this life. I'll be the strong ox.
I'll. I've done the work already. This is the promise of the crucifixion and of the Gospel, is that I've already done it. You're free. Your sins are paid for.
You have eternity in store for you. I'm going to help you live a life with meaning and purpose. I'm going to comfort you through all of the hard times. I'm going to bless you at times. I'm with you.
And he's the strong one. And all I have to say is, okay, where we going? All right, I'm the dumb ox. Are you okay with that? Some of you are like, I'm okay with it.
Maybe I'm not the dumb ox. I didn't like that phrase. I'm the weak one, though, for sure. Personally, I like that one less. I want to be strong.
I don't mind being dumb.
Either way is true, though. He's smarter, he's stronger. He's the Savior. He's Lord. However you want to slice it, he's on one side.
He's in command. And what makes it light and easy. I know he's going to go the right way. I know where he leads is true. I know that he's not going to let me just collapse over here.
He's with me. Hey, come on, come on. We got this. It's like the greatest battle, buddy, you can imagine. Getting you through the worst of mires and taking you to the highest of mountains.
I hope you're getting this picture that Jesus is painting. And he always follows through with his promises. Psalm 145, it says, the Lord is trustworthy in all he promises and faithful in all he does. We can rest in Jesus by trusting in Him. Pastor Louie Giglio, in a book that he wrote, I am not, but he is.
I think that was the title he said. I have heard it said that Waiting on God ascribes to God the glory of being all to us. For when we tirelessly toil as though that's what it takes to keep our ship afloat, we steal God's glory, elevating ourselves as sole providers and sustainers of all we have and are. By refusing to slow down and bring things to a halt, we are telling God that He is not enough for us. But when we trust him by resting in him, we exalt the Lord, championing Him as all powerful and our purposeful inactivity.
Wow.
So rest in his promise. Rest knowing that he's leading you in the right direction. Build a habit of rest. It starts every day. Every day you're going to wake up in a fresh new way and want to take over the steering wheel and go, I'm going over here.
But you're the weak ox.
You're not getting the guidance in and of yourself. Guess what you have to do every single day. It's never ending until God comes again or takes you home. This is every day of your life. And it's a joy to come back into the Presence and say, all right, putting it back on.
Slink back up. Where are we going today, Lord? I got to go to work, you know, I've got a job. I'M providing for my family. But Lord, you got a plan there?
I think I'm just going to, you know, maybe I'm cooking for people or maybe I'm helping in some way. Maybe I've got some real mundane job, I'm working a cash register or something and I think, man, this is pretty insignificant. And Jesus is saying, no, I got a good plan today. There's some people that are going to come through your cash line, your cash register line that I need you to talk to, have your eyes open, ears ready to listen. So every single day I come, as soon as my feet hit the ground, I come and link back up and say, alright, where we going?
And I can trust and rest in his promise. I can rest first in the promise of his acceptance. Christ says this, Romans, chapter 8, that there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. This is the gospel. Once you've come to Jesus and you continue to rest and submit to his will, he says there's no condemnation and then you can live in his promise of strength.
He says, my yoke is easy because I'm carrying it, you're just staying on. He promises a rest for our souls, a freedom from striving and anxiety. And at the end of the day, church. At the end of the day, believer, you anchor your rest in the hope of future glory. That's the sweet spot of what anchors you to where you say, at the end of the day, I know where he's leading me.
I have so much to long for and look forward to. I can trust him because one day all strivings will cease and Christ will secure our eternal rest. I hope this encouraged you today and challenged you as well that true rest is not living for distractions, it's walking in Jesus, creating a habit that says, every day I'm submitting again to your will. I'm coming to you, taking your yoke and walking with you. This is what it means to be a believer.
This is what it means to be a Christian. So that you walk by his will, not your own. And that in that place you'll find true rest. Let's pray now together. Church.
Heavenly Father, we thank you that you are a good and gracious and merciful God. That we don't serve an angry, manipulative, a God who promises things that he does not give. That's not who you are at all. In fact, you're the kind of God who said, these people are so far from me they can never live up to my just standard. So I will Come and die for them.
I will take their iniquities upon myself. Their sins, their brokenness. I'll pay for it. That's who you are. God.
I'm so thankful today that not only that, you are a God who says, come to me.
Friend, do you hear this today? Do you hear the words of Jesus saying simply this, I don't need you to come to me looking okay and looking right and have all your mess together. That is not what he says. He just says, friend, come to me. I don't know what you've been putting it off for.
Maybe you've heard the truth of the gospel before, but for whatever reason, you've never said yes. Hear these words of Jesus today. Come to me and I will give you rest and I will give you new purpose. Take my yoke and learn from me, because I'm going to give rest for your soul. I've got meaning in store for your life that you couldn't imagine.
I've got a peace that transcends understanding. Friend, hear this. Come to me. If that's you today, you've come in this place and you're feeling the Lord Jesus calling you. Come to me.
I want to give you an opportunity to pray a simple prayer of confession that in God's word it says in Romans chapter 10 that if we confess with our mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in our heart that God raised him from the dead, we will be saved. We put our faith in that as a church. We believe that here in this place that when we confess Christ and have faith in him and the power of the cross and the resurrection, we're saved. So, friend, if you've come today and you're hearing Jesus say, come pray simply with me, this Jesus, I believe today that you are Lord of my life. You are Lord of all things.
Jesus, I believe today that you died on the cross for my sins, my shame, my guilt, my brokenness. You've paid for it. And God, I believe that you raised Christ Jesus from the dead. I'm so thankful, Lord, that you called me to come. I'm asking now, God, would you show me how to rest in you?
Show me how to work out of a state of spiritual rest. Show me how to interact with my loved ones from a place of peace and rest in Christ Jesus.
God, I'm ready today to be on the other side of that yoke. Lead me where you please. I long to see where you lead. Dear friend, if you prayed that prayer with me today, you are part now of the family of God. A brother or sister in our family that Christ has called out of darkness.
Now you get to walk in the light. And we're praying right along with you the same thing. God, would you help us now to take your yoke upon us to let you lead? I pray this over every believer in the room. God, help us to say yes, to come, come to me, take my yoke.
Some of us have put half of our foot in the water. We just dipped our toe in a little bit and said, all right, I believe, but I'm not giving him everything. God, would you remove that today? Remove all shred of doubt that we need to withhold anything, any baggage, any luggage that we're trying to keep in a closet somewhere? I pray we would swing open every door and let you see every part so that you can heal us and guide us and restore us and make us whole.
God, would you do this in your people today and make us an incredible light in our city that many people would come to know genuine faith by the way we live because we walk with you and you lead the way. Thank you for this wonderful message today, Lord. I pray that your people would be able to rest in it. Pray all this in Jesus name, Amen.