Transcript

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.