Eternal Rest

Matthew 11:28-30

How? Nov 1st, 2025

Eternal Rest – Matthew 11:28-30

Please stand for the reading of God's word.

28 Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 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. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

This is the word of the Lord.

Audience: Thanks be to God.

You may be seated.

I have been a Christian since before I can remember. There is not a time that I can think of where the church was not a part of my life in some aspect or another. I have always attended Sunday school to some extent. I have read and know most Bible stories because I have heard them since I was smaller than Luca. There has not been a moment in my life when being Christian hasn't at least been a part of the story in some capacity. Jesus is a name I have heard for a long time, but Jesus is a person I am just now truly getting to know.

For most of my life, I have loved questions. Or maybe better said I have always overthought things. It is hard for me to take something and just accept it. I have never been afraid to ask questions and have always loved deciphering the what, the why, and the how of everything.

It's not that I don't have a lack of trust; I just like to think about things. And as a child, and I guess as an adult, I loved thinking about God. It all sounded terrific. The worldview that I was handed from a small child was that I was, in fact, not an accident. Not a group of particles that landed on a rock in the middle of the cosmos. There was a purpose behind my essence. And there was a creator who designed all of it. And not only that, but he loves me. And cares for me. There was a being I couldn't comprehend, a spiritual side of things, that I wanted to tap into. There was a love that I tried to understand and did at times, but only in small amounts.

And just like every other human being on earth, there were times in my life when I felt like nobody loved me. Maybe I had to grow up a little faster than some, but there were many nights when the only thing that would get me through the night would be my headphones playing Kid Cudi and the thought that the hardships in my life were tests by God and that I would come out stronger on the other side. I found solace in the fact that if I could get through the pain, then I would be closer to God when things calmed down. But to be vulnerable here, that never really happened.

Things just got worse. And eventually, my headphones broke. And I numbed myself even more. I distracted myself in high school by being involved in everything extra extracurricular. I tried out for everything that could get my face in front of people so I could receive love through attention. I found meaning by giving my life to school spirit, theater, and student council. And I will lose some mad aura points for this; I really thought that in high school, I was the main character. But really, all of it was just a way for me to make myself so busy and distracted that I didn't have to go home where the pain was or have enough time to think about how I felt. And in the few quiet moments that I did have, I fell to addiction with things like nicotine and lust.

I'm glad to have you guys here! Aren't you glad you decided to show up tonight?

No, but really, I was a Christian on Wednesdays and Sundays, and you better bet I was the kid who cried every year at church camp. But that was the extent of my relationship with Christ. It was shallow, based upon guilt and mere habit, and if you looked at my life, I was more of a hypocrite than anything.

The underlying issue is that I would go to church, and I would hear my pastor say that life with Jesus would change everything! That life with Jesus made everything better! That I should feel guilty about my sin and want to be better. Not because I had to, but because I should want to if I truly loved Jesus. But I would go home, and I wouldn't feel that way. My life didn't change; in fact, I honestly felt worse because now I was coping with all this pain, and I felt bad about it because it was a sin. I remember getting so angry myself for sinning sometimes that I would hit my chest and try to physically hurt myself cause I was so mad.

This rest that everyone was talking about, I wasn't feeling it. This rest that my pastor and small group leader said they found, I wasn't finding it. The rest that Jesus offered, I was not experiencing it.

The only thing that I had to look forward to was that when I died, I would get to go to heaven, and then things would be okay.

And maybe you haven't really thought about it, but perhaps you are not feeling that rest either. Maybe you read a scripture like this, and you think, wow. That sounds great. Wow, that sounds like something that I would want to experience. It would be nice to go through life and constantly feel like there is a wait on my chest. Maybe you are like me, and you don't really even want to think about all the things that are stressing you out or the pain that you have experienced. The easiest thing, really, is to pick up the magic distractor called your phone and endlessly doom-scroll until you don't even know why you were sad or stressed in the first place. Maybe you have been a "Christian" your whole life, but you don't really get it either. You know the Bible stories, you know the VBS songs, You know the "right" answers to the questions in Sunday school, but you aren't experiencing the rest that everybody is talking about.

You can't even sit quietly long enough to consider that you might not be okay because you have too much homework or too many things to worry about, or look, you just got a notification, can't not look at your phone because what if someone is trying to contact you? You are not enough.

You can't sleep, you have a band concert in the morning that you have to get up early for. You had better step it up because you need to do better at this tournament to keep your spot on the college team you signed up for. You will never be good enough. If you don't have the right clothes, the right car, the right phone, the right amount of money to make it seem like you are rich, but not too rich cause you dont want to seem snotty, then you better go find some new friends, cause you won't find that here.You will always be alone. You have got to get all the right answers on this test, or you could fail. Hopefully, you studied in between when you were supposed to be watching your little sister, but you got distracted by TikTok. You aren't smart enough. Hopefully, they are the right weight, or you might get made fun of. You have to find time to work out. But you know you really ought to eat better, even though it's pretty hard because your family is always on the move so you have to eat out a lot. You aren't attractive enough. Have you seen the latest Netflix series? You mean you haven't binged all the episodes in one night? Have you read your Bible? Are you taking a sabbath? Are you praying? You mean you dont have time? You are alone in all this. No one is going to help you. You can't know Christ. You don't have enough time. You will always and forever be hurting. There isn't a way out. You're not good enough. You are not good enough. You are not good enough. You can't find rest, you dont deserve it. keep going. keep running. You should be scared. yOu have to keep going. Why would God love you? All you do is do the wrong things. All you do is hurt other people. All you do is make others feel less than you. There is no reason to love you. No reason to be here. No reason to keep trying. He wouldn't die for you. You are to broken. You are too messed up. You are just like everybody else. An accident. A mistake.

Here, smoke this. here, drink this. Here, watch this. Here, eat this. Here, do that even though they told you not to. Feeling nothing is better than feeling like you're nothing, right?

28 Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 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. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

That’s what Jesus offers. That’s what he will give you. He is saying, come to me, and I will provide you with what you need. Come to me, and I will make those thoughts go away. Come to me, and I will give you rest. But how?

The Greek word mathitís is what we translated into English as Disciple. Let's say that together. Not because you need to know it but just because it is fun. Mathitís. Now, lots of other scholars, especially in the realm of spiritual formation study, the degree that I am studying, have come to the conclusion that this might not be the best translation. I am not saying that there is anything wrong with the word disciple but there might be another word, that might be more helpful for us to understand what the Greek word Mathitís might really mean.

This word is apprentice. Because let's be honest here. When someone asks you what a disciple is, you honestly, I would assume, like me, have a hard time explaining it. The first thing that comes to my mind is a dirty, gritty dude wearing a sackcloth and a belt around his waist with some Jesus sandals on. But when we hear the word apprentice, some other, clearer pictures come to mind that I think might be clearer for us. The word apprentice brings to mind, as John Mark Comer says, " a mode of education that is intentional, embodied, relational, and practice-based. This type of learning is very different from what most of us are used to; our education system can seep into our churches. This kind of learning is a lot different than just retaining data for a test and then leaving the second you no longer need it. This type of learning requires your whole body to be put into action. I think of Shawn Wyly and how he is a lineman. Sure, I bet there are some tests you need to take before getting up on a telephone pole and messing with breakers, but I bet if you asked him, the most he ever learned was when someone, like a mentor or teacher, brought him alongside them, and hands-on formed him into the man that he is with real life experience. This word is closer to what was happening in the scriptures than what I think comes to mind when we think of disciples. Most of us know and understand what an apprentice is.

To follow a rabbi, As author and teacher Ray Vander Lan says, "meant to walk alongside him in a posture of listening, learning, observation, obedience, and imitation." It was less like learning math, and more like learning karate. The purpose of being an apprentice was not just to retain knowledge but to convert that knowledge into real-life practice.

Did you hear that? Convert knowledge into real-life practice.

Here is the unfortunate thing about the state of Christianity in America right now. The church, not just WACC, but the big C church, is infamous for having alternative beliefs but nearly indistinguishable lifestyles from the surrounding world. We believe in something that supposedly is supposed to make us live differently and act differently than everyone else, but we aren’t. Christians are seen as hypocrites in America. They say they believe one thing but then act in a way that contradicts what they claim to believe. And I think the underlying issue is that modern churches believe that biblical knowledge by itself will lead to spiritual maturity. Here is what I mean by that: the current state of the modern church widely believes that if you know enough about the Bible, you will be more like Jesus.

Which isn’t wrong, but it’s not the whole picture. But I have said this before. An atheist can know a lot about the Bible and still live with someone who doesn’t know Jesus. Christians, for 1700 hundred years, understood spirituality and theology to be one thing. Spirituality – is how we experience God, and theology is what we think about God. Those two things were not separate but one. But in the 16th century, with the Enlightenment period, the way of Jesus, became divorced from the truth of Jesus. Eugene Peterson once said, “That the Jesus truth only when it is wedded to the Jesus way produces the Jesus life. Jesus as the truth gets far more attention than Jesus as the way.”

Do you see what I am saying here? Jesus doesn’t just call us to a way of thinking. He doesn’t just call us to a worldview. He doesn’t just call us to know things about him. He doesn’t just call us to go to church and learn how to read the Bible, sing songs about him, and get inspired to “try and be a better person.” No. He calls us to a way of life. He calls us to rest.

This is precisely why I am excited about this next series. At the beginning of this semester, we spent five weeks walking through the Nicene Creed, figuring out what we, as Christians, believe through our “What?” series. For four weeks, we talked about identity in each aspect of the Nicene creed through the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, and finally, last week, the church. This week, we will start a ten-week series called “How?” about the nine practices of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Over these next nine weeks, we will talk about, as Eugene Peterson calls them, the “rhythms of Grace.”

Because Jesus isn't only teaching us how to die; he is teaching us how to live. I want you to know. This youth group is filled with a group of kids who are genuinely trying to follow Jesus. I am not doing this because this group needs to try harder. I am teaching you this because it is something that I wish I had been taught. But I can see you in me. There is a gap between good intentions and everyday life. This is something that God has been working on within me for the last 3 years, and the holy spirit has been leading me to this point through books, sermons, and conversations, and I am so stoked.

So I am going to show you some graphs. Isn’t that just uber spiritual?! These are taken from a pastor named Tyler Staton in Portland Oregon. This first Graph is called the Common Christian Experience, or maybe something you have all called the “Camp High.”

We all have gone to camp and experienced the inspiration. We have all gone to church on a Wednesday night, heard Jake preach a great sermon, and left inspired. Right? It’s kind of hard not to, especially at camp. There is the worship, the lights, the late nights, and the fact that you have gotten about ten hours of sleep in about three days. And it is nonstop Jesus for a week straight. You hear the sermon, go to Sunday school class, and think you know what? I feel like I am going to do better. The Holy Spirit convicts you, and you think I should read my Bible more. I really should spend more time in prayer. You are inspired to do better.

So what do you do? You try harder. You set the alarms to remember to pray. You download a different app that can lead you through a prayer. You try and wake up earlier. You start to grind. You have got to do this. It’s only you! The only reason you aren’t close to God is because you aren’t trying hard enough! You have to walk around so tense like you got a stick up your butt cause you are trying so hard, but you do it! You really do! You start making spiritual gains.

Butttt, it only lasts for about a week, and then you stay up late watching Love Island, and you skip prayer in the morning, and then since you skipped it then you might as well skip it at lunch, and then you don’t read you Bible at all, and then everything is back to ground zero. 1 step forward, three steps back. Let me say something that might sound a little coutner intutiitive. Trying harder is not the answer. Trying harder is actually the critcial error that we all make. Because will power, is a depleteing recource. You understand what I mean there? You will run out of the will to try harder. It’s easier to say no to a donut in the morning that it is to say no to desert after dinner. So what happens when you inevtiatbly fail? Not if, when. Well then you start feeling guilty. You start feeling like you did before you were inspired but this time worse, because you said yes to trying to be better, and then you failed again. You start sprialing into the lies that Satan has been trying to convince you of, except this time you feel like he has a foot to step on because, you did mess up when you said that you wouldn’t. After feeling guilty the next phase is inevtiably the feeling of dissilusionment. You start thinking something that maybe this whole God thing isn’t what it was meant to be. Maybe none of this is even real. You start to think this following Jesus is a lot less good than I had orgianlly believed. As Tyler Staton states, “For the perfect but sincere follower of Jesus, Satan's greatest trick and his real temptation is to get you to wallow on the ground, defining yourself by your most recent failure when God continues to define you by his grace.”

And then… it all starts over again.

Here is the Cycle of Spiritual Maturity, that I want us to embody. The first stage is to see. Now I don’t just mean seeing with our eyes, but understadning that what God, gives us is revealed to us. We see his goodness, we see his character in crcipture, we see his heart in a sermon. Christianity was not man made, it was reveled by God himself. The second step would be to practice, As Tyler states “seeing is often called revelation, when something new is discovered, learned, or seen about God and His invitation to me. We convert every new revelation into practice. So every time we glimpse something new of who He is, of who I am, and of what the good life is, that should be converted into some way that I can inhabit that revelation, that I can put it into practice, a way that I can get my hands greasy in participating with His transformation in me.” Because hear me when I say this, we don’t mature my tryign harder, we mature by training. Do you hear me? You can’t start running a marathon by just trying harder. You can’t get a full ride to st. marys for soccer, by trying harder. You can’t get better at horse judging by trying harder. You can’t get better at school or football by trying harder. You mature, your get better, by training. By practicing.

I’m going to keep quoting Tyler cause it’s just that good, ““If we fall into the illusion that the practice is what transforms us, we take our eyes off of God and we miss out on the blessing. People like this are often devout, but in an unattractive way. They're someone that you may respect, but also might not want to become like.Do you know anyone like that? It's like the way I feel about a bodybuilder at the gym, where you're kind of like, look, I respect the commitment that it took to get there, but I also kind of feel like you're missing the point. I mean, don't we have all these machines and exercises so that you can live a healthy and vibrant life out there in the world?But you have taken them, and you're using them in such a way to live your entire life in here, flexing in the mirror. Right? So you're putting in all the work, but it's not freeing you to life because you've turned practice into your God, rather than the practice freeing you for life with God.” There is no power within the practices themselves.

Richard Foster, a pastor in the 80s who brought back the importance of spiritual formation to the Western church, said it like this. “the act of spiritual practice is a way of placing yourself where God can bless you. We don’t have spiritual practices to manipulate God into doing something for us. We don’t practice to be more spiritual or to be able to flex our spiritual muscles in small groups. We practice what God has revealed so that we can be blessed. And I don’t mean that if you do these things, you will be blessed in that you will get a new Ferrari if you pray every morning. I am not saying that you will get a girlfriend or things will just inherently go well for you. I am saying that if you practice what God has revealed to you, you will live how humanity was initially designed to live. Blessed doesn’t mean happy. A better translation of the Greek for blessed would be “the good life.” If you live the way that Jesus lives, by practicing and orienting your life in the way that jesus lived his life, you will live the life that God intended for man. You will live the good life. You will be blessed. You will find rest.

That being said, let me read our anchor text one last time. 28 Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 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. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

Come to me, all who are working too hard and have many burdens, physical or mental. Take my yoke upon you, an ancient Jewish idiom for as was a tool laid onto the back of an animal for the sake of labor. Taking on a rabbi's yoke was willingly wearing their life and teaching for the sake of formation. And Jesus is saying look, I am gentle and humble. And if you take my yoke upon your shoulders, you will find rest for your souls. You will be blessed; You will live the good life.

As Tyler states, “The unique thing about Jesus, among other rabbis, was not that his yoke required no effort. The yoke of Jesus works in this entirely upside-down way, where the longer you wear it on your shoulders, the lighter you seem to become. And the longer that you labor with him, the more at rest you seem to become.”

Here is what I want us to walk away with today. As we spend the next 9 weeks talking about these specific practices and getting into the nitty-gritty of what they are, how to do them, and why to do them, here is what I want you to remember.

You obtain eternal rest (eternal meaning past, present, and future), not by what you do, but by who you know.

You obtain eternal rest not by what you do but by who you know.

The purpose of the practices is not to get better at praying. It’s not to get better at silence. It’s not to get better at taking a sabbath. The purpose is to get to know the rest giver. The purpose, the reason for the practices, is to spend time with God.

Because spending time with God is how we are blessed, spending time with God is how we live the good life, and spending time with God is where we will find rest.

Pray