The Power of Rest

Section 1: Me - How do I wrestle with the problem (Introduction)

I love naps. I have been given the spiritual gift of sleep - I can sleep anywhere, anytime. When I was in Jr. High, I remember falling asleep at a school dance. That shows you my popularity at that stage, doesn’t it?

When I worked in roofing, I started work pretty early around 6:00am and got home around 4:00pm. And so I often would lie down on the couch after work and take a short nap until supper. Well, I did, until one day, while I lay there with my eyes closed, Hannah snuck up to me, stared and me and then “whack!” she smacked me in the face and ran off running and laughing. I became a bit more paranoid after that, but I still loved to nap.

Nowadays, most of my napping happens on Sundays, after church, mostly because you all are EXHAUSTING.

But one of the things I have learned is that there is a big difference between napping and true rest.

Napping solves the problem of sleepiness and can be a part of healthy rest routine, but true rest is far deeper.

Recently, we hosted a Thanksgiving dinner for a few of Rebekah’s friends. Some of them had never had what they lovingly dubbed as “White people thanksgiving” with turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, corn and Abby’s amazing Cream Cheese Pumpkin Pie. So Abby and I worked hard to create a great meal for them and it came out perfectly. I watched some very skinny people eat a lot of food that afternoon. But before we got started, I knew I needed to do something. I needed to sharpen my knives. So I sat down with this, my electric knife sharpener, and went to work getting them as best as I can, because when it comes to cooking, I know a few things:

I know that a sharp knife is considerably safer than a dull one

I know that a sharp knife makes the food look better when serving it because it’s cuts cleanly precisely, as opposed to hacking at it with a dull knife

I know that a sharp knife means a more enjoyable cooking experience because it just works.

“So what do resting and sharp knives have to do with each other?” you may be asking. Just as sharpening my knives makes me a more proficient cook, rest spiritually sharpens me so I can be effective for and with Jesus.

And I admit, I’m not always great at resting. I take my time off each week and I take my vacation time, but I don’t always use that time to truly rest. Often, I exchange distraction for rest and so, when I get back to work, I still feel drained.

Can any of you relate to that? Do you struggle to rest in a way that revitalizes you?

Section 2: We - How do we struggle with this idea? (Tension)

True rest involves resetting our brains, our bodies and our souls and if we ignore anyone one of those three things for a long period of time, we end up feeling dull and weary. As theologian Bilbo Baggins said, we “feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread. ”

Why is this? Why are so many of us bad at resting well? There are a lot of factors at play in this:

Some of you grew up being taught that productivity equaled acceptance or adoration. The more you did, the more you felt like you belonged and were praised. Often called the “Protestant work ethic,” working 60-80 hours a week and getting paid for 40 was considered a virtue. If that describes you, you may struggle to rest because to you inactivity = laziness which is, to you, a sin.

Some of you have an overdeveloped sense of pleasing others, so much so that you struggle to ask for help, try to do everything yourself and can’t leave anything undone because that would mean someone is disappointed in you, right? You struggle to rest because there is always something you are supposed to be doing because if you don’t do it, it won’t get done (or it won’t be done right).

Some of you, like me, have substituted distraction for rest. You fill your time away from work with things that occupy you, but don’t fill you. You know what I mean? For example, I enjoy playing video games. Sometimes, I just want to be Batman. But while playing video games fills my time, and has a level of fun to it, it doesn’t actually refresh my soul or reenergize me. So, while it’s helpful for numbing, it’s unhelpful for resting.

And some of you, whether because of where you are in life or because of one of the other reasons I’ve stated, have so over-programmed your life, that you have no time for rest. You’ve got to get the kids to soccer and band, buy groceries, check on your Mom or Dad, go to church, get the room painted and the house cleaned because there was no time to do any of that during the week between work, dinner, homework and school events and emails and maybe watching one hour of TV before going to bed at 9:00. You haven’t left any room for anything else, especially rest. There is no margin of time in your life.

Now, I know I have described some of you. I get it. I understand the feeling of having so much that you HAVE to do that there is no place for the things you WANT to do that gives life to your souls.

But that’s not how it’s supposed to be. We weren’t made to be on 24/7 365. Some people live like they are a computer with a bunch of updates that hasn’t restarted. You’re not running optimally. You’re spiritually slower than you should be, you’re getting buggy and things aren’t working like they should be. You need to rest so God can upload the updates for your spiritual life and help you run better.

The good news, is that even though many of us are tired and weary we don’t have to stay that way. Our God loves us so much, that he invites us to set a pattern of true rest into our lives that will allow us to better hear God speaking to us, that will allow us to feel revitalized and that will allow us to experience more love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Rest helps us become spiritually sharper.

Section 3: God- What does the Bible say about this?

In the passage that Margaret read for us earlier, Jesus and his disciples were walking in a grain field on a balmy Saturday afternoon and the disciples were feeling peckish, so they grabbed some heads of the grain to eat. Well, this upset the the Pharisees, the religious leaders of the time, because it broke the rules about Sabbath.

For thousands of years, going back to the time of Moses, the Israelite people have taken from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday as a special, holy time where they don’t do any work - and this day is called the sabbath or shabbat. The reason they take this day is because God both modelled it and commanded it for his people. When God gave Moses the 10 commandments he included the day of rest as the fourth one.

Exodus 20:8–11 (NLT)

8 “Remember to observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. 9 You have six days each week for your ordinary work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath day of rest dedicated to the Lord your God. On that day no one in your household may do any work. This includes you, your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, your livestock, and any foreigners living among you. 11 For in six days the Lord made the heavens, the earth, the sea, and everything in them; but on the seventh day he rested. That is why the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and set it apart as holy.

Think about that for a minute. God made a top 10 of the most important laws. Don’t worship other gods, don’t murder people, don’t lie, be faithful to your spouse. And in the list of the most important laws for Israel was “take a day off of work.”

Immaturity looks at idea of God’s laws as “keeping us from” something we want to do, when really they are an expression of God’s love and care for us. Our society is better when we don’t murder each other. Our community is healthier when we remain faithful to our spouses. And we are better people, and better followers of Jesus, when we take time to truly rest.

Over the centuries since Moses, especially coming out of that era when the temple had been destroyed and Israel was returning home from exile, the religious leaders began to add new rules to prevent people from breaking Moses’s law.

For example, they considered cooking a form of work. And in order to cook, you needed a fire. So it was against the rules to light a fire because that would lead to cooking. And before there was electricity, people used candles to light in the evenings but you couldn’t light those because lighting a candle was the same as lighting a fire which would lead to cooking. And when electricity was discovered and put into homes, you couldn’t turn on or off the light because that is too close to lighting or extinguishing a fire which we know leads to cooking, which is work, so you can’t turn on or off your switches. What they were when sabbath started, was how they stayed til sabbath ended.

So, in the passage, harvesting is work. And you can’t work on the sabbath and therefore it was against the rules for the disciples to pick the heads off the grains as they walked through the field because it’s like harvesting, which is work, which means you’ve sinned against God.

But Jesus didn’t play by the made-up rules of the Pharisees. Jesus believed in the Sabbath, and in rest, but he set it back to what’s its purpose is truly for:

Mark 2:27–28 (NLT)

27 Then Jesus said to them, “The Sabbath was made to meet the needs of people, and not people to meet the requirements of the Sabbath. 28 So the Son of Man is Lord, even over the Sabbath!”

Jesus teaches us that God gives us rest as a gift, it’s for our benefit.

Psalm 23:1–3 (NLT)

1 The Lord is my shepherd; I have all that I need. 2 He lets me rest in green meadows; he leads me beside peaceful streams. 3 He renews my strength. He guides me along right paths, bringing honor to his name.

Through rest our bodies, our minds, and our souls reset and God’s voice becomes clearer. I wonder if some of us haven’t heard God speak in a while because we’ve been too busy to stop and listen.

When practiced well, and with regularity, sabbath becomes two things:

1) Sabbath is an act of trust

In a song called “Resistance,” singer-songwriter Josh Garrels says, “My rest is a weapon against the oppression of man’s obsession to control things.”

- That God will provide - Al Braun and the farm -

- That God is in control, not us. We surrender to his ways, even when it doesn’t make sense.

2) Sabbath is an act of worship

Sabbath reminds us that our salvation is not a wage we earned from God, but a gift of his grace. On sabbath we stop working and striving and achieving and we remind ourselves that God is less concerned about our accomplishments or our careers than he is with us spending time with him and enjoying him. Sabbath reprioritizes God and teaches us to delight in him.

Section 4: You - What should you do about this?

So what would it look like to implement a sabbath day of rest in your life? As your pastor, your friend, and as a student of the Bible, I wholeheartedly believe your life and your walk with God would improve if you practice the sacred rhythm of rest. But, like all things, there is a danger and dark side to sabbath - legalism.

Just as the Pharisees made rules so that people wouldn’t break the law of Moses, so too, it’s easy to make our rule for life, the rule for everyone else. We apply what we define as rest and sabbath as what is right for everyone and can be harsh and judgmental when we see people violate it. And that’s exactly how some of you grew up - some of you grew up not being able to have fun on Sundays - no card games, no movies, no friends - because you were forced to observe your parent’s definition of sabbath and it’s left a sour taste in your mouth.

But Sabbath isn’t about being bored and unhappy. It’s about taking a day - any day - and delighting in the Lord and in the life He gave you. The Bible is clear, while the imperative to rest and to take the sabbath is given, the specifics of what you should do or not do are not given.

In his book, “The Rest of God,” author Mark Buchanan summarizes the heart of sabbath rest when he writes “Cease from what is necessary. Embrace that which gives life.”

We need to stop doing the things that “have to get done” and instead do the things that re-energize us - things that make us feel good and full of life. And that’s different for every person. Every time we go on vacation, Abby and I have to work together to figure out what we are going to do because we find different things restful. For Abby, quiet time reading by a pool on a sunny day is restful. For me, I find adventure and activity restful so we have to make sure to include time for both in our vacations so we can both rest.

But although we all rest differently, here are 4 overarching activities that apply to all of us and I believe that if we practice them, they will lead to true rest.

Presence

Scripture, prayer, contemplation

Me at Pastor’s retreat

Quiet

turn down or off the noise of the world - social media, news, numbing screens

Ignore the calls of the vampires

Play

Activities that you find fun and life-giving

This is where we will all differ.

Connect

Spend time with people who give you life

Created for community. (Introverts need people too - just less of them and deeper - extroverts need to go find introverts)

A couple randomized notes on rest:

Rest is best enjoyed when the whole household does it together. For some of you, you are the whole household and that’s great. Do sabbath as you see fit. Others live in the context of a family, which is also great but becomes more complicated. If mom’s idea is a quiet house and reading, and dad’s is golfing, who’s dealing with the toddler? I would say two things should happen: 1) Work together as a family to determine your sabbath plan so that everyone gets to rest in some way. 2) Because we live under grace, not law, you can consider having different sabbath days of rest. In that way, you empower each other to do what they need to rest, by taking on their “have to” burdens for them.

God gave us the command of a sabbath as a means of self-care and we should all try to take a full day every week. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t take mini-sabbaths throughout the week to boost your spiritual battery. Maybe on your lunch break, take 30 minutes to sabbath - reflect on one verse from the Bible app, pray the Lord’s prayer, take some deep breaths, play wordle and then eat your lunch. That mini-sabbath will both help energize you for the rest of your workday and it will attune you to what God is wanting to do through you in your workplace.

Good sabbath requires good preparation. You may need to cook your meals in advance, reorganize your and/or your family’s schedule or get the house clean before or after your sabbath day. You need to do what you need to do in order to make sure you can truly rest in Jesus.

While we are under grace and not law, and therefore keeping the sabbath does not determine your salvation, it does require sacrifice. Sometimes you have to say no to things so that you can rest in the way that works for you. And that’s hard. But following Jesus was never supposed to be easy.

Section 5: We - What does it look like if we all lived out this teaching?

So what happen if we all lived out the principle of taking a sacred rest - a sabbath?

Last time I preached, at our 110th anniversary Sunday, I told the story of Charles Francis Adams, a 19th century political figure. One day, while writing in his diary, he wrote: "Went fishing with my son today--a total waste of a day." His son, Brooks Adams, also kept a diary, which is still in existence. On that same day, Brooks Adams made this entry: "Went fishing with Dad today. Best day ever!"

This story can perfectly describe sabbath for us if we see ourselves as Charles Adams and Jesus as Brooks Adams. Too many of us don’t rest well. We prefer being busy or distracted, and and we see rest, play and worship as a unproductive. Throw into that the reality that some of us subconsciously believe that God either doesn’t want us to enjoy life or that God doesn’t want to be with us because we are a constant disappointment to Him.

But what we see as a wasted day of unproductiveness, Jesus sees as a great day. He delights in spending time with us as we draw near to him through the practice of presence, as we turn down the volume of the world and reduce our screens, as we play experiencing joy and fun, and as we connect with others who give us life. Jesus is with us through all of it and he delights in that time with you. That’s why we are to set apart one day dedicated to God - so that we can rest in Him and through Him.

And I’m confident, that if you developing the sacred rhythm of rest, I think at least four great things will happen to you.

1) You’ll feel better in your body and your stress levels decrease and you regain a healthier pace of life.

2) You’ll feel better mentally because it’s your brain is like a computer that needs updates - if you turn it off and then back on, it works better.

3) You’ll feel more satisfied in your relationship with Jesus. As you learn to rest in his love and listen for his voice, it’ll become clearer to you.

My hope and prayer for you is that when you go home today, you sit down and make a sabbath plan and then go delight in the Lord, filling your souls up with his goodness and love. It’s time to sharpen the knives for our souls, so that we can enjoy Jesus and the abundant life he died to give us.

Pray.