I'm Tired...

Gaylon, Pastella Family, friends, brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus. May the joy of Easter and our risen Savior bring you peace, comfort and strength today as we our Father in heaven chose to call home His servant, Robert Pastella. Our Lord’s gain is our temporary loss; however, as Jesus rose from the dead, and the tomb was empty, Bob lives with Jesus, resting until the resurrection of all flesh>

I’ve known Bob now for almost 9 years. And I have to say that i, personally, feel the loss, as i am sure we all do. Bob was a story teller. And most of his stories left me in stitches. He is greatly missed. Bob was also a survivor. Since I have known him, Bob has cheated death twice, but the Good Lord, in His timing, finally took Bob home to be with Him. It was as if Jesus said, “I know you’re tired Bob, I have your room ready, so it is time to come home.”

The text that comforts us today is from the Gospel of Matthew. Previous to our text this morning, John the Baptizer’s disciples were sent to Jesus by John who was in prison, asking Jesus, “Are You the One who is to come, or shall we look for another?” Jesus’ response to them was that Jesus was fulfilling prophecies about the Christ made centuries earlier: “…the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is the one who is not offended by Me.”

After John’s disciples were sent back to John, Jesus began teaching the crowds who were gathered around about who John was and witnessing about Himself, and began to denounce the cities where most of His mighty works were done, because they failed to repent, Chorazin, Bethsaida, Tyre, Sidon and Capernaum. Jesus said that if His miracles had been performed in Sodom at the time of Abraham and Lot, the people there would have turned and repented of their evil and unbelief.

This brings us to our text this morning. “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Bob was tired. He had fought very hard the past five years of his live. He lost his leg, fought infections, had a tracheotomy, recovered, then cancer struck again, and his fight was on. Yet, there comes a time in every person’s life where the fight goes on too long. Bob succumbed to the struggle. He told me the last time we were together, “Pastor, I’m tired.”

Weary and heavily burdened with health issues, Bob fought hard. Yet Jesus kept him in faith, held him in comfort and finally called Bob to Himself. That is how Jesus is with all of us.

Death is something that we all get to look forward to. Not one of us will escape the inevitable. The question is, will you make it out of life alive or not? All of scripture is the greatest rescue story ever written. It is the historical narrative of our world as well as the promises of what are to come.

God created all we see. The heavens and the earth were brought forward by Him. With a word, God brought forth everything. The earth was formed, and God gave it water, vegetation, fish, birds, animals, reptiles, then His crowning achievement, Adam and Eve. God formed them personally from the dust of the ground, and He breathed into Adam’s nostrils the breath of life and Adam became a living being. He then took a rib from Adam and created Eve, the mother of all the living.

However, even though everything was perfect, the serpent decided to throw a curve ball into the picture. He spoke with Eve one day about this ‘Tree of knowledge of good and evil’. He claimed that God had lied to them, and was withholding something special from them. This caused Eve to doubt that God was truthful, and she ate of the fruit and gave some to her husband, Adam. Instantly, they realized they were naked, and went and hid themselves.

Previously, the only command that God had given to Adam and Eve was to not eat of the fruit of that tree, nor even touch it, for when they did, they would certainly die. Once Eve ate of the fruit and gave it to Adam, they did die. They died spiritually. And that spiritual death has been passed down from one generation to another. You and I were born into spiritual death. Each one of us have inherited this nasty birth defect of sin.

Paul writes in Romans, “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—” (5:12, ESV). Because of sin brought into our world through doubting God’s Word, death is something we all will suffer. And it is this sin that cause all of us to want to be our own god. This is what Satan promised in the Garden to our first parents. “You will not surely die,” he promised Eve, “for when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like god, knowing good and evil.”

We are born into being our own little god. Sin is a very interesting thing. It is brought to life by the Law of God. Tell anyone that they cannot do something, and it is the first thing that they will want to do. It takes a person from being outward focused to being focused only on themselves. Sin curves us in on ourselves. So everything in life becomes all about ‘me, myself, and I’.

Being our own little god is tiring work. When we have to do everything, such as making up our own rules, enforcing our own rules on others; working to provide for ourselves, taking on the world that goes against our grain, forcing others into our mold and perceived ideology for everyone else’s lives, and doing everything our way, we tire out quickly. The beauty of life becomes one frustrating chore after another. We, like Bob, get tired. We get tired of life, we get tired of others around us, we get tired of the world around us that we cannot change to fit our mold. And as we get older…we become weary and heavily burdened.

So Jesus comes to us, He says that being your own god is not your job. That is His job. He softly and tenderly calls us by His Holy Spirit, through the Gospel to make things right.

Our sinfulness leads to death. Physical death is one thing, but living your life as your own god also leads to spiritual and eternal death. Just as being your own god is not your job, hell is not your eternal destination. That was created for Satan and his followers. Living life as your own god is not riding the fence between the two, it is following Satan. It was his doing that brought all this on in the first place. Fulfilling the desires of self are his promise to you. Remember though, that following his will for your life will end you up in a very hot place for all eternity.

The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord. (). Doing everything yourself, for yourself, that has been the job you took on for yourself. And as we know from all of our experience working one job or another, that when you work, you are due wages. And so if we take on the job of being our own god, the wages we will earn will be eternal death and suffering.

Why is that? Well, the gift is far better than the wage. The prophet Isaiah tells us that even God’s own chosen people were not good enough to make up the difference in the heavenly ledger of their life. “We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.” (, ESV). Even Mother Teresa who gave her entire life to the welfare of others cannot hold that life up to God and expect Him to allow her into paradise.

Since we are born with the disease of original sin, everything in our life is corrupted by this. Our health, our mental abilities, our emotions, and even the good things we do, or try to do. Our bodies begin to die the moment we are conceived. There are birth defects, other congenital diseases, sicknesses, cancer, and the like. Sooner or later, our bodies give out and die. This is the result of sin in our world, everything in this creation has been affected by it. Our mental states can become disease ridden also, with things like schizophrenia, schizo-affective disorder, bi-polar, depression and the like. And what about our emotions? We could be doing great then one day everything is off kilter. We can wake up one day and perceive that our entire world is crashing down around us, even though its not. Nothing in life can be counted on as being good 100% of the time. Sin screwed everything up, even the good things we do are corrupt.

left on our own, without Jesus, we are on our own. And there is nothing we can do to pay for our sins, or our sinful nature. The payment is very steep. God demands blood as payment for sin. We cannot even pay the debt with our own blood, because even that is corrupted by sin. So that leaves the inhabitants of the world in a very desperate situation. It is a situation that only God Himself can remedy.

So God did just that. The Apostle Paul tells us in Galatians, “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.” (, ESV). We are all familiar with Christmas. That holiday is the day that we celebrate the coming of the Christ into our world. Jesus was born for the purpose of giving His life as a ransom. Jesus was born to die. But His death is different than any other human being’s from creation till now.

Jesus is not like you or I. Jesus is the only person born that did not have an earthly father. God Himself assumed human flesh. The Angel Gabriel announced to Mary that she was highly favored in God’s eyes. She was not perfect, she was just like you and I. However, in that announcement, Mary was told that she would conceive a son, not through natural means, but the Holy Spirit would overshadow her and what she conceived was the very Son of God. Jesus grew and lived a perfect life. Being both God and Man, He was the only one who was not born with a sinful nature. So everything He did, and said and thought were without that corruption. Jesus kept the 10 commandments of God’s Law perfectly, in thought, word and deed.

So when He was arrested on trumped up charges, and condemned to die on the cross, His horrific death of being beaten, mocked, and nailed to a cross where He bled and died, His perfect life paid the price that God the Father demanded as payment for sin. Jesus is the spotless lamb slain for the sin of the entire world.

I know it is hard to understand how His death paid the price for sin, but it is not really for us to be able to wrap our finite minds around. It is something that must be accepted on faith. From Adam and Eve, all the way to the last person ever to be born, Christ’s death on the cross provided full payment and restitution for everyone’s sinfulness.

So how is that applied to Bob? How is His death of any benefit to you? It is simply a matter of trust. This is the beauty of God’s Word, the Bible. It never changes. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls was a very important find. What we found there was that the original manuscripts of the Old Testament that were discovered there are virtually identical to the ones used centuries later. The Isaiah scroll found, is almost word for word what we have today. His Word never changes.

The Bible is the greatest rescue story ever told. You can hold in your hand the history of the world, from creation to what is to come. You can rely on it because it is not the words of men, but the Holy Spirit inspired the authors to write what they wrote. There are countless archeological facts that agree with what the Bible contains.

Therefore, what we read in those pages we can trust to be true. The Bible details for us how God created everything we see. How He created Adam and then Eve, and how He had given them one commandment. You can eat of all the trees of the garden, except for one, the one in the midst of the garden, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. For when you eat of it you shall surely die. We can see in God’s Word how His perfect creation fell when Eve was deceived and ate of the tree and how Adam followed her; and how everything was cursed by God because of it.

But we can also read how God chose a very stubborn people to be the people through which He would provide for Adam and Eve’s sin that is passed on to every person in history. The Israelites were not perfect people, they were what is called “stiffed-necked” people. In other words, they were just like you and I. But God chose them to one day bring the birth of His Son. There are many savory characters in Jesus’ ancestry, including a prostitute, murderers, thieves, adulterers, slanderers and the like.

And this is the thing about being a child of God. We are not made perfect in this life. The point of being a baptized and redeemed child of God is knowing our own sin, owning our own sin, and knowing that there is nothing in us that can save us from our sinful condition. We are dead in sin and trespasses. And I don’t know about you, but dead things cannot do anything. This is why God does everything for you.

He sent His Son, Jesus to die on the cross to pay for our sinfulness. That work of Jesus on the cross is for everyone. His perfect life, suffering and death are credited to our account simply by faith, or trust, that what He did was for us, and that God raised Him from the dead. That’s it. It is simply believing that what God says is true. It is true about Him, it’s true about us, and it is true about Jesus.

This is what Bob believed. He knew his own unworthiness, he understood there was nothing in himself that could ever make him worthy. So Bob trusted in Jesus. He hated many things in his life, like how he said stupid things, or did things that made others hurt or angered them. He loved the Lord though. Jesus became Bob’s life.

In baptism, God took Bob and washed him clean of all his unworthiness, and adopted Bob as His own son. Bob was crucified with Christ and raised with Him in baptism, and as the apostle Paul states in Galatians “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.” (, ESV). In Baptism, Bob was clothed with Christ’s righteousness. He was given the Holy Spirit to create and sustain faith in Jesus all Bob’s life.

The same is true for all. Everyone who has been baptized, has been cleansed of their sin, adopted as one of God’s sons or daughters, and given the Holy Spirit to create and sustain faith in Jesus. If that baptismal faith is encouraged and strengthened by parents and friends, through going to Church to hear the preached word of God, and to receive the sacrament of Holy Communion, that person will be able to meet life on life’s terms, go through all the ups and downs of life, imperfectly however, and die in the faith. However, there are those who are or have been baptized that have not ever had the christian home to grow up in, who then live as the world lives, ignoring God, ignoring His Word and the gifts He has for us, passively, they have turned away from God and will reap the wages of their lifetime of work.

Yes, Bob was tired. He was tired of fighting. Bob was tired of fighting against his physical ailments, he was tired of fighting against his sinfulness. Bob was tired of fighting against the evil in the world. So Bob went to Jesus. “Come to me all who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest” our text says.

Jesus bids us all to come to Him when we are weary of fighting, when we are heavily burdened by our own sinfulness. Come to Jesus. Bob did and as a result of that he is now resting from all his labors, all those things that burdened him, especially himself. And there Bob will rest until Jesus returns. At that time, Bob’s body will be raised from the dead. This very body in this casket this morning will have new organs, new muscles and skin. This very body that is old and dead, will once again breathe air again. He will run and walk on two full legs. His mouth will speak again. But the great thing is, Bob will never again know sin. Sin will be out of the picture, it has now destroyed by Jesus, and in the resurrection there will be no more sin at all.

One piece of scripture I leave you all with today. From the last book of the Bible, Revelation, we get a glimpse of what is to come. “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”” (, ESV)

Imagine if you will, God Himself, with nail scared hands and feet walking up to you on that day, gently wiping those tears from your face, hugging you, and welcoming you in to eternal life with no sin, no suffering, no sickness or disease, no pain or crying anymore. Sin has been conquered, no more to infect or affect anyone or anything forever. That is Bob’s destiny. That is my destiny. That is Gaylon’s destiny and all who simply trust that Jesus is the true son of God and that His innocent life, suffering and death paid for our sin, and that because God raised Him from the dead, we too will one day rise from the dead as well, and we will live again.