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08-18-2019
REST
REFRESH
Welcome to Maranatha Baptist Fellowship
Go ahead and open your Bibles to Leviticus
Since we have talk about Gods wrath so much in last few months I thought we should also cover the Law
So for the next 36 months we will be in the book of Leviticus
I am just kidding
I am so excited about the series that we are going to go through
Which sort of scares me because the sermons I am excited about don’t usually come across so well and the ones I am nervous about seem to come out better
So this sermon is probably more directed to me
Shortly after I first started here at Maranatha Gary my pastor said that I needed to learn to rest
And wouldn’t you know that a decade later Gary still reminds me that I need to rest and learn to rest
For the next few weeks we will be going through rest
1 Thus the heavens and the earth were completed, and all their hosts. 2 By the seventh day God completed His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. 3 Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.
God rested after 6 days of work
If you have been in church for any sort of time then you might be sitting there going I know about rest I know I am supposed to rest
You have probably heard this said before and you know that you are to rest
12 The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 13 “But as for you, speak to the sons of Israel, saying, ‘You shall surely observe My sabbaths; for this is a sign between Me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I am the Lord who sanctifies you. 14 ‘Therefore you are to observe the sabbath, for it is holy to you. Everyone who profanes it shall surely be put to death; for whoever does any work on it, that person shall be cut off from among his people. 15 ‘For six days work may be done, but on the seventh day there is a sabbath of complete rest, holy to the Lord; whoever does any work on the sabbath day shall surely be put to death. 16 ‘So the sons of Israel shall observe the sabbath, to celebrate the sabbath throughout their generations as a perpetual covenant.’ 17 “It is a sign between Me and the sons of Israel forever; for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, but on the seventh day He ceased from labor, and was refreshed.”
God spoke to Moses saying that the nation would observe a sabbath
A day set aside that was holy to the Lord
Time set aside to rest
We that God spoke to Moses and used himself as an example of resting
see he created the entire universe and everything in it in 6 days and then we know that God rested
See church you and I were created to rest
You and I were never created to continue to go and go and go and go without any rest
But this morning we will break down rest
But this morning we will look at it from a different point of view
We will look at REST
and we will break it down by the letter
R is for refresh
This morning we will look at Refresh
How cool is it that refresh is the last word in the scripture we just read
REFRESH is defined as give new strength or energy to, and to reinvigorate
to renew, revive, to make fresh again
Refresh is part of resting
35 In the early morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house, and went away to a secluded place, and was praying there.
Jesus begins to show us how to refresh ourselves
Prior to Jesus getting up in the morning and going away to a secluded place
Jesus had just done ministry
Jesus had just been doing the work of God the Father
Jesus understood that we were not designed to do do do do work without any sort of recharge
Jesus understood the importance of being made fresh because if He wasn’t going to be made fresh then the next work He was going to do wouldn’t have been His best
See there is a time for work and there is a time for rest
In Ecclesiastes God says there is a time for everything
Then why would we think there is no time for refreshing ourselves
Why would we think that we must do everything and be at everything
Church you and I need time to refresh ourselves to reconnect with Jesus, to revive our hearts with Jesus, to give new strength to our relationship with Jesus
Notice Jesus went away to be with God the Father
If the Son of God thought it important just maybe just maybe we should think it important also
Most of you will sit here and say this sounds like a quite time and you wouldn’t be wrong
But church it is more than a quite time, it is a special time set aside maybe on top of your quite time
30 The apostles gathered together with Jesus; and they reported to Him all that they had done and taught. 31 And He said to them, “Come away by yourselves to a secluded place and rest a while.” (For there were many people coming and going, and they did not even have time to eat.) 32 They went away in the boat to a secluded place by themselves.
This is directly following some important things in scripture
First John the Baptist has just died
The second was the Disciples had just returned from being sent out
They meet Jesus and begin to share what happened on their trips and what they did, and who the spoke with
How awesome and exciting it must have been to be in that church service when the Disciples shared about their first mission trip
I get excited when we share about our trips to Colombia, Super Summer and VBS
Then notice what Jesus leads them to do
Jesus invites them to a special time away from everything to rest
Jesus invites them to refresh themselves
See church they were so busy they didn’t have time for a basic necessity of eating
I am sure they were willing to keep doing and doing and doing and serving and serving
But Jesus had just inviting them to a special time to refresh their souls
See Church for the next few weeks we will be talking about rest
You might be here and think you know all there is to rest and that is great, and you might actually be resting
But we our going to dig deeper than just the simple physical rest
Church there must be a time of refresh for your soul
There must be a time when you and I stop things and get away with Jesus
You and I were never created to continuously work
We were created to work and rest
Ministry and doing the work of the Lord can and is exhausting
But ministry and doing what God calls us to do is like this pitcher full of water
If all we do is pour ourselves out then eventually we don’t have any left to pour into other peoples lives
But we tell ourselves that we are doing the work of God and we must do it
And maybe we start to lie to ourselves and say God can’t do it without me
Either way we are empty and we are not pouring anything into anyone else's lives
When that happens bad things happen
These people get upset because they stop receiving and you become bitter and angry because they aren’t pouring into you
Church this is why we go away to be refreshed
We go and get new strength and new energy and we are made fresh
Now I don’t want you to hear this and think you must all be refreshing at the same time
I don’t want you to think this is a sermon that says your don’t have to serve
Because the opposite is true
If you are here and you think I don’t need to be refreshed because my pitcher is still full
There it is still full is because you haven’t been pouring into others lives, you have just been sitting there
Which means it becomes stagnate and nasty water
It does no goo to pour that water into anyones cup because it is nasty
You still need to go and get refreshed
You still need to find time to get away from everything and be filled up by the Spirit
So what does that look like in your life
A few things
If as you sit here you are unable to find time in your busy schedule then you need to start to say no to things
Ministries will not fail if you stop to refresh
People not come to Jesus because you stopped to refresh, rather people will not come to Jesus because you have nothing to pour into their lives
So maybe its you say no to things
Maybe you schedule a trip somewhere or time off from work to just sit at home and refresh
Maybe you turn the phone off
Church for me times of refresh are alone and quite before God
As I said earlier this is still something I struggle to do but something I am working on
Closing
Church if you and I don’t refresh ourselves then we are no good to be used by God
As we move into a time of invitation
The invitation is this
If you are here today and you do not have a personal relationship with Jesus I would invite you to the front
and there will be people who can open up the Bible and show you how you can have a personal relationship with Jesus this morning
Or maybe you are here and you are empty but for some reason you continue to pour yourselves out
Stop
Or maybe you have some stag net water in your pitcher
I would invite you to the front to begin to refresh your soul
I would challenge you today to begin to make time to go away to a secluded place and pray and spend time with God
The altar is open