Is there Rest for the Weary?

Welcome-

Thank all for being here tonight. I love it when we have our student ministries together. I believe it is a great reminder that even in our local community that the Church extends further than the walls of our local churches. It encourages me to see other students worship along side of the students here at Crosspoint.

Introduction

To start off this message I want you to raise your hand if any of the questions I’m about to ask apply to your life.

Who in here is a full-time student?

Who in here is part of a club, organization, or sport team or something other than school-work.

Who in here has a job currently? You have some source of income that you are working for.

Who in here has raised their hands to all 3 questions?

You can put your hands down. I have some more questions to ask.

Who in here gets at least 8.5 hours of sleep on a consistent basis?

Who in here takes at least the majority of one day a week to rest from work or strenuous activity.

Who in here spends at least 1.5 hrs a week reading bible/praying privately (does not include church, youth group, or FCA). That’s roughly 13 min a day. Who does at least that?

I think it is safe to say that there were a lot more hands that went up during the first 3 questions than the second set of questions.

This shows that the majority of us do a really good job at being active but a poor job at resting. It’s not that the things we are doing are bad, they may be good for us and help us grow as a person but they can distract us from living a life that God desires for us.

I want you to know that you are not alone. I can relate if this describes you. For my junior and senior years of high school I was taking duel credit classes, I was an athlete, and I had a year round job. Needless to say I didn’t much sleep those two years. It didn’t stop there. I entered college and continued the same pattern, school, sports, and work. So I can relate. You put me where you are sitting and I would have raised my hand for the first three and wouldn’t have raised my hand for the next three questions.

Throughout those years, when people would ask me how I was doing, I would always respond, “Oh you know, no rest for the weary”. And after living that lifestyle long enough I started to think that I would never have enough rest and started to ask “Is there Rest for the Weary?”. Through this whole time I’m a professing Christian. But most of my prayers went like this, “God, I’m so tired when will I have any rest, when will you allow me to rest?”. I believed that God had saved me from my sin but I thought I had to get through the busy, hard times of life by my own strength. I lived as if there was really no rest for the weary.

No Rest for the Weary

This phrase no rest for the weary is a phrase that means

You must keep persevering no matter how tired or overworked you are. This attitude is very evident in our culture today. If you want to succeed then you must be active because time is money and when you are resting you’re not making any money. I think it’s even in our sinful tendencies to resist rest. How many of you don’t go to sleep until you are 10 out of 10 on the tired scale? Like you might be in bed but you are on your phone or watching TV for like 2 hrs until you physically can’t stay awake.

This tendency is seen even in people who workout and are body builders. The hardest thing for body builders is to have a rest day.

Show funny clip.

This kind of thinking can lead us to believe that everything depends on us. When this takes place we can easily start to trust in ourselves in our own ability rather than taking a step back and realizing that God is in control of my situation. God is in control of my studies, my athletics, my job, my career, my life.

That is the reason behind God commanding humanity to observe a sabbath regularly. So that we can have a day to pause our working and turn our attention to God. In doing so we are trusting God that while we are not working, God will still provide for us and take care for us. We are declaring that He is Lord and in control and we are not.

Deuteronomy 5:12 CSB

Be careful to remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy as the Lord your God has commanded you.

The sabbath is for our good to not only give our bodies rest but to have a day to worship God with other believers.

Now we have to be careful to not have this thinking that it’s only on the Sabbath that we can have rest. While yes the sabbath is meant for us to have physical rest, we can experience spiritual rest at any given moment. It can be easy to have this mentality to live for the weekend and that is when you can have rest. But what if I told you that doesn’t have to be the case. What if we had the opportunity to rest at any given moment.

Read Matthew 11:25-30

Christian Standard Bible Chapter 11

25 At that time Jesus said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and revealed them to infants. 26 Yes, Father, because this was your good pleasure. 27 All things have been entrusted to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son desires to reveal him.

28 “Come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take up my yoke and learn from me, because I am lowly and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Did you catch it?

Re-read v. 28 pause at burdened. Ask do remember the question we asked at the beginning?

Is there rest for weary? Here is the answer re-read v. 28-29.

How Does Jesus Give Us Rest?

When thinking about Sabbath we may be tempted to view it just purely as not working or having physical rest. But the Sabbath is so much more than that. Even though we may be physically resting doesn’t mean that our soul is resting. True rest is when we experience rest in all parts of our humanity (which is body and soul).

So then in order to rest well, we need to first find rest for our soul, we need spiritual rest. This is what Jesus is talking about when He says come to me and I will give you rest.

If you have never experienced rest in your soul, may I suggest it’s because you have been trying to live this life depending on yourself instead of trusting in the God of this universe. There is good news that today can be the day of salvation for you because Jesus has already completed the work that was needed for salvation when He died on the cross for your sins. So come and know Him and find rest.

For the believer that has experience rest in your soul but right now for whatever reason who been spiritually restless. Even though we may have a relationship with Jesus, it’s easy to be distracted and it’s easy to want to go to other things or people to find rest. So confess that to God today. Repent of going to that other thing or person instead of going to God for true rest.

Or maybe your like me, and we think about obtaining rest when a certain project is finished. For example, there are times I fall into this trap. “I just got to get through this week, then I’ll get some rest on the weekend.” “Or I just need to finished this task then I can rest.” Then and only then can I give my attention to God. Let me tell that those are lies straight from Satan.

At any given moment you can choose to have spiritual rest. This is not something you need to wait for the perfect situation or circumstance. The commandment that Paul gives in 1 Thess. 1:17, “Pray Constantly” refers to this. At any given moment you give over your control, your heart, your life to God. And it starts with prayer.

An exercise that I will do when I find my soul being restless is to stop what I’m doing, take a few deep breathes and when I exhale, I pray short one sentence prayers.

Show example here.

As it relates to physical rest, do you have a routine pattern when you rest physically?

If you are always, (notice I said always, because I realize that there are some situations that will make us physically tired for a season) so if you are always feeling tired and overwhelmed with activity could it be that you are not giving your body adequate rest?

If this is you, I have this simple but terrifying solution to handle this. I say simple because it truly is simple but terrifying because (I struggle with this). Ready? Here it is. Say no to something.

In closing I’ll say this, all of our efforts to rest in this life points to the day that we will have eternal rest with God in Heaven when this life is over. This is possible because of the work of Christ on the cross. Because that work is finished, true rest (spirit and body) is made available to us.

Rest by Grey Havens

Gotta rest, feeling low(Re-e-e-est) Gotta rest, feeling low(Re-e-e-est)

Why's it so hard, so hard to slow it down? Why's it so hard, so hard to remember how? Supposed to be a bright spark in the dark, burning low Been going so hard, so hard, I'm burning out

Gotta rest, feeling low(Re-e-e-est) Gotta rest, feeling low(Re-e-e-est) Gotta rest, feeling low(Re-e-e-est) Gotta rest, feeling low(Re-e-e-est)

Living in the world in the clutches of counterfeit crutches Telling me not about as much as you're doing today Crippled card in the clutches of counterfeit crutches Saying better hurry up and better rush it to counter the claim Let's pray

Singing: Father, bless your name, let your kingdom come Give me eyes, help me see and believe your son Give me faith, let me rest in the work He's done Cause the work is done

Let’s Pray

Group Questions

On a scale of 1-10 how tired do you feel during a normal week?

What causes you to feel tired?

What do you tend to do when you feel tired? Do you turn to your phone? Distract yourself with activity? Caffeine? Do you take a nap?

What does it look like to rest in Jesus?

What is one way that you can rest in Jesus this week?