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Rest is the place where we communicate the most trust.
There is never rest when you don’t know where you are going.
I wanted to pick up on the story of my friend and I being lost in the Cascades.
After we realized we were lost we hiked up and down on trails trying to find a familiar spot.
IT got late and we found a place to camp and fell asleep.
But it was not restful.
We woke up before the sun because the anxiety was too much.
We got moving.
And hiked and hiked.
I to date have never walked faster for longer than that.
Anxiety was our fuel, trying to find a place where we could find something familiar, to find our way back.
It was like we couldn’t stop.
We were afraid of stopping
Our ability or inability to rest is a communication.
Rest communicates something.
Our ability to live in rest or live in anxiety is communicates what it is we are trusting.
And we often I think live in the movement of anxiety.
We are afraid of stopping because we are afraid of what may happen if and when we do.
I’m going to talk about an author, theologian and philosopher, JAmes KA Smith a bit in this message.
He writes on desire and love and God.
He has a number of books and in his book on Augustine called On the Road with Augustine he talks about our hearts and how Augustine thought of them:
“[Augustine] describes a heart on the run.
Where we rest is a matter of what and how we love.
Our restlessness is a reflection of what we try to “enjoy” as an end in itself—what we look to as a place to land.
The heart’s hunger is infinite, which is why it will ultimately be disappointed with anything merely finite.”
Rest is one of the greatest gifts God can give because it does not only help us to replenish but it also is a communication.
When we rest, when we are able to stop we proclaim the position that Christ is a sufficient finisher of our work.
Entering into God’s rest is more than just stopping.
It is more than just a break.
It is the understanding the finished work of Christ and that we are not responsible to do what Christ has already done.
Entering into God’s rest is one of the most important things we can learn.
And this passage highlights the primacy of it.
That rest is the primacy of our desires.
- Our usual goal is to achieve or be able to cover as much ground as possible adding exploits to your cv.
- But the achievement here is rest.
The priority is rest
- The economics of the Gospel is one where our end (telos) is defined by Christ and not success
In a different book called Desiring the Kingdom Smith states that we
we are not thinkers primarily but lovers
we chase after that which we love most
our lives are pursuits of the flourishing life.
So the call today is to strive to enter the rest.
We see the nation of israel wanting to enter that rest
Rest communicates that Christ is the complete sufficiency of our work
Rest is a place where we can stop.
Where we surrender.
But it is subversive because it communicates complete trust in Christ.
For the Israelites it is the place where they were to enter.
It was a physical location.
A response to an invitation.
To recognize that God has prepared a place for them.
The true spiritual purpose of rest is to reset our priorities and remind us of the Lordship of Christ.
It is more, we will find, orientation than it is action.
There is no one else that can offer the rest that Christ offers
but we over and over again find that it is not enough
Not even Joshua couldn’t give the Israelites rest.
Joshua’s work was not enough.
so what is enough ?
The writer of Hebrews tells us that Moses wasn’t enough.
And Joshua wasnt’ enough
But the message is not in what they did or didn’t do, their work.
The issue is where they were able to take the group.
They could not take the Israelites to where they fully needed to be.
There is a further rest that only Christ can offer.
Honestly that is helpful to me.
If Moses and Joshua weren’t able to fully provide what their people need then I certaintly can’t.
Zach Eswine, author and pastor, makes an incredible statement about ministry that I come back to quite often
He says “Everything pastors hope will take place in a person's life with God remains outside the pastor's own power.”
- Zach Eswine
That is a helpful reminder to pastors but really anyone working in vocational ministry.
our work will never be sufficient to bring people to where we want them to be.
As my friend and I were hiking we found a ridge and a mountain peak that we were at the day before.
So we headed on a trail we thought would connect.
A few miles into chasing this peak, the trail turned in the opposite direction.
Ied up a hill and at the top of the hill was a sign, more of a small monument.
IT was something so we headed up.
My friend reached it first and I watched him reach it and then cry out in frustration and just slump.
I got to the top and read the sign and it was a marker stating that we had reached the boundry between the us and canada.
We were further out.
Anxiety shifted to despondency.
We thought we had the answers.
We thought we knew where we were.
Everything we were trusting in didn’t work.
It wasn’t enough.
IN fact it had led us the opposite direction.
I wonder how often we feel that in ministry.
All this work and it feels like we have gone backward
Even during this pandemic.
Christmas crowd, then 50% less the week after
We think we have a trace on where we need to be and it turns out to be something else.
How do we find rest when we feel like aliens in our situations?
So if we have been chasing and pursuing and running and it feels like we hit the Canadian border, how do we learn rest?
Christ offers rest as the true communication of trust in Him.
We can only rest when we have found our way, when we know who is watching over us while we sleep.
The issue for the israelites and the promised land wasn’t stopping from work.
It was knowing that the King was sovereign over the promised land.
his Kingship
The issue of rest is not just a release from tension or a means for security.
Rest is tied specifically to the ruler of the land which is offering rest.
True rest depends entirely on who is ruling the land you are inhabiting.
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