GET A REST
GET A REST
A Message on Being Renewed By God
Text: Matthew 11:28-30
Key Idea: Relentless work without rest and renewal is disobedient to God.
Takeaway: Learn to live yoked to God
by daily living according to His will, learning to rest,
and making a place for true rest and renewal in your lives.
I read something very interesting in Genesis 2
“By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he resteda from all his work. And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.” - Genesis 2:2-3
Then in Exodus we read a commandment from God:
“Six days do your work, but on the seventh day do not work, so that your ox and your donkey may rest and the slave born in your household, and the alien as well, may be refreshed.” – Exodus 20:8
LET ME ASK YOU A QUESTION … ARE YOU ANY OF THESE PEOPLE?
OR IS THIS YOU?
In that sense, this is not the way most of us would choose to live,
But in reality, we do choose
We can live by the patterns and purposes of God
Or we can choose to live our way alone.
Note the pattern in the two texts
- God created his work in six days, but he rested the seventh from all his work.
- But instead of simply treating the seventh as a throwaway,
he blessed that day making it holy and then God rested.
Then in the next text he gives us instruction for our seventh day
Do not work nor make anyone work for you, rest that you may be refreshed.
A young man approached the foreman of a logging crew and asked for a job. “That depends,” replied the foreman. “let’s see you fell this tree.” The young man stepped forward and skillfully felled a great tree. Impressed, the foreman said, “Start Monday.”
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday rolled by, and by Thursday afternoon the foreman approached the young man and said, “You can pick up your paycheck on the way out today.”
Startled the young man replied, “I though you paid on Friday.” “Normally we do,” answered the foreman, “but we’re letting you go today because you have fallen behind. Our daily felling charts show that you dropped from first place on Monday to last on Wednesday.”
“But I’m a hard worker,” the young man objected. “ I arrive first, leave last, and even have worked through my coffee breaks!”
The foreman, sensing the boy’s integrity thought for a minute and then asked, “Have you been sharpening you axe?”
The young man replied, “I’ve been working too hard to take the time.”
Sometimes we get so busy we forget to sharpen our axe – the result is that we lose the ability to work.
YOKE YOUR LIFE TO GOD
This is the yoke Jesus would have been speaking of.
It was used by two oxen or beasts of burden for a task.
But notice – TWO PARTS to the yoke.
In one part is you, but in the other is Jesus.
LEARN TO REST
We tend to think of rest as inactivity – sleeping or vegging out,
But rest in the Bible has a deeper, richer meaning:
Dictionary, consistent with the Bible, tells us …
Rest is freedom from work, toil, strain or activity-anxiety or disturbance
Antonyms of rest include – restlessness, strain, toil, drudge, grind
Rest is cessation of work or movement
in order to relax or recover strength.
To rest is to dispose oneself at ease in order to relieve or avoid fatigue (spiritual “burnout”)
In poetry, a rest describes a short pause of the voice in reading
In the Bible rest means primarily to cease from one’s work
with the idea of release from anxiety, worry and insecurity.
This rest is offered to all and is freely available by grace through personal faith in Jesus Christ (Mt 11:28, 29, 30).
Only in Christ is our soul fully and truly at rest.
In this context rest means to be done with self-effort
as far as salvation is concerned.
It means the end of trying to please God by our feeble, fleshly works.
In short, God’s unmerited perfect rest is a rest in free grace which can only be entered into or appropriated by faith.
John MacArthur adds that…
Rest also means freedom from whatever worries or disturbs you.
Some people cannot rest mentally and emotionally
because they are so easily annoyed.
Every little nuisance upsets them and they always feel hassled.
Rest does not mean freedom from all nuisances and hassles;
it means freedom from being so easily bothered by them
Rest means to be inwardly quiet, composed, peaceful.
To enter God’s rest means to be at peace with God (Ro 5:1)
to possess the perfect peace He gives (Is 26:3).
It means to be free from guilt and even unnecessary feelings of guilt.
It means freedom from worry about sin, because sin is forgiven.
God’s rest is the end of legalistic works and the experience of peace in the total forgiveness of God.
Rest involves remaining confident, keeping trust.
In other words, to rest in something or someone means to maintain our confidence in it or him.
To enter God’s rest, therefore, means to enjoy the perfect, unshakeable confidence of salvation in our Lord. We have no more reason to fear.
We have absolute trust and confidence in God’s power and care.
Rest also means to lean.
To enter into God’s rest means that for the remainder of our lives
and for all eternity we can lean on God.
We can be sure that He will never fail to support us.
In the new relationship with God, we can depend on Him for everything and in everything-for support, for health, for strength, for all we need.
It is a relationship in which we are confident and secure that we have committed our life to God and that He holds it in perfect, eternal love.
It is a relationship that involves being settled and fixed.
No more floating around.
We know whom we have believed and we stand in Him. (MacArthur, John: Hebrews. Moody Press)
Relation of rest to refreshment: Rest was built into the natural rhythms of life by the Creator,
Who Himself rested on the seventh day of creation (Ge 2:1, 2, 3).
The rest of God includes the crucial element of refreshment.
MAKE A PLACE FOR TRUE REST AND RENEWAL
I am starting vacation now in just a little over 60 hours
I will be unavailable to all of the persons who are part of my life for 11 days
I have not been on vacation since Thanksgiving – more than 5 months
To be honest I am counting down the hours
Ready for it … taking me longer to do things
Getting more and more feisty
Trying to reduce my schedule to the least common denominator
But more importantly, we should not need to go on
a vacation to get some rest
Takeaway: Learn to live yoked to God
by daily living according to His will, learning to rest,
and making a place for true rest and renewal in your lives.
“We are not human doings, we are human beings.”
Dr. Stephen L Dunn
Church of God of Landisville
May 22, 2011
