The Church of Eleven22 - Stand Alone: Sabbath

Episode Date: January 2, 2022

The sabbath ultimately points us to Jesus.

Well, good morning, church. Happy New Year. I'm pretty proud of myself. I stayed up till 12.30 on New Year's Eve. And then I polar bear plunged on New Year's Day. I don't know if you can call it polar bear plunging when it's 80 degrees. And we all jumped in the water, and then I looked around and everybody was just standing in the water. Nobody hurried out.

And so it wasn't really much of a polar bear plunge. And one thing I didn't get to do was I didn't get to eat my black eye. peas and collard greens and cornbread on New Year, so I'm hoping maybe this afternoon I'll get to do all of that. But how's Christmas for everybody? Good? Yeah? It's kind of fun seeing all of your middle of the mess posts and, but does anybody else feel like they need a vacation from Christmas vacation? I mean, could there not be a more hectic, pressing season than like Thanksgiving to Christmas to New Year's. I mean, it's filled with, it's fun.

It's just filled with parties and shopping and trying to get all these things done. And then everybody's asking you, what are you doing for New Year's Eve? And do you have a New Year's resolution? And it seems like we're stepping into a season that is just go, go, go, do, do. And this morning, what I want to talk about is I want to talk about the Sabbath. Sabbath is, it just means to cease or to rest. And what I would love is for us collectively as a people, as a church, to just be able to step into this new year with a sense of a deep rest and a deep soul breath.

That we couldn't feel like we need to force and we need to make and we need to do. But I would love it if we would walk out after their time together. and that you would have a peace deep down in your soul that everything is necessary in life and faith has been accomplished by Jesus Christ, and you can rest in that. And so that's where we're heading. Now, when I talk about rest and the Sabbath,

I'm not naturally wired. I'm not saying it's a good thing. I'm just saying I get bored by about 10 a.m. On vacation, I need activities about every two hours. my personality like I'm a I'm a D a driver I'm an enneagram 7 if you do that that just means like what's the next big fun activity I'm always thinking about what's next I'm always thinking about what's coming what's heading down the line and I love what I get to do my job my role here at the church because I get to stand up I get to teach the Bible I get to travel well I used to get travel all over the world that maybe that'll happen in this next year

I mean, I actually had the thought and the plan that I was going to rip down our entire fireplace over Christmas break one day because I just didn't have anything to do one afternoon. But do you have a hard time resting? Do you have a hard time stopping to rest? And here's how you might know if you have a hard time resting. Do you go to bed at night and you lay down and then all of a sudden I call it the rotissory of the brain? It just, thoughts start churning and turning. And you're like, go to sleep now. Like if I go to sleep in three, two, one, I can get seven hours.

Or when my head hits the pillow, I fall right to sleep. So maybe you're like me, that's not your problem. But I wake up and it's like my brain has been thinking about something all night long. I wake up mid thought. If that's you, you really might need a rest. Or how about this? Can you not rest or relax until everything is checked off your to-do list? Anybody?

Anybody got that? Come on, who, yeah. All right, I just got to tell you, if that's you, you're never resting. Sorry. Or do you get sick a few times a year and you don't know why? Like, remember when we used to just get the good old-fashioned cold or flu? Remember those good old days? How about this?

You just forget simple things. Like you meet somebody and they tell you their name. And I mean, it's hardly out of their mouth and you can't remember what it is. You might, you just might need a rest. Right? This, you get up in the morning and you fix that first cup of coffee. Now, I am pro morning cup of coffee. But you get that first cup of coffee and then you get another cup of coffee.

And then about 10.30 in the morning, you get another cup of coffee. And then at lunch, you have that sweet tea. and then about 3 o'clock, you get that little bit of a headache, and so you swing through the drive-thru and get another cup of coffee. And then about 9 o'clock at night, you're thinking, uh-oh,

five cups of coffee is too much, and so you've got to have something else to bring you down so you can go to bed at night. You might need a rest if that's you. Or you just, how about this? Do you have to have your phone with you 24-7? Like, do you sleep with it next to your bed thinking, I couldn't possibly put it on the other side of the house? Or how about this?

What would it look like if you turned your phone off for a day? Some of you are like just twitching. You're like, I don't even like you talk. You know, you wake up in the middle of the night just to check and see if anybody has messaged you. You might need a Sabbath if that is you. or somebody asks you, how are you doing, and the first thing that comes out of your mouth is busy. Busy, so busy.

I mean, we wear busyness like it's a badge of honor, don't we? I mean, imagine, I just think, if you walked up to somebody today or tomorrow and you ask them, how are they doing, what's going on, and they're like, absolutely nothing. Nothing? I mean, you'd look at, you would think they are the laziest human being on the planet. because we wear busyness like it somehow validates our self-worth to the world. So to think about this idea of resting in the Sabbath is really hard for us.

Think about why would God, when God designed the Ten Commandments, okay, here's his ten ways this world is going to work best. Number four is keep the Sabbath. Theologians think, talk about number four, the Sabbath being the hinge. The first three are kind of vertical and our vertical relationship with God. And then the other six are about our horizontal relationship. And they talk about the connection between what goes on with us with God and what goes on with other people is our ability to keep the Sabbath. Why?

Like if I was God, which you should be happy, I'm not. But if I was God and I picked the top ten things for the world to run really, really, really well, I don't know that I would honestly pick stop one day a week and don't work as one of them. And what is the Sabbath really? Like, is it a Saturday? Like it is to the Jewish people? Is it Sunday? Is it just going to church? Is it taking a vacation? Is it just taking a day off? Is it just taking a nap? Like, what really is the Sabbath? What does it mean? to practice and keep the Sabbath and rest. And again, I think this is so important

because as we step into this New Year, everything in the culture around us is going to tell us, go! Make a New Year's resolution. Get a list of things you want to accomplish. Drop those pounds. Do this. Do that, do that. And I think as the people of God, what we need to do is before we do any of those things, we need to rest and really know,

know what it is to rest in the work of God. And so if you grab a Bible, go to Matthew chapter 12, and we're going to look at Jesus talking about the Sabbath. And so in Matthew chapter 12 in verse 1, it says this, at that time. Now, at that time is what has just happened. So if you rewind back just a couple verses into Matthew chapter 11, starting in verse 28, here's what it says.

So here's the at that time. Jesus says, come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me.

For I am gentle and lowly in heart and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. So when Matthew starts to say in Matthew chapter 12 verse 1,

And at that time, the at that time is Jesus saying, are you tired? Are you worn out? Like not just physically, but deep down in your soul and your gut is there. Do you just need to rest? And Jesus says, if that's you, come to me. And I will give you the rest that you need. That's the at that time. So at that time, Jesus went through the grain fields on the Sabbath.

His disciples were hungry, and they began to pluck heads of grain and to eat. So here's what's happening. It's a Saturday. They're walking along the side of a road, and there's a huge field, a grain field. And there's no chick-fil-a to eat at. There's no fast food. Apparently they didn't pack a lunch. They're walking along, and they get hungry, and so what they start doing is they start

pulling grain off the head of, like, wheat or whatever it was that was growing. So they pull it off, they shuck it, and they're going. they're eating it as they walk along. So they're walking, they're talking, and they're eating, and I don't know about that. I just thought of this, how amazing would it have been to just walk on the side of the road with Jesus? Like, do you ever think about what they were just talking about? I don't know, that's one. Side row.

Verse two, but when the Pharisees saw it, when the religious leaders of the day saw it, they said to him, look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath. So there's two kind of two Old Testament laws at play here. One set of Old Testament laws said if you owned a field, if you farmed a field, you had to leave the edge of the field unharvested. Or if you're while you're harvesting, you drop something. So let's say you're picking apples and you drop an apple. You're not allowed to pick it up. You have to leave it on the ground. And the point of leaving that strip along the edge of the or not picking up what you dropped

was so that people that didn't have enough, people that didn't have money, people that couldn't afford a lunch, people that were traveling, that were passing through the country or whatever it was, they would have the ability to have something to eat. It was God's way of providing

for people that couldn't provide for themselves. And so that's Jesus and his disciples. They're doing what that law says to do. But then on the other side, there's this other law that says on the Sabbath, you're not supposed to do any work. So the Pharisees come up and go, you're doing work by pulling heads of grain off,

you're harvesting, you're doing work, you shouldn't be doing work. Now, do you ever read the Bible? And you read something, and you think, that sounds contradictory to this. I can't figure out how these two things kind of come together. and that's what seems to be happening here, except if you look down in verse 10,

it says the Pharisees show up to Jesus to accuse him, which means they probably have been watching, they've probably been waiting, and they thought, this is our chance, we're going to get him. So they lay this trap. Now, the Sabbath was a really big deal to the Jewish people. It was such a big deal, in fact, they wrote this thing called the Mishnah.

And the Mishnah was like commentary on each of the commandments. And when it came to the Fourth Commandment, keeping the Sabbath, they had the Mishnah, and it had 39 categories with hundreds of rules and laws within those 39 categories about how to keep the one thing that says don't do anything. See the irony in that? Let me give you hundreds of things to do

to not do one thing, not do anything. And so in verse three, he said to them, have you not read, which is total sarcasm? Because of course the Pharisees have read. Of course they had read all of their Bible. They had read, not only had they read, but here, this is Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, the first five books of the Bible.

Not only had they read these, they had memorized them and probably had memorized other parts of what we call the Old Testament, the Hebrew Scriptures. So not only had they read it, of course they had read it, they'd memorized it.

But you do know, don't you, that you can know things about God and not know God? Like you can read some information about God and not know the heart of God? You can find out some things. You can listen to some things about God and not have a relationship with God. So he said to them, have you not read, now he's going to give two Old Testament examples for why they're not breaking the law of not keeping the Sabbath. Have you not read what David did when he was hungry? So this is from 1st Samuel

chapter 21 and those who were with him how he entered the house of God and ate the bread of the presence which is not lawful for him to eat nor for those who are with him but only for the priests so he's saying don't you remember the story of David David's on the run the king wants to kill him they duck into the temple they don't have anything to eat and there's the priest and out on the altar every day they baked this fresh bread you know imagine you walk in to worship and you just smell that like yeasty, doughy, good, fresh bread smell. And that bread was supposed to remind you of the presence of God. They called it the bread of the presence.

And it was, nobody was supposed to eat that except the priest. And every day they would take it away and they would bring out fresh bread. And David runs in and he's like, we don't have anything to eat. And the priest gives him the bread of the presence. And it says, he says, listen, nowhere in the scripture when David doesn't. that does it say that he actually broke the law of God by doing that? Verse 5, or have you not read in the law how on the Sabbath the priest in the temple profane the Sabbath and are gillus?

He said, the priests, every time they would go into worship, they would do work. They would slaughter animals. It was bloody, hard, heavy, dirty, work and they would do it on the Sabbath and the priest didn't profane the Sabbath. They didn't break the law. Verse six, I tell you. Now, I love it when Jesus just comes right out and says, can I give you the point? Like, I know I've been talking and all that it sort of sounds like code and parables and all this other stuff.

So can I just put the cookies on the bottom shelf and tell you what I mean by everything else I've just been saying? He says, I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. You know what that's something greater than the temple is? Jesus, that's right, himself. He would have gone, something else, something else. Who's got two thumbs? Something else is greater than the temple that is here. The temple signified the presence of God among the people.

It was a sign, it was a symbol of the presence of God. And Jesus shows up. and he says, I am not just a sign or a symbol of the presence of God. I am the very presence of God among you. We just celebrated at Christmas that Jesus is a manual God with us. And so Jesus is claiming to be the very presence of God. He's claiming to be God in the flesh. Then he says, and if you had known what this means,

quote, I desire mercy and not sacrifice. You would have not, you would not have condemned the guiltless. When I was little, when I was in high school, my friends and I would get ready to go out on Friday night. And we'd be getting ready to leave and I'd be walking out of the house and my mom would stop me. And she'd grab me by the arm and she'd say, hey, be home by 12. And I'd go, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. And I'd start to walk. and she grabbed my arm and she'd go, no, no, no, look at me. Look at me. Look at my eyes.

Right here. No, look, look in my eyes. Do you understand the intent of what I'm saying right now? Moms, you know that, right? Because she knew in my brain, I would go 12. Well, 12 can be 12 a.m., 12 p.m. I don't know. If I show back up at 4 a.m., that's before 12 p.m. And you said 12. You didn't specify. So I followed what you said. And my mom would go, you missed the intent of what I was. saying. And that's exactly what Jesus is saying right here. He's saying, you got the letter of the law, guys. You just missed the spirit of the law. And then he quotes Josea 6-6. I desire mercy and not sacrifice. Jesus quotes Josea 6-6 a bunch of times. It's like, it must be his life verse or something. I don't know. But mercy, when he says, I desired mercy, that word mercy is Hesed. It means faith.

or steadfast faithfulness or steadfast love. And so what Jesus is saying when he quotes that is that it's better to follow the intent of the law by faith than the letter of the law by hollow, meaningless, religious ritual. He says, it's, I desired mercy. I desired faithfulness. I desired that you would live and relate

and work to me out of faithfulness and love for me. that you would have a heart for me and all those things you do would flow out of that not sacrifice not just ritualistic actions I desired faithfulness and then he says this

you would if you had known that you would not have condemned the guiltless Jesus is claiming to be guiltless right he at first he says I am the president of God. And now he's saying, I am the perfection of God. He over and over and over and over again continues to say, I am God, I am God, I am God. You'll hear people sometimes object and say,

well, Jesus never claimed to be God. Yes, he did. Yes, he did. Over and over. He just claimed to be greater than the temple, to be the presence of God himself. And he just claimed to be guiltless, perfect. And then he says in verse 8, for the son of man, that's an Old Testament term from Daniel. That's a term used for the Savior of God. For the son of man is Lord, is God of the Sabbath. So he's claiming to be the presence of God, the perfection of God,

the Savior of God, and the God of God. of the Sabbath. Here's the point in all of this. If you hear nothing else from me, the Sabbath ultimately points us to Jesus. Everything that God intended for the Sabbath to do, whatever else it entails, underneath it all,

the point and the purpose of it is that we would fix our eyes on Jesus, that we would practice the Sabbath not to keep hollow ritualistic action. but that we would fix our eyes on Jesus and that we would see and know and love that Jesus is our God and he's with us. I want to talk about a couple things that the Sabbath is. The first one is this.

The Sabbath is for us and about God. The Sabbath is for us and it's about God. If you go back into Mark, Mark chapter 2 and Mark chapter 2 verse 27, Mark is telling the exact same account that Matthew is telling in chapter 12. Except that in Mark, he adds some detail that Matthew leaves out. And one of them is what Jesus says. Jesus says in verse 27, the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. How good is God?

How good is God that he created? a Sabbath for us. How good is God that he would create in the order of the world a day a week that we would stop and rest? He didn't have to do that. He could have just said, you know what, here's how this is going to work.

You are going to live and toil and work 365 days a year. Go, work, grind, do, go. But he says, no. I made for you a rest, a day to rest in me. And so it's for us, it's a gift from God for us, but it's not about us. The Sabbath day is not, it's not about us, it's about God.

In Exodus chapter 20 in verse 8, starting in verse 8, this is the, when he tells, when Moses gets the Ten Commandments, and he says, remember the Sabbath day to keep, keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. We're to keep it holy. We're to set it apart. That's what holy means.

Set it apart. And it is to be a day, a time that is devoted to the Lord. Which means you're already doing it. You're here. Part of it is that we would give a day to worship God to say, God, everything is about you, everything is to you, everything is through you. That we would have a day that we would stop and we would pause and we would say, God, the world doesn't revolve around me. It revolves around you. You are the thing that holds it up. You are the

thing that keeps it going. You are the one that makes everything work. Not me, you. It's for us. it's just not about us and because it is it's for us enjoy it enjoy it's we should enjoy the Sabbath it should be the greatest day of the week it should be you know Sunday fun day I remember when Gavin was little Gavin he's in college now that's like it's hard for me to even get that out but when he was little I mean little guy preschool we were planting a church and we did did set up and tear down. We met it in a school. So if you've never done that, you should do that sometime. It's awesome. And by awesome, I mean exhausting. So we'd roll up, set it up at five in the

morning, we'd have church, then we'd tear it all down, and it'd be about 1 o'clock in the afternoon. We'd be going home. And Gavin would go home with me. Sophie and Kristen would go home, and Gavin would come home with me, and every day on the way home from church on Sunday, we would stop into the gate gas station, and I would go, Gavin, get whatever you want. And he looked at the first time he looked at me, he's like, what? I'm like, yeah, give whatever you want. He's like, can I get a slurpy? Yeah, get the biggest one.

Get a giant, and he'd go over there, and he'd get like Mystic Mountain blueberry, right? You know, just the one with the most blue dyeing, and he'd get a big giant candy bar, and we'd get in the car, and the ride from the gas station to our house was not that far. It was a couple minutes. And I'd be like, buddy, you've got to finish that before we get home. And you got to leave that trash in the car. Like, I know mom tells you to never leave trash. You've got to leave that trash in the car.

And so he'd just devour it. He'd walk in the house, and Kristen would look at him. She'd be like, how it was tear down? And he'd be like, it was great. We worked so hard. And his face would just be blue, and there'd be chocolate all over him. And she'd be like, oh, that's so good. And he'd think he was, like, pulling one over on her.

But he would beg. Because Sunday to him became, like, the greatest day. I mean, imagine if we raised our kids. to think, to believe that Sunday, the day of resting in God was the greatest day. They found their deep joy in it. And so it is for us and about God. The Sabbath is also for rest and refreshment. In Exodus chapter 23, starting in verse 12, it says this,

six days you shall do your work. But on the seventh day, you shall rest. that your ox and your donkey may have rest, and the son of your servant woman and the alien may be refreshed. Listen, order to rest, you have to rest from something. So here's a little quiz. What do you have to rest from? Work.

You have to do work. This commandment to rest assumes that we work, that we work and we work hard. we were created to steward this world and to work and then to rest in it and then it says that we're to be refreshed we rest from our work and then we are also refreshed for our work if you go back go to Genesis chapter one, the opening chapter of the Bible, God for six days, he creates. And then on the seventh day, God rested. So God works and works and works and works and works and works. And then he stops. Now, in the sixth day, God creates humanity. Adam and Eve, you and me. Now think about this.

Adam and Eve are created on the sixth day. When they open their eyes on the first, full day of their life on the seventh day, what is the first thing they do? They rest. Adam and Eve haven't done anything yet. They were created, which means this. You and I were designed, we were created to work from rest, that we were created

to first rest in the finished work of God and then go to work. You know that your brain repairs itself while you sleep? You need to stop. You and I need to go to bed. We need to go to sleep for our brain to repair itself. There's a great book that I read a few years called The Last Child in the Woods. And it talks about how we sort of lost the art of kicking our kids out of the house

and telling them to come back when the street lights come on. and just letting them run off into the woods. And do you remember that? You remember some of you, you remember, you go out and play with your friends, and you'd sit around after a while, and you'd be like, what do you want to do? And they're like, I don't know, what do you want to do?

I don't know, what do you want to do? I don't know, I'm bored. What do you want to do? And then eventually, you would concoct some scheme for some great fun. And scientists have discovered that if you want to be productive, if you want to be creative,

your brain actually needs boredom. it needs complete downtime in order for you to do your greatest work. Think about that. Like God didn't know that for us to do what he created us to do, we need to just rest in him. And so this afternoon, here's what you need to do. Go find a golf tournament and turn it on. Is there anything better than a Sunday afternoon nap?

Just, and now on T1. Just out. Or wait until February when NASCAR comes back. There's nothing like a Sunday afternoon on the couch NASCAR race. Just whew! That white noise just humming around. And just lay down and like every once in a while just kind of open an eye and be like, yep, world's still going.

And go right back to sleep. You and I, God gave us the Sabbath to be rested and to refresh. And the Sabbath is a rhythm of life rooted in the created order. When God gives the Ten Commandments for the first time in Exodus chapter 20, he says this, for in six days the Lord made the heaven and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made, made it holy.

In this version of the Ten Commandments, in the first telling of the Ten Commandments, the reason why we practice the Sabbath is because God created the world to work that way. There's so much talk about how we need to live balanced lives. Balance is not a biblical virtue. Balance is like yin and yang, Taoism, Taoism, Eastern philosophy. what the scripture teaches us is a rhythm of life. 6-1, 6-1, work, rest, go stop, press, cease. Look at Jesus' life.

Jesus didn't live a balanced life. Jesus would teach and preach and heal, and then he would pull away and be quiet. And then he would re-engage, and then he would pull away, and he would stop. You look at the Apostle Paul. The Apostle Paul was like, I press on. And then he would stop and practice the Sabbath.

That that's the rhythm we were meant to, not balance but rhythm. I read this other book about a year or so ago by a guy named John Mark Homer, and the book's called The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry. And people would come up to me and they'd be like, hey, I know you're so busy, but do you think we could grab lunch? And I started hearing that a few times, like, hey, I know you must be so busy. And I started thinking, what is it, like, what is it in me that is causing everybody else to think, I'm so busy, I don't have time for a relationship with him?

What is it that I'm either doing or I'm portraying that says, I don't have time to eat a taco? And I went on a mission to really to ruthlessly eliminate hurry because Jesus, Jesus said, I came that you might have life and life to the fullest, not life to the busiest. Have a full life, just don't have a busy life. And rhythm is really, it is this bold declaration of faith. It really is. That when you say, I believe that God can do in six days plus one day of nothing, more than I can do in seven days without any rest, that's an incredible declaration of faith

that you would trust God enough to say I don't have to be the one to keep all of the plates spinning so the Sabbath is a rhythm of life rooted in the creative order and Sabbath is remembering that God saved and set you free that song prone to wander Lord I feel it prone to leave the God I love we constantly suffer from gospel amnesia. We are prone to forget the good work of Jesus Christ.

We just are. And if you read in Deuteronomy chapter 5, which is the second time the Ten Commandments are given, Deuteronomy just means second telling. And so the people of Israel are about to go into the promised land. And so Moses looks at me, he's like, okay, now listen, You remember when your mom would send you over her friend's house and she would say, remember how I told you to say please and thank you and yes ma'am and no ma'am? Do that. That's a second telling. That's a Deutero telling of the law in your house. So Moses is going to give it to him again. He's going to, we're about to go in the promised land. Let me remind you of these Ten Commandments. He says, you shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt. And the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore, the Lord, the Lord, your God, brought you outstretched arm. Therefore, the Lord. Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.

In the first telling, Sabbath is rooted in creation. In the second telling, Sabbath is rooted in salvation. He's saying, listen, Sabbath is my way of reminding you that I have saved you, that I have delivered you, that I have set you free. What would it look like to take a day a week and just remember how God saved us. Do you remember how God saved you?

I was 15 years old, had no thoughts about God, and God just took a two by four to my head at a Young Life camp one summer. I mean, woke my dead heart up. What would it look like if we sat around and we remembered how God saved us? And I know for some of us, you've got a dramatic story like Paul blinded on the road and God just smacked you. And there's others of us where you can't remember how God saved you.

Listen, the prayer that Kristen and I have prayed for our kids is that they would have the most boring testimony ever. That nobody would ever invite them to have a video. Because they would just be like, so tell us your story. And they're like, well, we grew up hearing about Jesus and we've loved him for as long as we can remember. but here's the point your salvation doesn't rest on your cataclysmic story your salvation rests on the life

death resurrection of Jesus your salvation rests on the Holy Spirit breathing life into you and whether you can remember the second that happened or it seems like that breath was breathed out real slow over a long period of time that's not the point the point is that Jesus saved you

and what would it look like if we sat around and told that story and retold the story and told the story of God's goodness at every point how he healed us, how he freed us from addiction, how he rescued marriages, how he did all sorts, he brought a prodigal child home, and then we retell it over and over and over again. And number five, the Sabbath is a countercultural, revolutionary way to live in this world. as slaves under Pharaoh the people of Israel they didn't get a day off their value and their worth was work and grind and produce and do and achieve and build and when God sets them free he says listen keep the Sabbath because this thing is about the most revolutionary declaration to the world that you don't bow down to the empire

higher anymore. That your value and your worth is not what you achieve and not what you do and what you build. Look at me. Your value, my value, is not in what we do. Your value and my value is not in all that we achieve. It is in what God has done. Your value and your worth is in what Jesus has achieved in his perfect life, perfect death, perfect resurrection, and his rule and his reign right now. Your value and your worth is being caught up in Jesus. Your value and your worth is in resting in what Jesus says. And one of the most bold witnesses you may have is that you would just stop and rest. Like, don't answer your phone on vacation.

Just pull your phone away for a day. And when somebody says, why didn't you text me back or why didn't you answer, you can just go, well, it's because I'm not a slave to this thing. My value and my worth is not in how much I produce. My value, my worth is in other things. It might be one of the most revolutionary, countercultural things you and I ever do.

It might be one of the most bold witnesses we ever make. I'm telling you, if you stop and you rest and you practice the Sabbath, people will look at you like you are the strangest human being on the planet. And they're going to ask you why. And it's a setup. It is a perfect setup for you to tell them about God. and then lastly the Sabbath is salvation that is finally and fully secured for us in Jesus in Hebrews chapter four starting in verse two it says this four because of for the good news that's the word

gospel for the good news the gospel came to us just as it did to them so he's he's saying to us who live on the other side of Jesus, the gospel is coming to us just as it did to these people that lived a long, long, long, long time ago that you read about way back here in your Bible. And then in verse 9 it says, so then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For whoever has entered in God's rest has also rested from his works as God did from his. God, the good news of the gospel is that God gives you a deep soul rest. That your relationship with Him is not dependent upon how much you read the Bible and how hard you pray and how flowery your prayers sound, whatever, your religious attendance

that service, it's not dependent on that. The good news of the gospel is it's all been accomplished by Jesus so you can rest in it. and you'll produce a thing that you'll want to do all those other things, but it'll come from a place of rest. Now, do you remember where all of this started? Rewind 40 minutes ago. Matthew chapter 11, verse 28, this is what Jesus said. The at that time, he says, come to me. the invitation of Jesus to find rest Listen, vacations are great, days off are great, walks on the beach are awesome,

the invitation for real rest is to come to Jesus. Come to me. All, all. All. Like if you've got breath in your lungs, here's the invitation, come to me. all who labor and are heavy laden. He's not just talking about you being tired

from a long day's work. He's talking about, are you tired of trying to impress everybody else? Are you tired of trying to perform for God to pretend that all the things that happened in your life didn't really happen so that everybody else and God will somehow accept you? That's a heavy burden.

That is labor to walk around pretending and performing all the time. And Jesus says, no, come to me. All of you who have tried to pretend and perform your way into this thing. And he says, I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me. For I am gentle and lowly in heart. And you will find rest for your soul. souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. That yoke that he's talking about,

a yoke was a thing that held and pulled the weight of work. That when Jesus hung on the cross, he took the yoke of the heaviest burden and the heaviest work, and he paid the price that you and I don't have to pay and work to cover our sins. He took his perfect life. He didn't have to pay for his own sins. And he took that and he did all the work on the cross. He hung on that yoke. And when he emptied sin of its power and its penalty, he offers a light and easy yoke. The offer of salvation is that you get to rest in the work of Jesus Christ. You know, the last words of Buddha were this, strive unceasingly. Do you know what the last words of Jesus were? It is finished. You have a choice. You can spend the rest of your life striving unceasingly, bearing a weight and a burden that is

heavy and you will never be able to accomplish the work of having a right relationship with God and being at peace and rest deep in your soul or you can take Jesus up on his offer that he has finished every work that you need to be with him and so listen for some of us what that means today is that you need to repent of your unceasing striving. You need to repent of believing that your world rests on you. You need to repent of trying to perform and pretend for everybody else and for God and believing that you can't stop and that your worth is in what you produce. And you need to come and you need to repent and you need to receive again the good gift of God's rest. And then for some of us,

you've never felt that rest. And somewhere in your soul right now, you're thinking, that's it, that's what I want. And I would say, come to Jesus. Right now, for the first time, come to Jesus. He will give you the rest you are looking for. Rest for your soul. So would you bow your heads?

And right now, if you've been striving unceasingly, as a follower of Jesus, you've still been striving. And you just need to be reminded to stop and you need to repent of your striving. Would you raise your hand right now? Wherever it is, come on, weighs them up high. Look, come on.

The rest of you are lying. Put them down. And if for the first time right now, you want to enter into the soul rest that Jesus offers in the finished work of the cross, would you raise your hand right now, raise them up high, and start this new year resting for the first time in the finished work of Jesus. Come on way up. Be bold. Heavenly Father, thank you for the finished work in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Thank you for the gift of resting in you. And so, Lord, as we worship right now, may we come to the all,

of your son, Jesus Christ, who is the lamb that was slain before the foundations of the world. And may we find a deep, deep rest in you. And Lord, would you be honored? Would you be glorified? Would there be a smile on your face that we find everything we need in you? Ultimately, our rest in you. And we pray it in Jesus' name. Amen. Would you stand and let's worship together? Let's respond. Come down, get down, kneel, pray, repent, rest in the Lord. And let's worship him as we sing together.