1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:05,540 Hey, how many television stations did you have? 2 00:00:05,540 --> 00:00:06,540 Six? 3 00:00:06,540 --> 00:00:07,540 Two? 4 00:00:07,540 --> 00:00:12,300 You're from Canada, they don't have TV in Canada. 5 00:00:12,300 --> 00:00:17,340 I have six or seven. 6 00:00:17,340 --> 00:00:18,340 You had six or seven? 7 00:00:18,340 --> 00:00:19,340 You were in the prairies, okay. 8 00:00:19,340 --> 00:00:23,780 All right, did they have Little House on the Prairie on TV in the prairie? 9 00:00:23,780 --> 00:00:24,780 No. 10 00:00:24,780 --> 00:00:25,780 No? 11 00:00:25,780 --> 00:00:26,780 All right. 12 00:00:26,780 --> 00:00:27,780 Who else? 13 00:00:27,780 --> 00:00:28,780 How many stations did you have? 14 00:00:28,780 --> 00:00:30,460 Five? 15 00:00:30,460 --> 00:00:31,460 Twenty-four? 16 00:00:31,460 --> 00:00:34,060 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 17 00:00:34,060 --> 00:00:39,740 Well, you were, you were, you know, you're a millennial, so you know, like I think, something 18 00:00:39,740 --> 00:00:43,220 interesting about our generations is that the older you are, the chances are the fewer 19 00:00:43,220 --> 00:00:45,100 stations you had. 20 00:00:45,100 --> 00:00:50,660 And if you are younger and you had a few stations, your family either budgeted really well and 21 00:00:50,660 --> 00:00:54,760 chose that this just isn't money we're going to waste on lots of stations, or maybe you 22 00:00:54,760 --> 00:00:57,600 were, you know, lower income, and you were like it just wasn't something that was available 23 00:00:57,600 --> 00:00:58,780 to you. 24 00:00:58,780 --> 00:01:01,060 And I don't know if I know for sure. 25 00:01:01,060 --> 00:01:03,060 I'd have to ask my dad how many we actually had. 26 00:01:03,060 --> 00:01:05,700 I feel like we had like 18-ish. 27 00:01:05,700 --> 00:01:09,740 I mean, sometimes we'd have like the basic cable and sometimes we wouldn't. 28 00:01:09,740 --> 00:01:13,780 Who remembers, if you're from here locally, who remembers, I think it was Channel 2, HBO 29 00:01:13,780 --> 00:01:16,260 would have like a one month free every now and again. 30 00:01:16,260 --> 00:01:19,100 Yeah, or we can, and they have Fraggle Rock on HBO. 31 00:01:19,100 --> 00:01:22,020 And it'd be like, oh my gosh, we get to watch Fraggle Rock. 32 00:01:22,020 --> 00:01:23,860 This is awesome. 33 00:01:23,860 --> 00:01:26,820 I really don't actually remember how many we had. 34 00:01:26,820 --> 00:01:29,020 And but I do remember this. 35 00:01:29,020 --> 00:01:31,320 Some stations, tell me if this is true. 36 00:01:31,320 --> 00:01:32,440 Maybe I'm remembering it wrong. 37 00:01:32,440 --> 00:01:35,060 Some stations would just go black at a certain time of the night. 38 00:01:35,060 --> 00:01:36,060 Right? 39 00:01:36,060 --> 00:01:37,060 They would just stop. 40 00:01:37,060 --> 00:01:41,000 And I don't know if that's because they just didn't have advertisers to pay for it or they 41 00:01:41,000 --> 00:01:44,300 just had run out of interesting things to show. 42 00:01:44,300 --> 00:01:47,220 And I don't know if they still do that now. 43 00:01:47,220 --> 00:01:52,700 I honestly would have no idea because I don't watch anything on regular television anymore. 44 00:01:52,700 --> 00:01:54,540 Anyone watch regular television? 45 00:01:54,540 --> 00:01:57,820 A handful of us watch regular television. 46 00:01:57,820 --> 00:02:01,500 But I would have no idea because everything that I watch, I stream. 47 00:02:01,500 --> 00:02:02,900 Right? 48 00:02:02,900 --> 00:02:07,220 Most of us probably stream something in one way or another. 49 00:02:07,220 --> 00:02:10,660 Everything is just always on. 50 00:02:10,660 --> 00:02:12,900 It's just always on. 51 00:02:12,900 --> 00:02:16,920 There's no such thing as missing something anymore. 52 00:02:16,920 --> 00:02:18,660 You can pause and come back. 53 00:02:18,660 --> 00:02:20,900 I remind my kids of that sometimes. 54 00:02:20,900 --> 00:02:23,200 When I ask them to do something, they're like, but I'm watching. 55 00:02:23,200 --> 00:02:24,540 You can pause it. 56 00:02:24,540 --> 00:02:26,180 You can pause and come back to it. 57 00:02:26,180 --> 00:02:27,580 And you can do that as many times as you want. 58 00:02:27,580 --> 00:02:34,220 You don't have to time your bathroom breaks with the commercial breaks of the show that 59 00:02:34,220 --> 00:02:35,460 you're watching. 60 00:02:35,460 --> 00:02:40,180 Some of my friends over here have no idea what that's about. 61 00:02:40,180 --> 00:02:43,980 But we grew up in an era, man, where if you wanted to see, actually NBC called their Thursday 62 00:02:43,980 --> 00:02:46,460 night stuff must see TV. 63 00:02:46,460 --> 00:02:50,140 Because once it showed, you had to wait forever for a rerun of something. 64 00:02:50,140 --> 00:02:52,460 It wasn't online somewhere. 65 00:02:52,460 --> 00:02:57,340 And it took them years before they would ever even put anything out in any other format. 66 00:02:57,340 --> 00:03:02,620 Nowadays, you don't even have to make sure that the DVR is programmed. 67 00:03:02,620 --> 00:03:07,020 And for the youngins, a DVR is a digital video recorder. 68 00:03:07,020 --> 00:03:09,860 The most popular version was called a TiVo. 69 00:03:09,860 --> 00:03:16,540 And you could use it to kind of like a VCR to record television onto a hard drive. 70 00:03:16,540 --> 00:03:23,820 A VCR was a machine that would record TV onto a big cassette tape. 71 00:03:23,820 --> 00:03:26,860 A cassette tape? 72 00:03:26,860 --> 00:03:31,140 Think of all of the technology that we have run through and created just so that we wouldn't 73 00:03:31,140 --> 00:03:38,980 miss an episode of Night Court. 74 00:03:38,980 --> 00:03:40,060 I don't know what comes next. 75 00:03:40,060 --> 00:03:45,980 I don't know what comes after streaming because it seems like the pinnacle of it, the most 76 00:03:45,980 --> 00:03:51,300 on demand unless it's streaming directly to our brains. 77 00:03:51,300 --> 00:03:58,660 Because now we can be under our covers in our bed in a place of rest in doom scroll 78 00:03:58,660 --> 00:03:59,700 for hours. 79 00:03:59,700 --> 00:04:05,060 We can binge watch an entire season of Golden Girls. 80 00:04:05,060 --> 00:04:10,780 Our heads are on our pillows, but our brains are in the cloud. 81 00:04:10,780 --> 00:04:15,940 And I don't think that we do this because we crave entertainment. 82 00:04:15,940 --> 00:04:20,740 I think it's because we just don't know how to stop. 83 00:04:20,740 --> 00:04:30,380 Physically, mentally, emotionally, fiscally, rest comes hard to us humans. 84 00:04:30,380 --> 00:04:37,500 For example, in the US, in a country that has no national mandatory or guaranteed paid 85 00:04:37,500 --> 00:04:44,620 vacation guidelines, half of us don't use all the vacation days that we have earned. 86 00:04:44,620 --> 00:04:49,380 A third of us don't use any of them. 87 00:04:49,380 --> 00:04:54,820 We don't know how to stop, how to rest. 88 00:04:54,820 --> 00:05:00,620 And I think that Christians, Jesus followers, are meant to lead the way in rest. 89 00:05:00,620 --> 00:05:07,500 I think the first page of discipleship is rest because rest isn't what we earn from 90 00:05:07,500 --> 00:05:08,900 Jesus. 91 00:05:08,900 --> 00:05:13,980 It is a gift and an invitation that we receive through Jesus. 92 00:05:13,980 --> 00:05:19,420 Rest has to come first because life flows from rest. 93 00:05:19,420 --> 00:05:25,900 Work is a byproduct or product of rest and life. 94 00:05:25,900 --> 00:05:31,040 So let's actually look at some scriptures because we don't want to build on the sand 95 00:05:31,040 --> 00:05:32,900 of Greg's opinions. 96 00:05:32,900 --> 00:05:38,980 We want to see what Jesus said and how God has been weaving rest through the story for 97 00:05:38,980 --> 00:05:39,980 thousands of years. 98 00:05:39,980 --> 00:05:44,420 Now, similar to last week, instead of standing, I'm actually going to be referencing a lot 99 00:05:44,420 --> 00:05:45,420 of scriptures throughout. 100 00:05:45,420 --> 00:05:47,360 And so I'm going to go ahead and pray. 101 00:05:47,360 --> 00:05:50,420 But if you want to have your Bibles ready for different references, I'll tell you what 102 00:05:50,420 --> 00:05:51,420 they are throughout. 103 00:05:51,420 --> 00:05:54,060 All right, let's pray. 104 00:05:54,060 --> 00:06:00,820 God of every tribe, every tongue, every color, every nation, God of rest, we pray that you 105 00:06:00,820 --> 00:06:05,060 would show us something true about you today. 106 00:06:05,060 --> 00:06:09,740 Whatever you have for us to learn, I pray that it would stick, that it would become 107 00:06:09,740 --> 00:06:15,740 a part of the framework of our faith, that we would become more like your son, Jesus. 108 00:06:15,740 --> 00:06:16,740 Amen. 109 00:06:16,740 --> 00:06:20,980 All right, so if you have your Bible and you want to turn there, I'm actually going to 110 00:06:20,980 --> 00:06:23,340 go all the way back to the beginning, okay? 111 00:06:23,340 --> 00:06:25,860 I'll go back to Genesis, Genesis 1. 112 00:06:25,860 --> 00:06:27,860 I'm going to start in verse 26. 113 00:06:27,860 --> 00:06:34,420 It says this, then God said, let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness. 114 00:06:34,420 --> 00:06:38,940 And verse 27, so God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God, he created 115 00:06:38,940 --> 00:06:40,860 them, male and female, he created them. 116 00:06:40,860 --> 00:06:45,460 Verse 28, God blessed them and said to them, be fruitful and increase in number, fill the 117 00:06:45,460 --> 00:06:48,460 earth and subdue it. 118 00:06:48,460 --> 00:06:53,260 Rule over the fish and the sea and the birds and the sky and over every living creature 119 00:06:53,260 --> 00:06:55,460 that moves on the ground. 120 00:06:55,460 --> 00:07:00,540 Verse 31, God saw all that he had made and it was very good. 121 00:07:00,540 --> 00:07:04,780 And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. 122 00:07:04,780 --> 00:07:11,580 Genesis 2 verse 1, thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array. 123 00:07:11,580 --> 00:07:15,120 By the seventh day, God finished the work he had been doing. 124 00:07:15,120 --> 00:07:19,020 So on the seventh day, he rested from all his work. 125 00:07:19,020 --> 00:07:22,100 Okay, so let's review. 126 00:07:22,100 --> 00:07:24,540 This describes humans being created on which day? 127 00:07:24,540 --> 00:07:26,740 You can say it out loud. 128 00:07:26,740 --> 00:07:28,740 Day six. 129 00:07:28,740 --> 00:07:29,980 Yeah. 130 00:07:29,980 --> 00:07:33,140 And on day six, they're even given purpose. 131 00:07:33,140 --> 00:07:34,620 They're given a job to do, right? 132 00:07:34,620 --> 00:07:36,220 You heard that? 133 00:07:36,220 --> 00:07:41,380 Be fruitful, multiply, rule over the fish and animals. 134 00:07:41,380 --> 00:07:44,620 But then something fascinating happens. 135 00:07:44,620 --> 00:07:47,740 It says that the day ends. 136 00:07:47,740 --> 00:07:53,220 Gives them this is what you're going to do and then the day ends. 137 00:07:53,220 --> 00:07:57,100 In my mind, I don't know about you, but all the things that he gave them were not one-day 138 00:07:57,100 --> 00:07:58,100 jobs. 139 00:07:58,100 --> 00:07:59,100 Yeah. 140 00:07:59,100 --> 00:08:05,140 It's also something curious about when the day ends. 141 00:08:05,140 --> 00:08:08,420 Let me read that again with your ears open. 142 00:08:08,420 --> 00:08:09,420 Ready? 143 00:08:09,420 --> 00:08:11,980 God saw all that had been made and it was very good. 144 00:08:11,980 --> 00:08:18,740 And there was evening and there was morning the sixth day. 145 00:08:18,740 --> 00:08:22,380 Says there was evening and there was morning on the sixth day. 146 00:08:22,380 --> 00:08:23,380 What sticks out? 147 00:08:23,380 --> 00:08:24,380 Anything? 148 00:08:24,380 --> 00:08:25,940 You don't have to say it out loud, but be thinking about it. 149 00:08:25,940 --> 00:08:30,580 It's okay if you have no idea what I'm talking about because we live in 2022 and most of 150 00:08:30,580 --> 00:08:36,500 us, if not all of us, we don't tend to think through things with the Hebrew lens. 151 00:08:36,500 --> 00:08:37,620 Okay? 152 00:08:37,620 --> 00:08:39,500 We're reading from what's called the Hebrew Bible. 153 00:08:39,500 --> 00:08:44,700 We're reading from what we call, would call the Old Testament, the Older Testament. 154 00:08:44,700 --> 00:08:49,280 But everything written in that part of the Bible is written through a Hebrew lens. 155 00:08:49,280 --> 00:08:56,580 It says that the day begins in the evening and ends after there was morning of the day. 156 00:08:56,580 --> 00:09:00,560 See, we think of a day beginning in the morning, right? 157 00:09:00,560 --> 00:09:01,700 We think, oh, the alarm went off. 158 00:09:01,700 --> 00:09:03,880 My day has begun. 159 00:09:03,880 --> 00:09:08,960 We think of the sun has come up and so this is something new and a day ending at night 160 00:09:08,960 --> 00:09:11,060 when we go to bed. 161 00:09:11,060 --> 00:09:14,860 But tradition tells us the Hebrew day doesn't begin when the sun comes up. 162 00:09:14,860 --> 00:09:21,420 A new day begins in the evening when the sun has gone down. 163 00:09:21,420 --> 00:09:23,220 Stay with me, okay? 164 00:09:23,220 --> 00:09:24,740 Stay with me. 165 00:09:24,740 --> 00:09:31,820 God creates them, gives them a glimpse of their future, does that on day six. 166 00:09:31,820 --> 00:09:36,580 Just as they were surely standing in awe, try to put yourself in their shoes. 167 00:09:36,580 --> 00:09:45,100 You are newly created, you're brand new, and you have this God that's going, oh, hey, check 168 00:09:45,100 --> 00:09:47,380 out all this cool stuff that I made. 169 00:09:47,380 --> 00:09:49,100 Check out what I'm going to have you do. 170 00:09:49,100 --> 00:09:53,540 Look what you're going to get to do. 171 00:09:53,540 --> 00:09:57,620 Just as they're surely standing in awe, amped up with possibility. 172 00:09:57,620 --> 00:10:05,340 I'm going to switch mics because my headset mic's going dead. 173 00:10:05,340 --> 00:10:08,740 And they're seeing all this for the first time, right? 174 00:10:08,740 --> 00:10:13,940 Just then, it says that day six ends. 175 00:10:13,940 --> 00:10:17,860 Day seven begins and then what? 176 00:10:17,860 --> 00:10:23,660 God rests. 177 00:10:23,660 --> 00:10:30,260 We have to ask ourselves, as God begins to rest on the evening before what we would have 178 00:10:30,260 --> 00:10:37,020 thought of as day seven, did God sit by and watch them begin to work in the dark? 179 00:10:37,020 --> 00:10:42,700 Or did God invite them into the evening rest of day seven? 180 00:10:42,700 --> 00:10:48,580 Now, if you were Jewish and reading this, your answer is almost surely rest because 181 00:10:48,580 --> 00:10:53,300 there's something hidden in that word for rest. 182 00:10:53,300 --> 00:11:01,420 When it says God rested, that word is Shabbat, the English word Sabbath. 183 00:11:01,420 --> 00:11:08,180 And it's the very first time that that word is used in scripture, but in Judaism, it's 184 00:11:08,180 --> 00:11:11,300 still a deeply meaningful word. 185 00:11:11,300 --> 00:11:13,420 It's a spiritual practice. 186 00:11:13,420 --> 00:11:16,740 It's a cultural belief that is relevant to this day. 187 00:11:16,740 --> 00:11:22,000 This week, when the sun goes down on day six, Friday night, until the daytime has ended 188 00:11:22,000 --> 00:11:27,420 on day seven Saturday, it will be Sabbath for millions of Jews around the world, no 189 00:11:27,420 --> 00:11:32,540 matter the time zone, no matter the country. 190 00:11:32,540 --> 00:11:38,420 It will be a time of rest because of this word, not just because Sabbath shows up in 191 00:11:38,420 --> 00:11:51,140 the Ten Commandments later, but because resting with God is the first thing humans do. 192 00:11:51,140 --> 00:11:58,660 This is meant to show us that rest is important and has been available to us from the beginning. 193 00:11:58,660 --> 00:12:03,100 Before we work, not so that we can work. 194 00:12:03,100 --> 00:12:05,340 That is so foreign to us. 195 00:12:05,340 --> 00:12:11,860 It is so backwards to our post-enlightenment brains that rest comes first. 196 00:12:11,860 --> 00:12:14,060 We do not work to rest. 197 00:12:14,060 --> 00:12:18,860 We rest so that we live. 198 00:12:18,860 --> 00:12:25,700 Rabbi and Jewish scholar Abraham Heschel said the Sabbath, day of rest, as a day of abstaining 199 00:12:25,700 --> 00:12:31,460 from toil is not for the purpose of recovering one's lost strength and becoming fit for 200 00:12:31,460 --> 00:12:33,980 the forthcoming labor. 201 00:12:33,980 --> 00:12:39,980 The Sabbath is a day for the sake of life. 202 00:12:39,980 --> 00:12:46,020 Rest is not a reward for work, and rest is not simply to ready us for work. 203 00:12:46,020 --> 00:12:50,380 Rest is a gift that enables life. 204 00:12:50,380 --> 00:13:03,100 So the God who needed no rest chose to rest, chose to Sabbath so that we could, so that 205 00:13:03,100 --> 00:13:10,340 we would know from the beginning that this is our example, that we can rest. 206 00:13:10,340 --> 00:13:11,860 Rest comes first. 207 00:13:11,860 --> 00:13:17,660 Now, if you fast forward in the scriptures to the next time that the word Shabbat shows 208 00:13:17,660 --> 00:13:18,660 up. 209 00:13:18,660 --> 00:13:25,900 It has been more than 2,000 years by the next time that this word shows up. 210 00:13:25,900 --> 00:13:30,780 In that, literally, you could read into that a little bit and go, okay, well, between here 211 00:13:30,780 --> 00:13:37,020 and there is all the time that sin has been ravaging the world. 212 00:13:37,020 --> 00:13:40,380 Eventually the Israelites, they are enslaved in Egypt. 213 00:13:40,380 --> 00:13:47,540 It's not until Exodus chapter 5 that we see the word Shabbat again. 214 00:13:47,540 --> 00:13:51,780 And it's not God that says it. 215 00:13:51,780 --> 00:13:57,300 Exodus 5, what happens is that God has called Moses and told Moses, I need you to go and 216 00:13:57,300 --> 00:13:58,300 free my people. 217 00:13:58,300 --> 00:13:59,300 I've heard their cry. 218 00:13:59,300 --> 00:14:02,540 It's time for you to go and free them, okay? 219 00:14:02,540 --> 00:14:09,940 Exodus 5 is the first face-off between Moses and Pharaoh. 220 00:14:09,940 --> 00:14:13,460 He says, you have to let these people go out and worship God. 221 00:14:13,460 --> 00:14:19,420 And Pharaoh says this, Exodus 5, 5, look, the people of the land are many now and you make 222 00:14:19,420 --> 00:14:22,340 them rest from their labor. 223 00:14:22,340 --> 00:14:26,740 That word rest is the word Sabbath. 224 00:14:26,740 --> 00:14:33,700 Pharaoh is angry because God has sent Moses to have his people Sabbath. 225 00:14:33,700 --> 00:14:36,460 God has sent his people to rest. 226 00:14:36,460 --> 00:14:37,460 So what does Pharaoh do? 227 00:14:37,460 --> 00:14:39,620 Anyone that's familiar with this story? 228 00:14:39,620 --> 00:14:45,780 Immediately after this, he punishes the people and makes their work even harder because they 229 00:14:45,780 --> 00:14:49,460 Sabbath, because they rested. 230 00:14:49,460 --> 00:14:53,620 Slave drivers hate rest. 231 00:14:53,620 --> 00:14:59,760 They will want to punish you for slowing them down. 232 00:14:59,760 --> 00:15:03,660 We don't need to punish ourselves. 233 00:15:03,660 --> 00:15:12,300 Some of us, maybe most of us, in one way or another, have a little Pharaoh on our shoulder. 234 00:15:12,300 --> 00:15:17,660 In our ear, in the back of our head, always telling us that we haven't done enough, we 235 00:15:17,660 --> 00:15:22,380 haven't worked long enough, we haven't made enough, we haven't accomplished enough with 236 00:15:22,380 --> 00:15:23,940 our life just yet. 237 00:15:23,940 --> 00:15:29,460 We rest and then we punish ourselves by working even harder. 238 00:15:29,460 --> 00:15:36,140 But God knows the purposes that he has for us. 239 00:15:36,140 --> 00:15:45,140 In Genesis, he wasn't afraid that they would get behind if they took rest. 240 00:15:45,140 --> 00:15:51,300 God was not afraid that they would get behind on the purpose that he had given them if they 241 00:15:51,300 --> 00:15:52,300 rested. 242 00:15:52,300 --> 00:16:02,620 And today, God isn't your Pharaoh, demanding that you get back to work. 243 00:16:02,620 --> 00:16:06,340 God invites you into rest that leads to life. 244 00:16:06,340 --> 00:16:10,220 Rest is a proclamation of freedom. 245 00:16:10,220 --> 00:16:22,500 Getting to rest makes you an abolitionist to say, I will not be enslaved to this anymore. 246 00:16:22,500 --> 00:16:27,020 Now it's only after all of this, after the people have escaped their slavery by the power 247 00:16:27,020 --> 00:16:33,540 of God, that then they're given Sabbath as a command that the seventh day they must rest, 248 00:16:33,540 --> 00:16:41,620 which is honestly a brilliant reversal. 249 00:16:41,620 --> 00:16:50,380 It's fascinating because for hundreds of years, the Israelites had been commanded to work. 250 00:16:50,380 --> 00:16:55,940 And now God is saying, you are no longer commanded in that way to work, but now you are actually 251 00:16:55,940 --> 00:16:57,580 commanded to rest. 252 00:16:57,580 --> 00:17:04,380 They'd gone hundreds of years without permission to rest, and now God is going, no, you have 253 00:17:04,380 --> 00:17:05,380 to. 254 00:17:05,380 --> 00:17:07,900 You have to rest. 255 00:17:07,900 --> 00:17:13,500 Of course, the first step of the blueprint of discipleship that we're talking about here 256 00:17:13,500 --> 00:17:20,060 isn't specifically the concept of Sabbath as much as it is the concept that God gives 257 00:17:20,060 --> 00:17:21,060 us rest. 258 00:17:21,060 --> 00:17:26,420 And it's specifically not about the legalism of having to do something in a specific way 259 00:17:26,420 --> 00:17:30,340 the same day off every single week at the same time. 260 00:17:30,340 --> 00:17:34,460 It's about the rest that God offers us, period. 261 00:17:34,460 --> 00:17:39,180 Rest from an unhealthy tyranny of work and from an unhealthy life pattern. 262 00:17:39,180 --> 00:17:40,740 And I'll tell you why. 263 00:17:40,740 --> 00:17:43,940 For one, the Bible writer Paul encourages us. 264 00:17:43,940 --> 00:17:49,460 He says, we don't need to get stuck in a legalism about which day is our day of rest. 265 00:17:49,460 --> 00:17:55,980 In Colossians 2.16, he says this, therefore, do not let anyone judge you by what you eat, 266 00:17:55,980 --> 00:18:04,900 drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a new moon celebration, or a Sabbath day. 267 00:18:04,900 --> 00:18:12,580 Why, he says, because these are a shadow of the things that were to come. 268 00:18:12,580 --> 00:18:19,220 The reality, however, is found in Christ. 269 00:18:19,220 --> 00:18:21,980 He's not saying don't rest. 270 00:18:21,980 --> 00:18:26,980 He's saying you can be flexible in your freedom because the depth and reality of your rest 271 00:18:26,980 --> 00:18:32,620 is actually found in Jesus, not a specific day. 272 00:18:32,620 --> 00:18:36,780 And so then we should ask, well, what did Jesus say? 273 00:18:36,780 --> 00:18:37,780 Right? 274 00:18:37,780 --> 00:18:41,380 Matthew 11.28, if you want to turn that, you can. 275 00:18:41,380 --> 00:18:45,100 Matthew 11, we're going to be in 11 and 12 for just a minute here. 276 00:18:45,100 --> 00:18:50,220 Matthew 11.28, one of my favorite verses. 277 00:18:50,220 --> 00:18:56,260 Come to me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 278 00:18:56,260 --> 00:19:01,060 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart. 279 00:19:01,060 --> 00:19:07,460 You will find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. 280 00:19:07,460 --> 00:19:13,820 When Scott read that verse, I was like, you have no idea how prescient that is for today. 281 00:19:13,820 --> 00:19:19,700 Now to be clear, when Jesus says rest in this passage, this isn't the same word. 282 00:19:19,700 --> 00:19:22,940 He's not saying, and I will give you Sabbath. 283 00:19:22,940 --> 00:19:25,620 This word means to refresh. 284 00:19:25,620 --> 00:19:30,220 It means to give repose or exemption from labor. 285 00:19:30,220 --> 00:19:38,300 Jesus is calling out to the tired, to the people trudged down by the rules, to the people 286 00:19:38,300 --> 00:19:40,700 crushed under life. 287 00:19:40,700 --> 00:19:42,820 Come to me. 288 00:19:42,820 --> 00:19:45,740 I have rest for you. 289 00:19:45,740 --> 00:19:51,020 I will give you Sabbath from the weight of this yoke that you carry. 290 00:19:51,020 --> 00:19:56,060 And again, like Genesis, there's something that isn't obvious to us because we don't 291 00:19:56,060 --> 00:19:59,020 see things with the Hebrew lens, right? 292 00:19:59,020 --> 00:20:05,820 When he says, take my yoke, when he said that he would cut the string of the yoke, take 293 00:20:05,820 --> 00:20:10,140 my yoke, my yoke is easy, my burden is light, the yoke that he's talking about, it's a 294 00:20:10,140 --> 00:20:14,460 Jewish metaphor for all the religious rules. 295 00:20:14,460 --> 00:20:20,180 In first century Palestine, Israel, if they were talking about all the law altogether, 296 00:20:20,180 --> 00:20:22,580 they called it the yoke of the law. 297 00:20:22,580 --> 00:20:31,660 So Jesus is saying, he wants to give them rest from the weight of the commands, to reframe 298 00:20:31,660 --> 00:20:42,660 how they understood their religious laws by inviting them to practice rest with him. 299 00:20:42,660 --> 00:20:47,860 While he doesn't use the word Sabbath rest in this verse, he does in the very next verse. 300 00:20:47,860 --> 00:20:50,500 12 verse 1. 301 00:20:50,500 --> 00:20:55,060 At that time, Jesus went through the grain fields on this Sabbath. 302 00:20:55,060 --> 00:20:58,780 His disciples were hungry and began to pick the heads of grain and eat them. 303 00:20:58,780 --> 00:21:02,380 When the Pharisees saw this, they said to him, look, your disciples are doing what is 304 00:21:02,380 --> 00:21:04,580 unlawful in the Sabbath. 305 00:21:04,580 --> 00:21:06,060 But Jesus corrects them. 306 00:21:06,060 --> 00:21:10,340 He reforms, he reframes Sabbath and rest together. 307 00:21:10,340 --> 00:21:15,060 He says for the son of man, that's the way he referred to himself, the son of man is 308 00:21:15,060 --> 00:21:16,060 Lord of the Sabbath. 309 00:21:16,060 --> 00:21:20,580 He says, I am the leader of this day of rest. 310 00:21:20,580 --> 00:21:27,660 In Mark 12, chapter 2, 27, he says, then Jesus said to them, the Sabbath was made to meet 311 00:21:27,660 --> 00:21:29,460 the needs of the people. 312 00:21:29,460 --> 00:21:31,580 Listen to that. 313 00:21:31,580 --> 00:21:37,580 The Sabbath was created to meet the needs of the people and not people meet the requirements 314 00:21:37,580 --> 00:21:40,420 of the Sabbath. 315 00:21:40,420 --> 00:21:45,200 He's saying Sabbath and rest, as it turns out, is not a rule for us to follow. 316 00:21:45,200 --> 00:21:52,260 Rest is a gift that we receive as we follow him. 317 00:21:52,260 --> 00:21:56,140 In the beginning, God gave us rest. 318 00:21:56,140 --> 00:22:02,580 When God saw that we needed it to be written in stone, he literally carved Sabbath into 319 00:22:02,580 --> 00:22:06,460 a tablet of the 10 commandments and made it a command. 320 00:22:06,460 --> 00:22:14,060 And then Jesus, this is fascinating, takes these hearts of stone and performs a brilliant 321 00:22:14,060 --> 00:22:15,860 reversal once again. 322 00:22:15,860 --> 00:22:24,860 He takes what had to be written in stone and he turns it back into flesh called Jesus. 323 00:22:24,860 --> 00:22:32,420 He says, I am the Lord of the Sabbath. 324 00:22:32,420 --> 00:22:33,660 I am your rest. 325 00:22:33,660 --> 00:22:36,420 I am the one that gives you rest. 326 00:22:36,420 --> 00:22:42,180 Your rules are not what find you rested and ready for life. 327 00:22:42,180 --> 00:22:45,900 I am. 328 00:22:45,900 --> 00:22:51,140 Last thing as I close up, I just want to point to John 13. 329 00:22:51,140 --> 00:22:56,580 Because last week I said each of these eight themes can be found in John 13 through 17, 330 00:22:56,580 --> 00:23:02,580 this last kind of sermon lesson that he's giving his disciples. 331 00:23:02,580 --> 00:23:09,260 John 13 on the night that Jesus was betrayed now for the sticklers and theologians in the 332 00:23:09,260 --> 00:23:10,260 room. 333 00:23:10,260 --> 00:23:12,620 Now it doesn't say that specifically in John 13. 334 00:23:12,620 --> 00:23:16,940 In John 13, John for whatever reason does not record them sharing the Eucharist for 335 00:23:16,940 --> 00:23:18,900 the Passover meal that night. 336 00:23:18,900 --> 00:23:21,500 But he does then say that this is the night that he's betrayed. 337 00:23:21,500 --> 00:23:25,220 And all the other gospels describe that the night that he's betrayed is the night that 338 00:23:25,220 --> 00:23:26,220 they sat down for the Eucharist. 339 00:23:26,220 --> 00:23:30,580 And so we put the two together and we know that that's what's happening here. 340 00:23:30,580 --> 00:23:36,780 John 13, this night, they sit down to a meal that we know to be the Eucharist. 341 00:23:36,780 --> 00:23:44,100 And before that meal, it says that he put a towel around his waist and began to wash 342 00:23:44,100 --> 00:23:49,400 the feet of his disciples. 343 00:23:49,400 --> 00:23:54,220 This was something that servants were meant to do. 344 00:23:54,220 --> 00:23:56,540 The disciples recline. 345 00:23:56,540 --> 00:23:59,940 Because back then tables were low to the ground. 346 00:23:59,940 --> 00:24:04,100 You sat on the ground and you reclined, kind of like Lionel Richie on the cover of one 347 00:24:04,100 --> 00:24:06,540 of his albums. 348 00:24:06,540 --> 00:24:09,780 You shared a meal together. 349 00:24:09,780 --> 00:24:16,420 He goes around and he washes the dirt off all of their feet. 350 00:24:16,420 --> 00:24:18,140 They recline. 351 00:24:18,140 --> 00:24:19,140 He serves. 352 00:24:19,140 --> 00:24:29,500 But not everybody at the table was ready to rest and to receive what Jesus was giving. 353 00:24:29,500 --> 00:24:35,660 It says, 13 verse 6, he came to Simon Peter who asked him, Lord, are you going to wash 354 00:24:35,660 --> 00:24:37,340 my feet? 355 00:24:37,340 --> 00:24:44,220 Jesus replied, you do not realize what I am doing, but later you will understand. 356 00:24:44,220 --> 00:24:46,940 Never shall you wash my feet. 357 00:24:46,940 --> 00:24:51,840 Said like a true worker, said like a true person that doesn't know how to receive rest. 358 00:24:51,840 --> 00:24:55,820 Never will you do that for me, Peter told him. 359 00:24:55,820 --> 00:25:00,980 Jesus answered, unless I wash you, you have no part with me. 360 00:25:00,980 --> 00:25:04,380 Listen, rest is not taken. 361 00:25:04,380 --> 00:25:07,140 Rest is not earned. 362 00:25:07,140 --> 00:25:10,540 Rest is received. 363 00:25:10,540 --> 00:25:12,340 Rest is not a sign. 364 00:25:12,340 --> 00:25:20,980 And actually, rest is a sign and a symbol of what we are becoming a part of and who we 365 00:25:20,980 --> 00:25:33,940 are becoming a part of because rest is found in a person, not a day, in a person. 366 00:25:33,940 --> 00:25:36,620 His name is Jesus. 367 00:25:36,620 --> 00:25:45,460 I hope that today we can see that the first step of discipleship is rest because rest 368 00:25:45,460 --> 00:25:53,820 means receiving Jesus, saying I will put down my way, I will put down my, no, you can't 369 00:25:53,820 --> 00:25:59,660 do this for me, God, but if you do not let me serve you, if you do not rest, if you do 370 00:25:59,660 --> 00:26:07,740 not sit back and let me give to you, today here, God wants you to receive rest because 371 00:26:07,740 --> 00:26:10,740 he wants you to receive him. 372 00:26:10,740 --> 00:26:14,540 Because rest is not a day. 373 00:26:14,540 --> 00:26:15,540 He is a person. 374 00:26:15,540 --> 00:26:16,540 Let us pray. 375 00:26:16,540 --> 00:26:24,420 God, thank you for the way that you're working in our community and I pray that today for 376 00:26:24,420 --> 00:26:27,980 some people that have heard this for the very first time that you would encourage them that 377 00:26:27,980 --> 00:26:31,700 they can receive your rest. 378 00:26:31,700 --> 00:26:34,900 The tension can be released. 379 00:26:34,900 --> 00:26:44,500 God, I pray that you would help each of us in the midst of our busy lives doing important 380 00:26:44,500 --> 00:26:53,100 things, that we would find the time to rest and think on you, and you would lead us into 381 00:26:53,100 --> 00:26:55,100 life. 382 00:26:55,100 --> 00:27:00,100 That life would lead to meaningful work. 383 00:27:00,100 --> 00:27:07,100 Amen.