Thank you for listening to this message from LifeHouse Church.
Good morning, LifeHouse.
Good morning.
Welcome.
Many of you probably have noticed already, I am not Pastor Kip.
Never claimed to be, never will be.
Well, my name is Andrew Manneville.
I am the Student Ministries Pastor here along with my wife, Alicia, and our little girl,
Lucy.
And we have another little girl on the way coming in January.
We're so excited about that.
So part of the baby boom at LifeHouse here.
Self-building ministries, I guess it is.
But this morning, I have the privilege of getting to speak to you.
Pastor Kip is out of town.
He's doing, like Jenna said, Pastor is getting some training, some coaching in Virginia,
in West Virginia this morning.
So pray for them, safe travels as they come back here this evening slash tomorrow morning.
But like many of us, we would have to admit that we live some crazy, busy lives.
The life we lead is crazy busy.
Whether we're taking kids to sports or we're running errands or you're working full-time
or part-time or you're volunteering at church or another nonprofit or you're going to doctor's
appointments, cooking three meals a day, taking care of pets or a relative, there is some
days it feels like there is no rest for the weary.
An article I found in my studies by NIH began as follows.
It said, sometimes the pace of modern life barely gives you time to stop and rest.
It can make getting a good night's sleep on a regular basis seem like a dream.
But sleep is as important for good health as diet and exercise.
Let's try that.
Oh, that's nice and loud.
There we go.
All right.
Well, like I was saying, good sleep improves your brain performance, your mood, your health,
and not getting enough sleep, not getting enough quality sleep that is, regularly, not
getting that quality sleep regularly, raises the risk of as many diseases and disorders.
These range from heart disease and stroke to obesity and dementia.
Rest and sleep are so crucial to so many functions that our bodies need, we're designed to take
regular rest.
Our sleep cycles and the healing that comes from those cycles are designed by God, and
they are necessary for our survival.
Within just three days without sleep, people can start to hallucinate and even paranoia
and psychosis can start to set in.
All of this begs the question.
We know and understand the importance of sleep.
This begs the question, why then do we lead such crazy, busy lives?
Why do we run ourselves ragged if we know the outcome?
If we know what's at stake, why do we live that way?
There's got to be a way out of the rat race, right?
There's got to be some escape where we can finally find some peace and quiet.
Well, church, I have some great news for you this morning.
Jesus has called us to rest.
Let's pray.
Heavenly Father, I thank you for your word this morning.
God, I pray that you would bring it forth through me, God, that I would be a vessel
of your word, God, that you would just speak to your people with what you would have them
to hear this morning.
God, I pray for all of those in this service, God, I pray for those online and at our East
Shore campus as well, God, I pray you would be with everyone in the house and in the community
as well.
Lord, we pray these things in your name.
Amen.
But before I get into today's main passage of scripture, I want to go for a journey.
We're going to go all the way back to the beginning, in the beginning.
We're going to Genesis this morning.
This is where we see the first instituted moment of rest, where God the Creator calls
us to rest.
And he sets that example for us.
We see in Genesis 2, 2, and it reads, so the creation of the heavens and the earth and
everything in them was completed.
And on the seventh day, God had finished his work of creation.
So he rested from all of his work.
And God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy because it was the day from when he
rested from all his work of creation.
It's important to note here, church, that God didn't rest because he was tired.
He didn't rest because he needed to take a nap because our God never sleeps.
He is everywhere.
He is all knowing.
He is all powerful.
He doesn't need sleep.
The original word here, that word rest in Hebrew is the word Shabbat.
That's where we get our word Sabbath.
That's where that word comes from, to keep that day of rest holy.
It means to cease from work.
There is no context in that word that is out of laziness or out of exhaustion.
It just means that God the creator ceased from work and he rested and he instituted
the principle of rest.
God declares this day of rest as a holy one.
But rest is not just for us.
It's not just for God, I'm sorry.
It is for us.
He invites us to rest in him, to rest with him.
I want you to grab your neighbor if you're friendly with them and tell them, you gotta
rest.
Say, you gotta rest.
You gotta rest.
Yes.
You gotta rest.
If you're online this morning, put that in the chat.
Type that in the chat.
Type, you gotta rest.
Or if you're up at East Shore, God bless you.
Say, you gotta rest to your neighbor up there.
Or if you're checking out our podcast during the week, tell it to yourself in the car.
It don't matter.
Say, you gotta rest.
But our main passage this morning, if you have your Bibles and you would turn to Matthew,
we're going to be in Matthew chapter 11, starting at verse 28.
If you have your Bibles with you, that's fantastic.
That's a great study tool to get into the word of God.
If you got your iPads or your phones with you, somewhere you can highlight and mark
and take notes, that's always good.
But if not, we will have the words on the screen for you as well.
But a little context, a little background on this passage of scripture.
Before this passage of scripture, we had just seen Jesus, He sent out the 12 disciples.
He sent them out to preach and to teach and to perform miracles in His name.
Earlier in the chapter, we also see that a couple of John the Baptist disciples come
to Jesus and they say, are you the Messiah, are you the Christ?
Because John the Baptist was imprisoned at the time and he was a forerunner, a prophet,
a teacher before Jesus preparing the way for Jesus.
And he wanted to know if Jesus was the Messiah.
This passage that we find here, we're going to be in this morning, Matthew 11, 28, is
kind of right smack dab in the middle of Jesus' ministry, His three-year ministry on earth.
Let's dive into the word together, shall we?
It says Matthew 11, 28, it says, then Jesus said, come to me, all of you who are weary
and carry heavy burdens and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you.
Let me teach you because I am humble and gentle at heart and you will find rest for your souls.
For my yoke is easy to bear and the burden I give you is light.
We don't have to be on this earth very long to know that there is a never ending barrage
of things that we can do, things that can make us grow weary, struggles in life, and
even well-meaning activities that after enough of them will wear us down.
The world calls us to that.
The world calls us to be busy, to be keeping up with the Joneses, if you will.
But Jesus invites us and Jesus calls us to rest.
See, we don't have to carry those burdens and those struggles of life on our own.
In this passage of scripture, the original word there for rest is in Greek, it's anapao.
Even though it's in Greek in the verse we looked at earlier in Genesis, that was Hebrew,
anapao and Shabbat, they are synonyms.
They mean the same thing.
They mean to cease from work.
It's the same rest that God the Creator took after creation that Jesus is calling us and
inviting us into.
He's saying, come to me and I will give you rest.
Jesus has called us to rest.
There's two things in this scripture that really jumped out to me when I was studying
this.
And there Jesus says, come and he says, I.
Come and I will give you rest.
Come to me.
This is a call to action.
This is a verb.
This is Jesus saying, draw near to me and I'll draw near to you like we read in James
4.
We can't sit in our worries and our burdens and our busyness and expect Jesus to come
to us.
Jesus is saying, you have to come to me.
This is a call to motion.
This is required obedience.
Jason, would you come here for a second, please?
That's perfect.
Great.
Thank you.
That's all I needed.
That was a call and he answered.
He answered my call with obedience and he came.
That's the same call.
That's that same command and obedience that we see here Jesus used.
We also see that when Jesus called his disciples in Matthew 4, 19, the disciples were called
to action.
They were called to leave their earthly burdens behind.
Matthew 4, 18 says, and Jesus was walking by the sea of Galilee.
He saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and Andrew, his brother, casting nets into the
sea for they were fishermen.
Then he said to them, follow me or come to me and I will make you fishers of men.
And they immediately left their nets and followed him.
Going on from there, he saw two other brothers, James, the son of Zebedee and John, his brother.
In the boat was Zebedee, their father mending their nets.
He called them and immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him.
Jesus calls his disciples to action.
He called them to follow.
It's the same language that he's using for us.
He's saying, come and rest.
It's that invitation, that call to action.
Jesus is saying, come to me and rest.
We can't hold on to those burdens though.
We can't hold on to those struggles of this world and receive the rest that Jesus has
for us.
Jason, I'm going to ask you to come here one more time, but this time I want you to hold
that wall up like it's going to fall on you.
I want you to hold up that wall.
Now Jason, come to me and hold up that wall.
You can't do it.
I appreciate that buddy.
Yes, you can't do it.
We can't hold on to the burdens that we have in this life.
The worries, the struggles, our fears, and also enter into the rest that Jesus has for
us.
We have to drop everything like the disciples did.
James and John, the disciple left their dad in the boat.
They just went for it, man.
They followed Jesus.
We need to give Jesus our worries and our anxieties and our burdens and our fears and
even our work.
Because if we don't rest in Jesus, the consequences can be dire.
They can be severe.
Because if we don't rest in Jesus, the busyness of life can take us out, make us ineffective
as Christians and make us miserable people.
Because there's never a shortage of things to do and tasks to get done.
We have to be intentional about our time that we spend in rest with Jesus.
We do this by getting near to Jesus.
We draw near to Jesus.
This is why we go to church on Sunday so that we can enter into Jesus' presence.
We can enter into God's holy presence and rest.
We spend time in the word and in prayer.
We also do that through faith like Pastor Kipp mentioned last week.
That's how we draw near to God is by putting that faith on display.
Worship is a great way how we draw near to Jesus.
And in prayer and time in the word, we have to build that intentionality to draw near
to Jesus.
And we can rest in Jesus because he helps us carry the load.
Matthew 11, 29, Jesus says, take my yoke upon you.
Let me teach you because I am humble and gentle at heart.
And you will find rest for your souls.
For my yoke is easy to bear and the burden I give you is light.
A yoke like Jesus was talking about we don't see very often in modern day.
The closest example we can see is in a horse and buggy.
The Amish have.
You see two horses yoke together.
This yoke is a physical piece of wood or metal and it connected two working animals, two
oxen, two mules, two horses together.
When they were connected together, they were going the same direction.
They had the same vision.
They had the same goal, the same passion that drive to continue on forward.
They're going the same way.
See Jesus invites us to take his yoke because it's lighter.
And his yoke is lighter because he's doing most of the work.
Chris and Jenna, if you guys would come up here for one final illustration this morning.
I got all kinds of illustrations for you this morning.
If you would just face the congregation, please.
I was looking for a size comparison here, right?
Picture a yoke, right?
These two were yoke together, right?
Picture they were yoke together.
That's the example, Chris.
Thank you.
Yes.
If they were yoke together and they were going to go pick up a refrigerator, who do
you think would be doing most of the work?
Right.
All right.
You guys can have a seat.
That's what Jesus invites us to, right?
He invites us into his yoke to take on his burden because it's light, because he's doing
most of the work, because he's doing the heavy lifting for us, right?
The load that Jesus gives us is nothing compared to the yoke and burden that we put on ourselves,
that we try to carry on our own each and every day.
The burden that Jesus shares with us is grace and not the law.
It is hope and not anxiety.
It is faith and not fear.
It is trust and truth instead of lies.
It's an easy trade off.
It's a no-brainer, right?
The rest that we have in Jesus is only possible if we take his yoke upon us.
Without taking the yoke of Jesus upon us, we cannot enter into his rest.
And we take his yoke upon us by listening to his commandments.
John 14, 15 says, if you love me, you will keep my commandments or obey my commandments.
We do this through aligning ourselves with Christ.
Whatever Jesus' goal was, that's our goal.
And his goal is to win lost souls for the kingdom.
His goal is to see the kingdom of God brought to this earth.
That should be our goal when we're yoked with Jesus.
Jesus calls us to rest and he says, help me carry this instead of what you were trying
to carry on your own.
Do this instead.
And all we have to do is answer his call.
All we have to do is join up with him, get headed in the same direction and follow his
leading.
Jesus calls us to rest.
He calls us to rest.
He helps us carry the load.
But maybe more importantly, and I think this one stood out the most, is Jesus will teach
us how to rest.
I almost missed it the first time I was reading through this passage and studying.
And Pastor Kipp and I were talking about this and he said, check this out.
And we looked at it and it's a really, really cool.
But Jesus, there's a really, just has a really small phrase in Matthew 11, 29.
He says, let me teach you.
Let me teach you because I am humble and gentle at heart.
Jesus doesn't just offer us rest.
He shows us how to do it.
He offers to teach us.
He teaches us that it's a necessity and not a luxury.
It's an act of worship and not a sign of laziness.
Jesus is saying, come to me.
Carry this with me.
Get yoked with me and I will give you rest.
Let me teach you and I will give you rest.
I don't often use it.
I don't often quote it, but I had to for this instance.
The message paraphrase here really, really paints a beautiful word picture for this.
And it says, come to me, get away with me and you'll recover your life.
I will show you how to take a real rest.
Walk with me and work with me.
Watch how I do it.
Learn the unforced rhythms of grace and I won't lay anything heavy or ill fitting on
you.
Keep company with me and you'll learn how to live freely and lightly.
Jesus says, I'll show you how to take a real rest.
Watch how I do it.
Follow my example.
Follow the example of the Father in creation and enter into rest.
Without Jesus showing us how to rest, we can't receive it.
That's a contingency here.
Jesus says, come to me, take my yoke, let me teach you.
We have to be teachable here.
We have to be able to learn from Jesus what it means to truly rest.
We have no excuse not to rest.
He's offering to teach us.
He calls us, he gives us a better way and he offers to teach us.
Who better to learn about rest, about Shabbat from God the Creator himself?
In his earthly life and his time on earth, Jesus displayed many facets of rest.
He modeled spiritual rest and physical rest and mental rest.
We find these all throughout scripture.
Jesus got away from the stressors of life.
He got away from busyness and from people to spend time intentional in his rest.
We see in Mark 1.35, it says, before daybreak the next morning, Jesus got up and went out
to an isolated place to pray.
Jesus took intentional time to spend with the Father alone in rest.
That's that spiritual rest.
He got away personally.
Jesus left everyone and spent time with God.
We see in Mark 6.31, then Jesus said, let's go off by ourselves.
He's speaking to his disciples here.
Let's go off by ourselves to a quiet place and rest a while.
He said this because there were so many people coming and going that Jesus and his apostles
didn't even have time to eat.
We see Jesus demonstrating rest for his disciples here.
This was after they had come back from their ministry journey.
They were exhausted.
They were mentally, physically, and spiritually exhausted.
They needed to get away.
They needed to rest.
One last example of Jesus' rest.
Josiah, if you'd come and close out for us here this morning.
We find it in Mark 4.38.
Jesus was sleeping at the back of the boat with his head on a cushion.
His disciples woke him up and said, teacher, don't you care that we're going to drown?
When Jesus woke up, he rebuked the wind and said to the waves, silence, be still.
Suddenly the wind stopped and there was a great calm.
Jesus was intentional about taking time to rest even in crazy circumstances.
He was unapologetic about taking rest.
Even when the disciples said, don't you care that we're going to drown?
Jesus said, I'm taking a nap.
I'm resting.
He knew that his body needed physical rest and he took it.
We can follow Jesus' example of rest by intentionally taking time to do so.
Because the rest that Jesus has to offer us is so crucial when we live in a world that
is never ending.
There is always something else to do.
There's always another activity to get involved in.
There's always an event to go to.
There's always people to please.
But Jesus is saying, come.
Take my yoke upon you.
Let me teach you how to rest.
Come to Jesus.
Abide in him.
Learn from him how to rest.
You bow your heads for me, church.
Amen.