struggling with rest

We struggle with this thing called “rest.” Sometimes we’re so unrested that when don’t know how broken and unrested we are until it’s so totally late. This morning I want to talk about resting in two lights. The first light being rest from the past that haunts us. It’s those things that we did that we regret and those things that we didn’t do that we wished we did. You know those things I’m talking about. It’s a rest that we receive when we Jesus Christ as our savior, which cleanses us from reliving the nightmare that we used to call a happy life. The second perspective I want to look at “rest” is from the silence to be alone long enough to reflect and to appreciate what’s going on in our lives. I’m not talking about rest as in vacation. Vacation is crazy concept invented by luxuries and that doesn’t mean rest. If you don’t believe me just think about the idea of “family vacation.” Yeah, I know, enough said. We’re going to look at three passages whereby we will examine the two threads of “rest” through the history of the Bible. We’ll be doing a little bit of Bible jumping, so keep one hand on your Bibles or Bible apps and another hand on that piece of paper to draw yourself a map of what is going on. Let’s go to Hebrews 4. I want us to look at this very carefully.

 ⁶ Since therefore it remains for some to enter it, and those who formerly received the good news failed to enter because of disobedience, ⁷ again he appoints a certain day, “Today,” saying through David so long afterward, in the words already quoted, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.” (Hebrews 4:6-7 ESV)

 If you can underline verse 7, do so now. I think it’s very important. In particular, highlight the phrase “he appoints a certain day, ‘today.’” Remember, we’re looking at this passage from two lenses. From the lens of salvation, which gives us rest from our past, “today” is the day we need to hear God’s voice and not ignore the rest that he is offering through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, God’s son. I think a lot of us take this good news, like the writer of the Hebrews says and then tries to save it for another day—it’s disbelief or unbelief, whatever you want to call it. But disbelief is worthless, it’s disobedience. I want to make it clear to you that disbelief results in failure. You cannot get to where you were created to be if you live in disbelief. Today is the day that we find rest from all the stupidity we were born with and lived with until this point in life. Remember that time you did some so stupid you wish you could take it back but can’t because it’s irreversible. Well, it may never be undone, but it is certainly not going to be your defining moment. Maybe it’s not something you did, but something you were born with like clinical depression and it hurts so bad that there is no amount of pills that man could invent to take away the unbelievable despair in your heart. This is the good news—that on our ugliest day, while we were still weak, Christ died and God’s glory will be revealed through it. TODAY is the day we hear the voice of God saying to us, “welcome back” and we are not jaded by that welcome and actual run to him. Now let’s take a look at this from our other lens of getting rest for the sake of reflection: in the turbulence of disobedience, when you do not know which way to turn, focus back on God. It is today, when you need to do this. But stopping there may not be enough. You can’t just focus back on God, you need to hear Him and not harden our hearts thinking that our ways are better than God’s ways. A few weeks ago we talked about how the Apostle Paul was in a stoned, arrested, in a hurricane, nearly executed, shipwrecked and then bitten by a poisonous snake while he was trying to make a fire to stay warm in the middle of a rain storm. He had rest through all of that in God. I want us to go back to the original source of this verse. Because essentially what the writer of the Hebrews is doing is interpreting a Psalm written by David in Psalm 95. Let’s go there now. I’m going to show you why this is so important in a second, but let’s go there.

 ⁶ Oh come, let us worship and bow down;     let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker! ⁷ For he is our God,     and we are the people of his pasture,     and the sheep of his hand. Today, if you hear his voice, ⁸     do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah,     as on the day at Massah in the wilderness, ⁹ when your fathers put me to the test     and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work. ¹⁰ For forty years I loathed that generation     and said, “They are a people who go astray in their heart,     and they have not known my ways.” (Psalm 95:6-10 ESV)

Rest, regardless of the type of rest and whichever lens we’re looking at it from, comes from the fact that we need to come bow before God because He is worthy of the worship but more importantly because we are His people! Our past is not the proof that we are His people. It is the fact that we’re here and saying that we are. As such, if we want real rest, then we need to hear His voice and no harden our hearts in the midst of our situation and circumstances. I hope you see this definitive statement: it doesn’t matter what you did or where you are—we hear God’s voice and open our hearts to God because He is our God and we are His people. We just spoke about circumstances and situations when we talked about Paul. Those things did not define Paul, and as such, he had rest in God. Let’s look at the circumstance and situation that inspired this Psalm. Open to Exodus 17. What happened at Meribah and Massah?

 ¹All the congregation of the people of Israel moved on from the wilderness of Sin by stages, according to the commandment of the Lord, and camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. ² Therefore the people quarreled with Moses and said, “Give us water to drink.” And Moses said to them, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?” ³ But the people thirsted there for water, and the people grumbled against Moses and said, “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?” ⁴ So Moses cried to the Lord, “What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me.” ⁵ And the Lord said to Moses, “Pass on before the people, taking with you some of the elders of Israel, and take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go.⁶ Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb, and you shall strike the rock, and water shall come out of it, and the people will drink.” And Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel. ⁷ And he called the name of the place Massah and Meribah, because of the quarreling of the people of Israel, and because they tested the Lord by saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?” (Exodus 17:1-7 ESV)

These people were thirsty. They were no long slaves but because they were thirsty, they decided not to listen to God. I’d call them idiots. I mean, what kind of idiot would choose slavery over freedom because he or she was thirsty? Oh yeah, these idiots in the Bible. I shouldn’t say that though even though it’s true. But isn’t that how we sometimes allow our circumstances define our heart? Our heart becomes unrestful and outside of God’s rest because our perspective is so skewed by our circumstances. God is with us. We know He is because we are the people of His pasture. God is our creator and as a result, our circumstances should not dictate our rest. Let’s keep reading the passage from Hebrews.

 ⁸ For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on. ⁹ So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, ¹⁰ for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his. ¹¹ Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. ¹² For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. ¹³ And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account. (Hebrews 4:7-13 ESV)

 Wow! What a beautiful paragraph. There is a resting place for us. We need to strive for that rest. It is for us. I said it twice already in the same breath. God wants you to have rest from your shame, sin, weaknesses, failures, and the ugliness of your past. God is offering that to all of us, listen to God’s voice. God wants you have rest to reflect on what God is doing in your life—this is why we do church. A rest to reflect and recharge our vision and calling without failing and falling. Now I am tempted to take every word here and probe into why it is used. Like, why mention joints and bone marrow? And what’s the difference between spirit and soul? And what precisely is the difference between thoughts and intentions? These are good questions and they are worth meditating on for hours, but do it on your own time, I encourage it. I want to come to one consensus about this paragraph before I lose all of you in the can of worms that I just opened up: the Word of God when it comes into us is that it penetrates very deep—like a sword through tough, hard layers—and makes judgments about what’s there. If you’re struggling with rest in your life and you desperately want to find rest, you need to make it a priority in your life to search for God’s rest by coming down on your knees to worship as it says in Psalm 95. Today is the day we all need to find rest in God. We need to find God’s rest today because if we say we will find God’s rest and enter into and make no attempt to do so, then the deep recesses of our souls will be penetrated by God’s word. We need to stop playing games with our faith because God’s words will break us open. Find rest in God. Find rest in the salvation of Jesus Christ. This is our calling. Let’s pray.