An Energizing Rest
Watch on YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RmLBe143tg&t=39s
I wanted to end our series on Energizing to Engage with the topic of rest, and that’s because the rest provided by God energizes us for God’s Kingdom purposes.
While rest is one of the most important areas of our overall health, it is also one of the most neglected.
Medical science even agrees that those who get regular and adequate rest are more likely not to get sick as compared to those who burn the midnight oil. Maybe we can say that those who burn the candle at both ends aren’t as bright as they think.
There’s a story of a man who complained to his doctor that he felt burnt out and tired. But, the doctor couldn’t find anything medically wrong. And so he asked the man to write down what he might be doing that would contribute to his tiredness.
After listing out five things, the doctor took the list, studied it, and after a few moments wrote out his prescription. He said, “Don’t do these five things,” and listed what the man had written.
And I think we can say, if modern medicine could bottle rest, or put it in pill form, it would be the hottest and most profitable drug on the market.
But if we want to reap the benefits of rest, and have a much healthier life, we have to slow down and take the time to rest.
Now, what are some of the benefits of rest?
Benefits of Rest
Improves Memory and Cognitive Skills
Contrary to popular opinion, our minds don’t shut down when we sleep; rather they continue to process information, which allows us to perform better.
So the saying we have to shut down our minds before we go to sleep is unrealistic. Instead we have to start thinking on those things that will enhance our tomorrows.
The Bible tells us what these things are. “Whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things.” (Philippians 4:8 NKJV)
Maintains a Healthy Weight and Lifestyle
Adequate sleep and rest releases into the human body hormones that control our appetite. Further, when we’re overly tired we don’t have the energy to exercise and cook healthy meals. Instead, it’s drive through time and our favorite fast-food joint.
The less sleep we get the hungrier we become and we crave the more high-fat and even higher calorie foods, like ice crème, or chips and dip.
Reduces Stress and Increases Heart Health
Being well rested reduces a person’s stress levels, thus improving heart health. Rest brings a person’s blood pressure under control and significantly reduces heart related issues and disease.
Lack of proper rest, however, seriously ups stress levels making a person more susceptible to heart attack and other heart problem. Research favors then greater rest for a healthier heart.
Fights Emotional Letdowns
Lack of proper rest brings on a greater chance of the dreaded “D’s.” These are, despair, discouragement, disappointment, despondency, disillusionment, distress, disarray, dejection, and the most dreaded of them all, depression.
Lessens Pain
Chronic and acute pain is lessened when someone gets adequate rest and gets enough sleep. Studies have actually shown a relationship between a lack of sleep and lowering a person’s threshold for pain.
Now, in all these various studies they have concluded that people need to take a day of rest every week from life’s hectic schedule. And this is something that God said way back in the beginning. It is known as the Sabbath.
The Sabbath
Because there is so much going on in our lives, we find ourselves needing to catch up, and soon we find ourselves out of breath in the attempt.
We live in a 24/7 culture with cellphones and the Internet to help us stay connected and assessable.
And yet with all these so-called efficiencies, we seem to have less time than ever before. When it comes to life, however, warp speed has a way warping our souls. The more we spread ourselves; we’ll soon find that there is nothing left of us at the end of the day.
To counter this overall feeling of tiredness we pop vitamins and no-doze tablets. We take herbal supplements and drink coffee and high-power energy drinks. We do anything and everything to get a boost to see us through the day.
Now, as a side note, it’s been said that our hectic lifestyles is nothing more than anesthesia to deaden the pain of an empty life.
So, if we don’t want to fall apart, we need to take time and come apart from all the stress; and rest. God calls it taking the Sabbath.
God established the Sabbath because He knows of our need for rest and worship. He created the Sabbath to be a delight. Therefore, the Sabbath is God’s word of grace for those who are driven and harassed by stress and anxiety.
The problem is that what God intended to be a blessing, humanity has corrupted. What God has designed to liberate, humanity has limited.
When the Pharisees tried to limit what could and could not be done on the Sabbath, Jesus said, “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.” (Mark 2:27 NKJV)
The Sabbath was and is for our health and healing, but not to make us subject to the day.
The Sabbath’s Purpose
“God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it He rested from all the work of creating that He had done.” (Genesis 2:2-3 NKJV)
In the very beginning God established a sacred day of rest every week. So important was this that God made the Sabbath a part of His Ten Commandments.
“For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.” (Exodus 20:11 NKJV)
But what we need to understand is that God didn’t institute the Sabbath because He was tired or overworked. God doesn’t get tired (Isaiah 40:28). And so there must be another reason why God instituted the Sabbath.
The Apostle Paul said that the Sabbath was meant as a shadow of what was to come. The shadow was Jesus and the work He finished for our redemption on the cross. And it was in this finished work that we can now rest.
“So let no one judge you in food or in drink, or regarding a festival or a new moon or Sabbaths, which are a shadow of things to come, but the substance is of Christ.” (Colossians 2:16-17 NKJV)
When Jesus’s work for our salvation was finished upon the cross, He said, “It is finished.”
God, therefore, instituted this day of rest out of His love for us.
God also gave the Sabbath so that we could come aside and worship Him.
“And remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.” (Deuteronomy 5:15 NKJV)
To summarize, the Lord gives us the Sabbath, not only because we need the rest, but also so that we can take this day and worship Him for our ultimate rest and deliverance though His Son, Jesus Christ.
Jesus said, “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.” (Matthew 11:28-30 NKJV)
This word “labor” here is also translated as “weary,” which means those who are tired and exhausted. It describes those who come home and collapse on the sofa in front of the TV with remote in hand, and then go to bed exhausted, only to wake up the next morning still exhausted.
Since Jesus said to come to Him and receive our rest, then we need to look at the rest He provides.
The Rest Jesus Provides
There are two forms of weariness or exhaustion that we experience that Jesus gives us rest from.
“His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue.” (2 Peter 1:3 NKJV)?
Today, I’d like for us to focus on the first part of verse three. “His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness.” Now, the word “life,” refers to our physical lives, while the word “godliness” refers to our spiritual lives.
With this understanding, there are two main areas that God gives us rest.
Physical Rest
Now, we’ve pretty much have established this in what we already talked about, but if I could just add that we’re a society that always has to be doing something and where everything we do is measured by how much we got done.
And so, the Sabbath is considered an outdated model for work efficiency. But nothing could be further from the truth. The Sabbath, taking the rest our bodies need is actually what brings health, because it keeps us from over committing and over extending ourselves leaving us physically tired, exhausted, and fatigued.
Jesus revealed just how important physical rest is to ministry.
“Because so many people were coming and going that they did not even have a chance to eat, He said to them, ‘Come with Me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.’” (Mark 6:31 NIV)
We see this need for physical rest in the King David’s psalms. In Psalm 127:2 David said, “It is useless for you to work so hard from early morning until late at night, anxiously working for food to eat; for God gives rest to his loved ones.” And in Psalm 23:2-3a he said, “He makes me to lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside the still waters. He restores my soul.”
Now, our work isn’t something done independently from Jesus. We see this in Jesus’s call for us to come to Him and put upon our shoulders His yoke (Matthew 11:29-30).
The illustration of the yoke is familiar to an agricultural society. It was what the farmer put upon two oxen in order to plow the field. The farmer would put one half of the yoke upon the older and more experienced ox, and the other half upon a younger and less seasoned ox.
What would happen is that the more mature ox would carry more of the load and in the process help the younger ox learn what he is supposed to do and how it is done.
And so, we take up Jesus’s yoke and work, not in our own strength, but rather we can work resting in the strength of Jesus.
The other rest Jesus gives is spiritual rest.
Spiritual Rest
The weight of sin and the struggle to overcome its hold upon our lives can lead to spiritual exhaustion. There is a weariness of spirit when we try to live this life in our own strength and energy.
We have been given rest in Christ; therefore, we no longer need to live our lives in bondage to sin and death because we have been set free (Romans 8:2). But beyond that, because of the rest Jesus gives we no longer need to search for life’s meaning. We no longer need to look to philosophy or religion, because we now have a living loving relationship with the author of life, Jesus Christ (Hebrews 12:2).
Further, such a spiritual rest allows us to focus on what is the most important thing.
One day Jesus went over to Lazarus and his sisters Martha and Mary’s house for a bite to eat. Martha was busy trying to serve Jesus and the disciples, but Mary rested, sitting at Jesus’s feet taking in everything He had to say. Martha complained asking Jesus to tell her sister to help out, but Jesus said that Mary had chosen the best, which was resting in Him.
“You are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.” (Luke 10:41-42 NKJV)
God knows our need for peace and praise, and so He gives us this commandment to take a day not only to rest in Him but to worship Him as well.
But as in all things, we can mess up the blessing God gives.
The Sabbath’s Perversion
Now, while there are many stories and examples of how God’s people perverted the Sabbath that God has made holy for our benefit, this probably gets to the heart of it, and that is, they reduced the Sabbath to a form with no meaning or substance.
This is how bad it got. God said, “Bring no more futile sacrifices; incense is an abomination to Me. The New Moons, the Sabbaths, and the calling of assemblies -- I cannot endure iniquity and the sacred meeting. Your New Moons and your appointed feasts My soul hates; they are a trouble to Me, I am weary of bearing them.” (Isaiah 1:13-14 NKJV)
However, God said that He would delight Himself in those who don’t pervert the Sabbath into something of their own making, but keep it holy day unto Him, that is, a day devoted to Him.
“If you turn away your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on My holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy day of the Lord honorable, and shall honor Him, not doing your own ways, nor finding your own pleasure, nor speaking your own words, then you will find your joy in the Lord.” (Isaiah 58:13-14a NIV)
Failure to keep the Sabbath all boils down to a lack of faith that God can and will provide.
In Hebrews 4:2-3, it says, “For indeed the gospel was preached to us as well as to them; but the word which they heard did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in those who heard it. For we who have believed do enter that rest, as He has said: ‘So I swore in My wrath, they shall not enter My rest.’” (Hebrews 4:2-3 NKJV)
Finally, while keeping the Sabbath is a command, it’s the principle behind the command that needs exploring and kept as well. So, what is the Sabbath principle?
4. The Sabbath’s Principle
In a culture that coined words like, “burnout” and “workaholic,” this is important.
So we need to set some time apart for God to restore and refresh ourselves through spiritual devotion, instruction, and worship. We need to take time from both work and play to renew our spirits. This is the heart of the Sabbath principle.
If we neglect the Sabbath principle it’s to our own peril, because worship is God’s design to recharge our spiritual batteries.
What happens when we neglect the Sabbath principle is that we try to recharge ourselves through other means, only to end up depleting our spiritual batteries even more.
The Old Testament, however, specifies the seventh day as the Sabbath, but in the New Testament this has become a principle, not a legalistic requirement.
In the New Testament the church didn’t meet on the seventh day; instead, they met on the first day of the week, or Sunday, because that was the day Jesus rose from the dead. But as far as which day we are to keep the Sabbath, let’s look again at what Paul said to the Colossian Church.
“So let no one judge you in food or in drink, or regarding a festival or a new moon or Sabbaths, which are a shadow of things to come, but the substance is of Christ” (Colossians 2:16-17 NKJV).
Our Sabbath is to be found in Jesus Christ, not in a particular day. This is the heart of the matter. When we take time off we should aways do so remembering Jesus.
Conclusion
God has promised to give us rest.
“For if Joshua had given them rest, then He would not afterward have spoken of another day. There remains therefore a rest for the people of God. For he who has entered His rest has himself also ceased from his works as God did from His.” (Hebrews 4:8-10 NKJV)
And so, this rest promised by God can only be achieved through Jesus Christ, and our faith in Him.
It is also a rest that we can have from our attempts to be worthy, because only Jesus is worthy, and it is in His worthiness that we can enter God’s ultimate rest of heaven.
Let me end our time together then with these words once again from the writer of Hebrews.
Therefore, since a promise remains of entering His rest, let us fear lest any of you seem to have come short of it. For indeed the gospel was preached to us as well as to them; but the word which they heard did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in those who heard it.” (Hebrews 4:1-2 NKJV)
It all comes down to a matter of faith. Will we trust and believe?
And so, the rest that energizes us to engage this world is a rest that can only be found in Jesus Christ. That is, or better yet, He is the rest that energizes.
