Finding Rest

Today on Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. I'm not taking this day off because I got nothing left to do. I'm not taking this day off because everything's finished.

I'm taking a day off because you told me to and I'm going to do less than I'm able to do because you commanded me to and so I'm dependent on you to make up what I'm missing and taking this time off. You see, Sabbath was a tangible declaration of trust in God. Welcome back to Summit Life with Pastor J.D.

Greer. As always, I'm your host, Molly Vidovich, and we are so glad that you're back with us today as Pastor J.D. begins a new teaching series titled Rest and Distraction. In this short series, Pastor J.D. will show us that those most mature in Jesus are not those working the hardest for Him, but those resting most in Him.

What does resting look like? Well, you've come to the right place. We know you don't want to miss a single message here on the program, so if you ever find yourself falling behind, you can catch up on previous broadcasts online at jdgreer.com. But for now, grab your Bible and let's learn more about finding rest.

Here's Pastor J.D. So I want to spend the next couple of weeks talking about the biblical concept of rest because I know that a lot of us look to the summer as a time that we can break things up a bit. I know when I say that, some of you that have young kids are like, are you joking with me? Vacations are not rest at all, and I totally get that. I know that for a lot of you between work and family and kids and managing your extended family, you are just tired. You're just tired.

Can I get an amen from somebody out there? You're just tired. Complicating this is the fact that we have a culture that chronically overworks, going so far as to even teach overwork as a value. Now, every study that is out there, of course, shows that overwork is bad for us in just about every possible way.

We know that it is bad for our families. I know a lot of parents try to justify their overwork by saying, oh, I'm doing this for my family so that they have all the privileges. But it's like Nicolas Cage says in one of his greatest movies, Family Man, you look up one day and realize that you don't have much of a family to speak of anymore because of how much you did work. He's a man for all seasons. He's just got something to say at every point in our life. But overwork is bad for our families.

We know that. But it's also, most of us know, it's bad for our health. Healthcare professionals say that overwork is a prime contributor to the most common medical ailments in our society, including heart disease and lung ailments and cirrhosis of the liver and accidental injuries and various types of cancers, just to name a few. A recent CNN study showed, get this, that those who work 11-hour days are 250% more likely to become clinically depressed than those who limit their work to eight-hour days. The reason, this article explains, is that when you work, your body's under a stress that makes you release certain types of hormones and chemicals, which are fine in limited amounts and normal rhythms. But when you do it to excess, it literally poisons your body, throwing off your levels and leading you to more likelihood of anxiety and depression. So we overwork.

We know it's bad for us. But there is a reason that many of us are driven to overwork. The most obvious of those reasons being that work is how we provide for ourselves. And so we believe that the privileges we enjoy and our families enjoy are in direct proportion to how hard that we work. Work is also for us sometimes how we establish our identity. We believe the nature of our work, the importance of our work determines our personal worth.

Right? I mean, it's the second question we ask people when we meet them. We say, what is your name?

And what's the second question? What do you do? And because we know how often people evaluate us based on what we do, we tend to exaggerate the importance of our jobs. Have you noticed how in our society normal job titles have given way to more impressive versions of that job title? I saw, I kid you not, a Pizza Hut advertisement looking to hire a shift manager that said, seeking to fill a position for the dean of pizza, which I thought was just awesome. But another restaurant chain was I saw taking resumes for a beverage dissemination officer, otherwise known as a bartender. Or do you ever see one of those companies where it's like literally every person in the company identifies as a vice president?

And you're like, I'm just not sure how many vice presidents a six person company can actually have. I read a Wall Street Journal article this week that said that most of us inflate the number of hours we work every week because we think more hours makes us sound more impressive. Oh, the world can't get by in just 40 hours.

I mean, it needs 50, 60, 70 hours. I mean, so we work to build up our identity. It's it's we tie our identity to it. Sometimes we're driven to overwork because we're trying to please other people. You fellow type A-ers out there, you firstborns, you don't want to let people down.

You want to live up to expectations, exceed expectations. So you got to answer that email. You got to return that phone call. You are attached to your phone like it's an IV. You've looked at it six times since I began this message. I see you. The little glow, I see it pop up on your face. I'm like, is that the Holy Spirit?

Oh, no, that's just so-and-so checking their phone again. Bottom line is that for all these reasons, we're a tired society, which is why I want to spend a couple of weeks talking about the biblical concept of rest. There's a little phrase in Hebrews 4, where I hope your Bible's open to if you have it, that always had this incredibly attractive power to me. It's this, Hebrews 4, 9. So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. It's very similar to a promise that Jesus made in Matthew 11, maybe one of his most famous promises, where he said, come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

Today, I want to explore those two passages because most of us, if we were honest, have no idea what Jesus is talking about there. I mean, if anything, if we're honest, Christianity feels like just more stuff to do. It feels like another list of things to be busy about, and if we're not doing them good enough, yet another thing to feel guilty about. Yet, according to Jesus, the core of the Christian experience is not work. The core of the Christian experience is rest.

In fact, all the work that you do is supposed to come out of the rest. Dallas Willard, a Christian author, says that most of us jump into the busy parts of Christianity, trying to serve our neighbor, be active in the church, getting busy with spiritual disciplines, but we tend to skip the rest promises of Jesus, which are crucial in being able to accomplish the work parts of what he gave us. You see, until you learn to rest correctly in Christ, I can promise you that all of your work for Christ is going to be off.

In fact, here's a big idea for the day if you want to write things down. Those most mature in Jesus are not those working hardest for him. Those most mature in Jesus are those resting best in him. We tend to evaluate Christians by how busy they are, the first part of this statement.

We think, well, who's working hardest for him? Who's showing up whenever the church doors are open, and who's going on this and doing that, and who's memorized 19 chapters of the Bible last month, and who's read 50 Christian books so far this year? Oh, who's busy for Jesus? And yes, I'm going to show you that loving Jesus certainly means an activity for him, but those who are most mature in Jesus are those who are resting best in him. The writer of Hebrews ties this rest to the Old Testament concept of Sabbath, so let's take a couple minutes and unpack the idea of Sabbath, because it'll help you see what he is getting at. You stay there in Hebrews 4. I'm going to take you to a couple other places in the Bible, but I'll catch back up to you in Hebrews 4 in a minute. Moses explains the purpose of the Sabbath in two primary places in the Old Testament.

The first one is Exodus 20, when Moses first gave God's 10 commandments, and here's how he stated the fourth commandment in Exodus chapter 20. In six days, you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. In six days, the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and he rested on the seventh day. Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and he made it holy. Just like God, Moses said, took six days and made the earth, you were to take six days and do your labor, and you're going to rest on the Sabbath the way that he did. You're going to do it for three major reasons, he will explain.

I'll give you these as an A and a B and a C, letter A. We were to do it, they were to do it, to remind us that God was the point of their lives. We were to take a day to recognize that God did not create us primarily to accomplish tasks, God created us to be in love with him and to walk with him. Sometimes the tyranny of life can cause us to disconnect from the purpose for which we were created, which is the quickest way to live in misery. When you are disconnected from your purpose, studies show that we can endure a lot of strain in life. We can endure a lot of pain even if we know the purpose behind it. So they were to take one day off every week just to remind themselves of that purpose. We weren't created for a job, we were created for God. And on that day, we were just supposed to enjoy him and enjoy his creation just to be alive. One day to be rather than to do.

That's the first reason. Here's the second one, letter B, to remind us that God is the provider for our lives. He's the point of our lives, he's the provider for our lives. In many ways, taking this day off back then was really inconvenient, even more so than today, especially in ancient Israel. Survival back then was often a day-to-day, season-to-season affair. Crops had to be harvested daily. Water had to be drawn daily to cut your productivity by one-seventh, right off the top, could literally make the difference between survival and death.

There was not a single other society in the ancient world that practiced anything like this. But God commanded his people to do it because he wanted to remind them that at the end of the day, it was his responsibility to provide for them, not their responsibility to take care of themselves. So he had them cut their productivity by one-seventh to give him space to work. Here was his promise, what we call the Sabbath principle. His promise was if they would take one day off in obedience to him, he would multiply their effectiveness on the other six days so that they would accomplish more in those six days than they would have if they'd worked all seven.

He would make sure that their needs were met, he would make sure in those six days that all the ends would meet. You see, God has set up the world so that we provide for ourselves by mostly natural means. That's why he says six days you labor and do all your work.

It's from that labor that we get most of our benefit. You understand that, right? I mean, money usually just does not show up magically in your bank account. And you say, oh look, another direct deposit from God.

If that happens, it's called a bank error and you should probably tell them about it. So typically you just don't have these supernatural dropping of finances into your lap. Typically you work and you get paid for your labor. That's how God has set it up. But because of this, we can very easily begin to assume that we are therefore the ones who bear the responsibility of taking care of ourselves. In other words, that we're the ones who have to make ends meet.

But that's not true. God bears that responsibility. And so we take a day off each week to declare that. And on that day we say, God, I'm not taking this day off because I got nothing left to do. I'm not taking this day off because everything's finished. I'm taking a day off because you told me to. And I'm going to do less than I'm able to do because you commanded me to. And so I'm dependent on you to make up what I'm missing and taking this time off. You see Sabbath was a declaration, a tangible declaration of trust in God. You don't do it because everything's done.

You do it because God promised that if you do it, he'll make up for the rest. We'll return to our teaching in just a moment, but I wanted to quickly introduce you to our new featured resource this month. We're all so distracted by the news, by any new app on our phone, by our families going in different directions with various activities. So we want to help you connect easily and quickly without adding something else to your plate. We have a set of conversation cards, which are simply cards with one question or prompt on them to pull out while you're eating dinner or on a long car ride to help you and those you're closest with talk about relationships and faith and even rest. It also comes with a book of 15 devotionals about those same topics. We'll send it as our thanks for your gift to the ministry right now.

So give us a call at 866-335-5220 or check it out at jdgrier.com. Now let's get back to our teaching for the day about finding rest. Here's Pastor JD. Now really quickly, the second place the Sabbath is discussed by Moses is in Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy literally means the second giving of the law. It's where Moses preached his favorite sermon, the law, and then he added a bunch of commentary about it. And Moses in this giving of the law is going to add one other purpose for the Sabbath. It's Deuteronomy 5 verse 12, observe the Sabbath day and keep it holy, fourth commandment. Then he explains this, you shall remember on that day 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, because of that, the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day. Here we see the Sabbath was to give them space for them to reflect on their salvation. This is probably my favorite one. Write this down.

Let her see. To remind them that God was the savior of their lives. He was the point of their lives. He was the provider for their lives. He was the savior of their lives to reflect on the fact that when it came to their greatest need, which was deliverance from sin and slavery, God had accomplished that all by himself.

And for meeting that need, they had not contributed one iota. You see that phrase in verse 15 where it says the Lord brought you out from there with a mighty hand. What had Israel done to contribute to their exodus, to their deliverance? Had they helped with the 10 plagues?

Did God show up to Moses and say, okay, Moses, here's what we're going to do. Go get some powdered blood. And I want you to go out to the Nile. We're going to pour it in the Nile and it's going to turn the Nile into blood and then collect all the frogs you can find in Egypt and we're going to dump them on Pharaoh's porch. And then the third plague is the night of cow tipping.

That's going to be an awesome one. No, they didn't do a thing to help with those plagues. Those were things all God did. What did they do to help the deliverance of the Red Sea? Did they pick up swords and fight the Egyptian soldiers? No. Did Moses divide them up into two groups and say, okay, half of you blow this way and half of you blow that way and we're going to create a channel that we can walk through?

No. They did not contribute the first thing to their deliverance. God did that all by himself. So Moses says we're to take a day to reflect on that and on that day we're going to think about this.

If God took care of our greatest need all by himself, don't we think we can trust him to take care of our day-to-day needs now? Did you notice how in verse 15, how in verse 15 Moses explains to them, your identity has changed. You were a slave in the land of Egypt and slaves didn't get days off.

Pharaoh didn't give you a day off. But now you're a son and daughter of God. You're a best friend with Jesus Christ, his son. You're going to have a new relationship. You were under the cruel rule of Pharaoh.

Now you're under the tender care of your father and you can trust him. Stop thinking like slaves who think it all depends on them to survive and start thinking like sons who depend on their heavenly father. Those were the three things they were to reflect on during the Sabbath day. God was the point, God was the provider, and God was the savior. Now I've caught back up to you in the book of Hebrews. According to the writer of Hebrews, all that Sabbath stuff was just a shadow that pointed forward to Christ.

And here's how the writer of Hebrews explains it. For if Joshua, who is Moses' successor, if Moses and Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on. The whole time he was teaching the Sabbath, he was like, hey, there's another one coming.

There's a better one coming. So then there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. Verse 10, for whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from his works just like God did from his.

The Sabbath that Moses and Joshua instituted did not provide that ultimate rest. It pointed forward to another rest, to Jesus, who would himself be our ultimate rest. Let me give you three ways that Jesus became our rest. Three statements that if you can save them from your heart means that you have entered into his rest. Number one, if you can say, Christ my righteousness.

Christ my righteousness. The ultimate way that Christ is our Sabbath is he saved us. He accomplished the work of salvation for us all by himself. Just like God did with Israel at the Exodus, we did not lift a finger to help him in salvation. There's a lot of things that you and I cooperate together with God on, but our salvation is not one of them. Jesus did not give us an instruction manual with an explanation on how we could save ourselves. When Jesus died on the cross, he put up a sonar, he declared with his voice, it is finished. Not, hey, I got it started and you take it the rest of the way.

I've compared here before. Our conversion is basically like waking up in an ambulance. You don't know how you got there, but you wake up in an ambulance and the attending doctor is looking at you saying, hey, you were in a terrible accident, you were about to die. But me and my team, we saved you and we're saving you now. And we're going to take you to the hospital.

We're going to finish this process. I can promise you in that moment, that doctor is not asking you to get up out of the ambulance bed and help him save you because you just make things worse. He is doing it for you. And your role is just to consent to that doctor and his team performing that salvation on you. In a sense, that's what conversion is, is you wake up to the fact that Jesus suffered and died alone for you. He bore your sin and your sorrow and made him his very own.

And when he said it is finished, he was serious. God put up a sign of the tomb of Jesus that says no help wanted, no help needed. You accomplished my salvation in my place. You died instead of me. You raised instead of me. It is no longer I who live, it is Christ who lives in me.

All I do is receive it as a gift. This is what the writer of Hebrews means when he says, verse 10, whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from his works as God did from his. Y'all, that doesn't mean that we cease from doing good works.

Of course not. It just means we cease to do them as a way of obtaining salvation. And that gives us a rest in them because they're no longer done with the pressure of thinking that we have to do them to save ourselves or to obtain favor from God.

We do them as an act of love toward our heavenly Father as an offering of gratefulness for how he has saved us, not as a way of saving ourselves. And that means that even in the busyness of our Christianity, there's a rest because I know that I'm securing God because of what Jesus did and not because of what I need to do, which leads me to number two, Christ my identity. Christ my identity through my salvation. Christ has given me a new identity in him. I'm no longer a stranger or an orphan or a slave before God.

I'm a son or daughter of God, a brother, sister, best friend of Jesus Christ. And as his child, I've been given specific gifts, specific gifts for use in his kingdom. I've been specially designed as his servant. I've been given supernatural gifts and a role to play in his kingdom. And I am a very specific member of the body of Christ. And I'm the only one who can play that role in the body of Christ, that leads to the body of Christ he's made me a part of. Every single one of you is a specially designed servant for use in his kingdom. Isn't that a better identity than anything that you could get from your job? In the fact that God has not just given you natural gifts, he's actually put supernatural gifts in you.

And he has specifically designed you through natural talents, experiences, and through his grace at work inside of you for a role in his kingdom and for a role that you're going to play in the body of Christ. Isn't that a better identity than anything you could obtain from any kind of success and a job? That's what the writer of Hebrews again is referring to. Whoever entered God's rest is also rested from his works as God did from his. Does that mean you cease working?

It means you cease working as a way of establishing your identity. I don't have to labor anymore to gain an identity because I've been given a better one, a superior one through Christ. I'm a servant of the most high.

I'm a son of the king of kings and I'm on assignment from him and he has protected me and will guide me until I have finished it. You see I've explained to you before that our souls, our souls have this ingrained sense of unworthiness. It's called shame and it's a result of the fall. It was first experienced as a sense of shame about our nakedness. Before the fall Adam and Eve were naked but they weren't ashamed because they felt clothed in the love and the acceptance of God. But after they'd sinned and God's presence had been stripped away from them their souls felt naked and ashamed about it and so they felt the need to find something to clothe themselves. And our work becomes one of the primary ways that we do that.

Our work become these clothes of significance that help us not feel ashamed because I'm significant because of what I do. One of the best pictures of this is an old movie, 1970s movie, one of the best movies of all time though in my opinion. Nicholas Cage is not in it surprisingly but it's called Chariots of Fire.

Chariots of Fire, it's a story of two runners in Scotland who were the fastest in their nation to the 1924 Olympics. One of them was Eric Little. Eric Little was a very committed Christian. He would end up dying one day as a missionary in China but Little was also incredibly fast and Little explains in the movie, he says I run for the glory of God and when I run for God it's like a gift I give to him and when I run I feel his pleasure.

Well the counter hero in the movie is a guy named Harold Abrahams. He doesn't run for God. He explains I run for myself. It's all about proving my purpose.

Running gave to me, he says and I quote, 10 lonely seconds to justify my whole existence. All of your work, all of your work will be done in one of those two categories. It'll either be done as an offering to God to glorify him as a way of you sensing the pleasure of God as an offering of gratefulness to him or it will be done as a way to justify yourself and if your work is really just your 10 lonely seconds or 70 lonely hours a week to justify your whole existence I can promise you rest will be out of the question.

You will never be able to rest because you will always be wondering have I done enough and am I significant enough? The gospel says you got a new identity in Christ, a better identity. You're a chosen son and daughter of the king of kings who had a plan for you and saved you from the foundation of the world and has a role for you now and will have one for eternity and that's better than anything that some corporation in Raleigh Durham can hand to you. I've tried to teach this to myself through something I call the gospel prayer. It's a prayer that I wrote years ago just for my own walk with God that I've shared with you. The first phrase goes like this, in Christ I try to tell myself this every day, in Christ there's nothing I can do that makes you love me more and nothing I have done that makes you love me less. I am a new creation. I have Jesus's perfect record because He's given me His identity. You're listening to Summit Life with Pastor J.D.

Greer. You can always find us online at jdgreer.com. It's because of your partnership that others around the country even the world can hear God's truth. So when you give a financial gift of $35 or more we'll send you our brand new 15-day resource called Devotions for the Distracted Family. As I mentioned earlier it also comes with a set of 20 conversation cards. We want to help you and your closest community easily dialogue about faith. For whatever reason talking about our faith with our family or closest friends can be awkward at times. So these conversation cards have a question or a prompt to kick-start that dialogue around important topics. Consider keeping them at the dinner table or around the kitchen island. They help break the ice.

Some will be more lighthearted and others will get you into deeper conversations quicker. Request these resources today when you call 866-335-5220. That's 866-335-5220 or donate online at jdgreer.com. I'm Molly Vinovich inviting you to join us again tomorrow when Pastor J.D.

wraps up this message on finding rest. That's Tuesday on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.