Good Morning. Glad you are here. If you have your Bibles, flip open to Exodus 20; Exodus 20 is where we will start. Then if you want to put a bookmark there, we will end in Mark 2. So Exodus 20 and Mark 2. Apparently last week there was a race, and some of you weren t here for last week, so let me fill you in on what we talked about. We started a two-week series on the theology of time. How does God want us to spend our time? Why did He give us the time that He gave us? We found out in Psalms that David said our lives are no longer than the width of our hand. That we are here one moment and gone the next. Life is temporary. In James 4 he taught us that there are things that we ought to do. Something we probably already knew but just needed to be reminded of. So if our life is temporary and there are things that we need to do, then we should only do what matters. So we boiled it down and gave three examples of things that definitely matter. The first was being a Dad. We talked to Dads in the room and just said it is time to step it up because there is a Dad shortage. Just because you are paying for the college education or just because you make the money does not make you a Dad. It takes time and intentionality. Now to be clear, mothers and fathers have an equal amount of responsibility and influence. But it is time for Dads to be the men they need to be and step up and be a Dad. The second was being a Mentor. We talked to the older and younger generation. We asked the older generation not to quit on us as young people. We need your experience, we need your wisdom and you to speak truth into our lives. For younger people it is time to stop talking for a second and listen. And finally the last was being a Servant. We watched the story of a young man named Jun from South Korea. He rode his bike into the Mozingos family life. He interrupted their world and gave them an opportunity to serve. We talked about our busy schedules that are so chuck full that we cannot be interrupted and we don t get the opportunity to serve that God is giving us. We said be a Dad, be a Mentor, and be a Servant. Today, we are going to talk about the idea of rest. Where does rest come from? What does God really want when He asks us to rest? I was walking behind a lady walking into first service. She picked up the bulletin, read The Remedy of Rest and said, Oh, I need this. I don t think any of us have this stockpile of rest sitting around. Most of us are not saying, Wow, I m far too rested I need something to do. We are saying, I m tired I m exhausted! I keep going and going and have no time to rest and to stop and to breathe. Jesus says something really interesting in Matthew 11:28, Come to Me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Notice what Jesus doesn t say. He does not say come to Me, those of who you are weary and carry heavy burdens and I will give you a 25 th hour. I will add an hour to the day; you can do with it anything that you want. You can have meetings or get work done. He does not say, come to Me all you who are weary and carry heavy burdens and I will remove Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.
those burdens. He doesn t say that either. He says, Come to Me, those of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens and I will give you rest. That doesn t mean that the burdens are going to go away. It doesn t mean you are going to have more time in the day. But I can give you rest. I know every single one of us comes into this room on Sundays with something going on. We all have this junk in our lives that we carry on our shoulders and we sit down in the seats and that junk doesn t disappear just because we are at church. It doesn t mean that our last week wasn t hard. It doesn t mean that something is not waiting for us tomorrow morning. But what I would like for us to do is just put pause on that for a second. We are going to keep it short this morning. We have something at the end that we d like to see you do. So, if you would, just put a pause on it for the next 20 to 30 minutes. I d like us to just take a deep breath. Sometimes we go so hard and so fast and for so long that we just forget to breathe. So, we are literally going to do this. I m going to count to three and we are going to take a deep breath and we are going to exhale that stuff that is weighing us down. Ready? One Two Three. [Exhale.] Man, you guys have a lot of junk. Let s pray. Then we ll dive in this morning. Hey, God, You are so incredible. You are so big and so strong. Sometimes we lose sight of that. I think that I have the answers and that if I can go just a little bit harder, or a little bit stronger and just figure this one thing out then life will make sense. Every time I try to do it on my own, I fall on my face. So this moment I am allowing You to speak truth into our lives. Breathe a breath of fresh air and an energy into our sails. We love You so much, God. In Your name I pray. Amen. Before we head into Exodus 20 let me ask you a question. Have you ever been given a gift that you denied, not totally understanding what was being offered to you? You were given a gift and you didn t fully understand what the offer was and you said no when you should have accepted it? For example, my daughter is two-years-old. She is a toddler. She is awesome and crazy, and she jumps on things she shouldn t. It is just so much fun. We have very few expectations of her. I need her to eat. I need her to sleep. I need her to not make as much of a mess as she is at the current moment. That is all I ask of her. The job description is not lengthy. She is a toddler. But at one point in almost every single day it comes time for a nap. For some reason, she thinks we are about to torture her by asking her to lie down on her bed. Like she hates taking a nap. And I look at her and I think, All I am asking you to do is not be awake for a couple of hours. That is all I m asking. I m not asking you to figure anything out. I m not asking you to do anything. I just want you to sleep. Like imagine tomorrow morning your boss comes into your office and says, Hey, look, new policy, I need you to take a nap right now. You would do it in a heartbeat! You would be out before he was out the door, drooling on the keyboard; like you d be taking a nap. For some reason, my daughter thinks it is a punishment for some crime she didn t know she committed. She has actually offered to take a time out in replacement of the nap. Because she knows it is going to be shorter. Do you not even know what you are being given? Maybe it is a TV show that you didn t know you would love until it was off the air and then you got the DVD s and you couldn t stop watching them. This February, I was at home on a weekday afternoon and I happened upon the channel TNT. If you have ever watched TNT on a weekday afternoon you know it is nonstop Law & Order. I did not know much about Law & Order at that moment in my life. I assumed it was for old people. So, I did not watch it. But then I watched one episode and I got hooked. I thought, This is amazing! Here is Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved. 2
what happens in your average Law & Order: somebody gets killed that s awesome, right? Then, they try to figure out who did it. And then they prosecute and it is over in an hour. Nice, tight, and clean. None of this to be continued business. Right? It is over in an hour and I love it. I have watched a million of them. It is so, so great. It was on for like 20 years and now I have 20 years of my life now to watch all of these Law & Orders that I missed. Maybe it was a food that you didn t know you would love and then you tried it and you loved it. For me it was guacamole. It looks weird and feels weird, but it tastes so good. Or maybe it was guy you never gave a second thought to and now you call him your husband. Like those kinds of things Those gifts that you didn t even know you were receiving, but now that you have them you completely understand and appreciate them. In the Bible I believe God is offering us this gift. He is giving us this offer that unfortunately too many of us are saying: thanks, but no thanks. I see what you are trying to give me but I m not totally sure I m in, so I m going to say no to this even though I don t completely understand what is going on. In Exodus, chapter 20 (go ahead and open it up) This passage is going to be really familiar to some of you. If you have grown up in church or if you ve been around the Bible much, then you ve heard of the Ten Commandments. Even if you did not grow up in church or you haven t had much experience with the Bible, you have heard of them at least. The Ten Commandments have been in classrooms and courtrooms (only to be taken down), in the hands of Moses and Charlton Heston very famous. A lot of people know these. But I think there is this one key element to the Ten Commandments that we kind of blow past that explains everything. That is verses 1-2 of chapter 20. Read with me, Then God gave the people all these instructions. Verse two is really key right here: I am the Lord your God who rescued you from the land of Egypt, the place of your slavery. So before God dives into all Ten Commandments, He gives Himself a character reference before He gets there. Why would God feel the need to do that? Think about this, how do you usually interact with rules that are being enforced upon you but you don t know who is enforcing them? Say it is an anonymous enforcement policy. When you are driving on a road and you see a white sign with a number on it - I don t know who put that sign there, I don t know who decided this was more a 45 than a 55. It feels like a 55, but they want me to go 45. I don t know who made this rule; I don t know why they made that rule - so I go 55. Right? Or maybe you are on your way to Chicago and someone decided you owed them 50 cents to get into the city, right? How did they even come up with such a small amount of change? So you have to stop and who carries change anymore? So you are grumbling and fussing because you don t know why the rule is there. You don t know who is behind it. So you don t enjoy following the rules. Well, here is what God does: He says, look I m going to give you this list of Commandments but you need to know where it is coming from. It is coming from the bottom of My heart. I am the One who freed you from slavery in Egypt. I m not this anonymous guy in the sky who is trying to be a bummer. I m not the guy who is trying to keep you from the things you enjoy. In fact, I love you so much that that s why I m giving you these rules. I tell my daughter not to play in the street because I love her and I want to protect her. That s where God is coming from. He s saying I m the One that freed you from all that oppressive slavery. I m the One that freed your wives and your daughters from abuse. I love you, remember that. So when you hear these rules, this isn t anonymous. This isn t cold and removed. This is out of the bottom of My heart. Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved. 3
Unfortunately, a lot of people in this room and this world have encountered God without the relationship. See, God defined the relationship before He defined the rules. He said: this is where I come from; this is who I am. So often, you and I encounter God in a rules-oriented kind of way, don t we? Do this don t do that. You can eat this but don t drink that. Wear this - but definitely not that. There are all these do s and don ts and we don t know who made up these rules. On the way back from Tennessee yesterday with some friends we drove past a church with a big billboard. It was black with white letters that started: Thou shalt thou shalt not. Thou shalt thou shalt not It didn t include verses one and two. They didn t say this was from the God that loved them that is why He gave them the rules. So if you are here today and all you have understood about God is what He doesn t want you to do, the things to stay away from, why you are wrong or bad - He didn t just leave it at that. He said, I love you and I care about you. I would not follow a God who was anonymous either. I would not follow these rules if I didn t know what was behind them. But God freed me from slavery, too. He freed me from a life of slavery to sin. A life that buried me and put heavy burdens on my shoulders. He said, You are free from that and now I will speak truth into your life. That is why I listen. So before going into the Ten Commandments, God said Remember who I am. Remember how much I love you. Remember where we have been. Remember where we are headed. Then He dives in. In the fourth commandment, He says in Exodus 20:8 Remember to observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. You have six days each week for your ordinary work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath day of rest dedicated to the Lord your God. On that day no one in your household may do any work. This includes you, your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, your livestock, and any foreigners living among you. For in six days the Lord made the heavens, the earth, the sea, and everything in them; but on the seventh day He rested. That is why the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and set it apart as holy. So I think we can learn from the principle of the Sabbath. Here is what it meant: the Sabbath as its core meant to cease and desist. He wanted them to immediately and intentionally stop working. He said, I know that it is going to take you six days of the week to work and clean and to have a family. It is going to take a lot of effort on your part, but that seventh day, I want it. I want 14% of your week; can you give that to me? He said, I want you to stop working so that you can rest. The thing that struck me about the Sabbath commandment is how intentional it was. He said, one out of every seven days, mark it on your calendar it s mine. It shed light on the biggest weakness of my relationship with God, which is my lack of intentionality. Maybe you have been there. There are so many times in my relationship with God that it is when I can get to it. Or when it slows down. Or when the kids go to bed. Or when I have the energy. Or when I can get away. See, when God is asking for the Sabbath He doesn t say to Israel, hey, take a Sabbath if it works. He doesn t say take a Sabbath if you can fit it in. He says I want time with you. I m desiring time to spend with you. I want to hang out. In Genesis 1 it reveals why God took a rest. Flip over to Genesis 1:31-2:3 we are going to find out why God rested, why He took a break. It says, Then God looked over all He had made, and He saw it was very good! And evening passed and morning came, marking the sixth day. So the creation of the heavens and the earth and everything in them was completed. On the seventh day God had finished His work of creation, so He rested from all His work. And God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy, because it was the day when He rested from all His work of creation. So why did God take a break? I mean, who could blame Him, He created night and day. That sounds exhausting. Right? He created the animals, trees and plants. No one would blame Him Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved. 4
for taking a day off. But He was not tired like you and I get tired. He wanted to take a moment to enjoy. He wanted to look around at the mountains and the seas and say, Wow. That s incredible. He wanted to watch the giraffes eat from the trees and the zebras eat from the grass. He wanted to listen as the waves came in from the beach forward and backward. He wanted to get up early and watch the sun rise and stay late to watch it set and then count all the stars. He wanted to enjoy what He had done. The great thing about the Sabbath is God is saying: I m inviting you to stand right next to Me as we do it. Let s hang out. Let s enjoy each other. Let s enjoy what I have done. This is for you. I want you to enjoy this with Me. So we have this offer to intentionally set apart time to rest and enjoy God but we keep saying no. Why would we do that? It sounds too good to be true. The Creator of the Universe wants to hang out with us but we are the ones turning Him down. It is like the prom queen asking me out in high school and me saying no. Would not have happened, right? I would not have said no because it doesn t make any sense. We keep turning down God because He wants to hang out with us. Why would we do that? I think we are battling a couple of fights. First is our culture. That is an easy one to point to. When it says in Psalms 46:10 to be still and know that I am God - no one is still. Some of you are tweeting right now. Like, I know that. No one stops we don t stop we keep going and going and adding things. If I m going to sit still, I need to be watching a movie with my phone in my hand while I hang out with somebody. I have to multitask. We don t stop. We are not still. But that is the easy one and maybe just an excuse. I think the reason we don t hang out with God is because we are battling ourselves. If we were really honest and could say anything and not be judged for it, I think we would say we don t really like hanging out with God all that much. If we had an opportunity to hang out with God that honestly kind of sounds boring, right? I mean He s not there. We aren t really talking back and forth. It isn t like we are going to watch the game together. How do I hang out with God? Because honestly, all I know about God are those rules, remember? He keeps telling me not to do the things I want to do. Why would I want to hang out with that guy? You don t hang out with the principal; you hang out with the gym teacher. That is who you hang out with, right? Why would I want to hang out with a guy who is just telling me what not to do? It s this: we are lacking the relationship. The idea of hanging out with God is like hanging out with a stranger because we don t know Him all that well. But you didn t know your wife all that well when you first met. You didn t know your best friend when you first met. You didn t know your coworkers when you first met them. It took time. It took relationship. It took you stepping out and putting yourself out there, didn t it? For some reason, we don t want to do that with God. Maybe we are avoiding conviction? Possibly. But honestly I think we misunderstand what He is about. He wants us to rest and enjoy everything that He has done and pour into us. We are the ones saying no. So say theoretically that you are in. You are saying: sign me up; I d love to spend time with God. I want to rest and have Him pour into me. That sounds great. Where do I sign up? How do I do it? Where are the how to s? Unfortunately this is where the Bible gets a little frustrating. I know that sounds weird to say at church, but I get frustrated with God sometimes because I m a black and white kind of a guy. I love logic. I love steps. I love when everything is laid out real nice and orderly. I would love for that to happen more often in the Bible, but honestly, Exodus 20 simply says to rest and enjoy God. That is all it gives us. So that is going to be different for all of us. Maybe you have a green thumb and working out in Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved. 5
the yard and planting is great for you. You feel energized by that and you can celebrate all that God does through nature. Maybe you love exercise and so a bike ride or a run, spent alone, can be a time that you and God connect. There are so many ways that God has wired us differently. Spending time with Him is going to look different for all of us. The minute we try to tell you exactly how to spend time with God is the minute we start acting like a Pharisee. Unfortunately, the Pharisees and I have a lot in common. Don t you hate when you have a lot in common with the bad guys? Isn t that the worst? The Pharisees were these religious leaders back in the day of Jesus. They were highly influential and they were really into rules. So they had this command at the core that was to obey the Sabbath. In order to not break that rule they made other rules to protect themselves from breaking the first rule. Real party people. They had the rule and this hedge of protection about not breaking the original rule. So the original law was to obey the Sabbath and keep it holy, rest, and enjoy God. But they built this hedge of protection like on the Sabbath you could not help someone unless they were in mortal danger. If they were about the die, then you could help. If not, leave them be because that might be work. If you tied a knot, it could only be tied if you could untie it with one hand. Real specific. One Pharisee was asked if it would be acceptable on the Sabbath to put a basket over a scorpion to avoid being stung. He said, No, that sounds too much like hunting. Come on, Dude! I m about to be stung by a scorpion, help me out. He said, No, the rules are the rules, you cannot break them. Then Jesus comes along and He just blows the Pharisees up, often. It is enjoyable. It is really fun to watch. They are trying to trap Jesus in this moment in Mark 2. He is walking through a grain field on the Sabbath and He and His disciples pick some food to eat because they are hungry. The law said the farmers were to leave the outside of their fields for travelers and for the poor to eat off of, so they weren t doing anything wrong. The Pharisees jumped all over Jesus for not obeying their rules because it seemed like work. And then there was a man with a shriveled hand in the temple and Jesus healed him. They jumped all over Him again, saying that was work to heal the man - the man who had lived his entire life with a withered hand. They were getting on Jesus for doing good. And then Jesus said something so simple and brilliant in Mark 2:27. Then Jesus said to them, The Sabbath was made to meet the needs of people, and not people to meet the requirements of the Sabbath. Let s read that one more time: Then Jesus said to them, The Sabbath was made to meet the needs of people, and not people to meet the requirements of the Sabbath. The Sabbath was made for you - He wants you to rest. He wants you to enjoy. He wants you to be energized. He doesn t want you to be so tired all the time. He doesn t want you to be worn out. This is what happens when we get a hold of God s Word, we start making it about rules and religion. Jesus wasn t about religion. He was about saving people into a relationship. I cannot tell you how to spend your time with God. I wish I could. I wish I could give you the five simple steps to making you and Jesus best buddies. I wish I could do that. But that doesn t exist because it is going to be different for all of us. What I can do is give you three qualitative descriptors of what quality time with God looks like. These three things, no matter how you do it, will allow God to open your heart and speak into it. To pour energy into a tired soul. So the first quality of time with God is that it is God-centered. We live in a world where there is no lack of leisure opportunities. We have 200 channels on our cable, we can immediately watch a movie on our phone or on our computer, or we can go see any sporting event that we want. None of those are Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved. 6
inherently bad. None of those are the problem. But often times we replace God s rest with that kind of rest. We assume that by taking a breather and watching a game that is really energizing us and it is not. I mean is there any time in your week where you intentionally just spend time with God - no one else? Or is this it? It might be it has been for me many times. Is there a place on your calendar where you have written in time with God and protected it? No meetings, no interruptions, just time with me and God. It is God-centered. Again, that sounds boring and sounds frightening because we don t truly understand who He is. He is the God of the universe. The guy that created oxygen and animals and waves and oceans and our cardiovascular system and He wants to hang out with us. He wants to pour into us and He wants to tell us how much He loves us. So the time is God-centered. It is not distracted or disjointed or haphazard. It is God-centered. The second quality of quality time with God is Unplugged. This is the one that is most difficult for me. I am an admitted technology lover. Anything that starts with a lowercase i, I love it. If it is phone or a pad or a banana - I would buy anything that they sell and I just love using these tools and they re not inherently bad. There are Bible apps that have so many resources. We have evangelistic tools like we never thought we would have, but when it starts distracting me from time with God that is when it becomes a problem. So maybe for you it requires putting the Blackberry in a drawer and locking it. Turning off the email; allowing God to speak to you without the distractions of our technology and of our modern day. I know it is difficult, but it would be worth it. Finally, the last quality of time with God is Energizing. Many of us think that time with God sounds boring and draining and question why we would ever want to do that. But, in fact, it should be energizing. In Leviticus 25, God asked the Israelites to not farm their land once every seven years. An agricultural society imagine that - not farming their land once every seven years. The Type A farmers were freaking out. Right? Why would God ask them to do that? Yes, it was a trust issue. Yes, it was an opportunity for them to show God how much they trusted Him to provide in that seventh year. But God also knew that the nutrients in the soil, the thing He created, were limited. You can t farm the same land over, and over, and over again. They needed time off to replenish. So yes, the Israelites needed to trust God, but God also knew what He was talking about because the land needed a break. He looks at you and me and He says I did not create you with an unlimited source of power and energy. I did not create you superman or superwoman. I created you limited and finite and imperfect and you need to stop. You need to slow down. You need to hang out with Me. We actually built time into the service to do something this morning. We are going to take Communion. Each week we have an opportunity at Traders Point to interact with Christ. To remember what He did for us, remember how He poured into us, remember the sacrifice that changed everything; the reason He can speak truth into our lives. Today you have an unlimited amount of time to spend with God. We are going to allow you to sit here for as long as you want. It might be short, it might be long. It is totally up to you. There is nothing else that is going to happen today here in this room. It is just time for you and God. So as you take Communion, we want you to reconnect. This might be the first time in a long time you have talked to God. Maybe you have shown up here week after week after week and you sang the songs and opened your Bible, but when it actually came time for you and God to interact, you Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved. 7
checked out. Maybe there are some open wounds right now that need healing. You haven t brought them to God because you didn t think He could do anything about it. In fact, you might even blame Him for what happened. This is the time to come to peace and allow the great Physician to heal you. It might be going really well for you right now. God may be blessing the socks off of you and your family. It is a time to thank Him. Understand anything good and anything perfect and anything beautiful came from God. Not from us, not from our ingenuity or brilliance but because God blessed us with it. So the ushers are going to come forward and we are going to receive Communion. You just get to hang out with God for as long as you want. It is totally up to you. As you leave, please be respectful and quiet of those that are hanging out for a little longer. Let s pray. God, we want to take You up on Your offer right now. We want to hang out. We want to listen not because You told us so, not because You are authoritative or overbearing, but because You loved us so much that You sent Your Son to take the punishment that we deserved. Because of that, I will listen. Because I know that you love me so much that you gave it all up so that I could live the life of freedom. We are open to it, right now, God. We want to hang out. We want to spend our time with You. We love You so much. In Jesus name I pray. Amen. Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved. 8