Sabbath Renewal Day 2012, Part 2: Sermon Manuscript

Part 2 of 4 in the Sabbath Renewal Day 2012 Packet:

SABBATH RENEWAL DAY 2012

Sermon Manuscript: “Sabbath: The Rest is Up to You”

Rev.Rodney Henry, Thornton, CO

Matthew 11:27-30

A thirteen year old girl comes home from school and rushes into her bedroom after school. Her life is falling apart because her parent's marriage is falling apart. It has been going on for months and it is a weight that is hard for her to carry.

A husband has finished paying the bills and once again, the family is spending more money than they are making. The husband knows that their finances are in a shambles and it is a weight that is hard for him to carry.

A single mother has a son who is doing drugs and getting into trouble at school. She has tried to help her son turn his life around. It has become a weight that is hard for her to carry.

A retired couple has been managing with the husband who has Alzheimer's disease. The wife’s health is getting worse. It is becoming a weight she can no longer carry.

Burdened and Weary

Carrying life’s burdens will make any one weary over time. What burdens are you carrying? What anxiety or worry or stress or discouragement is making you weary? Are you feeling crushed under the weight of your burdens? - You are not alone in being weary and burdened. And, you are not left alone to carry your burdens.

Life seems to be filled with troubles and trials. Jesus said, "In this world you will have trouble." (John 16:33) Jesus never offers escape from the trials of life. However he offers rest in the midst of trials and a yoke to help us deal with our burdens.

²⁷“All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. ²⁸“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. ²⁹Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. ³⁰For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Matthew 11:27-30

Come to Jesus

Jesus makes one of the most profound and comforting invitations in scripture. "Come to me." Jesus had just said that all things were committed to him by his heavenly Father. He said that there is mutual knowledge between himself, the God the Son, and God the Father. So, to come to Jesus is to come to God. In Jesus, God gets a face, hands, and feet.

This invitation is tender. Jesus said, "Come to me all you who are weary and burdened." In Christ, the arms of God are open wide to those who are overwhelmed and overloaded with life. Jesus understands that life is hard and we seem to go from one struggle to another. Burdens include strained relationships, depression, stress, inadequacy, and insecurity. Sometimes we suffer from the burdens of pretense and pride. And over the long-haul these and other burdens make us weary. - In our text Jesus promises the weary and burdened two solutions: rest and a yoke.

Jesus Gives Rest

Jesus promises rest for those who are weary. The Western understanding of rest usually involves a mattress or a recliner. We think of rest as "inactivity." However, the Hebrew understanding of rest is to stop or cease. At creation, God the Son stopped his creative activity on the seventh day (rested) but continued his sustaining activity on the seventh day. The call to rest is a call to stop what we are doing and do something else. In the distress of life, Jesus is calling us to come to him and he will empower us to stop what we were doing.

One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results. Rest is stopping our routine of work. However, it is also important for us to stop our repetitive thinking on life's burdens and seek a fresh perspective from God. Rest is the ability to stop ourselves physically, emotionally and spiritually.

Sabbath: Physical, Emotional, and Spiritual Rest

God calls us to a seventh day Sabbath rest. As Lord of the Sabbath, Jesus gives us time for rest on the Sabbath and he gives us rest in him with the ability to stop and focus on being in Christ.

This is not just time to physically rest or stop from our work-a-day world. It is also time to rest from the ruts of our thinking, ruts of our discouragement, ruts of our stress, and ruts of our burdens. Jesus has given us time to rest on the Sabbath and he has given us rest from the ruts of our weariness and burdens.

Use the Sabbath to rest emotionally from weariness and burdens. For those who are weary and burdened, Jesus has given us both the ability to stop and rest and Sabbath time to stop and rest.

Allow the Sabbath to give you time to pursue spiritual rest. Our rest is found in Christ. Take Sabbath time to gather in the presence of the Lord and with fellow Seventh Day Baptists to worship. Worship is a soul cleansing and revitalization event. Jesus gives us rest and we also need to find rest. We have been given the seventh day of the week as a gift to find and experience the rest of Christ.

“Yoked-Up” with Jesus

Jesus offers us rest and a yoke. Our responsibility in dealing with the weariness and burdens of life is to take on the yoke of Jesus. Jesus said, "Take my yoke upon you.” The yoke is given by Jesus. It is his yoke and it must be taken by us.

But when we feel overloaded and overwhelmed a yoke is the last thing we want. We want a vacation, or a rescue, not something else to take on. In spite of that, Jesus offers us something else to carry, a yoke.

A yoke allows two, to do what one cannot do alone. A yoke divides the burden so that the load is shared by two. Jesus' yoke is a tool for carrying life’s burdens instead of trying to escape life’s burdens. Our burdens in life make us weary. Jesus is saying, "You have been carrying your burdens with your own strength and you are weary with the load. Try my rest and my yoke."

Learn from Jesus

The yoke of Jesus is a yoke of learning. Jesus said, ²⁹Take my yoke upon you and learn from me. Think of two oxen yoked together and working side by side. Now picture yourself coming to Jesus and being yoked to him for life. Being yoked together means that you do everything together. We especially have the opportunity to learn from our fellow yoke-mate, Jesus. Jesus provides direction, leadership, help, teaching, and strength.

Jesus is saying to come to him and he will give us his yoke as a means of our learning from Him to carry the burdens of life. Every day we yoke-up with Jesus to learn from him and draw strength from him. The yoke is not a sitting tool, it is a walking tool. We yoke-up with Jesus every moment and movement of the day to learn and draw strength from him.

Jesus is Meek and Humble

Jesus then tells us that his personality and mannerisms for teaching us while being yoked to him, are gentle and humble. Jesus said, ²⁹Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart Jesus is gentle and will be patient with slow students and thoughtful in his correction of us. And, throughout the teaching and learning process Jesus will remain yoked to us.

A. W. Tozer in The Pursuit of God contends that life’s greatest burdens can come upon us through our pride and pretense. Tozer wrote, “The heart’s fierce effort to protect itself from every slight, to shield its touchy honor from the bad opinion of friend and enemy, will never let the mind have rest. Continue this fight through the years and the burden will become intolerable. Yet the sons of earth are carrying this burden continually, challenging every word spoken against them, cringing under every criticism, smarting under each fancied slight, tossing sleepless if another is preferred before them.”

Pride and pretense over time will make us weary and burdened. The solution to pride and pretense is meekness and humility. Those are the two qualities of Jesus mentioned in this text. ²⁹Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle (meek) and humble in heart. There will be no rest for our souls until we find rest from pride and pretense by being yoked with the meek and humble Jesus who calls us to “learn from me.” Learn meekness and humility from Jesus, our yokemate.

Finding Rest for our Souls

The Sabbath is time for physical rest from our labor of six days. The Sabbath is also time to stop so that we can find rest for our souls. When we come to Jesus we are given eternal rest. And then we spend the remainder of our lives finding the depth of that rest.

We know about rest for the body. But the Sabbath is also time, without the work-a-day distractions, for us to find rest for our souls. The Sabbath is a time to stop, reflect, worship, and learn from our yokemate so that we find rest for our soul as well as rest for our bodies.

Light and Easy Yoke

The yoke itself has weight. But Jesus is saying that to take his yoke is unusual because it is light and easy. Being “yoked up” with Jesus is light and easy because the gospel is simply saying “yes,” when Jesus says “come to me.” We say “yes” to Jesus’ invitation by putting our faith in the person of Jesus and in his death on the cross. We say “yes” to Jesus by turning away from sin and instead following Jesus (repentance). Jesus’ yoke is light and easy and the result is that we will find eternal rest for our souls. Jesus is still saying to people, “Come to me” and “find rest for your souls.”

In Christ we have been given a new rest with a new yoke to deal with the burdens and trials of life. It is up to us to find what we have already been given, rest. We will find rest for our souls being “yoked-up” with Jesus, walking with him side-by-side, carrying and sharing life’s burden together, and learning from him.

The Sabbath gives us time, the seventh day of the week, to find rest in Christ. Rest for our souls is experiencing Christ’s eternal rest. Finding rest for your souls is up to you. Come to Jesus, take his yoke upon you, and learn from him.