When is enough enough? This weekend Pastor Steve Andres continued our RENEW series with a message about rest.
Deuteronomy 5:15
Remember that you were once slaves in Egypt, but the Lord your God brought you out with his strong hand and powerful arm. That is why the Lord your God has commanded you to rest on the Sabbath day.
The word Sabbath is rooted in ideas of rest and celebration. When God finished his work in creation, he rested and rejoiced in what he had made.
1) God is a God of REST.
We struggle to feel we have enough. Enough fun. Enough money. Enough stuff. Enough status. Sabbath says that what God has provided is enough.
Sabbath is a way to break our addiction to accumulation and accomplishment.
Sabbath is a way to press pause on our compulsive availability.
Sabbath is a way to heal our toxic relationship with status and image.
Sabbath is a way to resist the pressure to perform.
When we honor the Sabbath, we cease our striving and clamoring for more, and we rest in the awareness of God’s good gifts.
2) God invites us to meet him through REST.
There is no monument or temple where God dwells. God doesn’t have a holy PLACE; he has a holy PACE.
“The Sabbaths are our great cathedrals.”
Rabbi Abraham Heschel
How do you practice REST? It requires work and preparation beforehand. For 24 hours, the focus is only on WORSHIP and DELIGHT. If it isn’t worshipful, if it doesn’t produce delight, then it belongs in the other six days! Sabbath trains us to trust.
3) Only through Jesus can we experience a true REST.
We need a deep rest of the soul, but to experience that we have to get to the root of our anxious performance orientation.
Hebrews 4:9,11
There remains therefore a Sabbath rest for the people of God. Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest.
Just like our weekly Sabbath, the deep rest that Jesus gives requires work if we are to enter into it. But Jesus is clear what that work is.
John 6:29
This is the only work God wants from you: Believe in the one he has sent.
When we trust and believe in Christ, we find rest for our souls and security to cease our striving. This is the ultimate REST that God has given us!
