Mark 2:23-28

And it speaks in many places, but I think particularly in Romans 13 where Paul, under the inspiration of God's Holy Spirit, says this, "Everyone must submit to governing authorities, for all authority comes from God, and those in positions of authority have been placed there by God." That last line: "those in places of authority", whether that's congresspersons, whether that's presidents, whether that's monarchs, whether that's dictators, they have been placed there by God.

God's sovereignty controls even who rises to power, even who makes it to elected office, even what dictator is able to rise to power. And so Paul writes, we're called to submit to the governing authorities. That is the response of a follower of Jesus Christ, whether it's to a ruler that is democratically elected, or whether that is to a ruler who has risen to power through totalitarian means. You notice that it doesn't mention voting.

It doesn't mention voting, because at the time that the apostle Paul wrote this, Roman government prevailed. Roman emperors, who were essentially dictators, prevailed, so he was under-- and really, the span of time that Paul lived in, probably some very cruel, some very evil Roman emperors. And yet he still writes these words. This is still what God wanted him to hear, the believers at that time to hear, and for you and I to hear. So what does that mean for us?

It means, first of all, that when we look at Tuesday, we, first of all, we trust in God's sovereignty over the political process. Secondly, it means we submit to the outcome of that process. There is no room to say, "Not my president, not my senator, not my congressperson." But thirdly, and this is where voting does come into play, we thank God that we have the opportunity that we even have, I would say the blessing, to directly participate in the political process by voting. That is a blessing.

Whether we realize it or not, that is a blessing that Paul and the believers in the early church didn't have. That is a blessing that, today, many followers of Jesus Christ in other parts of the world don't have. That is a blessing that we have now that we could lose, particularly if we don't exercise it.

And so as a step of thanksgiving to God for that blessing, I want to encourage you to directly participate in the political process that God is sovereign over, but directly participate by exercising your right to vote, if you've not already done so, on Tuesday. Enough said. This is not a voting sermon today. If you're visiting with us, we actually are taking a deep look at Jesus through the Gospel of Mark.

Mark, John Mark, inspired by the Holy Spirit, gives us one of the four Gospel accounts of Jesus, and we see him, and as we behold him, we're drawn to him. We are working our way through verse by verse. We are today-- we are finishing out chapter 2, so the text today is actually verses 23 through 28, which takes us to the end of the chapter. And today, I'm using the New International Version. Let me start with verse 23. "One Sabbath, Jesus was going through the grain fields.

And as his disciples walked along, they began to pick some heads of grain." Now, let me stop right there, before we go any further. I don't want to make any assumptions here. When I was new as a believer, I wasn't really clear on what "Sabbath" meant, so that may be you. So, I needed somebody to explain it to me. So let me just briefly explain it.

The Sabbath (and we'll see more of this in the Old Testament basis for this), but the Sabbath is the last day of the week under the old Mosaic law, the Old Testament culture. We think of the weekend as the end of the week, but if you look at a calendar, what do you know? You know that Saturday is the end of the week. Sunday actually begins a new week, and so the Sabbath is-- was-- Saturday under the old Mosaic law. So every week, the seventh day, Saturday, was recognized as the Sabbath.

And we'll get into the Old Testament basis for that in a moment. This all happens on the Sabbath, and that's very important, because this is the first of one of many encounters, controversial encounters, that Jesus is going to have with the religious authorities of that day about the sabbath, about what could or couldn't be done on the Sabbath. And actually, as these grow, and they build, we're going to see their hostility growing toward him.

We're going to see their efforts to accuse him based in a large part on what he did or didn't do on the Sabbath. Now, one of the things that we're going to go on to see they didn't accuse him of is-- you notice that there was some travel involved here. Traveling on the Sabbath was prohibited. You could walk on the Sabbath, but you couldn't take a journey on the Sabbath. And a journey was defined not by the Bible, but by a Pharisaic tradition, as 2,000 steps or more.

So on a Sunday, imagine that, or on a Saturday, imagine that: getting up, and you've got to count your steps. You know, those steps that you take to the bathroom, and the steps you take to the kitchen, they all count. And if you get over 1,999, you are on a journey, and you violated the Sabbath in that culture. Well, they weren't accusing him, as we're going to see here, of violating the Sabbath by taking a journey. And so my conclusion is they were right around where they normally were.

They were just taking a walk. Instead, the controversy began as his disciples picked some heads of grain. Now, I know if you have the King James Version, it may say "corn". I think "grain" is the better interpretation there. We're not sure whether that was a wheat grain or some ancient kind of grain, but it involved picking the heads off the stalks of grain and probably rubbing those heads between their palms to knock the chaff off, and then eating the raw heads of grain.

I didn't grow up where grain was grown, but I've heard people do that and say it's pretty good. Maybe you've had that experience. Mosaic Law, and specifically Deuteronomy 23:25, which is coming up on the screen, it permitted people at that time to pick kernels of grain with their hands in their neighbors' grain fields. So if you were walking through even your neighbor's field, you could do that.

You couldn't take some kind of implement and cut down a bunch of grain, but you could pick individual pieces of grain. In fact, if you know the story of Ruth, in Ruth chapter 2, that's actually how Ruth meets her soon-to-be-husband, Boaz. She is in his field gleaning grain, gathering some grain by hand to eat and to give to her mother-in-law to eat. So my point is the disciples weren't doing anything unlawful or unethical by going through somebody's field and picking stalks of grain.

No. The problem that the Pharisees had is that they were doing it on the Sabbath, on a Saturday. We see that in verse 24: "The Pharisees said to him, 'Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?'" The question Mark really doesn't get to-- it certainly popped up in my mind is, well, how did the Pharisees know? We're not really told any detail, but my conclusion based on what we've seen in Mark already is they're following him.

Whether it's their spies or groups of Pharisees themselves, they are already hostile enough toward them that they're trying to build a case against him. And so they may have some spies, or they may just be openly following him, taking notes, watching for ways that, in their minds, that he slips up so they can build a case against him.

Here's another indication of what we're going to see next week in Mark chapter 3, when Jesus openly says it: their hearts, instead of being receptive to what God is doing through him, are growing harder against him. Jesus is going to introduce us next week to the concept of hardness of heart. So they accuse him, saying, "You know what? "Your disciples are doing, what you're allowing your disciples to do is unlawful on the Sabbath."

And that-- let me just briefly bring you into the Mosaic law, what actually is in the Old Testament about the Sabbath, so we have some background for that. Exodus chapter 31, this is part of the Mosaic law in verse 15, gives us the general principle: for six days, work is to be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of rest, holy to the Lord. Whoever does any work on the Sabbath Day must be put to death. So the principles we can glean from this is Saturday's the Sabbath, or a day of rest.

But I ask the question, maybe you're asking it, well, what does "rest" mean? You know, what am I supposed to do that is rest? And then the other question is, you know, if there should be no work, what constitutes work? If I can take 1,999 paces, but I can't take 2,000 paces under this Pharisaic tradition and rules and regulations, where are the lines, where are the boundaries of work? We get a clue about the purpose of rest, that it's for rest.

Two verses later, in Exodus 31:17: "In six days, the Lord made Heaven and Earth, and on the seventh day, he, the Lord God, rested and was refreshed." Now think about that: God, the creator of the world, after creating the world and all that is in it in six days, he rested. God is omnipotent. God is all-powerful. God doesn't need a nap. God doesn't need to physically recover. God doesn't need to sleep.

So he is not resting in the sense that he is exhausted, that he has worn out, that he needs to be replenished, his energy needs to be replenished. No, he's doing something else here. He is modeling something for us human beings, those of us, he's made us in his image, but he has not made us some omnipotent. We're not like God in that respect.

He created us to need regular cycles of rest and refreshing, and I'm going to come back to that, because that speaks to you and me today and what we do now on the other side of Jesus's crucifixion and resurrection. But let's go back to the Pharisees. Why did the Pharisees see what the disciples were doing as unlawful work?

Again, there is nothing that you'll find in the Old Testament that specifically talks about the detail of plucking grain, rubbing it between your hands to knock the chaff off, and eating it on the Sabbath. So they're looking for general categories. There is a general category at least, maybe, that gets in the ballpark: in Exodus 34:21, you are to rest. Even during the plowing season and harvest, you must rest. The Pharisees looked at what the disciples were doing as harvesting.

You know, I think of harvesting as a combine going through a field or taking an implement and cutting down sheaves of grain. But the Pharisees looked at that little act of picking the heads of grain and knocking the chaff off as harvesting. They may, in addition, have looked at what they were doing, even, with knocking the chaff off and then eating it, as preparing a meal.

And there was a whole set of regulations that they had built up about what you could and couldn't do as far as the preparation of a meal. So again, this gets back to, if you were here last week, the tradition that they built on top of scripture. There is what the Old Testament said, and then there were myriads of rules and regulations that they had built up by tradition over the years. All these prohibited activities. Let me just-- I mean, there's literally thousands.

Let me just give you three to give you an idea. These stood out to me. So these are activities that you cannot do under, not the Bible, but under Pharisaic tradition, Sabbath regulations you cannot do on the Sabbath. You cannot tie a knot; you cannot loosen a knot. So you know, they probably didn't wear shoes like I do, but I mean, can you imagine that? If they wore any kind of garment or foot covering that involved tying, if it came untied, that's too bad.

You can't tie that knot, or you can't loosen that knot. You could not, without violating the Sabbath, sew more than one stitch, which is kind of pointless, isn't it? You know, you sew one stitch and that's it? You know, you cannot on the Sabbath, write more than one letter. And I don't mean letter as far as a document, you know, that you're going to mail; I mean one literal letter. A, b, c, d... You can only write one letter without violating the Sabbath.

I could go on and on, and we'll see some more of these next week even involving what you can do to save life, next week. But let's come back to how Jesus addresses this. This accusation has been made against him. It comes out of, again, not the Bible; it comes out of this extra-biblical tradition that they were trying to impose upon him. How does Jesus respond? We see his response in the next few verses.

And, you know, I normally don't really get drawn into doing that preacher's thing about alliteration, but it worked this week, so here it is in verses 25 and 26. Jesus responds with the precedent set by David, and we'll look at that in just a moment. In verse 27, he responds with what the true purpose of the Sabbath is. And then he finishes it in verse 28 by making a pronouncement of his authority, his authority over the Sabbath, but his authority over everything.

So first of all, let's look at the precedent set by David in Mark 2:25 and 26: Jesus answers to their accusations: "Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need? He entered the house of God, and he ate the consecrated bread, which is lawful only for priests to eat. And he gave some to his companions.

Now, the context for this is the book of 1 Samuel, and if you've read the Old Testament and you've read through Samuel, you may have some familiarity with this. Saul was king, and yet Saul's heart had turned away from God, and so God raised up young David, and in 1 Samuel 16, God has Samuel the prophet anoint David as the king. Do you think Saul accepted that and went away?

No. Saul retained control of power, and not only did Saul retain control of power in defiance of God; Saul was trying to kill David, the one who had been anointed as king. So here, where this story occurs that Jesus is referring to, it's 1 Samuel 21, and David is on the run from Saul. David has some men that are with him. They're being chased by Saul and his army. They are exhausted, and they are hungry, and they come to the town of Nob.

We're not exactly sure where that is, but it's somewhere near Jerusalem. And that's where the House of God, which is the tabernacle, the precursor to the temple, was located at that time. So they come to the tabernacle, and David speaks with the priest who's there, who greets them at the tabernacle, and we see what David asks of him in 1 Samuel 21:3 and 4, which should be coming up on the screen. David says to the priest, "Now then, what do you have on hand?" He's thinking of his hungry men.

Give me five loaves of bread or whatever is here. And the priest answered David, "I have no common bread on hand, but there is holy bread." Holy bread, or what Mark calls consecrated bread, is what Exodus 25 and Leviticus 24 called the Bread of the Presence. If you've done any study or you've been through any kind of teaching on what the tabernacle was like, and ultimately the temple, you may know this: the innermost sanctuary in the temple, in the tabernacle, is the Holy of Holies.

That's where the Ark of the Covenant, where God manifested his presence, was located. And right outside that, separated by a curtain, by the veil, is the holy place. And in the holy place, there's a table, the table of the Bread of the Presence, and on that table are 12 loaves.

Each loaf weighs about six pounds, and these loaves were there, not because anybody's going to eat them, but they symbolize God's provision for the nation of Israel, his provision for the 12 tribes, providing food and many other things as they made their way through the wilderness over 40 years. So this is the way that the tabernacle was to be set up. And these loaves, they were replaced every week with fresh loaves. So what happens to the old loaves?

Those old loaves are taken out, but the Mosaic law said those old loaves, which had been on the table of the Bread of the Presence, could only be eaten by priests, because they were holy. They were consecrated. In other words, they were set apart. So what is Jesus doing here by referring to this incident? Jesus is making a comparison between himself and David, in referring to this event. Think of how these two events compare.

Both David and Jesus had men with them who were hungry and needed to be fed. Both David and now Jesus technically violate the Sabbath regulations by feeding their men this bread. But what do we know about 1 Samuel 21? God did not punish David. God did not punish David's men for eating that consecrated bread. In fact, the Pharisees, who knew this account well, none of the Pharisees would have accused David of any wrongdoing, just the opposite.

The Pharisees knew or thought of David as Israel's greatest king, and they knew that the Old Testament spoke of David as, really, the inaugurator of the future Messianic reign. They saw in-- the Old Testament pictures David as, really, a precursor, one who points to the Messiah, an image, a dim image of what the Messiah, the Christ, would be. So Jesus is picking up on that here. This is not just a story he's randomly drawn out of Old Testament history.

Jesus picks up on that in making this comparison, and this is the first of a number of times in Mark that we're going to see Jesus comparing himself to David. Why? The Messiah, the Christ that they're all waiting for, the Old Testament said, would be the son of David. And by this comparison, Jesus is beginning to reveal to the Pharisees, and his disciples, and to us if we've not gotten it yet, that that is who he is. He is the son of David. He is the Messiah. He is the one to whom David pointed.

He is the Christ. He's beginning to reveal that here. He makes this comparison because, really, the lesson is this: if David, who is the precursor to the Messiah, if David could set aside the Sabbath rules for some greater purpose, feeding his hungry men, how much more does the true Messiah, the one that David points to, have the authority to do the very same thing? He rests on this precedent set by David and the picture that it gives them and us of who he really is.

Secondly, Jesus goes on from that. Jesus goes on to declare the purpose, the true purpose, of the Sabbath. You know, what the Pharisees were doing is what we do. You know, I don't know what kind of church you grew up in, but it happens in every church and every denomination: we take scripture, we take the scriptural principles, and we certainly obey the clearest ones, the black and white ones.

But there are some that are just principles, and what we're not sure how to apply those in every case in our daily lives, individually and as a church. And so we start to build practices. We start to build tradition. We start to build, depending on the kind of church background you came from, rules and regulations on top of what's in scripture. We do the very same things that the Pharisees did. They just recorded everything that they did, which usually we don't do.

So Jesus addresses, really, you know, all that has been built upon the scripture by going back to "what is the true purpose of the Sabbath?" Verse 27: "He said to them, 'The Sabbath was made for man; man wasn't made for the Sabbath.'" What does he mean? "The Sabbath was made for man." Well, let's look at God's purpose. Why did God make the Sabbath?

We see this again, going back to Exodus 31:17: "In six days, the Lord made Heaven and Earth, and on the seventh day, he rested, and he was refreshed." Again, God didn't need rest in the sense of he needs to take a nap, he needs to recover his energy level. It's nothing like that. God was signaling something bigger. "Rest."

The Hebrew word for "rest" is "Shabbat", and "Shabbat" rest in Hebrew means "to cease, to desist, to be at peace because you have stopped working, because you have stopped trying to perform, because you have stopped in your activity." We see a hint of that in Exodus 23:7-12. "For six days you are to do your work, but on the seventh day, you must cease so that you can rest, so that you can be refreshed."

God was giving us a picture in the creation: he accomplished his work of creation in six days. On the seventh day, what did God do? He ceased from his creative work, not because he was tired. He ceased, he rested, he desisted, and he saw that it was good. He took pleasure in all that he had done by ceasing from his work. And this gets to the purpose of the Sabbath, the real essential principle of the Sabbath. We cease in our efforts. We rest. We stop trying to perform.

We stop trying to be worthy. We stop trying to merit something. We stop all of our activity, and we rest in the sufficiency of God to refresh us. We rest in what God has done for us through Christ, and our peace in ceasing and desisting comes not from "I accomplished so much on my to-do list this week". No. Our worth, our value, is not based upon how much we've accomplished, how we performed, as you-name-it, husband, wife, father, son, daughter, mother.

Our worth, our value, is all based upon who we are in Christ before God and what Christ has done for us. We cease. We rest in that. I'll come back to this, but let me go to the third way Jesus responds. Jesus caps this off with a pronouncement of his authority. Verse 28: "So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath." Jesus identifies himself here again (it's already happened back in verse 10) as the Son of Man. And he says, "Because I'm the Son of Man, I am Lord over the Sabbath."

Now I want you to think about that concept. What does it mean to be Lord over the Sabbath? Well God, in the Old Testament, was lord over the Sabbath. If God created the Sabbath, God determined what you could and couldn't do on the Sabbath, what is being lord over the Sabbath? It means you have authority over it. You define it. You define how it is lived out. Jesus is now saying, "I have that authority over the Sabbath.

I have that authority now over the purpose of the Sabbath, the living out of the Sabbath purposes." Why? "Because I," Jesus says, "I am the Son of Man." We briefly looked at the Son of Man verse back in verse 10, but I want to go to where that title actually comes from. If you've studied through the book, of the Old Testament book of Daniel, especially if you've done prophetic study, you know Daniel chapter 7 is a pretty important chapter, and this is where this appears.

Daniel in chapter 7 is given a revelation, a vision, of ultimate spiritual reality, and I'll pick it up in verse 13. This is what he sees. This is what God allows him to see: "and behold, with the clouds of Heaven, one like a Son of Man was coming, and he came up to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him." Daniel is given this vision of ultimate spiritual reality. He sees the Ancient of Days, the Lord God Almighty, seated on his throne. And what is the picture that he sees?

He sees one who is the Son of Man coming before the Ancient of Days, coming before the Lord God Almighty. This is, without getting into a study of Daniel, this is a pre-incarnate revelation of who the Messiah is, of the Christ. And he's given the title the Son of Man because that reveals what he's going to do when he comes incarnate. He is going to be fully divine, but he's going to be fully human as well, so he can do effectively what he did on the cross for you and for me.

And what does God, the Ancient of Days, bestow upon this One, this Christ, this Messiah, the Son of Man? Verse 14 of Daniel 7: he was given authority, authority to rule, and glory, and a kingdom, so that those of every people, nation, and language should serve him. This is a picture of what is now spiritual reality.

This is a picture of what Paul the Apostle talks about in Philippians 2 when he teaches us that Jesus Christ, the Son of Man, though he has been crucified and resurrected and now ascended to the right hand of God, he one day will return, and when he returns, every knee will bow before him, and every tongue will confess that he is Lord. In other words, everyone will be forced to admit, either willingly or forced to admit, Jesus has ultimate authority over everyone and everything.

That will happen when Jesus Christ returns, which kind of puts politics today in perspective, doesn't it? You know, it kind of puts the outcome of elections into a little bit of perspective. So when Jesus claims that he is the Son of Man, is Lord of the Sabbath, he and the Pharisees got this. He is putting himself squarely in the place of God. God created the Sabbath, and he has now turned the authority of the Sabbath over to Jesus, the Son of Man. Jesus has authority over the Sabbath.

And so by virtue of his authority, Jesus is free to judge how the Sabbath should be lived out in fulfillment of his mission and his purposes. And I'll take it a step further here for those of us who now are on the other side of Jesus's resurrection. Jesus not only does that; what Jesus says here indicates that he was forever changing the way that the Sabbath principles were to be lived out. He is bringing the Sabbath back into alignment, out of the regulations, out of the rules.

He's bringing it back into alignment with God's true purposes for it, and that brings it home to you and me. Has Christ changed the Sabbath? Absolutely. What does that mean for you and me? Are we-- for instance, the question that's often asked, are we expected to keep the Sabbath? You may be aware of this, but there are groups of people like the Seventh Day Adventists, for one, who believe you need to continue to practice the Sabbath on Saturdays. You need to observe that as your day of worship.

You need to observe a certain amount of restrictions on what you can do. That is something, a view that is embraced by many people. But here's the reality: the early Church after Jesus's resurrection, they didn't continue that Jewish practice of seventh day Sabbath observance. In fact, we're shown something new in the New Testament. We're shown this concept of the Lord's Day.

We get a glimpse of that in Revelation chapter 1, verse 10, when John the Apostle, he's worshiping, and what is his day of worship? "I was in the spirit on the Lord's Day." The Lord's Day is the day the Lord Jesus rose from the dead, Sunday. So in the early Church, after Jesus' resurrection, their worship shifted from Saturday worship to Sunday worship, but it goes beyond that.

They didn't just carry over all those Sabbath regulations from Saturdays to Sundays, and now you had to live by the same rules. You just had to do it on Sunday. Instead, actually, as you read the New Testament, there are no New Testament commands. There are not even, that I can find, any New Testament examples of what Christians may or may not do on Sundays. And I realize for maybe many of you, that's new.

Maybe you grew up like I did, in a setting, in a town or a city in the culture, when we still had what were called blue laws, where stores had to be closed on Sundays. Where there were things that your parents and your church would say you can do and you can't do on Sundays. And while there's some value in that, I'm not totally casting that aside, what I would tell you is this, is there is no New Testament support for this.

There is no New Testament regulations or rules for what you can or can't do on the day that you worship the Lord. In fact, the only place where the New Testament speaks about the Sabbath is in Colossians chapter 2, verse 16: "Let no one act as your judge in regard to a Sabbath Day, a thing which is a mere shadow of what is to come. But the substance belongs to Christ." Did you get that? "Let no one act as your judge in regard to how you observe the purpose of the Sabbath, of Sabbath rest."

And this teaches us that how we seek the rest and refreshment that God has created us to regularly need, that's a matter of Christian liberty. That's a matter of Christian conscience. So for most of us, we have Sundays off. I love that Chick-fil-A gives their employees off. What a wonderful opportunity to say, "Not because I'm required, not because I'm under a set of rules, but because I have freedom in Christ, I'm going to give my Sunday to worship and to fellowship with other believers."

But if you work on a Sunday, or other circumstances are such that Sunday is not the day that you can set aside for rest, we have freedom in Christ to make that Saturday or Monday or whatever day it may be. There is freedom. There is liberty of conscience in deciding how we are going to live out the Sabbath principle, the purpose of the Sabbath, of rest and refreshment. And why is that? Paul says here the Sabbath is simply a mere shadow of what is to come. What do you know about a shadow?

You look at a shadow, and all you are seeing is the outline of something that is real. Something that is substance. So the Sabbath is only the outline. It's not what's real. What is the substance? The substance belongs to Christ. He is the ultimate fulfillment of our Sabbath rest. We see this in Hebrews 4: "There remains, then, a Sabbath rest for the people of God." He's speaking to believers, followers of Jesus.

"For anyone who enters God's rest also rests from his own work, just as God did from his." Here's the thing, without going into a detailed study of Hebrews: Jesus accomplished the ultimate work for us. There is no work, there is no effort that was more difficult, more painful than what Jesus did on the cross for us. And Jesus's sacrificial work on the cross, that's the only word that God finds acceptable.

So if you are trying to be worthy before God, to be accepted by God based on how you're performing, how you're performing religiously, how you're performing as a husband, a wife, a son or daughter, a father or mother, an employee, a church member, a church staff member... If you are striving to make yourself good enough, you are working, and God says, "Enter my rest by ceasing, by desisting, by trusting in the work that Jesus Christ has done." Have you entered God's rest?

Have you come to the place where you have rested from your own work? You've come to the conclusion, "You know what? I can't be good enough. I can't merit or earn acceptance before God. I can't be good enough to get into Heaven by trying harder. I have to rest. I have to cease. I have to desist. I have to trust in the all-powerful work that Jesus Christ did for me on the cross, dying for my sins." Have you entered God's rest? If you haven't, if you're still striving, he opens that to you today.

You can enter his rest. You can cease from your striving. You can cease from that performance-based lifestyle that weighs you down, that crushes us, that leads us to despair, and you can rest in what Christ has done. Let me close with this. If we're not under the Sabbath law anymore, does the Sabbath have any-- it's a shadow-- does it have any relevance in our lives? Yes. Again, we recognize the purpose.

We're made in God's image, and he created us to have this regular cycle where we work, and yet we need regularly, once a week, we need this time to cease from our work and desist. And that does refresh us physically, but it goes far beyond that; tt refreshes us emotionally. It refreshes us spiritually. It refreshes our minds and our hearts and our souls as we stop, and we cease, and we desist, and we declare that it is good. What Jesus did on the cross is good.

That, for most of us, I think that the ideal time to do that is as we come together as followers of Jesus Christ. We do it worshiping the One who did the ultimate work for us. We do it as we fellowship together, but again, there's freedom in that, and there's conscience. There's a freedom of conscience in that. So where are you this morning? Have you entered God's rest, or are you under the burden of performance, of work? Have you trusted in Christ?

And if you have, if you've crossed that line, do you fall back like I'm so often tempted to do? "I've still got to please God. I've got to do all these things. I've got to have enough things at the end of the week to show God that I'm worthy of him saving me." No. We need to cease. We need to desist. We need to rest. We need to trust. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, once again, we too are amazed.

And we're amazed, Lord, by what you have done, how you set us free, how you set us free from our striving in our performance-based life, in this performance-based culture, and you accept us, not based on anything we can do, not any work on our part, but on the work you have done on the cross. Lord Jesus, if there's anyone here who has not entered God's rest by trusting in you, by resting in your work, I pray even this morning your spirit would draw them.

Lord, if there are those here, like me, who can identify with me, when I confess to you, I still fall back on that idea that I've got to be good enough, that I've got to be worthy enough, I pray that you'd help us, Lord, to rest, to trust, to cease, to desist, and to be refreshed. We pray this all, Jesus, in your precious name. Amen.