Seeing Jesus: Sabbath Rest

Weird time to be alive. You look at the news and I imagine that every generation says that.

But like when we look at like the future that we're looking into with like AI and robots and space travel and Bitcoin, I don't know if that's a future of the past. We'll find out probably the hard way. But it feels like we live in really, really remarkable times. I mean, we could totally debate if these technological developments will come to anything. Like if you grew up watching the Jetsons, you probably feel lied to. Right? Because you don't have a robot made.

And who knows if, you know, we'll have robots, you know, cleaning our homes or, you know, AI will take over work or anything. But just as I think about like the possibility that those things could be near, I feel like it.

I mean, it's interesting or it's terrifying depending on how you feel about it because because in the end like a future with a lot of ai or a lot of robots like the the vision that's being painted is like is like a future where we don't have to work and if you like to work that's kind of scary like i actually like working in.

Things that i like doing and it's like to the idea of just like living free without labor like i heard this interview with elon musk and he's like everyone will have 10 robots and no one will do anything and he's like and that's the glorious future we're walking into and i'm like i'm not sure i'm not sure if i want that some people think that's a dream i think it's kind of a nightmare but no matter what you think about these techno technological developments it's

making me and probably i think probably you think about the relationship of people to work like it's like well we've all read the you know the gurus online you talk about work-life balance and we all can understand that it's like but what is the relationship between work and productivity and human flourishing like what is the relationship like like do i need to work like would it be a good thing for me if i were able to delegate all my

work to a thinking computer or to a robot so that i could just do nothing like it makes that the fact that that is possibly going to be a possibility it makes me think about that question a lot what is the proper relationship between work and rest and this is not a new question Thank you.

These are actually like very deep questions that are really important.

We've been going along in the book of Matthew, and we're going to be in Matthew 12 today. So if you can open that up to Matthew 12, verse 1 in your Bible. But we're getting into a passage that's focusing on the question of Sabbath, and particularly how the Pharisees feel about Jesus' relationship to the Sabbath. Ancient Israel had a lot of strong convictions about work and human flourishing, Like, what is the appropriate type of work we should be doing and how often?

And they, like all ancient people, like tended to be really hard workers. They knew what it was to be endlessly working because most of them were farm workers, right? And if you've known a farmer or spent time on a farm, you know that farmers are hardworking people because farmers' work is never done. You're either working very hard or just regular hard on the farm.

But Israel also had, in the midst of that attitude towards work, a really unique commitment among ancient peoples to their God, Yahweh. And they understood their obligations to God to be playing out in their obedience to certain laws and rules. And they believed that God had commanded them to rest on what they call the Sabbath day, so the seventh day of the week. And that that was a day that they were supposed to just take off from all the laboring and all the hardworking and actually just rest.

We read about that commandment in Exodus 20. It's one of the 10 commandments that Moses brings down from the mountain. In Exodus 20, verse 8, it says this, remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. You're to labor six days and do all of your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God.

You must not do any work, you or your sons or your daughter your male or female servant your livestock or the resident alien who is with you within your city gates for the Lord had made the heavens and the earth and the sea and everything in them in six days and then he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and declared it holy. Israel understands that God has called them to rest.

God knew that these people left to their own devices would just be going, going, going, constantly going, constantly trying to manage things, constantly trying to produce more, always thinking about how they're going to take care of themselves and provide for themselves. And so God tells his people that one day a week, they just have to take it off.

They have to rest and rest in such a way that they're understanding that this rest is holy rest. Like it's their devotion to God is tied up in their rest in the midst of all of this. And not just them, not just each individual, you know, Israelite person or man of the household, but everybody, everybody in their household, wives, children, servants, livestock, even everybody is to treat this day as a holy day and to rest or cease from their work on the midst of all of that.

And it was serious business in Israel. The obedience to the Sabbath commitment was serious. And, you know, I was in a coffee shop on Wednesday, and I had like some theology books around, and this guy came up to me and he said, oh, I see you're reading Christian theology. I'm like, yes. What a wonderful, yes, let's talk about that. And this was a non-believer, and he was like asking me what I was reading about. I was like, oh, I'm preparing for this message and we're talking about the Sabbath.

And he says, I don't understand the Sabbath. Like, why? It's a really good question. Even as somebody who's just secular and in the world, and we all understand what rest is, but why? Why this day in particular, and why is this tied up? Can't we take care of ourselves? Why do we need to take this particular day? I mean, we ended up having a really good conversation. It makes you wonder, why does God care? Why is there something special about the seventh day as opposed to all the other days?

Is there something, or is God just trying to exert his control over us, which I think a lot of people think about the commandments in scripture, and they think, oh, God is just super controlling. He just wants to tell you to take the seventh day because he can. The why that's given here, at least in Exodus, is that the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and he declared it holy.

And it's because on the seventh day, that's when he rested from creation. So it's a call back to this Genesis account when God created everything. But then when I think about whys, I think, well, that's not really a good way. I get that God did that, but what does that have to do with me? And why is it that I, or why as an ancient Israelite, would they feel this obligation to do this? Sure, God did that, but what does it have to do with us?

And as you think about that question, I just want us to get back into Matthew here. So setting this up, thinking about they have this commitment to the Sabbath. In Matthew 12 here. The Pharisees are really pushing on Jesus about, they're questioning his commitment to the Sabbath. Okay, so picking up in Matthew 12, verse one, he says this, at that time, Jesus passed through the grain fields on the Sabbath and his disciples were hungry and they began to pick and eat some heads of grain.

And when the Pharisees saw this, they said to him, see, your disciples are doing what he's not lawful to do on the Sabbath.

So the disciples are walking around with Jesus at this point in their ministry, just constant travel, including on the Sabbath day. They're always on the move. Everywhere Jesus is going, people are flocking to him. He's healing. People are interested in him. And this is the greatest part. The Pharisees, who kind of consider themselves the umpires of the game of following after God, they're the ones who get to decide if people are doing the right things or the wrong things.

They're, funny enough, following these disciples, watching them to see if they're going to do work. But of course, they're doing it like it's their job. Kind of interesting contradiction there. And so they see these disciples and the Pharisees come to complain to Jesus. He says, well, they're like breaking a law because we're told we can't harvest on the Sabbath. And they're walking through the grain fields and taking little things and having

a little snack. That's harvesting. So that's against the rules. And though I think this question is super annoying, right? And I think it's sort of presented as like, oh, these guys, you know, but it's not like it's a question that's out of left field. It's not like it's an unfair question. The Pharisees had this very strong sense that God had given the law for a reason. And he said, this is a holy day. And so keeping it holy, he said, we're not to be laboring. And so that's laboring.

I mean, how else are you supposed to know what to do or not to do on the Sabbath if you don't just, you know, avoid doing the things that seem like they could be work. Sabbath is holy. We can't do work on the Sabbath. This is a clear violation. The question isn't crazy. And so we really should pay attention, pay attention to it. And we should, I think we just need to know that it's a fair question. It's sort of an annoying question, but it's a fair question.

And Jesus replies to them, okay, so picking up in verse 3. So his response is, he said to them, haven't you read what David did when he and those who were with him were hungry and how he entered the house of God and they ate the bread of the presence, which is not lawful for those, for him or for those who are with him to eat, but only for the priests? Or haven't you read the law that on the Sabbath day, the priests in the temple violate the Sabbath and yet are innocent?

I tell you that something greater than the temple is here. And if you had known what this means, I desire mercy and not sacrifice, you would not have condemned the innocent. For the Son of Man is the Lord of the Sabbath. So in response to the Pharisees' annoying but fair question, Jesus appeals to two Old Testament texts, two Old Testament examples, to kind of point out that they're being inconsistent in their interpretation of Scripture.

First is a story that we could read about in 1 Samuel 21. We're not going to spend time in there this morning, but it's basically as King Saul has determined he's going to hunt down David and kill him, he's been warned by Jonathan that he needs to run away. And so he has to just like go right then and there. He's unprepared for his fleeing. And so he flees and he goes to the tabernacle and he's hungry. He doesn't know where to go. He doesn't have money. He wasn't prepared for this journey.

And so he goes to the tabernacle and the priest knows him. And he basically says, just give me the bread. And the priest says, well, this bread is like dedicated to the Lord. So you're not really supposed to eat it. But David does it anyway. And David's the hero of the story. And so Jesus is saying, well, David did this. I mean, he broke the law, and yet he was accounted as innocent in this instance, right? So it's an example of, okay, maybe this is more complicated than you think, Pharisees.

And then he gives this other example of how the priests, you know, how the priests on the Sabbath continue their work, right? Because God is worshiped on the Sabbath just like all the other days. And so the bakers are breaking bread and offering it up to God in the midst of that time. And the priests are burning incense.

And all this stuff continues on the Sabbath. And so there's this blanket command in Israel to keep the Sabbath holy, and yet certain people devoted to certain work, work that is holy, are allowed to work in the midst of all of it. So Jesus is having them question their assumptions about how they're applying these rules. And in both instances, Jesus is pointing out the Pharisees that they're not really paying attention to the exceptions and what the scriptures say themselves

about how the rules work. Back in 2001, can you remember that? Back in 2001, I lived on the East Coast in Connecticut, and I was 16 or 17 or something like that. I looked exactly the same without the beard. And one day I was out late, probably up to no good, about two in the morning. I know, right? I haven't seen two in the morning since. No, no, no, that's not fun. So they're like out by myself in my car. And I needed to take I was in the downtown part of this town.

And I knew it was up to no good. And there's nobody else around. And I needed to take a left through an intersection, you know, stoplight and everything. And so I pull up to the intersection in the left turn lane. The only other car there is in front of me, I pulled behind it. And it's a police car.

And i i admire police i respect police police i am deathly afraid of police and so i'm like there it's two in the morning you're like oh man i'm up to no good this is not this is not great so i'm just sit up straight patient respectful eyes straight ahead wait for the light to turn green so that i can breathe again you know the whole thing and so i wait a minute goes by i'll wait Two minutes goes by There's not another car

in the area Nothing No one else is around Just me and this police officer Two in the morning Wait It was probably four or five minutes I'm not joking The light does not turn, And I'm just White knuckling.

I don't want to get in trouble I don't know You know Not that I was doing anything I just You know I'm just deathly afraid And at some point The police officer Opens his door Gets out of the car Looks at me and goes, and then gets back in his car, turns on his lights, gets in the intersection and waves me through. And I'm like, very slowly make the turn. Thank you, officer. Get out of here because I'm just so afraid. And so, yeah, point of the story. Very slowly, carefully.

Now, technically, he and I were breaking the law. At some point, the officer decided he was not going to wait any longer because, come on. And he was able to make that call. He was able to make that call. I knew I couldn't. I was very aware of my inability to do that. If he wasn't there, I totally would have done it. But he was able to make that call in this instance. Because if not, he was going to sit there all night, but he had the authority.

He had the authority to break the law in order to make this situation work. And as Jesus points out here, he points to the Old Testament, he's illustrating this time where people were not obeying the law to the strictest standard, and yet, he says, they were counted as innocent in the midst of all that. And Jesus says this, for the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath. And so, like, just one takeaway here, Jesus claims to have authority. Jesus has the authority.

He has the authority to, come on, Caleb, come on. There it is. Thank you, sir. Jesus has the authority. He has the authority to determine what it looks like to have this kind of obedience play out and what it ought to look like for Jesus, for people to yet be innocent and have this relationship to the law. The Pharisees are just like, no, we need to just obey it. And that's how we stay on the right side of the law.

But Jesus says, one is here who's greater than the temple. He claims this place of authority. And he says, actually, I have the right, the rightful position in order to determine what's right and wrong. And for you to still be obedient, even in the midst of maybe bending the rules a little bit. And if you're a little uncomfortable, just hang on, because we're going to talk about that. We're going to keep going on here in Matthew 12, verse 9, okay?

Because Jesus, first, he makes this authority claim. And then Matthew brings us to another story about the Sabbath to kind of help us to understand in greater measure what Jesus is up to here.

So it goes, moving on from there, he entered their synagogue and there he saw a man who had a shriveled hand. And in order to accuse him, they, the Pharisees in this instance, they asked him, is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath? And he replied to them, well, who among you, if he has a sheep that fell into a pit on the Sabbath, wouldn't take hold of it and lift it out? A person is worth more than a sheep. So it is lawful to do what is good on the Sabbath.

And then he told the man, stretch out your hand. So he stretched it out and it was restored as good as the other. But the Pharisees went out and plotted against him, how they might kill him. You notice this because if you're uncomfortable with this idea, well, Jesus has authority, and it's like, well, yeah, but to what extent and how does that work? Like the question needs to be asked.

Jesus gives us, we have this next story of Jesus, and we kind of have some sense of how Jesus uses his authority, right? Jesus doesn't just willy-nilly just say, ah, forget about the law. It's no big deal. Like who cares even, right? Actually, what he says, he says in this text week, we can see that he actually has appropriate regard for the law of Moses. Like he understands himself, like that the law is good and it has purpose and it's useful, right? He understands that the law is good.

He also understands he has authority, but he grounds his authority and he uses his authority according to a principle that we see here. And so when the Pharisees complained about Jesus healing on the Sabbath in violation of this prohibition against work, he says, it's okay, not just because I have authority and I can do whatever I want, but because a person is worth more than a sheep, and so it's lawful to do what's good on the Sabbath.

This is not Jesus saying, forget about the Sabbath, forget about the rules, forget about the law.

What he's saying is, God cares so much about people, And he cares so much about this hurt and broken person. And I am here. And so I can use my authority, my trump card, because I'm greater than the temple. But how do I use it? I use it for the good of this other person. Not for my own selfish purposes. I'm going to go against this and I'm going to step out in this other thing. Because God cares about people. And so it's lawful to do good on the Sabbath.

That's his rationale. Now, which is really interesting because the way the Pharisees thought about the law and how the law works, it was all restriction. It's all what we can't do. That was their understanding. The law is this document, this covenant that just tells us the things we can't do. And Jesus says, no, no, no. Like, yes, I mean, it is that, but it's also there for a purpose. It's there to guide us to what we should do, what we are called to do, to do good.

See, he understands that the law can restrain. I mean, Paul talks about that in Galatians 3, how the law is a restraint for sin until the Messiah is going to come, right? He says, but Jesus understands that, yeah, but the law had a purpose and a function. It is sort of guardrails. It's leading God's people to restrain sin.

But so much better than being restraint is that God would call a people and form a people and empower a people to do good, to unleash people to be agents of blessing and love and goodness and kindness and to partner with God in his mission to demonstrate his love and reconcile the world to him. So Jesus isn't saying, well, we shouldn't be so obsessed with what we can't do. He says, don't you see what we're called to? We're called to do good just like the father has done good.

And he says, and so I am going to be an agent of and my disciples are gonna be an agent of And he's calling the Pharisees into understanding that the law is not meant to just restrain them, but to unleash them towards goodness and to give them a vision for what a good life ought to be. That's what he's getting at here in verse 7. I mean, he says, if you'd known what it means, I desire mercy and not sacrifice, you wouldn't have condemned the innocent.

He's making a direct reference to Hosea 6.6. Hosea 6.6 says, it's different translation, so slightly different wording, but same sense. I delight in loyalty rather than sacrifice. And in the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings. In Hosea, the prophet is calling out the people of God. He's calling out their formalism. They're aiming for just obedience to the law. And Hosea is saying, don't you understand that the law is there, yes, as a guide. And it's like a good thing.

But really what I'm after is I'm after this knowledge that you would know. So, yeah, I mean, the law gives you a sense of the things that God hates, and it gives you a sense of how to live your life towards the good. But really, the purpose of the law is that you would have a knowledge of me, of the Father, that you would know what God loves and what he values, that you become a sort of person who's shaped after those kinds of things.

See, Jesus here, he's helping the Pharisees see the problem of their legalism and their formalism. And really what that is, is it's the faulty idea that the law is the end of the law. That the goal of the law is itself. I think I have a slide for that, Caleb. The end of the law is not the law itself. Jesus just sees this super clearly. He doesn't scoff at the law. He isn't just like throwing out the law. Paul, likewise, like has respect for

the law. but he understands that the law has a purpose, and it's not just to be obeyed in itself. A stoplight, which I was sitting at for five minutes, heart beating, very nervous, it was serving no purpose in that instance. It was actually, it wasn't working the way it should have been. And so in that instance, the officer was able to bypass the stoplight. But stoplights bring order. Can you imagine driving around here without stoplights?

Oh, roundabouts, So we do it all the time. And how is that going? So stressful. The roundabout is so stressful.

Yeah, like a stoplight brings order. It brings order. But the goal of the stoplight is not to be pretty or to exist or to be obeyed. The goal of the stoplight is to bring order. So, okay. I just want to think about here. Oh, okay. Sorry. Got lost in my notes. So the law's purpose is to bring order to your life.

It's to bring, in the context of ancient Israel, it was to guide people to anticipate and look towards their Messiah who was going to come and who's going to teach them and fulfill all these promises. The prophets had talked about it, but giving them a new heart, giving them true knowledge of what God is like, like the spreading the knowledge of God abroad to the whole world. God is intending to do all those things. And I just, Mark 2, 27, Jesus explains the Sabbath in this way.

This is probably like the most definitive thing he said about the Sabbath. He said, the Sabbath was not made for man. The Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. Jesus is saying, yeah, like, okay, yes, the Sabbath is good. It's a part of God's law, but its goal is not itself. The goal of the Sabbath is to bring about knowledge of God and to direct people to understand him. So I want us to think really practically about our relationship to the law, right?

And by the law, I just mean like Old Testament commandments. Like what do we do with those things as New Testament people who follow after Jesus? If you're a Christian, how do you think about the law? So just generally, I think I have a slide for that, Caleb. Sorry. We're thinking about our relationship to the law. And some Christians think that the law is just totally irrelevant to us.

So Jesus overcame the law. And so no longer do we need to even think about or consider what was going on in the law. And I would say that there's some textual reasons why we might think that. I mean, Paul talks about how we've been set free for the sake of freedom. Like there is a very strong sense that Jesus uses authority to free us from this, I would say, strict, restrictive kind of sense that we have to follow the law.

And certainly from the sense that by obeying the law in a formalistic way, like we earn our salvation. Jesus is 100% against those things. That said, I don't think it's fair to just say, ah, law doesn't matter. So I'll get drunk when I want to get drunk and I will do whatever I want all the time and I'll exploit people. Like there's so many Old Testament laws against exploitation. So I can take advantage of people and it's fine.

No big deal because I'm free now or I'll just sleep with whoever I want. You know, like we can't like approach the law and just say, oh, well, since Jesus sets us free, he has authority. We can do anything we want. I think this would be a very foolish thing, a very foolish way to approach the law, and certainly is inconsistent both with the Old Testament and with the New Testament. So like what I'm saying is that we do have a relationship with the law. We don't just get to go off-roading.

I think the law does form and define kind of a sense of ethics. And while we don't like have this strong sense of like, we have to obey these things strictly and in a way that's super performative, like it does matter. It does matter that God has looked at certain things and said, I hate this thing. I mean, all the commandments against divorce in the Old Testament, God says he hates it. And so just because Jesus has set us free from the law doesn't mean God suddenly loves divorce.

And I'm not calling out anyone who's been divorced, right? I'm just saying we do have this dialogue and this concern with what the law tells us, and we can't just be totally unconcerned with it simply because Jesus has authority over it. So we want to avoid the mistake of being kind of free-range Christians who just say, oh, well, whatever, I'll do anything I want because I think that's completely unbiblical.

But then there's also like the problem of legalism. On the other side of this, I think we can get so obsessed with the law and so concerned with the law. As I thought about this, I got a lot of driving images this morning, but I was thinking about like, remember when you first started to drive. And you looked three feet in front of your car and you were trying to drive by just focusing on the road because you think, well, I want to stay on the

road and I want to stay between those lines. And so I'm just going to stare at those things. And I'm going to work really hard to keep my eyes on the road. And then at some point, your dad said, stop that. Actually, surprisingly, until you do it, the key to driving well and staying on the road is actually not looking at the road, but looking out towards the horizon. So here's the thing. I think that analogy helps me to understand my relationship with the law.

Yeah, the law defines some ethical boundaries and some things that God loves. But I don't need to be obsessed with staying on it. I actually need to get my eyes up on the horizon and get my eyes fixed upon Jesus, upon my true calling, upon the one who is like good and gracious and kind, who has the authority and calls me into something so much better than what I could manage or what I could do on my own. Like the key to good driving is keeping your eyes further ahead.

And I think the key to finding the right relationship between myself and the law is just keeping my eyes on Jesus. Not neglecting or not considering what God has said is good or bad in the Old Testament, but understanding that, okay, I know what I'm called to, and I'm called to Jesus, and he says these things are valuable, and so I'm just going to keep my eyes on him. I'm not going to become obsessed with him, but I'm just going to move towards him continually.

And like, I mean, sometimes we need to understand that we're going off the road and Jesus can work with us in those things, but we don't need to have this legalistic, obsessive kind of view of the law. But we understand that, well, he's greater than the temple. He's greater than the law. He calls us to live lives of devotion and love for God. And sometimes that involves not doing things that I might desire, right?

But that he's told me are wrong. And so keeping my eyes fixed on Jesus, I'm also able to keep myself into this way and this reliable way, this reliable path.

Those are kind of general concepts, right? But I just want to think specifically about the Sabbath, right? Because this is a pretty, I mean, Christians debate about this. Do Christians keep the Sabbath? Do Christians have no sense of obligation to keep the Sabbath? Like, what's the point of it? But I mean, look, it says Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So like, can we just get to this some other way?

Look, I can't give you a definitive answer. The thing that's difficult about being a pastor is I find that a lot of times people just want me to tell them what the rule is. And I want to be like, well, look to Jesus. And so like Jesus is going to tell you what he's leading you into. Here's what I can tell you definitively. Jesus cares about your rest.

He cares about your rest. He cares about your relationship with work. Jesus knows the long-standing human tradition of making work an idol and also making rest an idol. Like, we can take these things and we can value them and elevate them and pursue them in such a way that we actually don't end up achieving either of them. Like, you know, you can have this endless sense of needing to perform, always needing to work. And like the Sabbath is God's way of saying, well, that's not good.

Like endless work, always burdened, always going isn't good. So we have that sense that it's not good. But also like we have this sense that we ought to rest. And then what I really have been fascinated by over the last 20 years as the internet go up is how hard people work to rest. Do you notice that? Like what a labor and a burden it has become to rest the right way.

And all the planning and all the research and all the guilt and the shame that I didn't rest the right way and how that becomes such a burden, it becomes very impossible to manage these things, I think, at some point. It's interesting, little Bible study, like we picked up in chapter 12, verse one, right? But if we just go back two verses beforehand, so we're talking about the Sabbath, if we go back two verses beforehand into chapter 11, as we looked at last week, Jesus says these words.

He says, take my yoke upon you and learn from me because I'm lowly and humble in heart and you'll find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. So he goes from that calling to find rest into this teaching on Sabbath. And here's the thing. I find it, you know, we just have these texts and they don't give us clear boundaries and they're not step-by-step lists of things to do. But here's what I understand. And I can understand clearly from Matthew 11.

It's that Jesus really cares that disciples would have rest. But he doesn't say, take a vacation. Go to the spa. Stop, quit all your obligations and find rest for your soul. What does Jesus said? He says, you want to find true rest? Take my yoke upon yourself and you'll find rest for your souls. Jesus calls his disciples into a kind of work that is labor, but still restful.

I mean, like this yoke is this image of an oxen, right? And yoked oxen would kind of be trained in their work by a mature oxen. A trained oxen would get yoked to an immature one. And those oxen would learn together. One would teach the other because they're connected how to be, how to labor, how to work. And Jesus is using that farming imagery there. But the concern that Jesus has is that we would have rest for our souls.

Look, you are, especially people in the Seattle area, you guys are people who have, you are high capacity people. You can't afford to live here if you're not. You guys like work and you do things and you create things and it's valuable and it's good and work is satisfying. That's awesome. So we should do those things. But if you stay in that place of laboring long enough, you can forget how to rest. And then you end up going into this spiral, right? Where you get discouraged.

Like physical rest is great. And then what you do is like you work so hard and you burn yourself out and then you just give up on everything, right? Because you haven't been resting in the midst of all of it. But what Jesus makes really clear is that he cares about rest and he doesn't look at rest merely as this division between work and physical rest. He understands that these things come together in like a spiritual way through this pursuing of him and keeping our eyes upon him.

I think I've told this story before. I'm just doing the math. Okay, we're okay in time. I told this story before. I grew up Christian after college, didn't know what I want. I had no idea what I should do with my life. I thought maybe I should be a pastor, but I didn't have a spiritual life really to speak of. I didn't have a prayer life to speak of. I didn't really like have any certainty. Like I was just like good at being good and I could talk and I could study the Bible.

And I thought, well, I don't know, what am I supposed to do with that? Like, does that mean I'm supposed to be a pastor? And I didn't know. And so instead of spending $80,000 and going to seminary, which was a good choice, I'd said, I got to figure this out. I follow Jesus. And so I moved to Central America for two years.

I met my wife down there. It was great. But not only did I meet my wife, is that I had so much free time because the job I was supposed to be doing just kind of like didn't pan out. And I was alone with no money, no phone, no internet in a foreign country where I didn't really fit in. You can imagine. I was in the Caribbean. I didn't fit in for so many reasons. It's not my vibe. And so I just had all this time to just talk to the Lord and that does not come naturally to me.

Like sitting, doing nothing, right? Just paying attention to God does not come naturally to me. And I was just like so desperate to find an answer and like just so much trying to figure this stuff out and feeling like, God, I could just like do this. Sure, I could be a pastor. I could, I think, perform the duties of a pastor. I don't think they're that hard. But should I? I mean, like,

what's the right thing to do? And in the midst of all that time and all of that, just like seeking after the Lord. One point, I just had this powerful experience of the Holy Spirit. It came into my life and it was just like, I didn't know, I wasn't seeking that. I wasn't like, oh God, I need to rest. But I had this experience of the Holy Spirit like just washed over me.

And I feel bad saying that sometimes because I'm like, I can't prescribe that to you. Or just go have a radical experience of the Holy Spirit. I didn't even know what I was looking for. But what I experienced is that I didn't know what it was to rest at all. I didn't even know that I wasn't rested. I didn't even know that I was laboring so hard and striving and trying to find something. But all of a sudden, God showed up in our life. And it was like, oh, I've been wandering in the desert.

I had no idea. I was saved. Don't get me wrong. But I just had no idea. Yeah. That knowledge of God, this intimacy with God, could just rest my soul in a way that I have just wanted more of ever since. And so, again, I can't just prescribe you go have this radical experience of the Holy Spirit. I didn't do anything to deserve it. It wasn't about the technique. I was seeking the Lord, but that's it. And I don't know what else to say. God showed up in my life.

And from that point on, I'm not going to say I'm the, gosh, I'm still just as much of a doofus as I ever was. But God is so good. And as much as a lot of times I'm tired and I'm weary and I feel like I'm working and laboring, like I know that he's faithful to give me rest for your soul. And I've experienced that. And so I just, I mean, we have these kind of habits that I ask you to do, these become habits. One of them is to meet with God every day.

And there was a time in my life where I thought of that as just a duty. Well, I've got to pray. I've got to have my quiet time because, of course, you have to do those things because that's what Christians do. Those are things that you have to do. You have to read your Bible and you have to pray. And it doesn't matter how much you dislike it. And honestly, there's value to just doing things in obedience. But I'll tell you this.

It's meet with God because I really think that's what we're called to do we're called to pursue God and to seek Him and to seek Jesus and to just find rest for your soul, we pursue all these other things where we think I just need to find better work-life balance or I need to find more physical rest what I'm telling you is if you're weary and if you're tired if you feel like in a season of dryness, I understand that and I just would say,

meet with the Lord spend time with him and you say well I've done that and I've done that and I get it just keep going back, I believe that God wants to rest us so worship team is going to come up here, because this is the only thing this is the frustrating thing about being a pastor, we can't think our way out of our problems. I can't, like, I mean, yeah, I can tell you some things. But in the end, Jesus says, seek first the kingdom of heaven and everything else will be added to you.

So it's like this, we go on this seeking together. But I do think there's power, like, when we come together and when we meet with the Lord together. And so we're going to take some time to worship. And then I'm just going to come back and we're just going to pray together.

Because what I want for you guys all so desperately, and what I want for myself more and more, is to have this knowledge of God, this kind of freeing, resting knowledge of God, knowing with confidence that because he died on the cross, he has forgiven me my sins, I can rest from the constant burden of having to measure up, but also that I can enjoy fellowship with him. And I look around and it's always the spring, as the sun keeps hiding from us,

that I feel like we get frustrated here in the Pacific Northwest. us.

We say, it should be time now. We should feel the heat now. And we start to get in this season of just kind of like discouragement. And so what I want us to do is in a minute here, we're going to pray and I'm just going to ask, okay, Jesus, like bring out the son of your presence. Like, would you just rest us? Would you give us peace? If we know you, if we're seeking you, if we need that rest, Lord, would you give that rest to us? Because there's not a technique or our right way to approach it.

It's just that the Lord needs to show up in our lives. The Holy Spirit needs to show up in our lives. And so we're going to pray that together in just a second. So yeah, I'm not going to pre-pray before we pray because then I do that and we're not going to do that. So let's worship the Lord together and then.