Good morning. Good morning. Go Broncos. There’s gonna be nine people here at our 10 30 service <laugh>. So, so don’t text anybody on staff If if something amazing happens in those first 30 minutes or if it’s terrible in those first 30 morning minutes, maybe do text us and just say, Hey, don’t worry about it. <Laugh>. I, I hope you had an amazing Christmas. It’s that new year. But as as we go into the new year, you kinda look back and you’re reflect on Christmas. Tomorrow we’ll do a, a post-Christmas planning meeting where we say, okay, what went well? What do we wanna change? What we different? And, and I do kind of that in life too. You kind of think back about Christmas and every year at Christmas time, you’re trying to get the perfect gift. There’s so much pressure on the perfect gift, something that they’re gonna, like, they’re gonna enjoy.

It’s so disappointing when you give someone a gift and they don’t like it. And this last Christmas, I think I got my family the perfect gift. I gotta be honest. And I bought it probably four months ago. Totally forgot about it. I wrapped it early when we put our tree up. So, so, I mean, a month before Christmas time, it was under the, the tree. And, and genuinely totally forgot it was there until they found that present. And they said, it says it’s from dad, it’s to the entire family. And it was like, oh, oh, is that present? Yes. And, and when they opened it, man, they were surprised because they always say that the best gift you can give your kids and your family is, is your time and your presence. And so this year here, here’s the present that I got my family. This one right here, right there, <laugh>.

Yeah, that guy. Both sides. If you’re, I’ll tell you my, my kids, I was actually outta town this last week at a conference in Orlando, and this guy had dinner with my family each night, courtesy of my 6-year-old. My kids like to put it either in a chair or on the couch. And I’ll tell you, that freaks me out because I’ll walk into the room and then boom, there’s your face. And even if you try and turn it over and say, well, hey, that’s kind of disturbing, I’m gonna just flip. It says, it matters still there. But there’s a part of you that wishes you could double yourself. There’s a part of you that wishes, okay, if I could just clone myself, then my life would be so much easier. There’d be two of me. I’d have all the time in the world, especially in January, when we enter into New Year’s resolutions.

Now. Now, here’s what I’m curious of. How many of you out there still make New Year’s resolutions? Raise your hand if you’re like, yes, I make New Year’s resolutions. Okay, most of us do not now. Now here’s another question. How many of you, at some point in your entire life have ever made a New Year’s resolution? Go ahead and raise your hand. So, so here’s what’s fascinating. Just about everybody has made a New Year’s resolution, but most people do not make New Year’s resolutions anymore. And here would be why? Because the data says that 23%

Of the people that make a New Year’s resolution abandon those resolutions by the end of the first week of January, the first week, like, I feel like, like if you make a New Year’s resolution that I’m gonna work out more, you can give yourself a little grace that first week. It doesn’t count until about the 15th anyway. But that’s just me. 43% of people have quit their resolution by the end of January, and then only six weeks into the new year. By mid-February, 80% of resolutions dead gone, donezo given up already. And so why do we not make resolutions? Well, it’s because they tend to not work when they do the data, the science to figure out why do most resolutions fail? The number one reason the most New Year’s resolutions fail is because they have unrealistic goals that, that you, man, you go into January like, I’m gonna, I’m gonna learn another language and I’m gonna have 5% body fat and I’m not gonna drink any soda.

And I’m, you got like a list a mile along, and then you realize that’s really hard to do. And so you don’t end up doing those things. And I think where we are at this moment with our culture, I think the pressure of those things is even harder because we have this thing called hustle culture. Hustle culture. If you’re not familiar with it or around it, you definitely will recognize some of the phrases. But here’s the idea of hustle culture, that it’s this societal mindset that glorifies constant work, relentless productivity, the pursuit of success at all costs. It prioritizes ambition, achievement and financial gain over personal wellbeing. Rest and leisure often summarized by phrases like Rise and grind, no days off hustle, culture equates self-worth with output, encouraging people to overwork and glorify busyness as a badge of honor. You, you’ve probably heard some of those phrases.

Those phrases like Rise and Grind, like, woo, man, get to it. Or, or that, that phrase No days off or, or this one just, I kinda laugh when I hear this one. This one is team no sleep. Woo. Like we probably could all finish this phrase, I will sleep when I am. Like, there’s something unhealthy about that. Can I just tell you, <laugh>, if that’s what, as a culture, we’re like, yes, hustle, don’t sleep, grind till you’re dead. Like there’s a part of that that we should take a step back and say, okay, maybe this isn’t working now. Now I wanna pause for a second because here’s the challenge that is an extreme that I, I think is unhealthy. And I think biblically we’ll see that that’s unhealthy. But the opposite of that extreme is also unhealthy. So what I don’t want you to get when we walk through the sermon series is be like, go home and be like, man, went to church and I’m supposed to be lazy.

That was my takeaway, <laugh>, I don’t need to diet. I don’t need to work out. I don’t need to hustle. I’m just gonna be lazy and, and do nothing. And that’s it. That, that’s, that’s the opposite of that. And I think what we’re looking for is, hey, what does balance look like? Like I want you to imagine that your life, that your meter in your heart right now is like your cell phone battery. Where would you find yourself? Do you think yourself as full to the brim? Or would you find yourself feeling a little bit more like that? If you look down at your cell phone and you see the battery all the way down there, I don’t know about you, but it makes me nervous. It makes me anxious. You’re like, oh gosh. Gotta plug in. Gotta plug in. And I think sometimes we can run our lives like this, where it’s this constant state of, oh my gosh, I gotta plug in.

I gotta plug in. I am tired. John Mark Comer wrote an amazing book called The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry. Some of this series is based off of some of those concepts. And in it, here’s what he writes. He says, here’s my point. The solution to an over busy life is not more time. It’s to slow down and simplify our lives around what really matters. Jesus, in a very famous verse in Matthew 11, a verse, if you’ve been around church you’re very familiar with, he says, come to me all who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. We’re gonna focus on what that word means here in a moment. He says, take my yoke upon you and learn from me. For I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

Eugene Peterson, who paraphrased scripture, he had a version of scripture called the Message. He puts it like this. He says, are you tired, worn out, burned out from religion? Come to me, get away with me, and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest, walk with me and work with me. Watch how I do it. Learn the un unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly. You see, our, our culture puts this burden on our shoulders that we feel like we have to keep up with everybody else around us. And so we’re just running and running and running and running, and sometimes we run and we think that’s the right thing. Like we, nobody’s doing it with ill intent, but we think that’s what I gotta do. That’s what I have to do. And then Jesus ushers in a message that is countercultural a message where Jesus says, I will give you rest. And in addition to that, he demonstrates the lifestyle that we should pursue, the lifestyle that we should have by not just teaching us about rest, not just offering rest, but also demonstrating a lifestyle that had rest.

As a pastor, I sit down with a lot of people, and one of the things that I hear all the time, it’s just this phrase of, man, I’m just so tired. I am just so busy. And it’s caused me to wonder this question, why are we so worn out and tired? What is it about our culture that makes us feel like we’re always all the way to the very, very top of our capacity? And what we can do, if you take a look back at our country, if you go to the end of World War I, there’s this thing that happens that changes the trajectory of where we end up today. So going into World War I, we were primarily, you had the industrial revolution, the industrial complex, and really we are a country that we’re providing goods based off of need. So we were producing lots of stuff because people needed that stuff.

And so even if you go back to marketing, marketing before 1920 primarily was basically saying, Hey, you need this. Here’s the solution to it. But then something happens coming out of World War I, the industrial complex is producing more goods than we needed because of the war. It was just on overload, produce, produce, produce. And now the war was over. And so there became this big question, what do we do? Do we scale back or do we figure out with the over and abundance of stuff that we have, that we have to do something with it? And then in 1927 in the Harvard Review Paul Maser, who worked, worked for Lehman Brothers, he said this, he said, we must shift America from a needs to a desires culture. Now let me pause for a second so that you really unpack what that gets. We shifted from a needs culture to a desires culture.

It was no longer just about what I needed, but about all the things that I wanted. It goes on to say, people must be trained to desire to want new things even before the old have entirely been consumed. And guess what? That’s where we are today. Like here would be my guess. My guess is that all of us in this room, when we buy clothes, it’s not because the clothes that we have are literally falling apart. Like when’s the last time that you looked at jeans and said, they’re just disintegrating in my hands. They’re just falling apart. Like, I have to go get new clothes because I need new clothes. Because if I don’t get new clothes, I I have no clothes. Like, that’s not how we work, is it that we just get tired of the clothes that we have? Or culture has convinced us that trends have changed, styles have changed, and as a result of that, we have to change too.

And so instead of it being needs based, most of our consumption is based off desire. I want, I want, I want, I want. And here’s the thing about our desires. They never end. Here’s a good way to understand our desires culture. It’s a system that encourages people to buy not just for needs, but for pleasure, for our identity and for our aspiration. So a desires culture looks radically different than a needs culture. Edward Bernas is considered the father of pr. Interestingly, he’s the nephew of Sigmund Freud, the father of psychology. He was quoted as saying this, we are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested largely by men we have never heard of. He’s saying that behind the curtain of marketing, there are people that are shaping your identity, my identity, my aspirations, your aspirations to pursue the things that they just want us to buy.

I mean, in, in a few weeks, we’ll have the Super Bowl. The best part of Super Bowl is the commercials, because I, they’re paying a ridiculous amount of money to get 30 seconds or a minute of your time. But here’s the interesting thing, watch it. There are very few needs, needs-based commercials. Like nobody. There’s a truck commercial that is, do you need to carry stuff in the back of your vehicle? Here’s a truck that that’s not what they do. What do they do? We’re gonna show you boulders falling into the back of a truck. We’re gonna be driving on dirt roads. We’re gonna tell you that if you buy this truck, you will be a man <laugh> or, or a woman. If you’re a woman who drives a truck, like that’s <laugh>. That that is what they are selling. They’re selling an identity, not a product. And on top of that, you, you had that happen in the 1920s.

On top of that, in the last, what, 20 years, all of a sudden we’ve had technology enter into that equation. So now we’re seeing 4,000 messages a day about desires, desires, needs, needs, needs. You need to do more things. There’s a fascinating article in Times Magazine all the way back on April 2nd, 1965. This was the cover from Times Magazine. And, and here was the point of this magazine. They said in the magazine, by the year 2000, we will enjoy a four day work week and wonder what to do with all of our free time <laugh>. Here’s, here’s a direct quote from that article. Men such as IBM economist Joseph Frum and feel that automation will eventually bring about a 20 hour work week, perhaps within a century, thus creating a mass leisure class. Some of the more radical profits foresee the time when as little as 2% of the workforce will be employed.

Warned that the whole concept of people as producers of goods and services will become obsolete as automation advances even the most moderate estimates of automation’s. Progress show that millions of people have to adjust to quote, leisurely non-functional lives, a switch that will entail both an economic wrench and a severe test of the deeply ingrained ethic that work is the good and necessary calling of man. How’s that working out for you? <Laugh>, you just feel like because of technology, your life is just so leisurely and you have so much free time. And so we have a culture that is designed to make you feel like you need more and more and more and more. And we all get wrapped up into it. And especially at the start of a new year, I can feel like, well, I’ve got to do more and more and more and more.

Bejesus talks about rest. He says, I want to give you rest. Then in the book of Hebrews, the fourth chapter primarily is talking about rest. I wanna give a summary of this fourth chapter, then we’ll dive into a few specific verses. So if you’ve got a Bible, turn with me to Hebrews chapter four. Hey, Hebrews is a, is a challenging book because if you don’t have a really great grasp of the Old Testament, it’s hard to understand the book of Hebrews. Hebrews is taking the Old Testament and, and helping us to understand through the lens of Jesus how to best understand the Old Testament. So, so much of the author of the book of Hebrews expects us as the readers of the book of Hebrews to have a deep understanding of that history and what’s going on. So, so here’s some overview that in the first few verses that the author of Hubers is trying to help us to understand that God’s rest is still available, God’s rest is available to you, God’s rest is available to me. And God, the author then goes on to say that rest comes through faith and not through effort. So how we embrace that rest that God is offering, embrace that rest that Jesus wants us to experience, is not by me just sprinting, sprinting, sprinting, chasing, chasing, chasing. And then paradoxically, he says, but we need to strive to enter that rest. And then towards the end of this section, it, it reveals to us that rest

Exposes our heart.

The reason that rest is important

Is because

By resting in God, it helps us to understand the dangers, the challenges that we have.

Here’s what it says

In verse 11. Excuse me, I’m gonna start in verse eight, then go to verse 11 and verse eight.

It says, for if Joshua

Had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on. So then there remains a Sabbath

Rest for the people of God, for whoever

Has entered

God’s rest has also rested

From his works

As God did

From his. So, three things I wanna unpack as we then get into, really the main point, I think in verses 11, 12 and 13, the, the first

Is

It’s talking about the Old Testament, and it’s talking about the

Israelites

Going into the promised land, and the Israelites going through this promised land thinking, okay, now we have

Arrived. But that first verse says for Joshua,

If he’d given them rest, God would not have spoken to him in another day. Later on, he’s saying that ultimately the Old Testament is pointing

Ahead towards

The person of

Jesus, that without Jesus rest is

Impossible.

So wherever you’re

Coming into today, whether you’re coming in with a full battery or an empty battery, the the message that

The author of

Hebrews wants us to understand is that if we wanna find

Biblical rest, that God, that the way that God

Has designed it for us,

It

Is found in the person of

Jesus. Then it says,

So then there remains a

Sabbath rest for the people of

God. Now, we’re gonna really unpack the concept and the idea of

Sabbath

Next Sunday. But, but here’s what’s interesting about the word

Sabbath. The Hebrew word for Sabbath is the word Shabbat, and the word Shabbat. If you look at just the

Literal understanding definition of that word, it means to cease

Or to stop.

Now, compare that

To the Greek word kassis. That’s what the Greek word for rest is. Guess what? The literal

Definition of that, the

Root word of that Greek word is it’s to rest or to stop.

And now rest in the New Testament is not the exact same as Sabbath in the Old Testament, but they’re very linked

Together. This idea that that Jesus is

Offering,

That

The literal understanding is to

Stop, to cease

Certain actions. That here’s one way to understand it. The literal

Understanding of

Kassis is it implies a

Cessation of activity,

Particularly labor or striving. And so I stop

Striving, I stop pursuing, instead, I

Arrest

In Jesus. And then lastly, it says,

For whoever has entered God’s rest has also

Rested from his works

As

God did from His. And now when it says

That if we’ve

Entered into God’s rest,

We’ve

Rested from his works, it’s a lowercase his, it’s talking about our work, that when I enter into God’s rest simultaneous to entering into his rest is me stopping my works. It’s stopping that, that achievement culture. If I gotta do more, I gotta be more. I gotta accomplish more. It’s laying that aside and finding my identity and my wholeness in the person of Jesus. Then in verse 11, it goes on to say this, let us therefore strive to enter that rest. Now, if you’ve got a bylaw, I would encourage you to underline, to highlight, and mainly because this is an idea that we don’t talk about in church very much. Like if you would’ve asked me before I started preparing for this sermon series, if you said, okay, what, when it comes to your relationship with God, what are the things that you should be striving for?

I, I could list a lot. We, I should strive for holiness and sanctification. I should strive to spend more time in prayer. I should strive to spend more time in God’s word. I should strive to love God and love others like I would. I could come up with a pretty big list, but rest would not have been on my list. And yet in Hebrews chapter four, verse 11, it tells us as this encouragement, as this command, that we should strive to enter the rest that God has, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience because they didn’t have rest. You saw instead of resting in God and God’s presence and God’s identity, and the Old Testament of the Israelites just continually would disobey ’cause they didn’t have rest. Now, now, to put it practically in your life and my life, when we aren’t rested emotionally and spiritually, that overflows into other areas of our life.

So if I come home from work and I am emotionally drained and I’m spiritually drained and I’m just on edge, will that affect how I interact with my spouse, how I interact with my kids? It absolutely will. Well, like, I’ll give you two examples. My son, he’s, he’s 12 years old and he’s at this stage where he thinks it’s the coolest thing in the world to try and scare me. So he likes to pop out from behind things and, and when there’s no lights on, he just everything he can to try, try and jump out and spook me. And I told him, I said, Hey, this is a dangerous game because someday I’m gonna punch you in the throat, not on, not on purpose, not on purpose. You’re just gonna, that’s just gonna be a natural reaction. And I just want you to know it’s not my, not my fault, you’re playing a dangerous game.

But, but here’s what I can tell you. If I come home from work and I’m emotionally drained and I’m spiritually drained and I’m physically drained and I’m just exhausted and tired, and he jumps out and spooks me, the overflow is gonna be that I’m angry or I’m irritated. Now, compare that to, if I come home and I am emotionally and spiritually and physically charged up and rested and ready to go, and he does the exact same thing, what am I probably gonna do then? Probably laugh it off. Probably think it’s hilarious. But how I respond is directly connected to how I am internally with my bar, my meter, my battery, power of rest. And that’s what this scripture’s trying to get to. That we should strive to enter that rest so that we might not fall into disobedience. And if you are running your life where you’re always at your wit’s end, you’ll always feel like you’re out of time and energy and out, out of your battery power.

It is unintentionally affecting every other area of your life. You cannot be a healthy spouse if you’re constantly tired and drained. You cannot be a healthy mom or dad or son or daughter or even friend if you’re constantly tired and weary. And so first, we should strive to enter the rest. And then it feels like the author takes this huge 90 degree turn. But it all makes sense in context. The author then says, for the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two edges sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. That’s, that’s what’s gonna tie it all together in a second. So the word of God is discerning the thoughts and the intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.

Here’s this idea. It’s saying that when we start to strive to rest in God, one of the ways that we do that is by spending time in God’s word. That what we see Jesus do pattern in the New Testament is that Jesus is constantly getting away and spending time alone with God. He’s modeling for us what our lifestyle should look like. Primarily. The reason we don’t do that, we’re too busy. We don’t have enough time, we’re too tired. But, but the reason the author of Hebrews is pointing that out is such an important thing is because the author understands that if we can rest in God and spend time in God’s word, here’s what it’s gonna do. It’s gonna reveal to us the intentions of our heart. It’s gonna reveal those pieces and parts of our life that we need to change. Then we need to give over to God to sanctify in order to be more and more like him.

Now. Now this is where it feels like it’s a paradox because on the one hand it says that our works cease. And then on the other hand, the very next verse that says that we have to strive for rest, those seem opposite to each other, but, but here’s what they mean together. The paradoxically entering God’s rest requires effort, but it’s the effort of surrender. Not striving to strive means intentionally creating space for rest time and God’s word, Sabbath practices, we’ll talk about next week and releasing the need for control to put it a different way. True fulfillment and peace come not from doing more, but from resting in God. There is a parable. It’s not in the Bible. It’s a, it’s a famous parable about two lumberjacks. And I will tell you that I texted our head of security this morning and said, Hey, I just want you to know I’m gonna bring an ax to church <laugh> don’t, don’t tackle me when I show up.

And if you’re wondering, if you brought an ax to church, yes, you would be tackled. So, but, but there is this famous parable about two lumberjacks, and there’s a younger lumberjack and there’s an older lumberjack. And the younger lumberjack challenges, the older lumberjack, he says, Hey, let’s have a contest. Let’s see who in one day can chop the most wood. Now the younger lumberjack is thinking, I’m in my prime. He, he’s kind of getting up there in age. And so they went off to different parts of the woods far enough away that they couldn’t see one another, but close enough where they could hear one another. And that young lumberjack, he takes his ax. And the moment that they start, I mean, he just starts swinging as hard as he can and as fast as he can. And in the back of his mind, he’s thinking, this is gonna be easy because I’m younger than him.

I’m stronger than him. I’ve got more endurance than him. And so he just decided, I’ve been doing this a long time, I’m just not gonna stop. I’m gonna go all day long without stopping. And, and about once an hour, he could hear that the older lumberjack would stop chopping wood every hour for about 15 minutes. The guy would just stop chopping wood. And during those 15 minutes, every hour that young lumberjack, he’s thinking to himself, this is it. This is that moment where I am pushing out the lead. This is that moment where I’m really making my name known that I am the best lumberjack around. Then they get to the end of the day, the young lumberjack, he’s just, he’s got a grin on his face. He’s giddy. ’cause He knows he’s one. He’s like, there’s no way he chop more wood than me.

He, he took all these breaks and I never stopped. So he’s got his pile of lumber there that he brings together, and he’s looking at it and he looks over and he sees the old lumberjack and he realizes that his pile of lumber is almost twice as high as the young guy’s pile of lumber. And he looks at him, he says, what? It doesn’t make sense. He says, you must have cheated. He said, because I know every hour for about 15 minutes, you stopped. And I didn’t. I kept going and chopping and working, and you took all these breaks, and yet still, somehow you beat me. And the old lumberjack just starts laughing. And he says, see, you thought that I was taking breaks. He said, but in fact, every hour on the hour, I would stop for 15 minutes and I would sharpen my ax.

You see, I, I think our hustle culture, it’s convinced us a lie that we just have to keep chopping and chopping and chopping and don’t stop, don’t rest. You can sleep when you’re dead. Chop and chop and chop and chop. And biblically, here’s what God would say. He’d say, Hey, you are chopping, but your ax is dull. And because your ax is dull, the life that I have for you, the life that I’m offering you, it requires rest. It requires you to sharpen your ax. And even though everybody else around us isn’t sharpening their, as the fullest life available to us is not about adding more things to our plate. It’s about saying what are the best things? And in order to spend time on the best things, the most important things, it means that there are other things that I have to stop doing.

Even if all of culture around me says, these are the things you should do, I lay those aside and I say, God, I’m gonna pursue you. I’m gonna stop striving for these worldly things. Shut down the desire, culture around me, and I’m gonna sharpen my acts. Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, I thank you so much, God, that you give us this, this picture of health that, that you say that those of us who are weary, who are tired, God, that if we would come to you, you would give us rest. And that rest is available to us in a way that is hard to comprehend and, and understand that, that it doesn’t require us to work for it. It’s grace freely given from you. It requires us to rest in it, rest in you. What you’ve done for us on the cross, our identity found in you, and that we should pursue that rest. We should strive for that rest. And so, God, I pray specifically today for anyone in this room that is coming in and they’re tired and they’re worn out and they’re beat up. God, I pray that this sermon series, not just today, but in the weeks to come, God, it can be a light in the midst of darkness, a hope that rest can be found in you.

Pray this in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.