We See Jesus Giving Us Rest

It is good news to learn that the air travel industry is picking up again.  Southwest just ordered 100 737 Max jets!  My nephew Paul is a pilot for United and they called him back to fly.  My nephew Phil is a flight attendant and he started working again, too. 

Do you think we’ll start seeing those Southwest commercials again?  You know, like the one where the referee at a football game is getting ready for the coin toss and all he has is a dollar bill?  “Wanna get away?”  Or the girl in her friend’s bathroom who comments, “Hey you redecorated in here,” then she opens up the medicine cabinet and snoops around and when she tries to put back a tube of “something” the glass shelves all come crashing down!  “Wanna get away?” Do you ever need to get away?  You know, the job is draining, the kids are whining, and you wonder how much more you can bear before you get cranky and hard to live with?  Me too!  There are only so many sermons I can write, so many home visits I can make before I start making silly mistakes from sheer exhaustion.  From time to time we all need to take a break!

During the Sundays of Lent we did a series of sermons on the Old Testament ceremonies and sacrifices God established for his people that were designed to be a shadow of a deeper and higher fulfillment.  Every time they performed a ceremony or brought a sacrifice they were remembering the promises of God that came true in Jesus, the promised Messiah.  Today is Easter morning and the last sermon in this series that talks about one more shadow. The Word of God before us tells us all about a great place to get away called, “The Sabbath.”  After six days of working God commanded his people to take a break.  The Sabbath was established to give people rest and pointed to the New Testament where

We See Jesus Giving Us Rest

We rest in His Holiness

There is an outward and an inward part to the Sabbath.  The outward part was that God’s people were supposed to rest from physical labor.  God didn’t give this command to inspire fair labor practices, however.  God applied this law to everyone. “⁸Remember the Sabbath dayⁱ by setting it apart as holy. ⁹Six days you are to serve and do all your regular work, ¹⁰but the seventh day shall be a sabbath rest to the Lord your God. Do not do any regular work, neither you, nor your sons or daughters, nor your male or female servants, nor your cattle, nor the alien who is residing inside your gates.”  Where you were a businessman, a child, a slave or even a cow—everyone was to have a day off.  This law was not about splitting hairs to decide what constitutes work and what doesn’t.  That misses the basic point—remembering the Sabbath Day was mostly about an inward/spiritual rest.  The writer to the Hebrews explains this clearly, “⁹ So there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. ¹⁰ For the one who enters God’s rest also rests from his own work, just as God rested from his work” (Heb 4:9,10).  Real rest for hearts and souls came when God’s people would remember the blessings they and their forefathers had received from God.  We New Testament believers receive rest for our hearts, souls and lives when we remember Jesus who was born, lived the perfect life, died and rose again for us all.  There isn’t a better place to hear the refreshing promises of God proclaimed than at church!  The OT Sabbath was a picture of the perfect rest established by Jesus’ resurrection.  We rest secure in the holiness Jesus won for us on the cross and proved by his resurrection.

Moses said, “¹¹for in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and everything that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. In this way the Lord blessed the seventh day and made it holy.”  God made it holy by setting this day aside for a holy purpose.  He wanted his people to pause and remember God.  To remember the Lord God they would read from the holy Scriptures.  After hearing and reviewing God’s love for them they would have rest.  Likewise God uses the sweat, stress and heartache that you and I feel in our lives to remind us that we are living in a broken world that needs to be set free.  You know that feeling at work when you stomach is tied up in knots when you get called into the manager’s office and wonder, “Why?”  Do you wanna get away?  You know the feeling when you’re tired and busy yet family responsibilities call upon you to give up some of your time and energy to help someone out.  Wanna get away?  You know the feeling when you’re worried about spots, wrinkles, weight or hair.  Wanna get away?  And one of the worst feelings is the guilt that raises it ugly head to remind us of the sins of the past and we wanna get away!  Well, there is a place to go.  Get away and look into the empty tomb of Jesus.  Listen to the angel say, “He is not here;  he has risen, just as he said.  Come and see the place where he lay” (Mat 28:6).  There you see the gift of spiritual rest because all our hardships, anger & stresses;  the piles of sins, the eternity of hell and the curse of death were laid on Jesus on the cross.  Jesus gave his holy life to the Father who credited it to you.  Remember the Sabbath to think about about holiness.  Not our holiness, but Jesus’ holiness.  See Jesus Giving You Rest in His Holiness now as

We Rest in His Gift of Eternal Life

In the Old Testament God was very serious about remembering the Sabbath.  Jeremiah specifically warned the people, “Do not do any work, but keep the Sabbath day holy as I commanded your fathers. ….²³ But they did not listen or pay attention. They became stiff-necked so that they would not hear or receive instruction…. ²⁷ But if you will not listen to me and do not keep the Sabbath day holy, and you enter the gates of Jerusalem carrying a load on the Sabbath day, then I will set fire to its gates. I will burn the public buildings of Jerusalem, and the fire will not be put out” (Jer 17:22-27).  So, why was this law so important to God?  Isaiah tells us that the Sabbath holds out the promise of eternal life.  Listen, “²³ As often as one new moon follows another and one Sabbath follows another, all flesh will come to worship before me, says the Lord” (Is 66:23).  Can you see what God is picturing here?  He sees eternity as a succession of Sabbaths.  All the believers from the Old and New Testament Church will be worshiping God in heaven because of what Isaiah says in the last verse of his book, “²⁴ They will go out, and they will see the corpses of the ones who were rebelling against me, for their worm will not die, and their fire will not be quenched, and all flesh will be horrified by them” (66:24).  Do you see the Good News here?  “They will go out” are believers in heaven!  They are resting eternally, but are able to see those in hell who rejected the rest we have in Jesus.  Today we have that rest through faith in God’s Word.  But, the day will come when we will have that rest in heaven.

While God’s warning is serious, so is his solution.  Today we call it Easter!  Jesus rose from the dead to guarantee the door of heaven is open to eternal life.  It proves that Jesus’ word is true when Jesus says, “For this is the will of my Father: that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him may have eternal life. And I will raise him up on the Last Day” (John 6:40).  This solid promise of Jesus protects us during our time on this earth, because we are still living in the Church militant.  This means you, the Church, are still at war with the devil, the attacks of temptations and the forces of sin in our society.  The materialism of the world wants us to think that this world is worth fighting.  Jesus warns, “After all, what will it benefit a person if he gains the whole world, but forfeits his soul? Or what can a person give in exchange for his soul?” (Matt 16:26).  Many of the goals of humanity don’t jive with God’s Word.  God gives his Word in order for us to wrestle with who and what we really are.   God tells us to insist on the truth of his Word, even when our society tells us we are being intolerant.  God’s Word tells us to uphold marriage and family and to condemn sexual immorality.  God’s Word tells to teach our children the truths of God’s Word even though the world around us calls that brainwashing.  Therefore, God’s warning is serious, but so is his solution.  The solution is to remember the blessing we have received from Jesus and Rest in His Gift of Eternal Life!

It is good news to hear that the airline industry is rebounding.  Hopefully it will be safer to board a plane when you “Wanna get away!”  The Easter Sabbath from Jesus pictures a relief that is better than a trip to San Diego, Cancun or even a trip to the Holy Land.  Because Jesus died to pay the penalty of all our sins and rose from the dead we hear Jesus give us the Good News: “I forgive you!”  These are the words our loved ones trusted when they breathed their last.  These are the words to remember when we face the challenges of this life.  These are the words to remember when you wanna get away.  Remember that you can come to church to hear God’s promises and get some relief.  Remember at the Lord’s Supper the promises of Jesus that your sins are forgiven.  Remember Jesus Who Gives You Rest in his holiness and in his gift of eternal life.  Rest in Jesus because he lives!  Amen!