Sunday, September 2, 2012
LABOR
AND REST
Do you know what this day
is? It is the day we are privileged to
help Juanita celebrate her 90th birthday. It is also a great day because we have the
opportunity to visit with Joe and Michelle and their family. Yes, it is the day before Labor Day. All those things make this a special
day. On the other hand, every day is a
special day, because this and every other day is the day which the Lord hath
made. Regardless of what is happening in
our lives, our Lord is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And for those of us who have been adopted
into His family through the blood of Jesus Christ, we daily celebrate our life
in Him.
This
morning we are going to begin by thinking about Labor Day. Some of you are not with us every Sunday, so
we will talk about labor in order to kind of get together. But then we are going to move beyond that
theme to the related subject of rest. By
the time we’re finished, I trust that those of us who are here most every
Sunday will see that the Spirit of God relates to every issue in life.
I. Let’s Celebrate the Ability to Labor
Jesus was a
man who knew how to work. After all, he
grew up in Nazareth as the son of a carpenter.
He knew all about labor. Since we
don’t read anything of Joseph after the incident in the temple when Jesus was
12, most believe that Joseph died before Jesus began His ministry. That would mean that Jesus, as the oldest
son, would have carried much responsibility to provide for His family. No, He was no stranger to labor.
On the
other hand, if Jesus had lived in the late 19th or early 20th
century, He would have been concerned about the working conditions that many
laborers faced. Regardless of what you
think about labor unions today, Jesus would not have looked favorably on
oppressive working conditions He found them. Yes, Jesus could celebrate Labor
Day with us.
As a matter
of fact, the Bible has plenty to say about labor. The Lord Himself worked six days to create
the universe and everything in it, before resting on the seventh day. Though man, because of his sin, was forced to
earn his living by the sweat of his brow, that does not mean there is anything
degrading about work. Paul set forth a
simple principle, when he wrote to the Thessalonian Christians: “If a man won’t work, he shall not eat” (II
Thes. 3:10). We read these words in Eph.
4:28, "Let him that stole steal no longer: but rather let him labor,
working with his hands what is good, that he may have something to give him who
has need." Honest labor is
honorable indeed.
I don’t
know all of you well, but I have the sense this morning that most of us have a
healthy appreciation for labor. We may
have more trouble understanding those who don’t have that same appreciation for
honest work. Many of you would affirm
immediately that hard work is what built this country and the lack of it is at
the core of what is destroying it.
Of course,
some of you, along with Juanita, have been blessed with many years. As a result, you aren’t able to work like you
used to work. Nevertheless, you do what
you can. You want to keep as active as
you can as long as you can, both in your body and in your mind. Yes, we can celebrate the ability to
labor. It is a gift from the Lord.
II. Let’s Celebrate a Far Greater Work
So I am not
going to spend my time trying to encourage you to work, to give an honest day’s
work for an honest day’s pay. Rather, I
would like to point to a work that is far greater than anything we could
do. After all, our ability to labor is
infinitely less than the God who created everything in six days. God spoke into existence things that all of
mankind together could not accomplish in all of eternity. When we talk about His work, we move to a
totally different level.
But it’s
not creation I want to focus on this morning.
John records quite a number of statements in which Jesus talks about
doing the works of His Father. Please
come directly to the climax of all those statements, found in John 17. As Jesus is praying to His Father, He says,
“I have glorified You on the earth. I
have finished the work which You have given Me to do” (John 17:4). All of the works of Jesus pointed to this one
great and final work. What Jesus did was
a labor of love. And what was it? To what was Jesus referring? Just go back to verse 1, “…Father, the
hour has come. Glorify Your Son, that
Your Son also may glorify You.” How was
the Son going to glorify the Father?
Back to John 12:23-24, “But Jesus answered them, saying, The hour has
come that the Son of Man should be glorified.
Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the
ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much
grain.” Jesus was speaking of His own
death. That is the way He would glorify
the Father. When He prayed, “I have
glorified You on the earth; I have finished the work which You have given me to
do,” He was saying that He was ready to die.
He would go to the cross and lay down His life.
Many look
at that cross and say, “What a tragedy that such a man ended up on that
cross.” No, it wasn’t a tragedy; it was
glory. Why? Back to John 12 again. In the same context, come down to John
12:27, “Now My soul is troubled, and what shall I say? Father, save Me from this hour? But for this purpose I came to this
hour.” Do you hear what Jesus is saying? How can He ask the Father to spare Him from
death on the cross, when that is the very reason He was sent into the
world? That was the great work that He
was about to finish for the glory of the Father. No, He couldn’t shrink from that cross. He couldn’t ask the Father to save Him from
that hour. Rather, His prayed, “Father,
glorify your Name” (12:28), knowing full well that meant death His own death.
But why was
that such a great work? Haven’t other
men died? Of course; we will all die,
unless Jesus comes back first. And some
men and women have died heroic deaths for very noble causes. So why was the death of Jesus such a great
work? Do you know? Rom. 5:6-8, “For when we were still without strength, in due time
Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet
perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates His own
love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Jesus did what no one else ever did or ever
could do -- He died in my place. “In
this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to
be the propitiation for our sins” (I John 4:10). That big word simply means that Jesus
took the wrath of God upon Himself so that I wouldn’t have to. That’s why His soul was troubled, as He faced
the cross.
And why was it necessary for Jesus
to die? Because the wrath of God was
abiding on us (John 3:36). We were all
the enemies of God, storing up wrath for the day of wrath and revelation of the
righteous judgment of God (Rom. 2:5). By
the way, if you don’t like this kind of strong language, don’t take it up with
me; take it up with the Lord. I’m just
passing along exactly what He says in His Word.
If Jesus hadn’t come and taken upon Himself the wrath of God in my
place, I would be destined to eternal punishment in hell, and the same is true
of every human being in this universe.
Some of you here this morning are still so destined.
But how do we know that His death
accomplished what it was intended to accomplish? We know because Jesus did what no mere man
can do; He rose from the grave. Jesus
didn’t remain in the grave; He was victorious over the grave. Death didn’t conquer Jesus; Jesus conquered
death. Praise God that He did for us
what we could never do for ourselves.
III. Let’s Celebrate Rest
I started
out by saying that we can celebrate the ability to labor. Even more importantly, we can celebrate the
greatest work of all, Jesus’ death and resurrection. Now let me switch gears. At first, you will think that I totally
stripped a few gears, but stay with me.
Now let’s celebrate rest. That’s
right, let’s celebrate rest. The truth is, many of us are much better at
celebrating labor than we are at celebrating rest. We don’t mind working, but rest is a
different story. Many of us can get to
thinking that we are too busy to rest.
Some of you have reached retirement age, and now you have more time to
rest. But we find that just having more
time and doing less doesn’t necessarily equal rest. There is a rest for the body, but is there
rest for the soul?
Consider
that well-known invitation of Jesus: “Come to Me, all you who labor
and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 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. 30 For My yoke is easy and My
burden is light” (Matt. 11:28-30). Jesus
speaks of both labor and rest, but neither deal with the physical realm. His invitation is to those who labor and are
weighed down. I realize that some of
your translations may say something like “weary and burdened” (NIV, Holman). Those two terms give the sense of “heavy
laden,” but they don’t translate the first term, which is literally
“labor.” Jesus is speaking to those who
labor and are burdened. But how do these
two ideas go together? Does labor result
in being burdened? In other words, if a
farmer goes out and toils in the field for ten hours, will he be burdened as a
result? No. He may be tired, but his hard work will not
weigh him down. Physical labor does not
ordinarily result in carrying a heavy burden.
Are you getting the point? Jesus is talking about another kind of
labor. That is what the translations are
trying to bring out when they translate His words, “Come to Me, all you who are
weary and burdened.” People are
burdened, as if they were faltering under a heavy load. The burden is not physical, but much
deeper. For many people in this world,
they are laboring just to go on, just to make it through the day. Maybe some of you here this morning are in that
very place. You are laboring to make ends
meet. Or you are laboring to get
ahead. You are laboring to try to make
some sense out of life. You are laboring
to try to rid yourself of guilt. Has
life become toilsome labor for you, burdening you down under its load? Jesus says, “Come to me, and I will give you
rest.”
How precious is real rest? I’m talking about the kind of rest where we
aren’t looking over our shoulder. We are
at peace with the world and with ourselves.
When the storms come, we aren’t tossed to and fro like those around us. This is the kind of rest Jesus offered. But how do we find it? One thing for sure -- we won’t find it apart
from the Lord Jesus. No human being can
achieve this rest on his own, regardless of how things may appear. You may have heard the saying, “No rest for
the wicked.” Though the word used is
“peace,” I’m pretty sure that saying comes from Is. 48:22 and 57:21, “There is
no peace, says my God, for the wicked.”
Jesus had something else to say
about labor, and it has everything to do with rest. John 6:27, “Do not labor for the
food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which
the Son of Man will give you, because God the Father has set His seal on
Him.” On the surface, we might get the
idea that Jesus is saying, “Don’t do your work in order to earn money to buy
food for you and your family.” No, that
isn’t it. Jesus was not against earning
a living. When He talks about laboring
for food, He is not restricting His thoughts to food that you can eat. The key is in understanding the context. Jesus had fed the 5,000, as we see earlier in
chapter 6. The people were so stirred up
about His food-producing miracle that they tried to force Him to become their
king. Jesus would have none of it, but
that didn’t dampen their enthusiasm.
They chased Him over land and sea until they found Him. Listen to Jesus’ response in John
6:26-27, “Jesus answered them and said, ‘Most assuredly, I say to you,
you seek Me, not because you saw the signs [miracles], but because you ate of
the loaves and were filled. 27 Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the
food which endures to everlasting life…’”
Jesus talks about food, because that is what the people were after.
Go back to the story of the woman at
the well. While Jesus talked to the
woman, His apostles went into town to get them something to eat. The woman left just as they were coming
back. Then they suggested that Jesus
have something to eat, to which He responded, “I have food to eat that you know
nothing about.” When they began
questioning where He might have found something to eat, Jesus said, “My food is
to do the will of Him who sent Me and to finish His work” (John 4:34). In other words, “What sustains me is not the
food that you have brought, but the doing of my Father’s will.” As Jesus did the work of His Father, that
work kept Him going. Doing the will of
the Father is what made Jesus tick.
When Jesus speaks here, the primary
force of the word “labor” is not physical, and He is talking about more than just
physical food. The idea is something
like this: “Don’t go after things that
are temporary and won’t endure, but strive for that which will endure to
eternal life.” Don’t chase after riches,
fame, success, security, pleasure, and the like, because what those things can
offer is only temporary. Instead, give
yourself in pursuit of that which will last forever. And what is that? It is nothing less than the life Jesus came
to give to us. Later, in verse 35, He
will say, “I am the bread of life.” Jesus
is the only thing that will satisfy. His
life is the only real rest. So go after
Jesus and the life He came to give you.
But how? Repent and believe. That is the biblical message. That is what Jesus Himself said: “Repent and believe the gospel” (Mark
1:15). To put in terms of Matt.
11:28-30, “Let go of your burden. You
have been trying to find rest on your own, trying to handle your sin and your
guilt, trying to convince yourself that everything will be all right. That is a heavy burden. Lay it down.
Admit that you can do nothing for yourself. You have nothing to offer God, because there
is nothing good in you. You have lived life
the way you wanted and have rebelled against your Creator. Over and over you have proven that your
efforts produce nothing but a heavier burden.
Won’t you lay it down and trust Jesus, the One who bore the greatest
burden of all, when He went to the cross?
Throw yourself on Him who died and rose for you.” That’s what it means to repent and believe.
But that’s not the end of the
story. Rest begins when a person becomes
a follower of Jesus, when God Himself gives him the life of His Son, but that
isn’t the end. Please turn to Hebrews 4. We don’t have time to deal with all the
background of this passage, but let me just stay that it starts back in chapter
3. A whole generation of Israelites
missed the Promised Land because they refused to obey the Lord. You remember the story. God told them to go in and conquer the land,
but they refused. The presence of giants
and fortified cities in the land stirred up fear in their hearts. Two of the spies, Joshua and Caleb, urged the
people to trust God, assuring them that He was more than able to conquer all
their enemies, but they refused.
That rest in the Promised Land was a
picture of a far greater rest. Let’s
read about that rest in Heb. 4:9-10, “There remains
therefore a rest for the people of God. 10 For he who has entered His rest
has himself also ceased from his works as God did from His.” Obviously, this is not talking about physical
rest, but the same spiritual rest that Jesus spoke of in Matthew 11. “There remains a rest for the people of
God.” This rest is available to God’s
people, to those whom God marked out as His own by giving them His Spirit. The one who enters into this spiritual rest
is the person who has ceased doing his own works, just as God ceased doing His
work. Earlier, the writer quoted the
passage which says that God rested the seventh day from all His works. Does that mean that God quit working and now
does nothing? No, the entire Bible
refutes that idea. But when God finished
His work of creation in six days, He ceased from that work of creation; He
rested. In the same way, the Christian
does not enter this rest by becoming passive, by sitting and saying, “Well, I’m
just going to sit here and let God do it.”
But he does cease from doing his own works. He doesn’t sit by passively, but He moves as
God moves Him. He walks in the
Spirit. In other words, the Lord does
His work through this person. When I
cease working on my own and God by His Spirit works through me, that is
rest.
If you want to put it
other terms, that’s fine. Jesus said,
“Abide in me, and I in you. As the
branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except in abide in the vine, no more can
ye, except ye abide in me. I am the
vine; ye are the branches. He that
abideth in me and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit, for without me
ye can do nothing” (John 15:4-5). To abide
in Christ is to enter into this rest. To
walk in the Spirit is to enter into this rest.
Now here is the
clincher in Heb. 4:11, “Let us
therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall according to the
same example of disobedience.” The King James translates it, “Let us
therefore labor to enter into that rest.”
Isn’t that interesting -- labor to enter into rest. “Labor” is not a great translation, as this
is not the usual word that is translated “labor.” But this is a word which speaks of intensity,
meaning “to be diligent, to strive, to make every effort.” This is so vital that you must give yourself
to it wholeheartedly. Yes, we find rest
when we come to Christ through faith at the time of our conversion, but there
is more, much more.
Conclusion
We would all have to
agree that there is a certain contentment in labor. When we do honest work, if feels good. It should, because work is honorable before
God. However, the contentment achieved
through labor is limited. In the first
place, no matter how much work we do, there is always more to be done. Add to that the fact that sometimes we work
out of selfish and impure motives. And
whatever we accomplish, we will someday be undone. Suppose you build a beautiful house. You know that it will eventually be
destroyed. Oh but what contentment there
is when we rest in the Lord, when we cease from our own works. It is worth giving all diligence to enter
into this rest.
You say, “Well, can you
give me a five-step method to enter this rest?”
No, I cannot. I can tell you
this. We cannot enter if we do not
believe. In other words, if you don’t
believe that there is truly a rest from doing our own works, then you will
never enter. And this rest will never be
achieved by a half-hearted seeking. We
must give all diligence. Surely we can
trust our Lord, who is eager to lead us into this rest.
Did God want His people
to enter the Promised Land? Of course,
He did. He brought them out of Egypt
that He might take them into the Promised Land.
Did the presence of giants and fortified cities indicate that it was
impossible for His people to go in. No,
not at all. All they needed to do was
trust Him completely and obey Him. Is
that not what we must do? Trust and
obey.
No comments:
Post a Comment