With all that we’ve gone through these last couple of years is it any wonder that more people than ever are tired? Exhausted. Emotionally, physically and spiritually. Well here’s some good news. God’s rest is available to each one of us. Yes, it is!

I don’t know if you’ve noticed but some people seem so tired – exhausted. As though there’s a plague quietly creeping over humanity. Now I’m sure this varies somewhat from country to country and from culture to culture. I’m sure that there are some people somewhere living idyllic life, you know plenty of rest, relaxation but to tell you the honest truth most of us don’t know any.

People seem to be working harder, competing more, clamouring more to buy the things and have the things that we’re told that we should buy and have. Some people are struggling just to survive, just to get enough food on the table, many in fact. Others are drowning in debt.

Yet others still aspire to a career and then discover that this thing they idolised, this career has in fact turned them into indentured slaves. Long hours, long commute, the traffic, the train and you know, you don’t have to be working like a mad man to be tired.

There are many people who don’t work, people who are lonely who are tired. See I think that tiredness comes not just from working too hard. It comes from carrying around heavy burdens. And so that’s why I’m asking, why is it that everyone is so tired? What’s going on here? What can we, you and I, do about it?

That’s what we’re going to be looking at over the coming few weeks on the program – exhaustion and tiredness.

And just in case you should think that this is something new. Just in case that you should think that this plague of tiredness and exhaustion is something that’s exclusively related to the excesses of western materialism. Have a listen to this, this is Jesus 2000 years ago. You can read it in Matthew’s Gospel chapter 11, verses 28 to 30. Jesus said:

Come to me all you that are weary and carrying heavy burdens and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and humble of heart and you’ll find rest for your soul. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

So these weren’t people burnt out by an industrial age that He was talking to. We’re pretty much talking rural agrarian subsistence economy here back in the 1st century land of Israel. So carrying heavy burdens is nothing new. I mean we all carry heavy burdens from time to time.

It’s funny that the Greek mythology came up with Atlas. You’ve seen this picture of this man stooped over carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. And I guess that’s how many people feel. These heavy burdens that Jesus was talking about, these heavy burdens come in so many different shapes and sizes. I’ve carried a few of them around in my day and I’m sure that you have too.

Sometimes we’re just plain working too hard and we need a rest. Or there are pressures at work and maybe pressures at home and it feels like we’re living in a pressure cooker. And my hunch is that that’s not how we’re meant to live.

Sometimes it’s relationships, a particular person who is hurting us or who’s betrayed us or who’s ignoring us or who’s fighting with us or who’s trying to squeeze us into some mould into which we don’t fit. Sometimes it’s because we’re trying to do things or to be things we were never meant to do or be.

I remember when I started out as a consultant in the IT industry many years ago. I used to think that I had to pretend to my clients that I could do everything. I can tell you that’s a pretty stressful way of living. Sometimes the burdens about our self-esteem or self-worth. We compare ourselves with other people and we come up with a conclusion that we just don’t match up.

Or others have expectations of us, we have expectations of ourselves that, well, we’re just struggling to meet. Or sometimes it’s money problems, ‘I’ve lost my job, I don’t have a job’. And for many people listening today they can’t even put food on their table for their kids. Those are real burdens. Sometimes it’s loneliness, like a padded prison cell where we scream and no-one can hear us.

Do you see how this list goes on and on? And you know, sometimes it’s just this sense that something’s not quite right, something’s wrong, we just can’t put our finger on it. Other times we know what’s causing our stress, we know what’s causing our tiredness because we’re running away from God, we know that we’re rebelling.

And as much as we try and convince ourselves that we can do it our way, it’s so exhausting pulling in the opposite direction to God. Exhaustion, tiredness, man sometimes we need a rest, a holiday, a day off, a break away from the grind.

But can I tell you something? I’ve had holidays in the past where I didn’t get any rest either because while you can perhaps get away from work or even home and the day-to-day routine, many of those burdens and pressures I’ve been talking about just don’t go away because you’re on holidays, do they? You can be sitting on a sandy beach with waves rolling in and yet still carrying the heavy burden of a failing marriage or financial debt or the fear of what’s going to happen when you get back to work.

Here’s the thing, burdens come in many different shapes and sizes, they do, and over the coming weeks on the program we’re going to look at a lot of these different burdens – the things that we carry around, the weight of the world on our shoulders. The things that, try as we may, we can’t seem to put down even though we want to rest, even though we want to get rid of them out of our lives.

That’s the thing, so often these burdens are so hard to get away from and to put down and to rest from and I’ve come to the conclusion as a self reliant individual as I am, I just can’t do that on my own. Here’s the thing, I believe, I truly believe with every fibre of my being that God wants to give us rest. I believe that God hears the cries of His people and that He has the answers.

Do you remember when God’s chosen people, the nation of Israel, the descendants of Abraham, they were in slavery in captivity in Egypt? Do you remember what God said to Moses? Exodus chapter 3, verses 7 and 8:

The Lord said, ‘I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt. I have heard their cry on account of their task masters. Indeed I know their sufferings and I’ve come down to deliver them from the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey.

See we so often dig ourselves into a hole. So often we’re living out consequences of our own rebellion against God. So often we look at life and kick ourselves and think, ‘Oh man, if only I hadn’t, you know, whatever it is’. And that sense of regret makes things worse.

And sometimes we’re just carrying burdens that aren’t our fault. Being oppressed by other people or by circumstances completely out of our control. Well here’s the thing, I believe that God wants to set us free. I believe that God wants to give us rest and peace and well-being. In fact I don’t just believe it, I know it because Jesus said:

Come to me all you that are weary and carrying heavy burdens and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and humble of heart and you will find rest for you souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

Now, it’s really easy to read that and think, ‘Well, you know, that must be for someone else. That must be for those super spiritual people. Maybe it’s for that guy on the radio who’s talking right now. But it can’t possibly, can’t possibly be for me.’ Listen again to what Jesus said:

Come to me all you that are weary and carrying heavy burdens and I will give you rest.

There is no qualification, it is for everybody. It is for anybody and everybody who is weary and carrying heavy burdens. And that, that’s what we’re going to be exploring together over these coming weeks on the program. God’s rest – because He means it for my life and He means it for yours.

We’re chatting this week on the program about entering God’s rest – because His rest is available to each one of us right here, right now. But funny thing, after God had finished creating the whole universe, on the seventh day, He rested. Why was that? Was He tired?

You know there have been times in my life when I’ve been completely and absolutely exhausted. Sometimes it’s because I’ve worked too hard and haven’t taken a rest. Other times it’s because of pressures and risks and fears and things out there, things I haven’t been able to control.

This whole balance between work and rest is something that I’ve had to learn. In fact, I’ve got to tell you, it’s something that I’m still learning. I honestly, naturally I’m a bit of a workaholic. Well, not just a bit of one, I’m a complete workaholic. And so getting balance between work and rest right has been an important lesson for me to learn.

Both working too much and working not enough it turns out, are extremes that aren’t part of Gods plan for our lives. In fact, just so we get that right have a listen to these two verses of Scripture. On the one hand to the workaholics God has this to say. Psalm 127, verses 1 and 2:

Unless the Lord builds the house those who build it labour in vain. Unless the Lord guards the city the guard keeps watch in vain. It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil for He gives sleep to those whom He loves.

Sobering. But on the other hand have a listen to this. Proverbs chapter 20, verse 4:

The lazy person doesn’t plough in season and then the harvest comes but there’s nothing to be found.

So as it turns out God’s plan is for us both to work and to rest. And in fact right in the first couple of chapters of the Bible He actually lays this out with sharp clarity – with a clarity that can and should form the foundations of our understanding of work and rest.

I guess most of us realise that the first couple of chapters of the Bible, Genesis, the first Book in the Bible, are about God creating creation. God taking nothing and turning it into something:

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

It starts off and then the wonderful story of all the things He created – the light and water and dry land and the sky and plants and birds and animals. And eventually us, people in His own image. Couple of chapters, two or three pages about the creation of the universe.

It’s pretty easy to kind of skim over them and think to ourselves, ‘Ah yeah, okay, so God created everything’ until we engage with the things He created. A trillion, trillion stars. A universe so big it takes light, which travels at 186 thousand miles or 300 thousand kilometres every second, it takes light 93 billion years to travel from one end of the known universe to the other.

And that’s just the known universe. As the NASA website tells us no-one knows if the universe is infinitely large or even if ours is the only universe that exists.

And then, then you look at all the small things and the intricate things. Atoms, cells, living organisms, animals, plants, people and they are so wondrous and so amazing. Take the human body, a heart that beats a couple billion times in a lifetime to pump blood through 60,000 miles or 96,500 kilometres of blood vessels to the 60 or 70 trillion cells in our body of which around 1.1 trillion make up the human brain which puts any computer you’d care to name absolutely to shame.

Yeah, God created the creation and any thinking person who spends just a couple of minutes engaging with any part of that creation, well you have to be blown away by what you see.

Maybe having looked at things from that perspective, over the next day or so, it wouldn’t be a bad thing for you and me to read those first couple of chapters of the Book of Genesis through fresh eyes –eyes of awe and eyes of wonder.

Now I start off with this because obviously creating this stunning, amazing, humanly incomprehensible and unfathomable universe, it wasn’t a trivial exercise. It required creativity, imagination and a mighty, mighty effort. I say that as someone who’s been exhausted just digging a little trench in my backyard for a water pipe.

Now have a listen how the first account of this amazing act of creation winds up. Beginning at Genesis chapter 1, verse 31:

God saw everything that He’d made and indeed it was very good and there was evening and there was morning on the sixth day thus the heavens and the earth was finished in all their multitude. And on the seventh day God finished the work He’d done and He rested on the seventh day from all the work He’d done. So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it because on it God rested from all the work that He had done in creation. (Genesis 1:31 to Genesis 2:1-3)

So He builds this whole universe and then He rests. The Hebrew word for rest used in that passage a couple of times is the one from which we get the English word ‘Sabbath’. Now, here’s the thing, you have to ask yourself ‘Why did God rest? I mean why?’

Okay it was an amazing thing that He did, totally, totally blows my mind but why did He rest? Did He have to rest? Was He exhausted somehow like Berni digging that little trench, moving a few barrows of soil from his backyard? Well, no, God wasn’t exhausted. Not one little bit, because He’s God.

Now that’s not just me saying that. I say that because that’s exactly what God’s word says about Him. Have a listen to Psalm 121. A tired man looking up for God’s help says:

I lift up my eyes to the hills, from where will my help come? My help comes from the Lord who made the heaven and the earth. He will not let your foot be moved, He who keeps you will not slumber. He who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. (Psalm 121:1-4)

So there it is. God doesn’t get tired, He doesn’t need a cap nap in the afternoon, He doesn’t need to go to bed at night. He is on the job 24×7. So back to the question, why did He rest? Well the answers actually in the text that we read before, Genesis chapter 1:

God saw everything He’d made and it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day and so the heavens and the earth were finished in all their multitude and on that seventh day God finished the work He’d done and He rested from it.

See God sat back to enjoy what He’d made. He looked at it, it wasn’t just good, it was very good. In fact if I were to give you a more explicit translation to English it would say, ‘exceedingly, mightily, abundantly good’. We might say these days fantastic, utterly awesome.

And God sat back and rested from doing and He enjoyed. Now, you and I when we dig a trench we need to rest the old body but there’s another dimension of rest which is about enjoying our lives, enjoying the fruits of our labours, enjoying our relationships.

Rest is when we recharge our batteries not just by stopping work but by enjoying what we have and who we are and taking it in the way God did. And so important is this day of rest He called it the ‘Sabbath’ and He instructed His people, Israel, not to work on that day. The fourth of the Ten Commandments God says to His people:

You will not work on the Sabbath day. Completely desist from your work on that day. (Exodus 16:23)

He wants them to set that day aside to spend with Him.

Six days you’ll work but the seventh day is a Sabbath day of solemn rest, holy to the Lord. Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day shall be put to death. (Exodus 16:26)

You know what, I actually don’t think we’re that good at resting anymore and enjoying what we have and setting a day aside for God. Too many things to do, too many places to go, too many people to see.

So many people in this world are so … tired. Exhausted. And it doesn’t matter how clever you are, how emotionally resilient you and how strong you might be … when you’re tired, you’re just not functioning at your best. When you’re tired, you’re simply not enjoying life.

Well over the course of this week and in fact the next few weeks on the program we’re stepping our way through a little series of messages that I’ve called, ‘Oh God I Need A Rest’. And I know, I know that this is what so many, many, many people need in their lives – just a rest.

So many people are tired, too tired to have quality time with their friends or their family. Too tired to be truly part of a faith community. Too tired to enjoy life. Too tired, just too tired. And here’s the funny thing, we just keep on keeping on and we keep going, same commute, same pressures, same exhausted at night, up the next morning. Friday, the weekend collapse, back again on Monday.

We just can’t keep going. We know something’s wrong, we know life shouldn’t be like this but it is, that’s it, nothing I can do about it, I just have to keep going, I’m trapped on this treadmill, I can’t get off. You don’t hear too many people talking about this problem either. We know we’re all tired, just get on with it. Now I have absolutely nothing against hard work but where’s the balance, where’s the joy, what’s the point of it all?

Today I’d like to share with you that this exhaustion, this tiredness is just not what God’s plan is for our life. Absolutely there are sometimes and some seasons that we have to travel through where you have to work at a million miles an hour. I’ve been through some of those and doubtless you have been too. But as we saw yesterday on the program it says in Psalm 127:

It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest eating the bread of anxious toil. For He gives sleep to those whom He loves.

In other words God wants us to have His rest. That’s why over these few weeks, that’s exactly what we’re looking at each day, a simple straight forward ‘how to’. How to enter God’s rest. How to live smack bang in the centre of God’s peace.

Yesterday we saw that God, after His mighty act of creation, rested and He thought that, that day of rest was so important He commanded His people to keep a Sabbath day set apart for Him. Now He didn’t rest because He was exhausted, He rested to sit back and enjoy what He had created.

So for God, right up front there, there is a simple pattern of work and rest. You and I, we need both and actually that wonderful creation, that sense of work and enjoying this world, that’s something He’s also gifted to humanity. See sometimes we imagine that God’s blessing and His goodness and this whole rest and peace thing can’t possibly be for us.

But come and have a look with me at what He did with all that He created. Let this rock your socks off. It starts in Genesis chapter 1, beginning at verse 26:

Then God said after He’d made everything else He said, ‘let us make human kind in our image, according to our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, over the cattle, over all the wild animals of the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.

So God created humanity in His image and the image of God He created them. Male and female, He created them. God blessed them and God said to them, ‘be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, over every living thing that moves upon the earth.

God said, ‘see, I’ve given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of the earth. Every tree with seed in its fruit you shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the air and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has breath of life I have given every green plant for food. And so it was so.

God saw everything He had made and indeed it was very good and there was evening and morning on the sixth day. Thus the heavens and the earth were finished in all their multitude and on the seventh day God finished from the work He’d done and He rested on the seventh day from all the work that He had done. (Genesis 1:26-31 to 2:1-3)

See there it is, God creates this stunning universe and hands it over for the man and the woman, for you and for me, to enjoy that creation. Here, here it’s yours. I’ve made it, now subdue it, till it, farm it, be fruitful, multiply, enjoy. See God only rests once He’s created everything and then given it away to people, to men and women, both made in His image. That is the joy that He has in creation and then, Genesis chapter 2, verse 15:

The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to till it and to keep it.

So He gives the man a woman to be his wife, his partner and they enjoy life in this garden, safe, at rest, working, resting in relationship with God. That was God’s original plan for His people. That He would be their God, they will be His people, safe and at rest.

Now we know that Adam and Eve ruined that and we’re going to look at that on the program tomorrow. But for now let’s just stick with God’s original plan. It was never His plan for us to be out of close fellowship and relationship with Him or with one another. It was never His plan for us to be amidst strife and conflict. It was never His plan for us to be carrying around heavy burdens. It was never His plan to see you and me groaning under the burden of a weight that’s crushing us.

Those things were never ever His first and His best plan for us. What’s befallen us has done so because Adam and Eve and then you and me, we all in our own way, in our own time, have turned our backs on God. Just as I said, that’s for tomorrow’s program.

But if you somehow imagine that God wouldn’t possibly bring peace and rest into your life then it’s time to think again. Look at what He did, He created the whole universe, the whole thing and then He handed it over to humanity through Adam and Eve to us to enjoy.

Both to work and to rest. Just as God Himself did. The very point I believe God wants us to get today, see Adam and Eve weren’t sitting on the beach drinking Pina Colada’s. The Lord took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to till it and to keep it. There was work involved.

Right from the very, very, very beginning God’s plan of work and rest was a good one. And here’s the thing, there’s a reason that they called Jesus the ‘Saviour’. A lot of people wonder themselves, ‘What could He possibly save me from, I’m not lost? I’m not in trouble’. And so they conclude they don’t need Jesus.

And sadly, let me say, all too often these are the very same people who are carrying around those heavy burdens. These are the very same people who are being crushed under the yoke of slavery to their sin. That’s why Jesus came. That’s why He said: 

Come to me all you that are weary and carrying heavy burdens. I’ll give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, learn from me, I’m gentle, I’m humble in my heart and here with me you’ll find rest for you souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. (Matthew 11:28-30)

My friend, I don’t know where you are in your life. I don’t know whether you’re on a mountain top or whether you’re down in a gully somewhere, it doesn’t matter. We all go through things, we all suffer the consequences of our sin. We all get tired and so many, many people are exhausted by life.

God never meant it to be like that and over these coming few weeks on the program I want to show you from God’s own word that He sent Jesus to set us free. He sent Jesus so that those who were weary and carrying heavy burdens could enter the rest of God.

One of the reasons that so many of us are so tired, is that we’re not living our lives the way God intended. Look at Adam and Eve. Everything was just fine, until they turned their backs on God. The moment they did that, life became, well … seriously hard work!

Every now and then I get to thinking, ‘God, why am I so tired? Why do I have to work so hard?’ I’m sure that thought’s gone through your mind once or twice as well.

I remember one time several years ago early on in my involvement in this media ministry at Christianityworks that produces these radio programs. On top of writing and recording these radio programs and running a ministry I took on a large consulting assignment. My background was in IT and I was a consultant.

Anyhow, in the early years of Christianityworks things were really tight so we decided I’d do this consulting assignment to help support the ministry. I was an expert witness in a large IT related litigation and what started off as a big assignment ended up running for three years and involved me writing over 600,000 words of evidence for the courts.

I mean that’s like writing 6 PhD theses. There was a period of five months or so where I worked every day for 12 to 14 hours without a break. I have never ever been so exhausted in all my life. And I look back on that time now and I wonder how did I ever manage it.

And the thing that I think about is that we only ever see those sorts of things in our lives from a human perspective. A fact that sometimes life’s just hard work and we’re tired. But it’s not just human. There’s a spiritual dimension to hard work and exhaustion. A dimension that starts almost at the beginning of time.

Yesterday on the program we had a bit of a look at God’s ideal plan for humanity. Straight out of Genesis chapters 1 and 2 in the Bible. God made this amazing, utterly stunning creation – the universe. All the stars, the planets and here on earth the water and the land and the plants and the animals and of course, people.

And He puts us, Adam and Eve, into this creation in a garden to work it and enjoy it. See some people think that the whole ‘working’ thing didn’t happen until after Adam and Eve ate that apple and were booted out of the garden. But that’s not true. Have a listen, Genesis chapter 1, verse 29:

God said, ‘see, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth and every tree with seed in it’s fruit, you shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the air and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has breathe of life I have given every green plant for food and it was so. 

God saw everything that He’d made and indeed it was very good and there was evening and there was morning on the sixth day. Thus the heavens and the earth were finished in all their multitude. And on the seventh day God finished the work that He’d done and He rested on the seventh day from all the work that He’d done. (Genesis 1:29-31 to Genesis 2:1-3)

So He gave them everything He’d made but now, have a listen to what it says in verse 15 of Genesis, chapter 2:

The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to till it and to keep it.

So, there was work and there was rest, together making up a perfect existence for Adam and Eve. But we know the story that Adam and Eve did the one thing that God told them not to do. They ate the apple from that one tree that God had forbidden them from eating from, the tree of knowledge of good and evil, smack bang in the middle of the garden.

They did what you and I do. God gives us everything He created, He says, ‘Here, go and enjoy it. Be blessed by it.’ And He puts some boundaries around just a tiny portion of that, calls it sin, sets it off limits because it will hurt us. Tells us not to go there and as sure as God made the green apples, we go there.

Not His plan but He wants to give us a choice, to love and obey Him or to reject and disobey Him and as sure as God made those little green apples, we choose the latter. Just like Adam and Eve. And the moment they did that everything started to come apart.

Even before God showed up to talk with them they were ashamed in front of one another and they ran and hid from God. And God came and spoke to them and after He’d dealt with the tempter, the serpent, this is what He said. Genesis chapter 3, verse 16:

To the woman He said, ‘I’ll greatly increase your pains in child bearing and in pain you shall bring forth children yet your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you.’ And to the man He said, ‘because you have listened to the voice of your wife, you’ve eaten from the tree about which I commanded you shall not eat of it, cursed is the ground because of you, in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life.’

‘Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground. For out of it you were taken, you are dust and to dust you shall return.’

So, before they rebelled against God there was work and there was rest. They tilled and they kept the garden. That literally means they had to labour in it and work in it and look after it. But after the rebellion of Adam and Eve against God tilling turns to toiling: In toil you shall eat the ground all the days of your life.

The original Hebrew word there means ‘pain, labour, hardship, sorrow and toil’. And in my book those things lead to exhaustion. Do you see now the spiritual dimension of what’s going on when we slog our guts out day after day? When we toil instead of till.

Things only became difficult for the man and the woman when they rebelled against God. That’s why things are tough sometimes in this world. That was never the original plan. Toil replaced tilling after humanity rebelled against God.

Let me say, today still, whenever we rebel against God, whenever we pull in the opposite direction to God, whenever we go into that tiny roped off area called sin, where He tells us not to go, I can absolutely guarantee that toil will come. And with toil, pain and sorrow and with those, exhaustion.

Now, you might say to me, ‘Berni, that may well be but does that mean if I honour God and obey God with my life everything will be a bed of roses because that’s what I’ve been doing and it ain’t so?’ And the answer is, ‘No, not always because we live in a world where humanity has rejected God. And sometimes, you and I have to live through the consequences of other people’s rebellion against God and that hurts.’

Great, so what is anything useful do we learn from God here about the link between sin and exhaustion? Well, quite simply this, there are plenty of things out there in this world that you and I have no control over – sickness. Disease. Wars. Riots. Economic failures. Other people’s greed. Lots of things that we can’t control. Things that can impact negatively on our lives.

But let me tell you something, we do have control over our own sin and we can join hands with God to deal with our own sin and our own rebellion. We can progressively get rid of the negative impacts of those sins in our lives. And then, this is what I found, then there seems to be this power.

The power of God, the presence of the Spirit of God in our lives that lets us deal with all the other stuff. Time and time again I’ve found that when I’m living in obedience to God then when the difficult things come, the things that are out of my control out there, somehow I’m able to walk through them with a peace and with a confidence that I didn’t have before.

Let me go back to it, God’s perfect plan was for Adam and Eve to live in a perfect relationship with Him in that garden. But that relationship involved both work and rest. The work was tilling and keeping the garden. It’s when they allowed rebellion to enter into that place that it came apart.

Tilling turned to toiling. The tiredness is a consequence of their sin and their rebellion. Toil equals pain, sorrow and hardship. That makes us tired. That’s the spiritual dimension. 

Sometimes in life we get so tired, so exhausted just from doing all the stuff we have to do, that we forget to rest. In fact, for many, rest, feels like … like a million miles away. If that’s something you relate to, then today, I have some good news for you. Really, really good news.

Well here we are, Friday again, end of another week. How’s your week been? Well mine’s had its challenges but let me tell you something, facing those hand in hand with God has been pretty much fantastic.

One of the things that strikes me is that the challenges, that challenges can wear you down, seriously wear you down. That’s why this week and next week on the program we’re stepping through a series of message that I’ve called ‘Oh God I Need A Rest’.

I’m sure that there are a few people today who can relate to that. Maybe your ears have just pricked up and you’re thinking, ‘Hang on a minute, that’s exactly what I need, a rest’. Well today I have some good news for you. Some fantastic news. God knows the problem and He wants to give us His rest. Not just any rest, His rest.

It’s something that sometimes we don’t expect of God. We have our spirituality over there in that box but over here in this box we have our day-to-day life. For many people they never make the connection between their spirituality and their faith in Jesus and their day-to-day lives. Between God and life. Between God and their exhaustion.

Well they may exclaim, ‘Oh God I need a rest’ but mostly they don’t expect an answer. Today I want to show you that God does have an answer. That He plans to answer and He wants to deal with our tiredness. This is where the rubber hits to road.

Now if you’ve been able to join us this week you’ll have heard about Gods plan for our lives and how we, humanity, you and I, ended up snatching defeat out of the jaws of victory. In a nutshell we looked at the creation story in Genesis chapters 1 and 2.

God creates all this amazing stuff. The heavens and the earth and the oceans, day and night and the land and the plants and the animals and you and me. There’s this utter splendour of creation, I mean have a look around. Then He puts us in the middle of it all, gives the whole thing to us, everything He’s created and only once He’s done that on the seventh day does God rests. Not because He’s exhausted but to enjoy what He’s created, to delight in it.

Then in Genesis chapter 2, verse 15 He calls on us, Adam, to till the land and to look after it. See work and rest. A perfect plan, perfect relationship with God but as we know and this is the point we arrived at yesterday if you were able to join me, then we blew it. At least Adam and Eve did.

They did the one thing that God told them not to do. They ate that apple from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil smack bang in the middle of the garden. And at that point everything turned to custard. All of Gods good and perfect plan for humanity started to unravel. And in particular to the man God said, reading from Genesis chapter 3, verse 17:

To the man He said, ‘because you have listened to the voice of your wife and you’ve eaten of the tree about which I commanded you ‘you shall not eat of it’, cursed is the ground because of you. In toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles shall bring forth for you and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground. For out of it you were taken, you are dust and to dust you shall return’.

So we go from a good and perfect plan to toiling and suffering. That’s what happened when humanity rejected God. Look around the world, sin ushered in pain and suffering and toiling and exhaustion. That’s the bad news but now here’s the good news.

The good news is that God wants us to experience His rest. And that rest, that peace has everything to do with us living in obedience to Him. Have a listen, the writer of the New Testament Book Hebrews has just gone through a fairly lengthy explanation of how the rebellion of Israel during the Exodus in the wilderness, stopped them from entering God’s rest. Have a read, Hebrews chapter 3 for yourself. Now lets pick it up in Hebrews chapter 4. Have a careful listen:

Therefore while the promise of entering God’s rest is still open let us take care that none of us should seem to have failed to reach it. For indeed the good news came to us, just as to them, but the message they heard didn’t benefit them because they were not united by faith with those who listened.

For we who have believed enter that rest just as God has said, ‘As I swore in my anger they shall not enter my rest though his works were finished at the foundation of the world’. For in one place it speaks about the seventh day as follows. God rested on the seventh day from all His works and again in this place says, ‘They shall not enter my rest.’

Since therefore it remains open for some to enter God’s rest and those who formerly received the good news failed to enter because of disobedience, again He sets a certain day, today, saying through David much later in the words already quoted. Today if you hear my voice do not harden your hearts for if Joshua had given them rest God would not speak later about another day.

So then a Sabbath rest still remains for the people of God. For those who enter Gods rest also cease from their labours as God did from His. Let us therefore make every effort to enter that rest so that no-one may fall through disobedience such as theirs. (Hebrews 4:1-11)

Now the logic in that passage, well it might feel a bit convoluted but he’s effectively providing an argument that they would have understood in their historical mindset back in the 1st century. That’s a little more obscure to you and me, here and now.

But here’s the gist of what he’s saying. That God’s indeed saying to you and me, here and now, that all the Israelites, all of them, hundreds of thousands, perhaps well over a million, who fled from Egypt, all of them bar two perished in the desert before they got to the Promised Land.

They failed to reach the Promised Land. They failed to enter into Gods rest. Why? Because of their disobedience. Let that stand as a lesson to you. Disobedience means that we don’t end up in God’s promises in God’s rest. And the punch line, the whole point of what God’s saying to you and me, right here and now, comes in the last couple of verses: So then a Sabbath rest still remains for God’s people. For those who enter God’s rest also cease from their labours just as God did from His. Let us therefore make every effort to enter that rest so that no-one may fall through disobedience such as theirs.

God’s plan is for us to know a rest that goes way beyond a day or two off each week. A rest that goes way beyond a week or two off on holidays somewhere each year. It’s a deep, abiding, peaceful rest. A blessed rest from toil and trouble.

The sort of rest that can happen in the middle of the most terrible of life’s storms where we experience a peace that just doesn’t make sense because it comes from God. All the burdens we’ve been carrying just lift off our shoulders and we don’t have to worry about them in the world anymore.

That’s what God means by His rest. Not me off on some flight of fancy, this is exactly what God says to us in His word. Have a listen from Isaiah chapter 40, beginning at verse 28:

Have you not known? Haven’t you heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the earth. He doesn’t faint or grow weary, His understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint and strengthens the powerless.

Even youths will faint and be weary and the young will fall exhausted but those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint. (Isaiah 40:28-31)

 You see that’s exactly is what God promises us. So I don’t know about you but I think this is great news. It’s a fantastic place to finish off the week and it’s good news that we’ll be talking about a lot more again next week on the program.