Sleep in Heavenly Peace - On Rest

Is it possible to truly get rest? Did God really intend for us to be exhausted all the time? In a restless world, how can we get rest? This sermon looks at the issue of rest and evaluates both sides.

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Transcript

Sleep in Heavenly Peace:  The theme of this conference is refreshing. And the theme verse that was given to me is from John chapter seven, verse 37 and 38. Let me read it for us. 

On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me as scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.

So, let me ask a question: in one word, what is your idea of rest and refreshing? And you can give an essay about it, but in one word, what is your idea of rest and refreshing sleep,

eating, eating cold water, cold water. The word. Laughter. Laughter laughter more. Laughter

hiking. Okay. Worship, worship, greeting, sunshine.   Different cultures have different views on what rest and relaxation is. The American idea of rest can be captured in,  the 1991, the black album from California's Metallica in their song: enter Sandman: something's wrong. Shut the light heavy thoughts tonight. And they aren't a snow white. Dreams of war, dreams of liars, dreams of dragons fire, and of things that will bite. Sleep with one eye open gripping your pillow tight. This is kind of how we  rest in the Western world where it's not real rest. We kind of sleep with one eye open gripping our pillow tight.

This morning in a sermon entitled sleep in heavenly peace, I want to look at the idea of rest and refreshing. Rest and refreshing. My sermon has two parts. Here's the first part of my thesis. God wants us to have intermittent physical rest. God wants us to have intermittent physical rest.

Rest is something God made inherent to creation.  In the beginning there was darkness,  darkness covered the surface of the deep and the spirit of God hovered over the waters. And God said, let there be light.  God could have just said, okay, let there be light. And there is light for all of eternity.

But instead he also created darkness, so he created  light and night so that they would be rest. So rest is inherent to creation. There are multiple layers of rest. So not everything in the physical universe needs to shut down. You know, the breakfast that you ate this morning, it's still digesting whether you're thinking about it or not, you don't need to be awake at night, trying to keep your heart beating. Your heart is beating continuously whether you're aware of it or not. The planets are rotating. The planets are revolving and there are things in the universe that are happening without rest.

Yet, there are many things that we need rest for. There is rest in the universe and there are multiple layers of rest. So there is rest in longer periods.  In Leviticus  chapter 25, it talks about the year of Jubilee.  After the seventh year, the land gets rest where there's no cultivation, the Israelites were supposed to use  whatever produce they got from the land.

So the land had rest. During the pandemic 2020 during the worldwide lockdowns, when there was less pollution, the land got rest.  Cities like Shanghai and new Delhi,  saw a significant reduction in pollution  and then there was rest in the land. 

There's rest in longer periods and then there's rest every week, God had six days of creation and then God rested.

God established that pattern of rest. It's not like God thought, you know what, man, I'm so tired after creating for six days, especially after creating man and woman on the sixth day, i'm exhausted. Let me take a day off. No, God just stood there and spoke. So it was not that he was tired. It was just that he was establishing a pattern of rest.

And then there's rest every day. He created bodies for us to rest every day. He created a tiny gland called the pineal gland, which is right in the middle of your brain.  It's the size of a grain of rice. Very very tiny. When it becomes dark outside, this gland produces melatonin. And when it becomes light outside, it stops producing melatonin and  it manages your sleep wake cycle because God wanted us to rest every day.

 This rest predates sin. Right. Adam slept before he sinned. So it's not like God wanted us to be active all the time. And now that we sin, God said, no, you're not going to be active. You need to sleep  some more because you sinned. Rest predates sin. In fact, if it were not for Adams rice, grain sized penial gland, there probably would be no Eve.

We sleep a third of our lives. It was a normal thing that God would have made Eve regardless. Forget about it. There's no, there's no yeah, God would have made., based on our temperament, some temperaments want more sleep than others. They need more sleep than others, but we all need sleep and rest.

What is the worth, because we all like to convert things into objective numbers. What is the worth of a good night of sleep? What is the worth of a good night of sleep. In the Oxford sleep medical journal, researchers in the UK found that getting consecutively good nights of sleep was as good as winning a lottery.

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking how much of a lottery. Big amount then? Well, I might as well sacrifice a few nights of sleep. The answer is 215,000 dollars. So getting a few good nights of sleep makes you as happy as winning a lottery of 215000 dollars. We all lost a few , hundreds of thousands of dollars in the last few nights as we recover from jet lag.

How do we get physical rest?

We said sleep. We said you know, somebody said walking, I'm not sure, but somebody said sleep and then a bunch of other answers, how do we get more physical rest? If God in built rest into the human system and we don't provide the human system with adequate rest, then the human system is not functioning the way it's supposed to function.

If you have a dishwasher and you put your dishes in the dishwasher, you can't just put it any which way you want. It's gotta be a certain direction. It's gotta be certain dishes on the top, certain dishes on the bottom. That's how the dishwasher system is supposed to work. If it's not put correctly, it won't work correctly.

So if we are not getting the rest that we need, then the human system is not going to work as optimal as we would like it to be. How can we get more rest? Let me give you two thoughts. There are a thousand ideas. Let me give you two thoughts to get physical rest. 

Time management. We are doing what is necessary, but we are not managing our time well. We are doing what is necessary, but we are not managing our time well because we keep getting distracted. We need to recharge and we need to draw boundaries to rest and relax. My dad was a pastor or is still a pastor of a church back in India and the way it works in India is he had an open door policy.  Anybody could come in at any time and stay as long as they wanted.

 It worked for him because that was his temperament.  He liked people all the time, but for some other people in the house whose temperament were not to have people in contact all the time, it didn't work well for them. But in the Indian setting, if you start drawing boundaries, people will stop coming to church.

I mean that's just how that system works. So in whatever cultural setting you are, it may be difficult to draw boundaries. But, if we don't manage our time, well, we may be doing necessary tasks, but we will not get rest.  There needs to be some way  in your cultural situation, that you're able to find a way to get rest in spite of the busyness.

The second thought that I want to give is what I will say, necessary activity. We are doing what is unnecessary and therefore we do not have time. We are doing what is unnecessary and therefore we cannot manage our time well. What activity are we doing now that is not necessary. What activity are we doing now that is not necessary. We need to say no to certain things. We need to say no to many things. The older I get, the more I say no.  In the last two, three years, I've been saying no to more things than I've said "Yes". Because I'm 45 years old, I'm on the back end of life. And I don't have time anymore. I need to start running to get something done and so I say no to more things then yes so that I can do something worthwhile.

God wants us to have intermittent physical rest.  If you read the book of Proverbs about 19 times it talks about the Sluggard and the lazy person. God is not talking about continuous physical rest. He's talking about intermittent physical rest. 

It would be a tragedy if my sermon ended here. Because most of the time, this is what we think rest is. Rest is intermittent rest, and the pattern of the Sabbath is what we think we need to continue for the rest of our lives.

So we have  a weekly Sabbath. We may have a two year retreat, or we may have a three month retreat. And if we think that is all that rest is, it is not. That's just one half of it. The American idea of life is work, work, work, work, work, and then the weekend comes and then we,  wash our clothes, do all the tasks. And then it's back to Monday morning and it's work, work, work, work, work, and the same cycle keeps repeating.  Then we get two weeks of vacation in a year. Which being an  employer, I give my employees just two weeks of vacation. I know that's terrible. But you get only two weeks of vacation and then you wait about six months to go on this vacation and you plan for this vacation and there's so much pressure to enjoy this vacation.  I am going to enjoy this vacation at any cost. It's like you're trying hard to sleep and you're not going to get rest.  Then we pack so many things in that one week. So many things of activity that you do more work on the vacation and you need to come back and rest.

I mean, it's, it's so, it's so. Hard. It's a  different system and we need to find a way where we can rest. 

As I studied about the topic of rest, I read a bunch of resources. The two things in juxtaposition that confused me were: there was the topic of Sabbath and then I read this verse in the new Testament in Matthew 1128 to 30, where Jesus said, I will give you rest for your soul.

So then I put those together. So does that mean I get rest for my soul on the Sabbath infrequently, intermittently.  I looked for an answer to combine the two, because that didn't make sense to me.  None of the resources that I read had that until I realized the more I thought about it, that there was a second kind of rest.

There's another kind of rest and this is the second half of my thesis. God wants us to have intermittent physical rest and continuous non-physical rest. God wants us to have intermittent physical rest and continuous non-physical rest. I tried numerous terms. So these terms, physical and non-physical are not exactly right.

They don't convey the exact meaning. I tried numerous different terms. I tried physical versus mental, physical versus mental and spiritual. Material versus immaterial and so on. But none of the terms were able to capture the essence of what I'm trying to convey. So  you can ignore the terms and try to get the concept that I'm trying to convey.

We have non-physical restlessness. There are many factors in the world that cause physical restlessness.  For example, even Jesus said, the son of man has no place to lay his head. So he had a physical reason why he could not sleep. he had no place to lay his head. So there are physical factors in our countries where  it can prevent you from having rest.

But what are some reasons that you can think of that are non physical factors that prevent you from getting sleep? If you had a surgery and you're in pain, that's a physical factor. If your kid is crying and has a stuffy nose and wants to suck the pacifier at the same time, that's a physical factor.

So can you think of an example of a non-physical factor that keeps you up at night?

anxiety great!. So we on the right track.  Anxiety worry, guilty, conscience, anger, revenge, all these things can keep you up at night. British born director, Ridley, Scott has directed many movies, including alien blade runner, gladiator, black Hawk, down the marshal among others. HE revealed a rule that the best horror and sci-fi movies follow.

And that is: never reveal too much. This is what he said. You don't show the monster too many times because you'll get used to him and you never want to get used to him. The best screening room in the world is your brain. So it's learning to tap into the human brain to show just so much, let the brain do a lot of the work. That's where you start to tap into people's anxieties. 

We get a little bit of information and then we do a lot of exaggeration and that is what we worry about. That can happen with fear that can happen with worry. That can happen with anxiety that can happen with anger, with revenge. When we sit awake at night the last time that you had a nonphysical reason that kept you up at night. Okay. All of you thinking about it? The last time you had a nonphysical reason that kept you up at night.

In that reason, how much of it was actual fact? And how much of it was a huge exaggeration.

Listen to the speech that Larry King gave in 2011. 

Larry King: One station, small station hired me and they said, we think you have some talent. The first person gets fired or leaves. You got the job. Wow. I hung around that station. I swept up the floors. I watched them do news. I watched them do sports. I watch him do disc jockey, work interviews, anything just to absorb it, waiting for my break.

Then one day I got it on Friday, the general manager called me and he said, Lee, Tom Baird just quit. He quit because he was making $50 a week and his alimony was $60 a week. Tom bed, not a mathematical genius figured out that he cannot survive. So he said, he's leaving. You got the job. This was Friday, Monday morning.

You'll be on the air from nine to 12. You'll play records and you'll talk in the afternoon. You'll do sports and news. You'll be paid $50. Go get them. Uh, folks, I went home that weekend and I never slept. I kept prowling the rooms. Good morning. Good morning. I'm Larry. Here's my record. Good morning. Good morning.

My name was Larry Zeiger at the time was legally changed later. So I kept saying my name is Larry Zeiger. My name is Larry. . Good morning. How does this sound? My neighbor never slept. Now I get through a radio station. It's the morning of my day. Boom. They Butte May 1st, 1957. My dream is about to come true.

The general manager of the station called me and he said, we're ready for you, Larry. We wish you a great career. What name are you going to use? I said, I got to go on the air in five minutes and I don't have a name. He says, well, and he had the paper open to Miami. And there was an ad for King's wholesale liquors.

And so he said, why not? Why not? Larry King? I said, why not? So I was Larry King. Now I'd went through the broadcast booth picture. This my theme song is less cell guard swinging down the lane. dadadada.dot dot a dot a dumb I'm going to fade the record, turn on the mic and speak. I fade the record. I turn on the.

Nothing comes out. I bring up the record, I fade the record I rent and then I look at the clock. It's four minutes after nine. And I say to myself, well, I tried, but I can't do it. I don't have the guts. I thought I had it. I don't have the persistence. I thought I had it. Maybe I just wasn't cut out for it on too scared.

And the general manager kicked open the door to the controller. And he said, Larry, this is a communications business communicate and he shut the door and I did something then that I would do today. And I learned something then that I would do today. And that was be honest. I turned on the mic, faded the record.

And I said, ladies and gentlemen, good morning. This is my first day on the road. My name is Larry King. That's the first time I've ever said that

I have been sitting here scared to death, and you've been hearing music going up and down. Probably wondering if there was an earthquake in the station, but I wanted to tell you, I was scared to death this all my life I wanted to be. I wanted to be in radio. Now I had my chance and I was scared. So bear with me.

I really want this. I want it to work. So I'm going to do my best. At that minute I had them and I never, ever again was ever nervous on radio or on television.

Sleep in Heavenly Peace:  He had nervousness the first time he went on radio and we all have nervousness and fear at different times. But some people have it as a lifestyle. And that's what I'm talking about. Having it as a lifestyle of worry, a lifestyle of fear, a lifestyle of anger, a lifestyle of revenge, that is a non-physical factor. That can steal your rest. 

How do we get non-physical rest  turn your Bibles. If you will, to Matthew chapter 11 and verse 28 to 30 Matthew 1128 to 30.

 We will go over a few things in these three verses. Let me read it for us. Come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I'm gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

Jesus promises to give us rest.  The context of the passage is that there is opposition before and after. There is opposition from within, before these three verses and there's opposition from outside after these three verses. So these three verses where Jesus says come to me and I will give you rest is literally in the middle of opposition.

 Then he says, come to me all you who are. weary weary. The word for weary is in the present active participle, which conveys the idea of continual action. So it's an ongoing burden, an ongoing burden without a minute of relief. When I was a kid, I remember that we we lived in the house and then we bought a little plot of land on the outskirts of the city.

The way the, the Indian system worked at that time was , if you bought just a plot of land, but didn't do anything on it, as the city was expanding, the government would take that piece of land. If they needed it for the road, I mean, they would pay you, but they would take the piece of land if they needed it for the roads or for development.

So the thing that was done is you buy a plot of land and you quickly build two rooms in it. So it's a house, so they won't take  the piece of land.  My dad was a pastor and we had a second service in a nearby location. we went for the second service, the nearby location, and there was a believer that was there and over time the believer didn't have a house. He had some issues with  temporary problem with housing. And so we said, you know what, take this thing and stay there for the temporary season  while your stuff gets figured out. So he moved in and he stayed there. And then he stayed there some more. Soon he stopped coming to church, but he still continued to stay there. So for about five, six years, I remember one of the things we were praying was Lord, let this guy move out because  he was a squatter at this point. I think we finally sold that piece of property.

It was an ongoing prayer request for several years for us. What is an ongoing request that you have? What is an ongoing burden that you have. Maybe it's a prodigal son. You raised them right. You had  family prayers.  You taught to him, the Bible. He came to church or she came to church and then they grew up, they met friends, they're gone away. And now it's an ongoing problem. Well, maybe it's a person who is a thorn in your side. It may be a relative. It may be a friend. It may be a neighbor. It may be a coworker. That's an ongoing problem. An ongoing burden,

maybe it is an ongoing sickness you have. There is no clear way to diagnose it. The doctors don't know what's going on. And it's an ongoing problem. Maybe it's financial hardship. There's no way out of it. Or maybe it's the uncertainties of life. Every step for the foreseeable future looks uncertain.

Then he said, those who are burdened. Burdened is in the  perfect passive participle. It's a state of weariness.  It's not an ongoing burden. It was a past burden with ongoing repercussions.  It's the past burden. What past burden is bothering you today? Maybe it's a sin from the past. A sin from our youth that still has its effects today.

Maybe it has effects that nobody ever knows about, but you know about it, And you're dealing with the effects of it.

Maybe it's some wrong decision you made years ago, and you're still with the consequences of those actions today.

Maybe it's guilt from the past. And Jesus says, take my yoke. The yoke is a piece of wood that is put on the top of a domesticated animal.  It may be one or two animals. If it's one animal, there is one loop of wood around at the bottom where the animal puts his head into it.  The reason for the yoke is so that the animal can give control to the master and the master can direct it.

That's the purpose of the yoke. It's a piece of wood. And the interesting thing is it says you get rest by taking the yoke of Christ. Usually we would think, well, if I need true rest, I don't need any yoke, no yolk, but that's not true. It's taking the yoke of Jesus. It's taking the presence of the correct yoke.

 Jesus said, my yoke is easy. The Greek word for easy is crustless. I probably shouldn't say any Greek words in Greece, but that's the, that's the Greek word. It can mean well fitting. When he says my yoke is easy, it can mean my yokeis well-fitting. In Palestine ox yolks were made of wood and they would bring the, ox or the oxygen to a carpenter.

And he would measure the necks. Just like if you need a denture. Yeah, I'm sure nobody here needs a denture because you guys are all young. But if  people needed a denture, they would go to the dentist and he would fit  a denture to their mouth. Right? It's not like they take a denture from the shelf and say, here's your denture.

They fit the denture to the mouth. That is how a yoke was made back in those days, it was fitted to the neck of the animal. It was a custom fit yoke. I bet somewhere in Nazareth, there was a carpenter that made the best yokes for miles around

I bet people brought their oxen to him and he measured the oxen and made the best fitting yokes that there ever was. And the same carpenter says, come to me and take my well fitting yoke upon you. So I tried to think of a illustration to show what is a yoke, but not burdensome. Because we usually think a yoke is a burdensome thing. What can be a yoke that is not burdensome.

Let me give you a couple of examples. I love my job. Monday through Friday. I work in my office. I absolutely love it. On Sunday nights I am excited to go to work.  I've got to work because if you can't work, you can't eat. said the Bible.  So I've got to work .  I have to carry a yoke, I might as well carry a yolk that is not burdensome. Let me give you another example. If you are fitted with a ministry  that is not your gifting, that is a yoke that is burdensome, right? It is not your gifting. But when you're fitted with the right kind of ministry, then the yolk is not burdensome.

It is a well fitting yolk. 

Then Jesus said, learn from. Learn from me, the  non-physical rest of Jesus once continuous and so powerful that sometimes it satisfied the need of his physical rest. Let me say it again. His non-physical rest was continuous and so powerful that sometimes it satisfied his need for physical rest.

Let me give you two examples. At night when his pineal gland worked with the day and night darkness and light, he should have been sleeping. But there were many nights he spent in prayer with his father. You see, he was getting nonphysical spiritual rest, and that was satisfying his physical rest. John chapter four, it talks of how the disciples walked through samaria and the Bible says at noon, they came to Sychar in Samaria and the disciples went to buy food.

So we assume that all of them were hungry. The Bible doesn't say it, but we assume that they were all hungry. So the disciples went to buy food. Jesus was there. After they came back and after his interaction with the Samaritan woman, Jesus said, I'm not hungry anymore. You see his non-physical rest had satisfied his need for physical rest.

One of the best examples that show the non-physical rest of Jesus and the physical rest of Jesus, all in a couple of verses is in mark chapter four. 37 and 38. A furious squall came up and the waves broke over the boat so that it was nearly swamped. Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion.

Unbelievable. He was getting his physical rest and he got his  non-physical rest. No worry whatsoever. I mean, no worry whatsoever.

He says, come to me and I will give you a rest. Come to me. Nobody ever says that. Buddha did not say come to me. None of the Hindu gods say, come to me. Jesus said, come to me. He didn't say, come to my teachings, come to my philosophy, come to my miracles, but come to me. He calls us into a personal relationship and constant fellowship with him. In the garden of Eden adam was at peace and he had rest. He had a constant fellowship with God. He had intermittent rest, intermittent, physical rest and continuous non-physical rest. Then sin came and broke that continuous non-physical rest.

Continuous non-physical rest is found in an ongoing fellowship with the eternal God. What does this mean? It means that when I spend time with God, In an ongoing fashion, then I don't need to be worried about something because I know God's got it. I don't need to have revenge because I know God's got it. I don't need to have fear because I know God's got it. Because the more time I spend with him, the more I  am aware of the attributes of God and the presence of God. 

In a restless world the rest of a Christian should look different than the rest of a non-Christian, shouldn't it.

If a Christian is spending time in the presence of God, and if that person is as restless as a non-Christian, then there's something not right.  The best way to test it is have a common problem come across and see how each person responds to a common problem. So, for example, let's say, you know, what, if there was a worldwide pandemic and let's see how we all would respond to it. Would the Christian respond in trusting God and rest compared to a non-Christian who would respond in fear and anxiety. 

Come to Jesus and stay, and you will find rest for your souls. I'm going to give us some time to reflect, and I'm going to ask this first question.

 We're going to do something like we did yesterday. I did this exercise for this particular scenario about 25 years ago in my church, back in India. And there's a second time I'm doing it. The same concept, we are going to write every burden. You're going to write every burden you have on a piece of paper on a fresh new sheet of paper.

Every single burden, physical non-physical every single one of them. Whether it's an ongoing problem or a past problem, because both of those Jesus can handle. One Peter chapter five, verse seven says cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.

What we're going to do today is that once we have written everything down, we are going to submit everything to the one who told us to submit it to him. Once you have submitted every last problem, then you don't have to care for it. Because you've submitted your cares to him. He will care for it.  Once you've submitted every last problem, you're going to tear up the sheet.

It may be harder to do because sometimes we like to hold on to certain things. Please submit everything to the one who can give us a rest for our souls.

heavenly father. We come before you in humility and gratitude. Over time, the burdens have kept adding up. Lord God, it's become too hard to bear it.

There was no reason for us to bear it. Cause you're there to bear it.

I come into our fears into your hands. I commit our worries into your hand.

I come at our anxieties into your hands. I commit our questions into your hands. I commit our anger into yours. Okay. I commit our conscience is India.

Okay. Thank you. That you are more than enough to carry. 

Help us not to grab it back, Lord, God help us not to grab it back.

You are better at it than we are. I passed to give it to you and stay free.

for some reason, Lord, we insist on carrying the thing that we cannot carry

So we lay down our burdens that you feed. Thank you for the rest that you give, help us to enjoy that rest. Even in a restless world in Jesus name. Amen.