Pursuit of God - Meekness and Rest, Matthew 11:28 8/18/2013

Sermon 8-18-13 mt 11:28 pursuit of god- meekness and resttttttt

28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”  

Here are two things that don’t go together

A burden and rest

Mutually exclusive

When we have burdens, it is hard to rest.

Jesus offers to release us from our burdens

He taught the peaceful beatitudes-

Mt 5 Blessed are the meek,  for they will inherit the earth.

we live the exact opposite

Instead of poverty of spirit, we find rankest kind of pride...

instead of mourners, pleasure seekers.....

instead of meekness, arrogance....

instead of hunger after righteousness, we pursue riches

instead of peacemakers, quarrelsome and resentful....

instead of rejoicing in mistreatment, fighting back---complaining life isn’t fair

Jesus offers to release us from our burdens

This happens in two ways

Religious burdens have no place in jesus theology

He breaks all of the rules

He talks to women

He gets close to lepers

He heals on the Sabbath. 

The eats with sinners

He turns water into wine

The teachings of jesus are his yoke

[Define yoke]

They are not burdensome

The teaching of the Pharisees were a burden

You place great burdens on the backs of the people but will not carry them yourselves

Matthew 23  of the Pharisees, Jesus said……

⁴ They tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on other people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them.⁵ “Everything they do is done for people to see: They make their phylacteries^[a] wide and the tassels on their garments long; ⁶ they love the place of honor at banquets and the most important seats in the synagogues; ⁷ they love to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces and to be called ‘Rabbi’ by others.

Famous seven woes...

²⁵ “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. ²⁶ Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean. ²⁷ “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. ²⁸ In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.

Jesus teachings vs the Pharisees is illustrated in the story of the Pharisee and the publican

A sinner with a heart for god vs someone who thinks they have it going on

The Pharisees were pretenders.  They dressed it all up.

The outside of the cup was clean but the inside was not

The tomb was painted on the outside but inside, dead mens bones

We act like Pharisees when we put on the show

Paint up our life

Try to keep up with the joneses

Hide who we are

Thank God, The best of friends welcome us just the way that we are

This is the good news of jesus. 

Not that you are loved after you straighten up,

Not that you are loved if you straighten up,

but simply that you are loved.

Religious burdens have no place in jesus teachings

pretense and artificiality is a burden to live with......many live in secret fear that some day they will be careless and by chance someone will be allowed to peep into their poor, empty souls....so they never relax....

my moms dream of the shower curtain

the wizard of oz…….pay no attention to the man behind the curtain

we don’t have to pretend

Rest is simply release from that burden.  It is not something we do, it is something that comes to us when we cease to do

The second way that jesus wants to release us from our burdens

The burdens of life

A heart break.  A sadness. An illness. We have all had them

We want to pray and have them go away.

Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t

When they do, we give thanks

When they don’t, we are invited to trust god

A sheep found a hole in the fence and crept through it.

 He wandered far and lost his way back. Then he realized that was being followed by a wolf. He ran and ran, but the wolf kept chasing him, until the shepherd came and rescued him and carried him lovingly back to the fold. In spite of everyone’s urgings to the contrary, the shepherd refused to nail up the hole in the fence.

If you want to let the world drive you crazy, God allows that

You are not forced to stay in his fold

As long as we are lost in the problems of this world, we will never find his rest

The world invites us to fight & kick and scream and try to get it our way

Jesus invites us into a world where we rest in him.  Where we let it all go

·        He invites us to stop caring who is the greatest,

·        to stop caring about whether someone pulled out in front of you in traffic. 

·        To stop worrying about who makes more money. 

·        To stop worrying. 

·        To stop……

Rest is what we find when we stop trying to fight everything, stop trying to fix everything

You can let a thing drive you crazy or you can lay down your burdens and rest in jesus.

When we see our selves as god sees us, we have no more need to prove to everyone how great we are.

Those who say don’t know, those who know, don’t have to say.

When we see ourselves as god sees us, we are confident not in our own superiority, but we are confident in his love.

When we rest in god we are no longer worried about keeping up with the jones, for we can find a place of soul rest.

In this life we can get busy…
So busy so busy that we cant find our keys, our check book. We are not living in the moment, we are living in where we need to go next.

The day that you stop, you will arrive. You will find peace

The man with three wishes…….

wife dead.  Wife alive.  Not sure what to choose…

one friend said money, another said health, another said to live forever

he couldn’t decide

god, what should I pick?

the serenity prayer
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference. Living one day at a time; Enjoying one moment at a time; Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace; Taking, as Christ did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it; Trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender to His Will; That I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with Him Forever in the next. Amen. ----Reinhold Niebuhr

We never rest until we let go of the outcome.

Once upon a time a man was visited by a dragon. Man was visited nightly by a 12 foot dragon with 3 heads. Terrified, he went to the psychologist who told him. I can cure you but it will take years and costs thousands of dollars. The man said, ok, never mind, I will just go home and make friends with it.

Tim C- make friends with the pain

Hello mr pain….

We find no rest because we continue to fight our dragons. We continue to resist our thorn in the flesh.

Paul asked for it to go away

Jesus said no.  my strength is made perfect in weakness.

If we can grow accustomed to the fact that some of this isn’t going to get better, the we can get our mind off of our pain and onto the person of Christ and the joy of life.

Conclusion

Jesus has one rule.  Love.  Do this, and relax.  Rest in him.  Stop trying to fix everything, stop trying to fix others. stop trying to be perfect.  Love and be loved.  Welcome him in and rest in him.

His yoke his teaching is easy, his burden is light

Do you know a Jesus who’s yoke is easy?

Come to him and you will find rest for your souls

Matthew 11:28-30  The Message (MSG)

^28-30 “Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”

Prayer
– Lord, make us simple and clean like little children. At times, we have been posers. Deliver me from the urge to compete with another for place or prestige or position.  Help us to lay our burdens at Your feet and take up your life of love.  Help us to forget ourselves and find true peace and rest in You.   Amen