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Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Brothers and sisters, for the sermon today, looking at that letter to the Hebrews, please be seated.
Rest. What a great word and a great concept. Rest is something we greatly enjoy, but probably too often something we don’t take enough advantage of. In fact, statistics show that Americans may be the most stressed and tired people in the world. Can I get an amen? The United Nations International Labor Organization says that workers in the United States put in more hours of work than anyone else in the industrialized world. So, yeah, we may be the most productive, it seems, but we probably are also the most stressed.
And we take less vacation time than most of the world. Many countries take four up to six weeks. On average, Americans take two. Even worse, when we do have leisure hours, they can be packed with so many activities that we rarely get any rest. Can I get another amen? Amen.
Or we’ll work overtime to have extra money for vacations, only to spend a good part of that vacation just being tired and even beginning to feel rested. Or worse, we’ll return from a vacation feeling exhausted. Whenever somebody asks, how are you? You’re probably more likely to answer, I’m tired, than, boy, I’m really rested.
Now, in Christian circles, when the word Sabbath is mentioned, we often think of the day of rest. And usually think of the third commandment, which is to remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. The Sabbath day was given to the Israelites as a day of stopping from all work so that they could rest. In fact, the Hebrew word Sabbath, Shabbat, means stop. And the Sabbath was the seventh day of the week. For the Israelites, today we call it Saturday, as God had rested on the seventh day after his six days of creating the world.
For most Christians, the Sabbath is Sunday, the first day of the week, a day of worship, especially praising God for the resurrection of Jesus, which happened on the first day of the week, or we call it Sunday today. Christians see Sunday as a day of rest, at least in part anyway. Some areas of the country have those blue laws where you can’t buy alcohol. Or some stores are closed on Sunday, including Texas. In fact, you have a hard time buying a car on Sunday in Texas because of those blue laws.
Well, God gave the Sabbath day so we could rest physically. We know that rest is important, and we go sometimes to great lengths of attempts to gain rest with meditation, maybe yoga, medication, sleep number mattresses. There’s even an application now on your phone to help calm you and get better sleep. Some companies even allow their employees to take naps during the afternoon.
But this isn’t a sermon about what day is the Sabbath or more about physical rest. It’s more about what the Sabbath is and how we can enter into it. In the second reading, in that letter to the Hebrews, it talks about Sabbath, but it’s not talking about a day of rest, but more what that rest is, what the Sabbath is, and how to enter it, that’s what’s emphasized.
In fact, you can follow along. I’d like to reread part of it here. Verses 9 through 11. You get extra points for following along. And the writer said this, verse 9: So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his. Let us therefore strive to enter that rest so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.
First of all, let’s talk about what we need rest from. The letter talks about what that rest is. Let’s talk about what do we need rest from. Why do we need Sabbath? Sure, there’s the physical. We need physical rest because we get physically tired, and you know what tires you physically. Specifically, physically.
But there are also things that tire us spiritually. Our soul can get tired. Our spiritual side can be tired too, and it needs rest. And we get tired spiritually, kind of like we do physically. We get tired physically by things we bring on ourselves. Spiritually, we tire because of things we bring on ourselves. In Christian circles, that’s called tiredness. Sin.
Sin such as when you have a schedule that hinders gathering with God’s people in worship or gathering in fellowship, or being in prayer and study of God’s Word, or when your schedule doesn’t even include any time for your spirit to rest, or when your trust in God slips and you doubt. And you’re stressed by worry and cares about your life and about your future. Or when you’re carrying a burden of something sinful, something you may have done years ago, and you just aren’t able to forgive yourself, and it tires you out, dragging it around.
And you know what particular sins that you have that are tiring you out, and you need rest. You need rest, but you need way more than just a day off, more than a vacation, more than an app or a nap. You need spiritual rest, rest for your soul. You need, as it says in the text, God’s rest.
So what is God’s rest? What is God’s Sabbath? Well, first of all, since it’s his, it belongs to God, it must be something that then is given to you. God’s rest is the rest that he gives to you. And not just a day of rest like he gave to the Israelites. God’s rest is in his Son, Jesus Christ, who was given to us in his death on the cross and his resurrection from the dead. To lift off your tiresome sin and give you instead God’s grace and mercy and forgiveness for whatever is tiring you out.
Jesus’ death and resurrection weren’t to be a burden on you, but to stop your burden, to stop your worry over your sin and to forgive you. God’s Sabbath, God’s rest isn’t a day. It’s Jesus. He’s your rest. He’s your Sabbath. And we see that in the reading today too in verses 2 and 6, where the word good news comes up.
Verse 2: For good news came to us just as to them. And verse 6: Since therefore it remains for some to enter it, and those who formerly received the good news, that good news. That’s the gospel of Jesus, the message, the promise of what Jesus has done in his death and resurrection. That’s what’s God’s rest for you, for your spiritual tiredness. That’s his Sabbath for you, in the burden of the sin that you’re dragging around.
Only in Jesus can you truly have spiritual rest. That’s it. Rest that doesn’t just make you feel rested. It’s rest that’s more than just stopping work. It’s rest for your soul. But how do we enter into God’s rest? That rest that He gives us in Jesus. How do we get that Sabbath that He gives to us?
Through His Word. Through that good news, that message. And that’s why I think verse 12 here in the reading just doesn’t seem to fit with everything else. It just seems to get stuck in here. Verse 12, which is probably very familiar to many of you, says this: For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, and so on. It doesn’t seem to fit there, but it really does because it comes right after this idea of entering that rest.
That’s how we enter that rest. Through his word. God’s word, the scriptures, tell us about that Sabbath rest in Jesus. It tells us about what he’s done: his death, his resurrection, the forgiveness of sins, his grace and mercy. And it can go on and on. What Jesus gives to us can give rest for our soul. That’s what the scriptures proclaim.
That’s the word that cuts deep to our soul to give it rest through that good news, that gospel of what Jesus has done. And by faith, we take a hold of that promise. We take a hold of that good news, and we receive the benefits of it, of rest, by faith.
You know, you think about it. Keeping the Sabbath is not about a day, really. Or even about keeping it. In fact, we can look at it just backwards. You can say that we don’t keep the Sabbath. The Sabbath keeps us. Jesus keeps us and gives us rest. In this sense, the word rest is a noun and not a verb. Spiritual rest isn’t something that you do, but it’s given to you.
I mean, think about it. Okay, when you rest, when you really rest… What are you doing? Nothing. You’re resting. And spiritual rest, relief from the burden of sin, comes from the work of Jesus for you and receiving that by faith. You don’t do rest. You rest. We don’t do spiritual rest. God gives it to us in Jesus, and we receive it by faith, not working at it by meditation or yoga or medicine or apps or naps.
Rest for your soul is beyond you. It’s outside of you. And God gives it to you. And if you’re dragging around some past sins or stuff from your life that you’ve done that is maybe even shameful or embarrassing, if you’re dragging that around, stop. God knows it and He sees it, and He wants to give you rest from it.
There is a Sabbath from your sins. There is rest for anything that you’ve done, for anything that’s happened in your life. Jesus, that’s why he came. That’s why he died to give that to you. That’s why I like to emphasize worship as a time to come in out of the world.
I especially do this with university Lutheran church kids, telling them, hey, you’ve got to take a break sometime. Come in. Come in out of the world of stress and demands and the tiring things. Come into a time of rest and a time of stopping. And come into a time of receiving that rest from God, His mercy and forgiveness in the Word and in the sacrament.
That’s why I prefer calling a church building a sanctuary. This is where you rest. This is where you’re safe. This is where you get out of all those things, and it just stops here. And that’s what we do when we gather here on a Sabbath day. We truly keep the Sabbath day holy by stopping and allowing God to give us spiritual rest that we truly need. Nothing else in the world is going to give that to you.
Yoga, meditation, medicine, sleep number mattresses, apps, or naps are not going to give rest to your soul. That Sabbath rest comes through Christ. Yeah, taking time off physically, that’s still a good thing, a good necessity. Taking a physical Sabbath is good. But even though you stop work, God’s work for you does not stop.
And if you don’t already, I would encourage you to add time for the reading, hearing, and learning of God’s Word to your leisure time. Find a time to be at rest during the day in that Word that brings that promise of forgiveness to you. And may you continue to gather together here to hear God’s Word, that message of the gifts of forgiveness and eternal life in Jesus, as we are today.
And with that kind of spiritual rest for your soul, in the forgiveness of your sins, when people ever ask you, how are you? Well, you don’t have to answer, I’m really tired. You can truly answer, I am really well-rested.
May God’s rest and Sabbath always be with you in Christ. Amen.
Now may the peace of God, which goes beyond all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
