Second Rest 1978

One of our favorite texts here, Matthew 11, 28. Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Now, if somebody were to come to us and ask those of us who are believers whether we have actually found that rest, doubtless we would all insist that we have.

Surely, since we turned away from Egypt and drew near to Jesus, we began to experience a rest which we never knew before. And yet, if we are truly trying at least to be honest with ourselves, we will have to admit that some very strange things have been happening in our lives since we started to follow Jesus. That after the honeymoon was over, we began to experience a disquietude and an unsettledness and an unrest inside our hearts which has caused us more conscious anguish than any unsettledness we knew before we met Jesus.

It would be very nice if real life were the way it is in so many of the missionary biographies and so many of the TV testimonies. Come to Jesus, give your life to Him, and you have rest, and you live happily ever after. And yet we find, in fact, that it's not quite that way, even though many of us are led to believe when we first crossed the Red Sea.

That's what the Hebrews expected. Surely, they crossed the Red Sea, they were out of Pharaoh's clutches, now we're going to have rest. But what actually happened was that these Hebrews were driven around in circles in that wilderness for 40 years by an unrest in some ways more severe than anything they knew in Egypt, an unrest which caused them to turn their eyes back again and again and wish they were back there.

Now, they didn't have to spend 40 years doing this. They could have gone right across the wilderness and over the Jordan River into the real second rest that God had for them, but they didn't. We have to understand that there is an unrest, a restlessness which is peculiar to disciples, which people outside the kingdom of God really know nothing about, and which, in fact, does cause all kinds of anguish inside us.

Psalm 42. Why art thou cast down, O my soul? And why art thou disquieted within me? Hope thou in God, for I shall yet praise him who is the health of my countenance and my God. Why art thou cast down, O my soul? These are not the words of somebody who hasn't met God.

These are the words of somebody who knows God well, somebody who's come in the kingdom, and now has experienced the reality of Jesus, and yet suddenly is cast down inside and disquieted within. Or take these words. For we do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, of the affliction we experienced in Asia.

For we were utterly and unbearably crushed that we despaired of life itself, while we felt that we had received the sentence of death. So down this man was, and this man was not an unbeliever or some flaky babe in the Lord. This man was a man of God, if there ever was one, the Apostle Paul, who was being so battered around by persecution that his mind was reeling, and by this he was driven to find the second rest, if you want to call it that.

For we were so utterly and unbearably crushed that we despaired of life itself, while we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves, but on God, who raises the dead. He delivered us from so deadly a peril and would deliver us again.

So what do you do when you have come to Jesus and experienced rest in his kingdom? You see fruit flowing from your life, perhaps. Wonderful things are going on, and then out of nowhere comes, boom, depression of some kind, unrest, trouble, disturbance inside. It may come because of the fact that you are being tossed about by storms of persecution, as Paul was, or it may come for the very opposite reason that you have been become day after day after day after day, and there's no wind to move your little ship, and it sits there, and you're at loose ends, and you see your life as an utter failure, and you cannot seem to find anything meaningful to do in God's vineyard.

Now comes the temptation, and it comes to us all, when we're like this, to try to solve the unsettledness inside here by making some kind of change in our outside circumstances. The pressure is so great inside me that I decide, let's say, if I'm working to quit my job and go to seminary, or if I'm in seminary, then it's to quit seminary and get a job, or if I'm in Detroit, then I'm going to leave Detroit and go to Kenya, East Africa, or the Upper Peninsula, or if I'm in the Upper Peninsula, then I'm going to quit and go to New York. Now, any number of these changes, and we always contemplate them, might be just the thing we are to do eventually, or perhaps very soon, but the changing of our outward circumstances by itself, just changing that, will never relieve the pressure of inward unrest.

Then comes another temptation, which is even more subtle, so subtle that we often don't realize what's going on, what we're doing. The temptation to force God to move, do something. God isn't doing anything.

I'm sick and tired of sitting around here and waiting, so I'm going to jump from the pinnacle, and if His angels come and bear me up, okay, and if they don't, okay. I can't stand this anymore. And so we take a leap of desperation.

Now, a leap of desperation looks almost the same from the outside as a leap of faith. Often you can't tell the difference when you look at that in somebody else's life, so we must be careful, try to decide what their motives are, but they're very, very different, the leap of desperation and the leap of faith. Maybe it's the, you know, I feel like I'm going to give all my money to Billy Joe Hargis, or however you pronounce his name, in his Christian anti-communist crusade, or join the children of God, or withdraw from all brothers and sisters and hibernate in my little spiritual cave, and if God wants to rescue me, He's going to have to do it.

Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laboring, and I will give you rest. Okay, we came to Him. We found rest, and yet now we're beginning to experience restlessness again.

Now what do I do? What I do now is press on through until I find a second rest, and don't get worried about doctrines. That's Methodism, not Lutheranism. Don't worry about it, you know.

Don't try to put a handle on it, but think about it anyway, and if you don't agree with me, think about it and pray about it some more. Maybe you're right. Anyway, what you do when you begin to experience this unsettledness after you've come to Jesus is that you have to find not just the rest that you found when you went through the door.

See, going through the door into the kingdom, the narrow gate is the first rest, but now you have to find the rest which is walking on the path, which goes on day after day after day, and the seeking of that kind of rest never stops. Okay, where do I find it? The very next verse. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am meek and lowly of heart, and you shall find rest for your souls.

You will not find that rest by trying to manipulate your outer circumstances. You will not find that rest by forcing God's hand and jumping from the pinnacle. You will find that rest by getting under the yoke, to get under the yoke with Jesus.

Three wonderful things begin to happen in our lives when we do this. The yoke of serving his side, serving the way he does, the ones he serves, in the spirit that he serves. Three wonderful things happen, and the first is that we begin to truly have fellowship with Jesus as can be found in no other way.

So many of us seem to think we're going to find that mystical communion with the Lord Jesus in the rose garden if we get in there before the dew leaves the roses. When you try to find communion with Jesus in the rose garden, away from all the hassles, be very careful that you don't find yourself sucked in by the first demon in white robes that comes and starts whispering spiritual nothings in your ear. Jesus entered into communion with his disciples, not in the rose garden, but by working together with them.

Labor. The men and the women that traveled around with Jesus worked at whatever he gave them to do. And they did have beautiful conversations at the supper table.

But don't forget, before they ever had supper, they walked those dusty, smelly, dirty roads of Galilee. They worked among and served people who were hard-nosed and ungrateful and mean and ugly. And sometimes they had to sit for hours and wait while Jesus was off there praying.

When Jesus withdraws and goes off to worship his Father, he's laboring. And we labor by his side by getting in there and doing it with him. When he worships and ministers to his Father this way, we do it too.

So when you go into your room and shut the door and get down to the business of prayer, remember that you're not doing this alone. You're doing it yoked to Jesus. You're doing it with him.

It makes a tremendous difference if you realize you're not alone. Tremendous difference. Then Jesus leaves the prayer room and goes out through the streets and the lanes of Jerusalem and Detroit and everywhere else looking for the rejects, the forgotten, the poor, the hurting, the sick, the demented, the troubled.

And we go too. The more we genuinely serve with Jesus, God and man, the more we will experience communion with him as never before. And in that communion, we will find rest.

The second beautiful thing that happens under the yoke is that we begin to appreciate the value of lowliness. So much lip service is being paid to lowliness in Christian hymns and literature and yet how few Christians put any stock in it and how very, very few Christians pursue lowliness as a goal. If you want to have a goal, let that be your goal.

And the reason is that they don't really believe that truly has any value. Much more important to get my ministry on the road, you know, reach more souls, get this thing established. Nor do you learn the value of lowliness by reading spiritual books and memorizing scripture alone.

You only begin to understand the value of being lowly as Jesus calls us to be, incessantly, by working under the yoke with him. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and lowly of heart and you shall find rest for your souls. Under the yoke, Jesus starts giving us all the cruddy jobs to do, real work, things that don't bring our ego the slightest bit of satisfaction, labors that have to take place away from all human eyes.

But as we learn to labor under the yoke with the lowliest man that ever walked this earth, we also begin to learn how to deliberately avoid the limelight, get away from it. We learn that that needs to be. And we also learn how to give, heal, help, and even cast out demons without making a ripple in the world around us.

And when we begin to learn to do that, we also begin to experience the awesome rest of God that satisfies as no ego satisfaction ever satisfies. Finally, under the yoke with Jesus, we also begin to find the door to the Father's presence. And he said to them, Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, Friend, lend me three loaves, for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey and I have nothing to set before him.

And he will answer from within, Do not bother me. The door is now shut. My children are with me in bed.

I cannot get up and give you anything. I tell you, though, he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend. Yet because of his persistence, his importunity, he will rise and give him whatever he needs.

And I tell you, ask, and it will be given you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and it will be open to you.

For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it shall be opened. All right, now, who is this person who is able to knock on heaven's door and get it open? It is the person who is yoked with Jesus under the yoke of service in him. So a friend comes to me or you at midnight, the inconvenient hour.

We have nothing to give them, so we have to go and pound on our father's door, and we do, and the door opens. This passage in Luke 11 has so often been ripped out of context and made to be some kind of panacea for spiritual idlers, but that's not what it is, even though it indeed says, everyone who asks receives, he who seeks finds, to him who knocks it shall be opened. Who is everyone who does that? The ones who do that only are, I'm convinced of this more and more, and think and pray over it, the only ones who do that kind of asking and knocking and seeking are the ones whose hearts are breaking for the desolation around them.

They're worried over this sickness. They're frustrated. They just can't take it anymore because people are messed up, and they're hungry, and there's trouble, and they're in bondage, and all kinds of things are wrong in their lives, and we can't help them.

They come to us, and what do we have to do? They come to us sick, and they go away sick. When you start getting bugged over that, then you knock on heaven's door. Lord, open the door of heaven and pour out your spirit upon us, not just so that we can have joy bows here among the saints, but so that we can give living bread to the hungry whose lives we have to touch.

Then he gives us the spirit, and in the spirit, we find rest. Why art thou cast down, O my soul, and why art thou disquieted within me? Hope thou in God, for I shall yet praise him who is the health of my confidence in my God. Many of us are experiencing more unrest, inner trouble, and turmoil than we ever knew before we came to Jesus.

The first rest we experienced at the foot of the cross, and how will we ever forget that, and how can we ever stop thanking God for that? That's everything. But now, not to take us away from the cross, but drive us deeper into it, the vision changes. And the Spirit of the Lord lifts us up and brings us back to that place in Jerusalem where they first put the cross on Jesus, and puts us right down at his side, and lays the cross on us too.

Links the cross of Jesus and the cross on us together. And now we say, Lord, what's happening? Why do I have to go through this? And he says, as you carry your cross yoked with me, you will find rest for the restlessness which is now troubling your heart. You will find the second rest.

Don't be afraid. Under this yoke with me, you will have fellowship as we work together. Here, you will learn from me to be lowly.

And here, you will find the door to the Father's presence. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am meek and lowly of heart and you shall find rest for your soul. For my yoke is easy.

My burden is light. Let's pray. We're just asking, Heavenly Father, that you help us by the power of the Spirit to apply this to exactly where we are.

Take away from us this demonic fear of getting under the yoke, this thing in us that always wants to go the other way when the yoke is mentioned. And help us today to throw aside or defy that fear and get under there side by side with our Master and our Lord, our Savior, and the best friend we ever had, Jesus. We ask it in His name.

Amen.