2/9/20 Mark 1:29-39 “Why You Need Rest!”

05 Feb 2/9/20 Mark 1:29-39 “Why You Need Rest!”

2/9/20     Mark 1:29-39         “Why You Need Rest!”

I like to mention things like seasons once in a while because they change for our benefit all the time.  Seasons are good things even though we may not care for the snow; the snow is caring for us by giving the land a much needed rest.  And if you are not a farmer you would also have seasons in whatever work that you do.  For some the summer is the busy time of year.  For others it may be the busiest during the school year.  For still others it may be spring or fall.  It just depends on what you do for an occupation.  Even the church has times of the year when we are busier than others.  We are coming up to the Easter season where we will be very busy again.  Today I would like to take a look at how Jesus coped with busyness and what He is trying to tell us about it.  Hopefully we will benefit from this advice.

Maynard Pittendreigh tells this story about the apostle John.  This is a story according to folklore or tradition.  It’s not Biblically accurate.  It seems that John had the hobby of raising pigeons while he was at Ephesus.  One day an elder of the church at Ephesus passed by John’s house as he returned from hunting.  When he saw John playing with one of his birds, he gently criticized the old apostle for spending his time so frivolously.  John looked at his critics bow and remarked that the string had been loosened.

“Of course,” said the hunter, “I always loosen the string on my bow when it is not in use.  If it was always tight, then it would lose its rebounding quality and it wouldn’t work when I wanted to use it.”

“And I,” replied John, “am now relaxing the bow of my mind so that I may be better able to shoot the arrows of divine truth.”  In other words, John realized the value of rest.

As we begin to look at today’s Scripture, we see that just prior to this Jesus had been healing at the synagogue.  Our text tells us that as soon as He left and He went to the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John.  And in the verse right before this, we have Mark using the term quickly.  Mark uses these terms of speed over 50 times in his gospel.

Often times I feel that we like to think that we are the only generation who is busy.  Personally, I don’t even like the term ‘I’m busy’ because so often it is used as an excuse not to do something.  But if we look here we find that these people were also busy.  We like to think of them as walking or riding a donkey or camel and that everything was in slow motion.  Well, maybe they moved physically slower than we do, but when they got there they were just as busy as we are today.  Busyness is something that has been handed down through the centuries.  We aren’t the only ones to be busy.

Anyway, Jesus left the synagogue and went to this home, probably for a little rest.  He gets there and finds that Simon Peter’s mother-in-law was ill.  So before He can rest and eat, He heals her.  He takes her hand and helps her up.  The first problem here was that a man would not touch a strange woman in her home under any circumstances.  He had just finished healing on the Sabbath and now He does this.

Then Peter’s mother-in-law gets up and she serves them.  It doesn’t tell us but I would imagine that this would have been some sort of meal with a little physical rest.  But by that evening, the people somehow knew that Jesus was there and they start to bring their sick for Him to heal.  And Jesus was not going to turn people away who were in need.  So he heals many.

This was just the beginning of his ministry and already there are many people coming to him to get healed.  Can you imagine what it was like in those days?  There were no doctors and no hospitals.   If you caught a bug or were hurt, you either waited to heal yourself or you would spend the rest of your life with the injury or disease or you died.  There were no cures.  This is probably why so many came to Jesus.  There were so many people that had some sort of serious affliction and just about everyone had something.  So Jesus tries to get a little rest and the people just won’t let Him do it.

So how do you do at getting rest?  I think that there are two ways of looking at this.  The first way is that there are many of us who don’t get enough rest.  We are busy.  We work 12, 14 16 hours a day.  And then we have to take care of our families in our spare time.  We end up running here and running there and often we don’t get a lot done.

I personally think that computers and cell phones are a couple of the worst inventions ever as they often help us to get nothing done.  We cannot get away from our cell phones.  We have been programmed to always answer our phones.  Some people will walk out of worship to answer their cell.  They will interrupt dinner to talk on the cell.  I have seen people talking to others, paying a store clerk and at the same time, talking on the cell.  Politeness gets tossed out the window with cell phones.

And computers are not much better.  We feel that we have to look at our emails.  We have to look at the stocks.  I remember one time when we were on a trip out of state, everywhere we looked, people were talking on some sort of cell devices or they were working on their computers.  There was no time to relax.  There was no time to rest.  The people in our ancient story were busy and so are we.  I think that it is once again amazing how God can write a passage 2000 years ago that has so much relevance with us today.

With this busyness, we have had to make more time for the things we have to do.  Or maybe I should say that we have had to rearrange our time so we can get things done.  We will stay up after everyone is in bed so we can pay the bills or do some house work.  We will get up extra early so we can get some things done before we have to go to work.  Saturdays get jammed with all the things to do that we didn’t get done during the week.  The only day left to infringe upon is Sunday, our Sabbath.  And now we have all kinds of things happening on Sunday.  We have ball tournaments and other things for kids on Sunday as Satan is trying to get us not to worship.  I really appreciate that you folks are here to worship today because I know just how busy you are.  But please don’t ever forget to worship!

The second way we can look at this is that we really aren’t that busy at all; we just talk like we are.  We procrastinate.  We get home from work and we park in front of the television set and nothing gets done.  We get home from work and we go and do something fun and not the work that has to be done.  Or we get done with work and we go and sit in a bar or coffee shop and tell all of our friends just how busy we are.  The Bible spends a lot of time talking about the lazy person.  I’m not going to spend a lot of time on this as you can read it for yourself in Proverbs.  This is another way that Satan sneaks into our lives.  He turns us off so that we get nothing done.  Satan either makes us too busy or lazy.  Either way, we lose.

I would like us to take note on what Jesus does here.  He goes to a solitary place and He prays.  At this point you have to have faith.  You need faith that God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are one, and you need faith that they are separate.  There is no way that we can understand this concept yet.  But they are indeed separate and one.  Many times we will find Jesus praying to the Father.  And He will usually do this off by himself somewhere.  Remember in the garden of Gethsemane where He went off to pray and left the disciples behind?  This is one of the things I love about this book.  It is just packed full of instructions if you can dig them out.

But I would like to point out something else here that is also very important.  Notice Jesus gets up very early in the morning while it is still dark.  To some of us and this includes me, this would almost read that Jesus got up in the middle of the night to pray!  The man in him was probably almost dead tired and still he gets up in the middle of the night to pray.  This has got to tell us how important it is to be a praying person as well as how restful it is.

I know that many of you have a prayer life and that is a great thing.  It gives us a worship center that is centered on prayer and Jesus.  But if you don’t have a regular prayer time then put aside some time today for prayer.  I might suggest that everyone pray when they get up in the morning.  If you are tired and want five more minutes of rest, then come to the arms of God through Jesus Christ and He will give you far more rest than you could ever get with 5 more minutes of sleep.  Sleep is over rated but Jesus Christ isn’t.  Go to Him for rest.

I would also suggest that you pray before you go to sleep.  Husbands grab the hand of your wife and say a prayer together before you go to sleep.  Turn off that TV, set aside that book and pray together.  You will be surprised at the results that you get.  Jesus loves you so much that He is always ready to talk to you and listen.  The great thing about loving Jesus is that He loves you a thousand fold back plus some more.  His love for you is worth 5 minutes in the morning and 5 minutes in the evening.

But an important and overlooked part of rest is found in verse 38.  His disciples are telling him that everyone is looking for him in the town.  They want him to go back so that He can heal more people.  But Jesus tells them no.  He will not be going back.  Instead they will press forward to more villages where He can spread the Good News to new people.  This is why He came.  Jesus had to keep moving during his 3 years of ministry so that he could affect a maximum number of people.  He never had a church.  He just went from place to place.

Anyway, the key here is to know how to say no.  Jesus knows that we can get too busy to do other things.  He tells us that it is ok to say ‘no’ sometimes especially if the extra things are not what God wants us to do.  Maybe God doesn’t want you to be on another board or committee.  Maybe God doesn’t want you to coach the little league or some other sport.  Maybe God doesn’t want you to volunteer for as much overtime as possible.  God doesn’t want you to do things that will hurt you or your family.  And it is ok to say ‘no’ and follow the will of God.

And the people who are able to do this are the people who pray daily, who read their Bibles daily and who come to church on a regular basis.  Once again you keep hearing me say this over and over.  And of course all of this starts with a personal relationship with Jesus.  If you don’t know Him on an intimate level, then confess your sins to Him and ask Him to live in your heart today.  When you do, you will finally be able to know love first hand.  You will finally be able to rest.  You will finally be able to say ‘no’ to the unimportant things in life and start to say ‘yes’ to God.  When all of these things begin to happen, then everyone will see a transformed life.  And that is what Jesus does best.  He changes lives for the better, never for the worse.

Marc Axelrod tells this story of Lee Iacocca when he was the chairman of Chrysler Corp.  Iacocca said, “I’m constantly amazed by the number of people who can’t seem to control their own schedules.  Over the years, I’ve had many executives come to me and say with pride: ‘Boy, last year I worked so hard that I didn’t take any vacation.’  And I always say, ‘That’s nothing to be proud of!  You mean to tell me that you can take responsibility for an $80 million project and you can’t plan 2 weeks out of the year to go off with your family and have some fun?  You can’t plan any time to take care of yourself?”  Lee Iacocca knew the importance of rest.

Axelrod also tells us during French Revolution where they actually outlawed Sunday as a day of rest.  They wanted people to work all the time, 7 days a week.  I know some people like this.  In a few years they had to repeal the law and they reinstituted Sunday as a day off.  And the reason was that the health of the entire country had collapsed.  God made us so that we work 6 days a week and not 7.  We need rest and you deserve a break today.  So take it.

Jesus knew 2000 years ago how much you were going to need rest today.  Sometime today, take 5 minutes to spend in quiet time with Jesus.  Ask Him how to rest.  He loves you so much that He will show you the rest that you can get in His arms.  One of the reasons Jesus came to us was to give us rest.  He loves you so much that He doesn’t want you to be tired.  Come, all who are weary.  Come to Jesus.  Thank you Jesus for all this love that you give that I don’t deserve.  And thank you for first loving us.  Let’s pray.