First Come, Then Go

1. As we paused to process where are in this series, what are some thoughts that have surfaced for you related to apathy? What are some elements of the series that have stood out so far?
2. Read Matthew 11:28-30. Are you experiencing true rest in Jesus right now? What do you think that rest looks like?
3. Why does Jesus call his yoke easy and his burden light?
4. If sin is not just violating a command, but is also spurning God's design and purpose for the world (the "vandalism of shalom") does this change the way you view the severity of your "lesser" sins?
5. Recall the Titanic story of John Harper swimming through hypothermia back to the man who rejected the offer of salvation. Do you think you would have swam back? Why or why not?

Practice: Spend some time in your groups confessing and repenting of the different ways you've disengaged from culture and have grown cold to God's love towards it. Ask God to turn your heart back to him and his love towards people.

We’ve been in this series on apathy. It’s resonated with me, and I know in talking with you that it has really resonated with all of us.

We’re going to take sort of a pause to reflect and process where we’ve been and where we are now.

I’ve been processing these things with many of you, and it’s been encouraging to hear how you are taking it and thinking through it. I’m in the same boat, sitting out here hearing the same message. One of the most consistent threads I’ve heard so far is that we can see that we’ve been apathetic, but still aren’t sure what to do about it.

Pete has already said, that’s by design. We can’t go out and engage in a frenzy of activity when our hearts aren’t there. It’s giving some of us a rash, but we need to sit in it a little longer.

This week was meant to be a transitional point into the next part of the series. So, I’m going to do my best to honor that and help us process just a little more where we are.

We've heard again and again, we first have to reconnect with the heart of God and his mission. We looked last week at the mission: Go and make disciples, baptize them into this trinitarian community of love that has gone to impossibly drastic lengths to open up this love to us and invite us in. He said last week, you don’t enter into this community without being sent out, because love sends. Love is self-giving. Love is a conduit that gives away what it has rather than hoard it.

Let's look a little more at what that invitation looks like. In Matthew 11, Jesus is in a context and culture where the religious leaders have heaped heavy burdens onto people. They were in this frenzy of activity, but their hearts were not in the right place. We’ve seen, apathy and sloth don’t actually refer necessarily to laziness or inactivity. It’s a casting off of responsibility, a desire for weightlessness, and turning inward on yourself. It’s a hatred toward anything that’s going to try and put limits on us. R. J. Snell calls it an implosion of self-love. So, you can be the busiest person in the world and still be apathetic if you’re not connected to the heart and mission of God. Apathy disdains God’s design. And Jesus sees these weary and burdened people, caught up in all the wrong things. They’re active, but man, they’re tired. They’re active in things that don’t ultimately matter. Or they’re engaged in religious activity, but are apathetic towards God and his heart for people.

They despise the Roman government that is oppressing them. They read their prophets and think, these people are inhibiting God’s plan! Who hasn’t felt that about the government? The Jews can’t stand some of their own people like the tax collectors who dare to have anything to do with the Romans. Traitors. They want nothing to do with the other people groups around them, like the gross Samaritans. They’ve turned inward. The Jews were apathetic in the same sense that we are now and that Jonah was toward Nineveh. It’s not “laziness” per se. It’s a disdain for God’s world and his mission to redeem it. We complain about culture rather than engage it in love. Apathy is not laziness. It’s hatred of the way things are in a way that seeks to detach itself. We have felt this way towards our culture. It looks irredeemable. It’s hard to love. So, we’ve written it off. Decided we would be better without it. Figured anyone who actually wants in with us can come, but we’re not pursuing them anymore. They’ve made their bed and they can lie in it.

But it’s hard to realize how deep our apathy goes, because we don’t consider ourselves “lazy.” We’re all constantly engaged in activity, and walking around burned out and exhausted.

Eugene Peterson and C. S. Lewis both say, “Only lazy people work hard.” I read that recently and had to do a double take. Only lazy people work hard? What they mean is that we fill all of our time with so many different things, sometimes really good things, just so we can avoid the strenuous and uncomfortable tasks at the center of God’s heart.

With all the activity we’re engaged in, the mission of God has been out of focus. We want to cast off the burden that God himself bears for the culture and for the lost––the very same culture that he gave everything to pursue.

So, their context is actually very similar to ours. Busy, busy, busy, with nothing to show for it. And when we ask, “Well, what do I do then?” It’s impossible to get us to do anything else, because our hearts haven’t changed.

Jesus looks at them the way he looks at us and our unbearably frazzled selves stuffed with self-importance. He looks at us with what I imagine to be the same knowing grin. And he extends the same invitation:

Does he commission them and tell them to “Go” here? He says I will give you what? Rest. They’re not first being told to “Go.” The invitation is first to “Come.”

And all of us who are trying to take the heavy loads off of our shoulders and shed ourselves of any responsibilities that are real and thick and important and ones that ask too much of us––he doesn’t say the answer to our weariness is detaching. He actually tells us to pick up something lighter. And it’s only lighter because he bears it with us. The image is of a wooden bar that would have joined two animals together. He’s saying, “I am yoked to this mission with you. That’s why I’m here.” He says to take the yoke and learn a new way, one with a humble and gentle allure. He says this is the answer to our desire for weightlessness. You will find rest for your souls. My yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

If this mission is so weighty and important, why is he saying it’s light? Because he’s with us. That’s why when he finally does tell us to Go, he promises to be with us. We have to first Come and know him and only then are we fit to Go, because he’s with us.

The answer to our slothfulness and apathy and disdain of culture is not more activity. Not yet. Right now, to a weary and burdened and burned-out people, it’s rest. That’s his invitation. That’s why the heart has to precede activity. It’s why we haven't been given a bunch of things to go and do yet. Let me show you this somewhere else that is pretty familiar.

Do you see any activity here on our part? Even the faith is supplied. The way the sentence is laid out in Greek, the word “this” refers to the entire clause, “by-grace-through-faith-salvation.” The whole package. Even the faith to believe is supplied. It’s an invitation to Come. Then what is the very next verse?

First, it is an invitation to come rest. Then it is an invitation to go.

Here’s where we are. There are two separate cycles of work and rest. When you find yourself slothful or apathetic, and you realize something needs to change, we keep asking, “Ok, so what do I do?”

When you ask that question, and find more activity to engage in, you enter into more frenetic activity that you can’t sustain on your own and you grow more frustrated and tired and you throw it all back off of you again. It’s a vicious cycle of sloth and busyness that is never resolved, because nothing ever changed at the heart level. I’m constantly just taking off one set of activities and putting on another.

Rest and Good Work

But the invitation of Jesus starts with resting in him. Come to me, all who are weary and burdened and I won’t give you 3 points and an application or 50 more assignments to do––I will give you rest as you take on my yoke. You won’t find the rest you need by continuing to detach yourself. You find rest by putting on a different way of life that he says I am going to offer you.

When you start there, like we saw in Ephesians 2:8-9, you enter into a new and eternal way of living that starts by resting in the finished work of Christ accomplished on our behalf.

Only then, when you have taken on his way of life and your first priority is his presence, then you enter into Ephesians 2:10, the good work that he has prepared for you to do.

You have to see your place as his workmanship, before you ever step into the work.

You are the work. His workmanship. You are the result of his activity. You have a new identity and a place to belong. And you can’t take that kind of love into your life without it going out from you.

The invitation into rest is an invitation to stop and delight in God, in his creation, in the inherent goodness of the world he created. That’s what the practice of Sabbath is about. It just teaches us that truth.

Garden Consider Adam and Eve in the Garden. God just them at the end of this great symphony of creation, and gives him this call to be fruitful and multiply; to fill the earth and subdue it––to rule over it. Talk about a weighty task! But on what day were they created? Day 6. Day 7 is the day God set aside for rest. I would be amped up and ready to go, but their first invitation as God’s children created in his image is to rest and delight in the finished work of God. Only then can they step into the work.

Past-Present-Future

This invitation into rest is a cycle, something happening constantly. It’s a past-present-future reality. Paul says in Romans 1 that the gospel is the power of God for salvation to all who believe. When he talks about salvation, he’s not only talking about the time in the past that you were saved. That’s part of it. In that moment, you were sealed by the Holy Spirit, Ephesians 1 tells us, as a down payment for your inheritance. And now, nothing can separate you from the love of God, and no one can snatch you out of his hand. If you have accepted Jesus in your life, you have entered into a new identity as a child of God. But that past event is only one part of it. I need that kind of saving power every day! Until the day in the future when I will ultimately be saved.

Same with the resurrection. If I have accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior, I have passed from death into life. But now I need to walk in that resurrection power every day, in newness of life. And in the future, I will one day be raised from the dead forever.

So, this invitation into rest is the same thing. For those who have never accepted it, here’s the offer he’s giving you. And if you have accepted it, you need to enter into that rest daily, delighting in him and his creation and celebrating who he is. And we do all of this as we long for the ultimate rest to come.

This kind of rest tethers us to ultimate reality. It makes us see God for who he is. Ps. 48 says, “As is your name, O God, so is your praise to the ends of the earth.”

I have to see God as glorious, and that means resting and delighting in him before I go and do anything.

1. If you don’t yet know Jesus, that’s the invitation open to you.
2. If you do have a relationship with Jesus and you’ve drifted into this other way of living that has disdain for the world, he’s calling you to remember how he sees the world. He’s calling you to see it firsthand, experiencing it in your own life afresh.

Here’s what that process of entering in looks like:

Jesus’ message at the beginning of his ministry was very simple. Repent & Believe. That process is the same for new believers and every day after, Repent & Believe Call it spiritual hygiene. Every moment of every day. Repent and believe.

Sin and Shalom We tend to see sin as violating a prohibition, crossing some line, or failing to obey. The Hebrew word for sin means to “miss the mark.” It’s more than just stepping over a boundary though, because sin is a violation of God’s design and his created order. It’s a rejection of the good. You have to understand what was intended to understand what was broken. We have to understand Shalom. Usually translated “peace.” Means so much more. Cornelius Plantinga explains shalom like this: “The webbing together of God, humans, and all creation in justice, fulfillment, and delight is what the Hebrew prophets call shalom. We call it peace, but it means far more than mere peace of mind or a cease-fire between enemies. In the Bible, shalom means universal flourishing, wholeness, and delight — a rich state of affairs in which natural needs are satisfied and natural gifts fruitfully employed, a state of affairs that inspires joyful wonder as its Creator and Savior opens doors and welcomes the creatures in whom he delights. Shalom, in other words, is the way things ought to be.”

If Shalom is the way things ought to be, then sin is the vandalism of shalom. It takes a clear picture of Shalom to know (or even care) that you’ve vandalized it.

Plantinga says, “The prophets knew how many ways human life can go wrong because they knew how many ways human life can go right. (You need the concept of a wall on plumb to tell when one is off.)”

See it as grievous. Not just a miscalculation. To be busy in religious activity that does not send that love back out to this culture is a grievous spurning of God’s heart.

Titanic story – A picture of shalom and urgency for the mission of God. John Harper and six-year-old daughter headed to Moody Bible Church in Chicago to be their new pastor. When the ship was going down, he got his daughter on a lifeboat. Being a widower, he may have been allowed to join her, but instead chose to provide everyone else with one more chance to know Christ. Harper ran from person to person, telling others about Christ. Harper was heard shouting, “Women, children, and the unsaved into the lifeboats.” One guy rejected the offer of salvation and so Harper gave him his own life vest saying, “You need this more than I do.” Up until the very last moment on the ship, Harper pleaded with people to give their lives to Jesus. Once the ship disappeared beneath the water, Harper struggled through hypothermia to swim to as many people as he could, still sharing the Gospel. Four years after the tragedy at a Titanic survivor’s meeting in Ontario, Canada, one survivor recounted his interaction with Harper in the middle of the icy waters of the Atlantic. He said he was clinging to ship debris when Harper swam up to him and challenged him with the invitation, “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you’ll be saved.” But this survivor said he rejected the offer. Harper swam from person to person attempting to tell them about Jesus. Then Harper swam back to this man, after already being rejected, and gave him a second chance to believe, and the man gave his life to Christ. The man was rescued by a lifeboat, and at this survivors’ meeting in Ontario, he said, “I am the last convert of John Harper.”

That’s a picture of a wall on plumb. That’s someone fighting for shalom, connected to the heart of God. That’s the urgency we should all have for the mission of God in a culture that is sinking.

Repent In order to experience that as a church, we are going to have to repent of how far we’ve drifted from his heart. The opposite of apathy is not activity, it’s love. We have been Jonah, running the opposite direction. I am Jonah. Let’s repent like Nineveh did. Don’t be harder than this culture to reach.