Rest

Our scripture reading for today is from the Gospel of Matthew the 11th chapter, verse 25 through 30. Let us hear together from God's Word. Jesus said, I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this is what you are pleased to do. All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son, and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him. Come to me, all ye who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 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, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. This is the Word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God.

Well, good morning, church. My name is Ryan. I'm one of your pastors. It's good to be back with you today. On Monday, it was my first day back in office, and you all know how that is the first day back in office on being away.

And I was trying to get back in the rhythm and trying to get my mind back around everything, and I kept asking questions about worship today. Do I need to do this, or do we have anything special, or what's going on? And Steve, finally, I think, was getting frustrated with me, and he just looked at me and said, all you have to do is preach and do the benediction, and Pastor Rebecca and I will do everything else. So that's what I'm going to try to do today.

So here we go. Today, we're starting a new sermon series, and we're calling it camp meetings. Now, for some of you all, that may be a very familiar term. It's an old-school term, camp meetings, and you may be aware of it. For some of you, that may be a new term. It may be something that you've never heard of before But camp meetings are a practice that was very common 100 years ago, still pretty common about 50 years ago, but not so much today. There are still some that exist, but it's not that prevalent, especially as it used to be. I know of one in West Tennessee, where I have some friends that still go to, and I know of one in Georgia that has some family members that still go to every year.

But a camp meeting is a week for people to take off of work and to go to this designated place, this designated location, with their family to meet up with other family and friends and have sort of a family reunion-type atmosphere with a lot of fellowship and fun and heavy doses of worship with powerful singing and times of prayer. They bring in a really well-known preacher or pastor for the week to do their sermons and things like that. And it's a time of getting away and focusing on relaxing and focusing on your faith.

It used to be where people would come to a big field and would set up camps, hence the name camp meeting. But over time, people got tired of living in tents for the week, and so they sort of became more modernized. The land was acquired and put in a trust, and then money was raised to build some facilities on these places. And there's auditoriums now where the worship happens. Some of them have kind of cafeterias where they have meals together. And then over time, the people who were participants in the camp meetings could get attractive land that they could build a cabin or a small house on where they and their family could come to spend the week to be a part of these camp meetings. And so they would take off work and go to the camp meetings, and then while they were there, they would relax and enjoy the fellowship and the fun, and there'd be some activities for everybody there. And then at night, they would have powerful times of worship. Camp meetings got their start in the Methodist movement, the Wesleyan Holiness movement, where thousands of people would come to a field to hear some of the great early Methodist evangelists like George Whitfield and Francis Asbury and John Wesley come and preach that might be there for day upon day upon day. And August of 1801 is recorded the first camp meeting where thousands of souls were gathered in Cambridge, Kentucky for the purpose of holding a sacramental meeting. It said in the history of this, Methodist Baptists and Presbyterians gathered in the great outdoors to not only take communion, but to hear fiery preaching and to participate in fervent singing. But in some ways, this idea of camp meetings goes way back before any of this.

In fact, it could be linked back to ancient Israel, where Israel would leave their work as a nation and travel to Jerusalem and gather to gather as an entire nation to pray, to praise, and to seek God's face. We're going to spend the month of August with the backdrop of camp meetings. We're going to use this idea of this Wesleyan holiness movement to help us to grow in our faith, to focus on those same three things of praying, of praising God and seeking God's face. And over the course of August, you may see some elements in worship here that might resemble some things that you would see in camp meetings. You might have already seen something this morning. It'll be a part of our August worship gatherings. And we also hope that over the course of August, to do some fun things that might be a part of camp meetings outside of our normal Sunday morning worship. So stay tuned for that as well. But I hope that you will look at ways that you can set aside this month to pray, to praise, and to seek God's face.

As we start this idea of camp meetings, I want us to kind of start at really the beginning, one of the things that has to happen in order for camp meetings to happen. And that's in order to engage in camp meetings that people would have to disengage from work. Israel had to disengage from their work to journey to Jerusalem for the Feast of Tabernacles. And still today, people will schedule their vacations oftentimes around camp meetings in order to go and be a part of it. Now, it also used to be a disengagement from the culture around it and from the world around it and from technology and all those things, though I think today it probably slips in in ways more than they would like. And I suspect that in today's work from home culture that there are those who may attempt to go to camp meetings and still bring their laptop in order to do work.

That goes against the whole premise of what a camp meeting is supposed to be. It's about getting away from the day-to-day grind of the world, from the day-to-day grind of our work, and to seek out a different pace of life. And I'll tell you, that hits kind of different for me this week as I was preparing this sermon than it did two months ago when I was planning out this sermon series because I've come to see what that grind can be in my life coming back from vacation after being gone for almost two weeks. What I've come to realize is just how dry I was before going on vacation. And I'll tell you this, I love to preach. It's my favorite thing I think I get to do every single week and I have missed preaching the last three Sundays when I wasn't in the pulpit.

But what I have understood is that I've long calculated that every sermon I preach, I spend about 15 to 20 hours in preparation getting the sermon ready to preach from when I figure out what the sermon series is going to look like and then I flesh out the week-to-week within the sermon series and then when I write the actual sermon the week that I'm going to preach it, it's about 15 to 20 hours all averaged out and it would become a grind. I've come to realize that it was challenging. I've always kind of felt like writing a sermon is like giving birth in some ways and I give birth to a sermon every single week that I preach. Now, some weeks labors are pretty easy but lately they had grown difficult. I should have picked up better on what was going on in my life but I didn't. I didn't realize what was happening that I was tired.

It didn't hit me until I got away. It wasn't until I disengaged that I realized just how tired I was. Isn't it funny how it works that way oftentimes? How we don't really realize just how tired we are until we disengage when we're in the midst of the grind, when we're in the midst of cranking out that flywheel when we're doing the day-to-day work and we're in the hustle and bustle and busyness and craziness and stress-filled days of every week. We don't realize how tired we've grown until we step away from it. And I think we also fail to recognize the diminishing returns of our labor that we aren't being as productive because we're tired but our light grows dimmer and dimmer until we fail to see it until we or it burns out. I think Jimmy Buffett was right.

Changes in latitudes do bring changes in attitudes. And camp meetings or vacations or long weekends or simply disengaging from the normal routines and paces of our life and sometimes even from our locations can help us to gain better perspective for today Jesus says to us, come to me you who are weary and heavy laden and you will find rest. Now I think it's easy for us to understand what Jesus means when he says come to me you who are weary.

We've all been weary. We've all felt the tiredness of long days and long hours and long work that's filled with stress and the pressures to succeed. We know what it's like to be worn out either from the physical or mental work that we have to do and sometimes even the emotional pressures that we find ourselves under. But do we really understand what it means to be heavy laden? To be heavy laden means to be filled with burdens. Things that we carry with us things that we cannot let go of that we hold on to that weigh us down and take their toll on us over time. Those things can be too numerous for us to name.

But I think oftentimes those burdens that make us heavy laden can be born out of our relationships with a spouse, parents, children, neighbors, coworkers, friends. I think those burdens that make us heavy laden can be born out of issues around money, around work. Burdens that we feel when we look around the world see things that we don't like, see things that we worry about or that concern us, burdens that keep us up at night, burdens that wear us down, burdens that cause us to become burnt out.

You see it's the burdens that make us heavy laden that cause us to get weary. And Jesus says come to me, you who are weary and heavy laden and you will find rest. Let me ask you this: When you're weary, when you really are feeling the weight of the world burdening you, laid on your shoulders, when you find yourselves tired, is Jesus the one you think of to help you find rest? But that's exactly what he says. Come to me, you who are weary and heavy laden and you will find rest. And then he goes on to say, 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, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. We need to understand that when Jesus says this, he's speaking from professional accomplishment. Remember, Jesus's dad, Joseph, was a carpenter, a master carpenter at that. And Jesus was an apprentice carpenter to his dad and became a master carpenter in his own right.

Jesus knew woodworking and part of being a master carpenter is you would make yokes. Yokes are farming tools where a carpenter would craft a wooden cross piece that joins two animals so that they could share the burden of work evenly. One of the things that a farmer knew is that you just couldn't pull a yoke off the rack and it worked well for you.

There would be consequences to that. No, you had to make sure that that yoke was well-fitting for the specific animals that you were going to use. And so you would actually take your animals to the carpenter so he could measure out the width of the animal between the shoulders and the curvature of his side and how tall it was to make sure that everything fit perfectly, that it was well-fitting for that animal so that the burden for that animal wouldn't be overwhelming because if you didn't do that, then it would rub the animal raw, would cause blisters to form on the animal, would hurt their muscles or even their bones to where you would have to put them on the shelf, not be able to use them.

They would be out of service. Jesus, the master carpenter, is saying, take my yoke upon you, the one that I have made that will fit perfectly for you, for the work that I've called you to do, such that you won't even realize that what you're doing is burdensome because what I've crafted fits you. Notice also when he says, take my yoke upon you, that these cross pieces were to yoke two animals together.

In other words, Jesus is saying, take my yoke. The one that I'm already yoked to come beside me and let's do the work together. Jesus is making a strong statement here for us to quit trying to be self-sufficient, for that will lead to burnout.

Is that smacking anybody else's face but mine? And if you do that, he says, if you quit trying to be self-sufficient, if you allow yourself to be a yoke next to me and what I have prepared for you that I will help you with, that's when you will discover what real rest is. Come to me, you who are weary and heavy laden, filled with burdens, and you will find rest. Let me ask you, does anybody feel weary here today? Is anyone tired, run down, worn out from the daily grind of everything we have to deal with? Do you feel heavy laden from the burdens that you have been carrying for so long? Things that are overwhelming, more than you can handle, that rub you the wrong way and cause you to collapse under their sheer weight.

The thing about camp meetings that I think is most appealing out of all of it, it's not just the time away, away from work, away from the needs of the world, away from the yard that needs to be mowed and the laundry that needs to be done and the bills that need to be paid. It's time away from that to spend time with Jesus, the one who offers us rest. It's also time with family and friends and other loved ones.

It's practicing presence, which is what we're seeking to do this year. Be present with God and other most important relationships because that's where we find our hearts renewed. It's where we find our rest. Come to me you who are weary and heavy laden and you will find that rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me. Try and gentle and humble of heart and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy. That means well-fitting. And my burden is light.

I pray friends that today we will seek out rest no matter where it is that we find ourselves. Thanks be to God. Amen.