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Elevate - Airplane Mode - Rest - Neal DiQuattro
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The main idea of this information is that rest is a spiritual discipline that is often overlooked in the Western world, particularly in America. The speaker emphasizes that rest is not just about sleep, but also about creating mental and spiritual space to grow spiritually. The concept of Sabbath is introduced as a gift from God, modeled after His own rest after creation. The speaker encourages listeners to prioritize rest without guilt, as it is essential for mental health and spiritual growth. The importance of rest is highlighted by the fact that even the land needs rest to remain fertile. Overall, the message emphasizes the need for intentional rest as a spiritual discipline in order to live a fully devoted life for God. The American way of doing things, if you think about it practically, has been sort of propped up, loosely propped up with scripture. We have scriptures like, if a man will not work, he shall not eat. But the Bible teaches us, if you look at the whole witness of scripture, it tells us something different. It tells us two truths, which is this, work really, really hard and rest really, really well. Welcome to Elevate from Authentic Life Church in Mobile, Alabama with Pastor John DeQuatro. We hope it builds your faith and helps you to live a life for God that you've always wanted to live. We hope it inspires you to be a fully devoted, authentic follower of Jesus Christ. Enjoy the message and welcome to Elevate. Today's message is from Authentic Life Church Youth Minister and Worship Leader, Neal DeQuatro. We're in airplane mode, and as Pastor said, in the last few weeks, we all have airplane mode on our phone. And it was originally designed so that if you're on an airplane, you can't send communication or get communication back and interfere potentially with the navigation systems, but you can shut that off. How many of you know that you can use airplane mode whenever you want? Whenever you need to shut out the outside world, whenever you need some space, whenever you want to focus on what really matters, like your walk with God, like praying, like reading your Word without getting distracted. How many here tell the truth, shame the devil, were reading your Bible and got distracted by a phone call or a text and never got back to it? So we can use airplane mode whenever we want. But the airplane mode in our lives is called spiritual discipline. It's the intentional thing that we do to allow us to do what's most important. And so this morning, we're going to be continuing with that. And let's see, so a few weeks ago we talked about prayer and fasting. Last week we talked about the spiritual discipline of Bible study, which by the way, I thought that was one of the best messages I've ever heard Pastor John preach. It was awesome. See how you walk away from that without a sense of, man, I need to get in my Word. Fifteen hundred years, people didn't have that. The common person didn't have it. We have it, you know, and so it's a gift to us. So I want to talk about the next spiritual discipline, and it's really super practical. So practical that we'll forget how spiritual it is, but it's the spiritual discipline of rest. Can somebody say amen? And yes, it's a spiritual discipline. How many of you know that that lack of rest is an epidemic in the western part of the world, and particularly in America? And I'm not talking about just sleep. You know, some folks have trouble sleeping at night, you know, popping A&B in or whatever, or a couple of Benadryl. You have trouble sleeping. But I'm talking about general rest, because without it, what happens? We're moody. Nudge the person next to you, tell them to stop being moody. You're moody. You're simply surviving. You're overwhelmed. You don't look a whole lot like Christ when you haven't rested in a long time. A lack of rest leads to mental health conditions, unhappiness, depression, burnout. The American way of doing things, if you think about it practically, has been sort of propped up, loosely propped up with Scripture. We have Scriptures like, if a man will not work, he shall not eat. But the Bible teaches us, if you look at the whole witness of Scripture, it tells us something different. It tells us two truths, which is this. Work really, really hard, and rest really, really well. That's what the Bible tells us. And the Bible speaks of three different kinds of rest, and we're going to talk about two this morning. One in particular will take most of the time this morning. And the mission today, and this is really important that you hear this, the mission today is to remind you of God's divine permission and imperative to rest without guilt. You understand what I'm saying? To rest without guilt. Sometimes the folks on the worship team will say, Hey, I've got a thing going on. Is it okay if I miss a week, or I'm not feeling well, or man, this has been an overwhelming week at work. And I'll tell them, absolutely. Burnout does not glorify Jesus. It just doesn't. You can't square that with Scripture. Sometimes we need to stop. So I want you to know you've got God's divine permission and imperative to rest without guilt. So we're going to talk first about physical rest, which is a spiritual discipline that stems from a command in the Word. Quick disclaimer, as I talk about rest, I know that we have people in our church who are working two, three, four jobs. I know we have single moms. I know we have people who are struggling to keep the food on the table. I understand that. The goal this morning is not for you to have guilt and condemnation heaped upon you. It's simply just to show you what the Word says so you have something to believe God for. Amen? So we don't want any condemnation this morning. But in a book called The Good and Beautiful God, there's an author by the name of Jim Smith. He writes this. The number one enemy of Christian spiritual formation today is exhaustion. Spiritual formation. It's all the things that go into you becoming a disciple of Christ. The Word you read, the songs you worship to, the experiences you have, the way you serve, the church that you go to, the things you learn. That's spiritual formation. He thinks that the number one enemy of that is exhaustion. And it's a bold proclamation, but I think he's probably right. Anyone think that he might be right? Exhaustion. Just robbing us of what God has. And so we don't often rest unless it's forced upon us. And it robs us of mental and spiritual space to grow spiritually. That's the outcome. And so God knew the disposition of man. He knew the disposition of mankind. And so he gave us a gift. And his gift that he gave us, in his Word, it's called the Sabbath. The Sabbath. Now, when I say the Sabbath, it brings up a lot of ideas for different people. You might be thinking, that sounds like an old Jewish law that doesn't apply to us today. That sounds like a Jewish friend or a Messianic Jewish friend of mine. Sounds like something they talk about. Or you might say that it's the day of week that we go to church. We go to church on the Sabbath. But that's not exactly what we're talking about when we say Sabbath. It's not the Word that's important. And I want to show this to you in Scripture. It's the principle behind it that's modeled by God's Word in Scripture and then commanded for us. I want us to see that the idea of Sabbath, of rest in Scripture, is a gift. It's a gift that God has given His people. And so God models Sabbath for us. And so let's start out by just going to the Word and see what the Word says. Let's start with Genesis chapter 2. And we're just reading the creation account here, so you'll all be very familiar with it. It says on the seventh day God finished His work that He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work that He had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all His work that He had done in creation. Something interesting to think about is this. God flexed His spiritual might and creativity and power and beauty in the most incredible way through creation for six days. But He doesn't bless those days. He blesses the seventh day. That's the one that He calls holy, the day that He rested. Just let that sort of like seep in as I'm speaking this morning. Think about maybe what that means. Deuteronomy chapter 5. Let's continue. Now what we have here is the Israelites getting ready to go into the promised land. That's what's happening in Deuteronomy. So the commands of God and how He wants them to live and behave and be is being renewed. And here's what God says. Observe the Sabbath day. To keep it holy as the Lord your God commanded you. Actually, it's Moses speaking. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but on the seventh it's the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work, nor you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your ox, nor your donkey, nor any of your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates, that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you. What's the reason for the Sabbath? To rest. We don't have to over-spiritualize it. Now spiritual things can happen as we observe the Sabbath. In fact, I would say as we learn to rest, lots of spiritual things will happen. But you don't have to qualify rest in order to do it. God wants that for you in your life. That's why He gave you the gift of the Sabbath. One more scripture I want to look at here in Leviticus chapter 25. I want us to see that God just didn't design in His creation, in His wisdom, for human beings to rest. He desires for all things to rest. In Leviticus 25.3, 6 years you shall sow your field, and 6 years you shall prune your vineyard and gather its fruit. But in the seventh year there shall be a Sabbath, a solemn rest for the land, a Sabbath to the Lord. You shall neither sow your field nor prune your vineyard. What grows of its own accord of your harvest you shall not reap, nor gather the grapes of your untended vine. For it is a year of rest for the land. Everything, everything that God creates, God created, needs rest. If you talk to an experienced farmer, they'll tell you, if you never rest the land and you keep pulling the nutrients out of it, it is no longer good. It is no longer, can be used for anything helpful. How much more you and I, when we constantly go and go and allow ourselves to be completely depleted. Know what happens to us? We're not good for anybody either. We're not good for any purpose because we have nothing left to live. Church, this is not just a product of sin. It's just the way God made the world. And it's good pleasure to work and to rest. And it's okay. And so you may be thinking, but the Sabbath, you're talking about the Sabbath, that's part of the Old Testament law. Well, I want to share with you an idea to help you understand that the idea of the Sabbath still very much applies to us today. And the reason for that is the Sabbath predates the Old Testament law. If you study Scripture, you'll see that there are several things that we see in the Word that seem to be particularly important to God, and as a result, we see them taught and established way before the Mosaic law is given to the Israelites. And I'm going to share with you a couple to make the point, so you can feel free to rest. Abraham. Paul in Romans goes to great lengths to help people understand that Abraham was not justified by his works. He was justified by what? And Paul tells us he had that faith before what? The law. He was justified by faith before that law was given. And guess what carries through all the way through the Old Testament, and even the law that they had to do by faith. And now the New Testament, being justified by faith. The principle of faith started in the Old Testament, and it carries all the way through the New Testament. Do you see that? We've got the same thing with firstfruits. This understanding of giving God your first and your best. Now the principle of firstfruits eventually turned into what we call now the tithe. But that started. It was important to God way early off in the human story that we understood that we want to give God our first and our best. It predates the law, and it carries through. So then the Sabbath, like these other principles, applies to us. But here's the key. Now it looks like a principle, not a law. That's a really important distinction. Otherwise we can just get ourselves into law, and I've got to do this, and I've got to do that, and I've got to rest, and it's got to be on this day for this long, and we completely miss the gift that God has given us through that command in the Word. Does that make sense? So it's now to be understood as a principle, not a law. So what is the Sabbath? Well, it's translated sabbat, right? That's the Hebrew. Anyone here have any Jewish friends or Messianic Jewish friends? They celebrate sabbat, right? That's where we get our word Sabbath from. Well, what does that mean? So that we can do it. Well, it simply means this. To rest. To cease. To pause. Time out. Cut it out. Chill. Stop. Stop. Just stop. For a minute, just stop. Why? So that you can thrive spiritually and physically. Rest is God's gift to you. The Sabbath is God's gift to you. Jesus affirms this. This idea in Mark 2.27. That it's not about keeping a law. It's about receiving a gift. And we see this when the disciples are walking with Jesus. They're hungry. It's the Sabbath. So they start picking the heads of grain. And the Pharisee is looking for a way to be able to capture Him, and catch Him doing something wrong. Confront Him and give Him a hard time about them working on the Sabbath. And Jesus simply responds by saying, The Sabbath was made for man. Not man for the Sabbath. The Creator of the universe in Jesus, the Incarnate God, is telling you in that Scripture that the Sabbath is a gift to you. We don't reject the other gifts God gives us. Do we? We try not to. But for some reason in our Western way of thinking, we struggle with this idea of rest because we only see working hard as being godly. But again, the biblical witness of Scripture, when you take the whole thing into account, it tells us two things. Be faithful. Work hard. Work really, really hard. But at some point, on a regular basis, I'm not talking about a vacation once a week. But something in some kind of cyclical basis that you and the Lord work out, it's time to stop. Being like Christ involves resting well at some level. It's a spiritual discipline. Why do we call it a spiritual discipline? Because it is a choice. It's a choice to stop. Many times we feel victimized by our busyness. And remember I gave that disclaimer in the beginning about folks who are really, really struggling financially and don't hear what I'm not saying. But for those of us who've got a moment to stop, we don't always make the choice to rest. In fact, some of us, when we're resting, we're not resting. Right? We don't know how to just allow ourselves to be fresh and sit for a minute. And so, it's a spiritual discipline because it's a choice and also because I think it's the linchpin that holds the rest of the Christian walk together. How could that possibly be? I don't need to go to the next part for anyone who's been burnt out. But if you've never felt burnt out before, I'm going to explain to you why rest is the linchpin that holds the rest of the Christian walk together. So think about it. Practically speaking, whoever said to themselves that a lack of consistent rest made you the best spouse, the best parent, the best worker, the best servant in a church, who has ever felt like they were their best when they run themselves into the ground and they don't have a discipline of rest? No one has ever said that. On the other side, when you don't rest, and here's where it really comes into something spiritual, on the other side, when you don't ever rest, do you sense God's closeness when you're just running and running and busy and busy? Is that the time that you meditate on God's Word? That you behold His goodness and His glory? Is that the time that when life is going on difficult, that life is being difficult for you, that you can stop, as Dawn said this morning, and just think about that, gosh, you know, I'm really frustrated, it's a rough day, but God really has been good to me. There are some good things that happened today. We never do those things because we don't have the physical space or the brain space or the emotional space to do that, to commune with Him, to engage with Him, to sort of pull ourselves out of the mess we're in and look objectively. When does that happen? How does it happen? It happens when we rest. Those are the times that we tend to hear God. So sometimes, doing keeps us from becoming. Do we see that? Doing is important. Don't get me wrong, the Bible is full of admonishments to do and to work hard, but it is not the whole story. Sometimes doing keeps us from becoming. And so we're talking this morning about incorporating a spiritual discipline of rest into our life. Well, what does it look like practically? Well, I don't have to spend a lot of time on this because it is more about choice than it is about engaging in something that's complex, but I would just simply say, keep it simple, follow God's model, and make a choice to stop and to do it repetitiously, cyclically, if you can. So, a whole day per week, the way we traditionally understand the Sabbath? Sure, do that. Half day? That works too. Why not? A block of time throughout the week? Okay. You see, it's a principle. There's multiple ways that we can have a discipline of stopping and unplugging in our life. What matters here is that we recognize it as a gift from God, and we make the choice to do it. But we often don't. We know resting is important. I don't think I've dropped any bombs on anyone this morning and said something that you felt like was, wow, mind-blown. Right? We need to rest. That's important. Yet, we don't do it for some reason. I think for some, it's a matter of trust. I think for some, it's a matter of just being intentional. But guess what? These are not new obstacles for God's people. So let's unpack them quickly. So in Exodus chapter 16, before the law as we understand it now was completely given to the Israelites, and this is the time when the Sabbath principle is being established for them, and they're wandering in the wilderness, and they don't have enough. They've got a million reasons to do and do and do because their sustenance was on the line. And in verse 29, we see this. See, for the Lord has given you... Alright, let's stop. He has given you. I just want to point out again, it's God's gift. His heart is that resting is a gift rather than a command. The Lord has given you the Sabbath, therefore He gives you on the sixth day bread for two days. Let every man remain in his place. Let no man go out of his place on the seventh day. So the people rested on the seventh day. There's a couple of things we can miss if we gloss over this too fast. Remember God was giving them quail and manna so that they could eat? They were literally eating from the hands of God. And God offered them something practical to do so that they could fulfill His desire for their life. What is that? He told them to set things in order so they could rest. What can we learn here? Church, you have to plan to rest. It won't happen by itself. It won't happen through osmosis. It's not going to suddenly find your calendar cleared up. You have to plan to rest. And the God of the universe told them to rest and then helped them come up with a plan to do it. It's just practical stuff here. You've got to trust God if you're going to rest. Trust Him for what? That God knows best. That you're fearfully and wonderfully made. And He knows how He made you and what you need to thrive. And so you might say, but I like to work. Okay, rest anyway. I can't sit still. Okay, you should stop and rest. God knows better. And there might be all kinds of other things you sort of need to unpack, like why you can't sit still or why it's hard to rest. But I tell you this much. For us, we spend our whole lives running ourselves into the ground. It doesn't happen without practice. And it'll get more comfortable. However it is that you decide to do it, to just pause for a minute. To be with your family. To meditate on the Lord. You know, to just stop doing stuff and just let your spirit be renewed. It takes preparation and it takes trust, which means it doesn't matter if you want to all the time. And again, anyone who's ever been burnt out probably were doing exactly what they wanted to do that led them to burnout. And then they weren't the person, the best person God wanted for them. And back to our original quote from that gentleman who wrote that book, it becomes the biggest obstacle to your spiritual formation. Exhaustion. And so in the real world, there's always a reason not to rest. But will you trust God's plan? Will you rest anyways? Doing isn't everything. It's something, but it's not everything. Becoming matters too. So I would admonish you to work extremely hard. Be faithful. Be the hardest working person in your job. But just know that it won't produce everything you need to be a fully devoted follower of Christ. There are some things that we need to let God do His way. Right? We're letting God do it His way. And this leads us briefly to a second kind of biblical rest that's even more important than what I just shared. Salvation producing rest. It's a wild concept. One of the mysteries, as we've been talking about Ephesians, the book of Ephesians on Wednesdays, one of the mysteries of Christ that has been revealed, a salvation producing rest. You see, there's lots of religions in the world and every one of us recognize that we need to do something about the sin problem, the problem of being awful people, and get to heaven and spend eternity there. But what every religion has to work out is who's doing the work of salvation? Who's doing the work of salvation? And what separates Christianity from every other world religion is simply this. Someone else is doing the work for you. In fact, the Sabbath that happened all the way back in Genesis, Paul and the writer of Hebrews tell us is pointing to the ultimate Sabbath where people would cease from their work. What work? The work of trying to make yourself acceptable before God. Because you cannot do it. I promise. When you are on your game spiritually and reading your Word and coming to church, and being the person you know that Christ wants you to be, in that moment you are still so woefully far away from His standard. You cannot do it. You cannot work your way into salvation. And before Christ, people labored to make themselves acceptable to God through the law. And people are still doing that today. There are Christians who are saved by grace through faith who are still trying to earn their salvation and make themselves acceptable to God. And you are going to get to heaven, but you are going to do it missing out on the good news. That through your union with Christ, good works will flow, but not because of your determination to earn a good standing before God. Does that make sense? That is what the Sabbath idea in our salvation is all about. And the writer of Hebrews lays this out for us beautifully. And we would have to get into a lot of verses to get the whole construct of the theology here. Well, I'll just play, and it's right here in the middle. In Hebrews 4, verses 9-11, he beautifully explains the salvation producing rest when he says, There remains therefore a rest for the people of God. There remains therefore a rest for the people of God. For he who has entered His rest has himself also ceased from his works as God did from His. What is he talking about here? Here's what he means. God rested at creation. Six days, He rested on the seventh. And Jesus Christ, when He was finished doing the work of bearing the weight of all of your sin and being beaten and tortured on a cross for you, when He was finished with that work, that's work. That's work. When He was finished doing that, what did He do? He ascends to heaven, and He sits at the right hand of the Father and rests. Why? Because it was finished. The work was finished. And it is finished today. He sits there, glorious, triumphant. His enemy is now a footstool for His feet, as the psalmist says, because He doesn't have to work it anymore. It was complete. And Jesus, quite literally, became our Sabbath rest unto salvation. That's what the writer of Hebrews is saying. Christ did the work. We simply have to rest in His work. I know it sounds too good to be true. And the religious mindset that we have will say, but if you don't keep twisting people's arms to do good works, they never will. But that's not what the Bible says. The Bible says, when you truly understand salvation, what it means to be a follower of Christ, and you are now connected to the vine, what happens? Good fruit is the result of that. Sure, we need help along the way. We need to learn things. We need pastors to guide us. We need each other to guide each other. But our salvation comes from letting someone else do the work. When you talk about the good news of the gospel, in Paul's mind and the gospel writers, that's what the good news was. That someone else did it for you. That someone else did it for you. That's why it's good news. Thank you for listening to Elevate. We hope this message encouraged, inspired, and challenged you. Authentic Life Church is located at 3750 Michael Boulevard in Mobile, Alabama. Visit our website, authenticlife.tv, for more information about Authentic Life Church. To find out what we have going on, or to make a donation, you can also find us on Facebook. We'd love for you to join us on Sundays at 10 a.m. for our weekend service. We have excellent children's, nursery, and youth programs, so bring the family. For Pastor John DeQuatro, I'm Scott Chestnut. Thanks again for listening, and God bless you.
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