Our Hearts Are Restless Until They Find Their Rest in Christ

Sermon preached for Trinity 17 by Rev. James Preus on Luke 14:1-11. 

 

Trinity 17

Our Hearts Are Restless until They Find Their Rest in Christ

Luke 14:1-11

Pastor James Preus

Trinity Lutheran Church

September 22, 2024

 

St. Augustine begins his famous work, Confessions with a prayer to God in which He says, “Man, a little piece of Your creation, desires to praise You, a human being ‘bearing his mortality with him (2 Cor. 4:10), carrying with him the witness of his sin and the witness that You ‘resist the proud’ (1 Peter 5:5). Nevertheless, to praise You is the desire of man, a little piece of Your creation. You stir man to take pleasure in praising You, because You have made us for Yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”

Our heart is restless until it finds its rest in the Lord. This truth is fundamental to understanding the Sabbath. Sabbath means rest. Moses records in Genesis 2, “And 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.” (Genesis 2:2-3)

God blessed the seventh day and made it a day of rest. Yet, man fell into sin. St. Paul tells us that the Law was added because of transgressions (Gal. 3:19). Moses writes in Exodus 20, “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.” When man sinned, he fell out of God’s Sabbath. He could not find rest in the Lord on account of his sin. So, God added the Commandment to remember the Sabbath Day, so that His people might find rest in Him. But the Commandment did not give them rest, because of their unbelief. Because of their hardness of heart and rebellion, the Lord says in Psalm 95, “Therefore I swore in my wrath, ‘They shall not enter my rest.’” (Psalm 95:11)

Hebrews chapter 4 explains this, “For we who have believed enter that rest, as He has said, ‘As I swore in my wrath, “They shall not enter My rest,’” although His works were finished from the foundation of the world. For He has somewhere spoken of the seventh day in this way: ‘And God rested on the seventh day from all His works.’ And again, in this passage He said, ‘They shall not enter My rest.’ Since therefore it remains for some to enter it, and those who formerly received the good news failed to enter because of disobedience, again He appoints a certain day, ‘Today,’ saying through David so long afterward, in the words already quoted, ‘Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts.’ For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on. So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from his works as God did from His.” (Hebrews 4:3-10)

The command to rest failed to give the people rest! This is what St. Paul says in Romans 3, “Through works of the Law no human being will be justified in God’s sight, since through the Law comes knowledge of sin.” It could be paraphrased, “Through works of the Law no human being finds rest in God, since through the Law comes knowledge of sin.” The Law does not grant rest. Rest can only be received through faith, because it is God who accomplishes the work.

This sets us up for our Gospel lesson. A ruler of the Pharisees invited Jesus to dinner on the Sabbath, and they watched Him closely to see whether He would break the Sabbath. A man suffering from dropsy was there. “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not?” Jesus asks. And they are silent. Their silence shows their ignorance of the Law and of the Sabbath. They think they find Sabbath rest in their works. And they gloat over the possibility that Jesus will fail to find that rest by showing compassion to a suffering man. Their desire for the Sabbath is evil. But Jesus’ desire is good. He heals the man, breaking the Sabbath in the eyes of the Pharisees, but making it holy in the eyes of God.

The man with dropsy is a picture of our sinful condition. Dropsy is known as a rich man’s illness, because it is caused by overindulgence. It causes the body to retain water. The man’s body retains water, so that he is swollen and bloated, yet he cannot quench his thirst. His condition is a result of overindulgence, yet it presses him into further indulgence until he dies. This is the state of sin. We do not find rest in our sin. We do not find rest in our ability to keep the Law. We find rest only in Jesus, who rescues us from our sin.

The man with dropsy is a picture of us. We are heavy laden with our sinful condition. We have consumed too much, and it is killing us. Yet, the disease of sin drives us to keep consuming more and more until we die.  We crave that which kills us. We want to be freed from it, but it drives us on and on. We find no rest in our sin, in our lust, hatred, and craving after earthly pleasure. Yet, sin is a slave master, which drives us further on. We need to find rest for our souls. We need to be forgiven and freed from our sin and the guilt which presses upon us because of it. Jesus declares in Matthew 11, “Come to Me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light.”

As Jesus healed the man of dropsy from the condition, which was suffocating his very heart, so Jesus heals us of our sin and lifts the heavy burden off our conscience. Jesus did this by doing the work of re-creation. On the first day, He entered Jerusalem triumphantly to shouts of Hosanna. On the fifth day, He washed His disciples’ feet. On the sixth day, He labored on the cross until His work was done. And on the seventh day, He took His rest in the tomb. And on the first day of a new week, He rose from the dead, having taken all our sins away, so that He might give us a renewed Sabbath in the Lord to be received through faith. The first Sabbath was already holy, but we could not enter it because of our sin and unbelief. So, Jesus came to take away our sins, so that we may enter God’s rest through faith in Him.

God gave the Sabbath commandment, not because He thought we could enter His rest through our own works, but to draw us to faith in Christ, who would win for us true rest. This is why St. Paul writes to the Colossians in chapter 2, “Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the body belongs to Christ.” The body belongs to Christ. The Sabbath regulations of the Old Testament were a shadow. Jesus is the body, which cast the shadow. We no longer need the shadow. We have the body. This is why Christians do not observe the ceremonial laws of the Old Testament, including the prohibition to work on Saturday.

However, we do not ignore the commandment. Why did God forbid them to work on Saturday? So that they could not only rest their bodies, but also find rest for their souls by meditating on God’s Word, as Martin Luther writes in his hymn, “And put aside the work you do, so that God may work in you.” And so, we still have use for this commandment today. Martin Luther explains the meaning of this commandment, “Remember the Sabbath Day by keeping it holy. What does this mean? We should fear and love God, so that we do not despise preaching and His Word, but hold it sacred, and gladly hear and learn it.” God still commands us to stop working, so that we may listen to His Word and learn it. To refuse to stop working and take a physical rest is foolish. To refuse to listen to God’s preaching and Word is wicked. Jesus said to those Jews who refused to listen to His preaching, “Whoever is of God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God.” (John 8:47) Yet Jesus makes this wonderful promise to those who gladly hear His Word and preaching, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my Word, and my Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him.” (John 14:23)

But outward observances of the law, even coming to church, does not give you Sabbath rest if you do not have faith. The rest Jesus seeks to give us is not simply physical rest, it is inner spiritual rest. The Lord spoke to Isaiah in chapter 66, “what is the house that you would build for me, and what is the place of my rest? … But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at My Word.” The one who finds rest in Christ is the one who is humble and contrite in spirit, the one who is sorry for his sins and trembles at God’s Word. The one who finds rest in Christ is like the man with dropsy, who is weighed down with a heavy burden, which he cannot lift off himself. The Pharisees, who exulted themselves did not get this. They found rest in themselves, because they thought they had fulfilled the commandment. But their rest was fake, just as the pleasure that the man with dropsy indulged in was fake pleasure, which led him to the point of death.

If your heart is to find true rest in the Lord, you must humble yourself. You must recognize that your works are not good enough, that you have overindulged in the fading pleasures of this world, and that your sin bars you from any true rest. And when you recognize that, you are prepared to find true rest in Christ. Christ did not come to call the righteous, but sinners. He did not come to give rest to those satisfied with themselves, but to those who are heavy-burdened and who seek rest from the Lord.

The Apostles appointed Sunday for the day of worship for two reasons. First, to show that we are free from the shadow of the Old Testament and cannot be judged for not observing the seventh day or any other ceremonial law. Second, because Christ rose from the dead on Sunday, so we should know that we only find true rest in Christ. You should go to church every Sunday, because the Lord commands us to hear His Word. It is a sin to skip church, because it is despising God’s preaching and Word. Yet, much more, you should go to church every Sunday to find rest in Christ. You find rest in the Lord by hearing the words of Christ and believing His promise of forgiveness. We do not come to church to judge one another and see who has kept the Sabbath better. We come to church as dropsied sinners coming to the banquet where Jesus is, so He can heal us and satisfy that one unquenchable craving. Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in the Lord. We find that rest today in the words of Jesus. And we believe that we will enjoy that rest in perfect holiness in eternity with Him. Amen.