Gateway Church's Podcast
Honoring the Sabbath
A Gateway Sermon
We're going to speak today about the keys to kingdom living. So in Matthew chapter 11, we're going to talk today about honoring the Sabbath. The Sabbath is often overlooked in the church. Most people don't understand it. They don't understand how to apply it in their lives. They consider it many times the legalistic is something we must do. But I'm going to give you a different way to look at rest today. And I want to take a quick survey before I start. How many of you came to church today? And if you had to judge your life right now, if you had to look at your schedule, if you had to look at what's going on in your life and just the gauge and the way you feel, the way your emotions are, the way your physical body is, how many of you are tired, just exhausted? That's not good when I'm preaching to a group of tired people, I guess, so I better be really good today. But you know what, I believe that most believers that I'm around, most Christians that I am around are simply exhausted, simply tired, simply worn out with life, worn out with living, with their schedule. In fact, I believe that it could be one of the reasons that we're not seeing some of the moves of God among us that we're seeing in other parts of the world simply because we don't have time to fit a move of God into our current schedule. I mean, if God wanted to do something new in our lives to change us in some way, we have to make time for that. First of all, we have to hear God, which God is into marinating and we're into microwaving. I mean, you noticed that the other day I was really ashamed of myself because I was in a drive-through restaurant and I won't name the restaurant, although it was Waterburger, so I was going through and I'm used to getting a hamburger in two minutes or less. Have you noticed that when you go into a drive-through, if it lasts more than three minutes, do you think you're having to chase the meal down somewhere? It's just aggravating and I was in a hurry, it's one of those times when you're late and you can't get your burger. So I'm in the drive-through lane, I'd already paid my money and I'm confessing this to you, I'm very ashamed, all right? I'm already telling you that. I already paid my money, I was sitting in the line and I'm hungry, I'm aggravated, but I'm in too big a hurry. So I just leave, I just drive out of the parking lot, drive out of the line, they kept my $4.78, by the way, and if you're here at Waterburger, I would like a check after the trip. But anyway, I just left there and I got out on the road and I was going, "Lord, you know, that was, I hope no one saw me that knew me because I didn't curse or anything out loud, you know, I didn't make any hand gestures. I didn't do anything that, you know, would make me look bad too much." I just left and I was in a hurry, I didn't have time to wait another 60 seconds for a burger and I love Waterburger and I could have waited another 60 seconds but I'm in a hurry and I don't know why I'm in a hurry. There's a song by Alabama and I don't know if this is really hard to work Alabama into a sermon but I did it, just now, didn't I? Isn't that great? Alabama has a song and it says, "Here's a line out of it, all I have to do is live and die and I'm in a hurry and I don't know why." I don't know why I'm in a hurry. I don't know why my life is so chaotic. I don't know why that every day when I get up that I have a series of things to do and I rush and rush and rush and rush and then this song goes, "I rush and rush and rush until life is no fun." Have you ever gotten to that point where life is just not fun because you're in a hurry, you just don't have time to sit and smell the roses. I don't have time to plant a rose bush, must let sit and smell the things once they bloom. It's chaotic. Now I believe prophetically that the Lord is that we are in the last days. I think we can agree on that theologically. Joel chapter 2 and Acts chapter 2 tell us that in the last days God will pour out his spirit upon all people, that your sons and daughters will prophesy, that your old men will dream dreams and that these powerful things would happen in the last days. Now when Peter stood and Acts chapter 2 and preached that, 3,000 people were saved and that started the age of the church and that's the age that we're living in right now. That happened 2,000 years ago. It is my theological guess that we're in the last days of the last days, possibly the last minutes of the last days on the eternal calendar. There is no other age to come. The next age is an age in heaven where we spend eternity with Jesus. So if we're living in those times where God wants to pour out his spirit, where God wants to release a supernatural energy among us, where we will see wave after wave after wave of lost people come to know Jesus. You know what? I believe that we're going to live in a time where we will not be able to build buildings quick enough to catch the harvest, that we will simply run out of room. We will not have to have enough services that God, there are so many lost people that the Holy Spirit is even now dealing with preparing them for the last final harvest test to come, that we will not have room to contain them at Gateway Church and many of the churches in this area will not have room to contain the harvest that is coming. I also believe, prophetically, that we're about to see more people healed of terminal illnesses than ever in the history of the church. People with cancer, people that the doctors have given up on are going to come forward, they're going to be prayed for in life groups, they're going to be prayed for right on the spot in hospital rooms, they're going to be prayed for anywhere that we'll allow us to pray and we're going to see hundreds, hundreds and hundreds of peoples healed in our midst. This is a supernatural outpouring of a Holy Spirit that's about to happen. Now, do you believe that or not? I believe that with all my heart and that's the great hope that I have, the great anticipation that I have in these last days. So I'm praying about this and I receive this. I get up very early in the morning, I'm weird like that. The best time of my day is between 6 a.m. and 8 a.m. Honestly, I love those two hours, I love seven to nine on weekends, but six days on the weekdays. I love early mornings and when I get up early in the morning, I get to the office very early. I'm the first one there usually, I go into my office and that's the time where I hear the Lord, where I sit in the presence of the Lord and I just hear Him. I just sit there and so I'm hearing all this prophetic things. I believe that Gateway Church is going to be a part of that harvest. We're already a part of that harvest, but we haven't seen what God really wants to do yet. This is just a taste. It's almost like an appetizer before the main meal comes. And so I said, "Lord, why will keep us from experiencing what I'm seeing in my heart?" He says, "Your time? Your time? You don't have time for me to do what I want to do in your midst, Brady." He's talking to me personally. This is on a very personal level I'm sharing with you today. My wife and I, we have made an effort in our home to make sure that our time is managed well. It is a battle. You know it's a battle, isn't it? We have two small kids and they haven't even started playing Little League and playing soccer yet. They're five and three, but they're about to start and I understand that when they start doing those things and when they start getting into school activities, that our schedule is about the double, basically. And I know that. It's a huge challenge, a huge effort to get this time under control. But we all have the same amount of time every week and how we manage it will determine how much God can use us in these last days. And that is why the Sabbath, that is why God thousands of years ago set in place the Sabbath idea that we must catch it. We must start honoring it for God to be able to do what he wants to do. Now in Matthew chapter 11 I ask you a minute ago how many of your weary, how many of your tired, how many of your exhausted, and I saw a lot of hands, hundreds of hands went up across this congregation. Well I'm going to give you a formula today. I'm going to give you a scripture that I want you to read and memorize. I want you to constantly be on this scripture for the next several weeks because I believe it will liberate your heart from fatigue and weariness. In Matthew 11 verse 28 it says, "Come to me, all who are weary and burdened, and I might give you rest." The word though is actually much clearer than that. I will, I will guaranteed, definitely, no qualms about it. I will give you rest if you'll come to me. 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. I don't know about you but I want to live my life where my burden is lighter. I am tired of carrying burdens that God did not design me to carry. The burdens that I am designed to carry, I find that they're pretty easy to carry. The burden of leading my home, the burden of providing financially for my home, the burden of praying for my children, the burden of ministering and working and doing my job every week, those burdens are easy. Those burdens are not wearing me out. People ask me all the time, you know I have been at Gateway now almost three and a half years almost. So I was here when the church was 100 people. We have more people backstage right now than we had in our very first services. And I remember those days, we had one service on Saturday night. It was like a part time job. It was easy. One service, 100 people. Do you remember those days? And so when, now all of a sudden, we're 5,000 people, three services and people ask me all the time. Brady, are you so exhausted? Are you tired? I mean, it seems like the church has grown so much that it would just wear all of the out. And I tell them, no, I'm not. I'm not exhausted. I'm not worn out. I'm not going to die because the church grew. I didn't make up my mind before I came to Gateway. Hey, you know, if it gets over 2000, I think I might just quit this. This is too much work. No, we're not worn out. Our staff typically goes through the week without being exhausted. That's by design. And we're modeling something for you that we want you. Now we work hard. We're diligent. We're here very early. We work until our job is done. We make sure that we get everything done and our job that we're supposed to do and more. However, we have a rule at our church that we don't work more than 50 hours a week and we're not away from our home more than three nights a week. That's a rule on our staff. If we break that rule, we get in trouble. Now, I know that that's not possible for everyone. I know that 50 hours a week is not, that's not a law we're putting here. It's just something that we want to model in front of you as pastors. We want to live our lives above reprosion show you that we are going to do everything we can and we're going to believe God for the rest. We're going to believe God to take up the slack, to do his part and not to wear ourselves out. I am in this for a 30-year haul. I hope one day when I'm 75 that I'm standing up in front of Gateway with the same silly smile on my face and I'm happy about the way Gateway's turned out. I want to live my life like this. Wouldn't it be great to live our lives without exhaustion, without being weary, without carrying unnecessary burdens? Well, you know right now in America that fatigue is second only to alcohol as a leading cause of car accidents that end in fatality. Second only to alcohol, people fall asleep more often in their cars and die. That is growing. It's an epidemic in America. Right now, hundreds of people a day in just the state of Texas are being admitted to the hospitals for exhaustion and fatigue. They come to the hospital and they don't know why they're worn out. They don't know why they can't think. They have no emotions left. They're completely exhausted and clinics are opening up as fast as they can build the building to take care of tired people in America. And yet we have more technology right now. We have more computers. We have more things that are supposed to make our life easy than any other time. For example, in Africa three weeks ago, these people don't have toilets. They still wash their dishes with a water hose in the backyard. They have no dishwasher. They have nothing. And yet they're so happy. They're walking around the food. They don't know that they're supposed to have a dishwasher. They don't know that they're supposed to be exhausted. They have none of the technology. I didn't have a computer for a week there. And you know what? I lived. I survived. My cell phone barely worked. It cost $8 a minute when it did work. But I survived. It's just easy. Sometimes we don't realize how how labor some our lives have become. Matthew chapter 11, it says that you'll find the rest for your souls. You know what your soul is? It's your mind, your will, and your emotions. Your mind is what thinks. Your will is what makes decisions. Your emotions is how you feel. You know what happens when your soul becomes exhausted though? Well, here's the first thing. Our thinking deteriorates. Our thinking just simply breaks down. You cannot process any more information once you're tired. You just stop being able to think. The second thing is our emotions become numb. Many of you are sitting in this congregation right now and you cannot connect emotionally with anything in your life. You cannot connect emotionally with your family. You cannot connect emotionally at work. You're not passionate about anything. You're not sad about anything. You're not happy about anything. We can't even get you mad about anything. Maybe. The drive-through line will do it every time though, okay? That's what happens. Our emotions become numb. I know when I'm tired. When I stop having the emotions and feelings that I'm supposed to have. I'm supposed to cry sometime. I'm supposed to be happy sometimes. And I know when I'm tired because I can't feel that way. And here's the third thing is that we've become indecisive. We just can't make decisions. We simply make the wrong choices all the time, constantly making wrong choices. Now, a very wise man, I was in radio and television for five years. I worked in that industry for a while. And a very wise man, I was a very young man when I started that. And I was always making some bad decisions. Periodically, I just make a string of bad decisions that were hurting our company. And so, this man who was mentoring me, who owned the company, he loved me, he cared for me, he came to me one day and said, "Brady, I'll tell you what your problem is." You're making major decisions after 4 p.m. Stop that. Stop making any major decisions after 4 p.m. Now, that's not a legalistic law, but that was very good advice. And so, for the rest of my life, I have lived by that rule. If I'm on a car lot looking to buy a car and it's after 4 p.m., I sleep on it one more night. If I'm looking at houses, my wife and I've just built a house a few months ago. If I'm out looking at houses or looking at laws, trying to make a major investment decision or making a major decision that would affect my family or my children, here's what I do. I sleep on it one more night. I don't make major decisions when my mind is tired. The enemy puts us in a trap. In fact, most of the decisions that you regret, most of the decisions that you regret in life were made while you were tired, exhausted or fatigued. And the Lord has a better plan, a better design for our lives. Basically, everyone in this room is either one or two things. We're either a third bread or we're a pack animal. Now, a third bread, here's a picture of a third bread. A third bread is a horse that is designed to run fast. They can run 30 miles an hour top speed. That jockey weighs less than 110 pounds and the animal weighs over a thousand pounds. The saddle, the bridle, everything, all the equipment on him totally weighs less than two pounds. When that shoot opens and that horse looks out in front of him, all he sees is a wide track with boundaries that are there simply for his safety. And he is trained to run with passion and speed and get to the finish line. And the crowd cheers. That's the kind of animal I want to be. I want God opens the door in front of me and shows me another opportunity. I want to run fast. I want to run with passion. I want wide boundaries to protect me. But I want to run with passion. I want to run the race that set before me. That's what God has assigned you to be as a believer. However, most believers are more like pack animals. Now, to see this poor animal, he's not going anywhere. He's loaded down. If the shoot were to open right now, that pack animal could not go anywhere. His legs would just be kicking. When I saw that picture, that's a prophetic picture of most believers. It's more like it's a pathetic picture of most believers and prophetic. Thank you very much. Put that down. Okay. Enough of the mule. We have brought a mule into the sanctuary. All right. No one passed out. Good. But this is how we live our lives loaded down with burdens with our head down, not being able to see in front of us, not being able to see the vision that God's given our lives. And if God were to tell us to go and run to the race with passion, we can't pull all the burdens that we've surrounded our lives with. The financial burdens, the schedule, our career, our children, everything that we've allowed to weigh ourselves down. God wants you to run the race. So how do we find this rest for our souls? I believe Matthew 11 is so clear when you read it like this, when you understand it, Matthew 11 gives us three things. Here's the first one is come to me. Jesus gave us three commands in Matthew 11. One is He says, come to me. Just come to me. You see, many times as believers, we feel like that if we could just simply do something for God, like pay a penance to God, do something and pay off our debt, pay off God. And then we feel better about our guilt. That's not the life that God designed for us to live. God designed for us to live a life of actually receiving. The Bible is more about receiving than giving, although we are supposed to give our time. We are supposed to give our money. We are supposed to give away our spiritual gifts. But this Bible is more about receiving from the presence of the Lord than any other subject. Sitting in the presence of God, simply receiving from Him, come to me. As I said, most of us are into microwaving and God's into marinating. We want God in a 10 minute timeframe to shower us, to give us a deluge of His blessing. Lord, I've got 10 minutes here. Open up heaven and let the spigots pour. When God actually wants us to sit in His presence, let us slow rain fall upon us. You see, this Bible, all the Bible is about, is about a wedding that's going to happen one day. And we're the bride. One day in heaven, I was at a wedding last night. And I said, as a bride, walk down the aisle that, you know, the groom's there, he's smiling, everybody's, and I love, I love doing weddings when the bride walks down the aisle. That's my favorite part. You know why? Every time, including last night, I said, one day, Lord, I'm going to walk down the aisle. I'm going to take you. And Lord, I'm going to live with you for eternity. I'm your bride. I know it's hard for men to think that way, and I don't have any dresses at home. But I know this. I want to be God's bride. I want to be the bride of Christ. I want to sit in His presence, and I want Him to love me and let me love Him. This, all the Bible is about, is preparing us to be that affectionate bride, to let God speak to us and receive from Him, to be receivers of His love. Most of us have the curse of Peter on our lives, though, where God's, you know, when Peter came and Jesus wanted to wash His feet, Peter said, no, no, no. You can't wash my feet. I'm not letting you wash my feet. And Jesus said, if you don't let me wash your feet, you can't have no part of me. And Peter said, well, then wash everything. You know, Peter was either a hall or nothing. And see, I don't want to live my life not able to receive when the Lord wants to come and wash my feet, to be affectionate to me, to come and speak peace into my heart. I don't want to push Him away and shove Him away and say, Lord, no, I'm not worthy for you to come and speak into my life. I'm not worthy to sit in your presence. That's not the life I was engineered to live. What's the only thing that can fill your car's pain? See, I have a nice car, so it's a very sophisticated piece of machinery. You know, when I get in, open my door, my car seats adjust for me. Everything's very sophisticated. I don't have any of it works, you know? I don't know how to do it much of it. But it's very sophisticated. You know, what I found though is if I don't put gas in that car, it doesn't run, that I can run out of very expensive gas in a very expensive car, just quit running. I know that in order for that very expensive piece of machinery to run that sophisticated piece of machinery, I've got to put some fuel in it. You know that your body, your soul, your emotions, your mind, everything about you is sophisticated. The way you think, we have the greatest minds on earth. As human beings have the most developed minds on earth, your body is a complex blend of circuits and muscles and fibers and tissues and bones. We're very complex people, but you cannot run when your fuel is empty. And the only fuel that you were designed to run on is the fuel of the Holy Spirit. In fact, many of you can exercise and eat right and get eight hours of sleep and still be exhausted. Now you should exercise. You should eat right. You should try to get six to eight hours sleep a night. You should. But that doesn't mean you'd wake up refreshed. I found that I can do all those things, but if I don't sit in the presence of a Lord, I don't have the fuel that I need to run the race that God's called me to run. And the race that he's called you to run. The Bible says, "Come to me." Now David was a flawed man. David was a lousy father. I don't think he was a very good husband. He was a powerful leader, but he was bloody and violent at times. Yet throughout the Old Testament, David is unequivocally called a friend after God's own heart, a man after God's own heart, a friend of God, someone that God loved and pleasured in his company. David is a hero in the scripture because of that. In Psalms 116, we find the key to why David was a man after God's own heart. In verse 1, it says, "I love the Lord for he heard my voice." Do you understand the pleasure of that? Do you understand the pleasure of realizing that God's listening and that hearing you, knowing you, understands who you are? Oh Lord, I come to you this morning. I'm tired. I'm exhausted. I need your Holy Spirit in my life. And to realize that God in heaven just heard everything you said and he's responding as quickly as possible to you. "I love the Lord for he heard my voice. He heard my cry for mercy because he turned his ear to me. I will call on him as long as I live. The cords of death entangled me. The anguish of the grave came upon me. I was overcome by trouble and sorrow. And then I called on the name of the Lord. Oh Lord, save me." Now listen, that's all God wants to hear from you. This is not complicated. All God wants to hear from you and your time of need and your time of fatigue and your time of weariness is, "Oh Lord, save me. Here I am, God. Lord, here's my heart. I'm not hiding from you. I'm not running from you. I'm not doing anything but just coming and sitting in your presence right now." And he says, "Then I called on the name of the Lord. The Lord is gracious and righteous. Our God is full of compassion. The Lord protects the simplehearted. When I was in great need, he saved me. Be at rest once more, O my soul, for the Lord has been good to you." You see, all the Lord wants from us today. If you don't remember anything else, I'd say, "Please remember this next sentence. Spending time alone in the presence of the Lord is never wasted time. Spending time alone with God in his presence is never, ever wasted time. That's what I'm calling you as believers to do. I'm asking you to experience this life that I have found in the Lord and that is simply to sit alone in the presence of the Lord. Sit and be still and receive. If you'll just do this simple thing, and I know you may be here today and you've been saved and walking with the Lord for many, many, many years, but I'm calling you back to that first love. Remember the first time you really knew that you were born again? You really knew that Jesus lived in your heart? How wonderful it was to wake up and the first thing you wanted to do was just to say something to the Lord. Just hearing back and just to have a conversation with him, "I'm calling you back to that first love this morning. I'm calling you back as believers. Maybe you never experienced that. Maybe you don't understand what I'm talking to. I want you to try something. I want you to just block some time off." You know that, sometimes you shouldn't even do your quiet time in the office. You know that noise your computer makes when you have a new email? That's a demonic noise, okay, because it disrupts you. I took me six months, but I learned how to turn that noise off. In other words, get into a place somewhere that you can just be alone, even as far as few minutes starting out. Just be along with the Lord, because what will happen is you'll begin to hear him. People say, "Well, pastor Brady, how do you hear the Lord?" Well, I'll listen. That's it. I'm honest. That's as complicated as I can get theologically. I just listen. The Bible says, "My sheep know my voice. You're super naturally equipped to hear the voice of the Lord." This is not hard. I just listen. How do you know it's God? Because I know him. How do you know it's me talking right now? You know me. It's easy after that, didn't it? I know God. I know his voice. I know what it produces in my life. I listen far as much as possible, because it gives me life, gives me rest. Here's the second thing. Take my yoke. Let me ask you a question today. Who's yoke or do you have right now in your life? Who's yoke do you have? This is the illustration you need to get, because when Jesus told this, he's talking to people who are agricultural. And the yoke of oxen that he was talking about were always two yoke of oxen, standing side by side. And what Jesus was saying is, "You've got this big yoke on your neck, and I've got this manageable, small yoke on my neck. I'll tell you what I'm going to do. You take mine. I'll take yours. You take mine." You see, what God's offering you today is the great burden exchange. I used to be in sales and I'm offering you a deal today. What can I do to make you take this deal today? Here's what Jesus is offering. He's offering you the great burden exchange, whatever burden you're carrying right now. Here's how you know if you have a burden, by the way. What area of your life do you not have peace about? Whatever area of your life that you worry and grieve and fret over that you do not have peace over, you're carrying a burden that God didn't design for you to carry. If you wake up in the morning terrified about your finances, you're not carrying God's burden for your finances. If you wake up in the morning and you're terrified that something terrible might happen to your children, you're not carrying God's burden for your children. If you wake up in the morning worried, stressed, worn out, fatigued about your future, about your career, about retirement, about the next step in your life, it's an area of your life that God simply wants you to lay down and take his burden for you. Isaiah 26-3, it's not on the PowerPoint, but I want you to write this scripture down. It says, "I will give my peace, I will give my peace to those who trust in me, to those whose thoughts are fixed upon me." In every area of my life, when I wake up and I don't have peace about an area of my life, you know what the Lord is challenging me to do right now? Fix my thoughts on him. Fix my thoughts on the Lord. Lord, I know that nothing terrible is going to happen to my children. Lord, I gave them to you at birth. They don't even belong to me. They belong to you. I dedicated them at the altar to you, Lord. And Lord, I believe your will be done on earth as it is in heaven and my son and my daughter. Lord, my finances belong to you. When I give my tithe, it's redeemed the curse of my finances. I don't have any curses on my finances. Lord, I believe your scripture in Malachi 3. So Lord, today I give up that burden. I'm not going to worry about the finances anymore. They don't even belong to me. That money doesn't even belong to me. Lord, so why am I worried about something that doesn't even belong to me? It says in Psalms 57 that I will fulfill my purposes for your life. So Lord, I'm not worried about my future. I'm not worried about what's going to happen the next 10 years of my life. I'm not going to have a midlife crisis and freak out and leave my family because Lord, my life doesn't belong to you. I died in August of 1988 in my bedroom when I gave my life to you. I am a dead man and dead men have no worries. You understand that there's nothing to fret over. I'm not going to live with some burden that the enemy comes to place on my life. I'm not designed to carry those burdens, just like that mule was not designed to carry that card. And he's a much bigger mule for that card. And I'm not designed to carry that card either. I'm designed to carry the burdens that God puts in my heart. Here's the burdens I need to carry. I have a burden to pray for my family and I carry that burden. I carry a burden to lead my family as the priest of my home. I have a burden to provide for my family. I have a burden to lead this church as one of the pastors and one of the elders. That's a burden that's easy for me to carry because I was designed spiritually gifted, equipped to carry that burden. Whatever burden you have that you're designed for that you're equipped to carry will never be a burden to you that will never weary you and tire you out because I'm taking the right yoke. There's a Chinese story of an old man who was very elderly man walking down the road. He had a heavy load on his back. He was bent over, taking small steps trying to get into town. And a young man in a new cart pulls up the siding and he says, "Hey, why don't you get into my cart? I'll take you into town." Being very kind, being very nice to the elderly man. So the young man goes on down the road and he looks behind him to see that the old man is sitting in the cart but he's still bent over because he never dropped the load off his back. Now listen, one day Jesus came by and offered you a free ride into town and you said, "Yes, you gave your life to him." He said, "Lord, I accept this free ride. It's free gift and I accept it. I thank you, Lord, that you're taking me to heaven and I'll take this ride." And yet we walk through life and we don't drop the burdens in the very cart that he came by to pick you up on. You see, you can give your life to the Lord and be sentenced to heaven and can't get out of it but you can also carry those burdens with you all the way to heaven. And I just simply want you to know today, you don't have to do that. You do not have to carry those burdens to heaven. Now when you drop them, you can never pick them up. Don't go back and pick them up. Whatever's causing you to lose your peace, go to the Lord, Isaiah 26-3, okay? You just meditate on that this week. Here's the third thing, learn from me. Jesus was saying, "Learn from me, watch me, follow my example." Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed. Jesus was not a workaholic. Did you hear that guys? Jesus, our Lord, our Savior, Yeshua, our Lord, our Savior, was not a workaholic. Jesus understood the Sabbath. He understood retreats. He understood rest. He understood getting his disciples away from the crowd at times and taking them to the mountaintop. In fact, in most of the red scriptures that you see in your Bible, was Jesus sitting in a lonely place on a mountaintop or on the side of a hill or in a boat somewhere just with his disciples away? They were retreating. They were praying. They were resting. Jesus did not model something for us that's beyond our capabilities to live. Jesus didn't model a 90-hour work week. Jesus didn't model breakneck speeds of ministry that would only burn out and deflate all of us. Jesus modeled a balanced life of teaching, ministering, doing what He was called to do, doing what He was equipped to do, but oftentimes withdrawing and resting and praying. I just came off vacation. This is my first day off vacation. I was on vacation all last week, so I'm not tired. And I will not be tired next week. Next Sunday when you see me, I'm not going to be tired because I want to learn from Jesus. Genesis chapter 2, verse 1, it says, "So the creation of the heavens and the earth and everything in them was completed. And on the seventh day, having finished His task, God rested from all His work. And God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy because it was a day when He rested from His work of creation. Now we know that He made that seventh day holy and later in Exodus chapter 20, it became one of the Ten Commandments to honor the Sabbath. Keep it holy. Now, do you know why God chose to rest on the seventh day? It wasn't because He was tired. God rested on the seventh day because there was nothing left to do. Now scientists believe that it took millions and billions of years for the earth to be created. I believe it was a literal six days. And I believe that God was showing off a little bit and making a point. I can do more in six days than you think I can do or nature can do in millions or billions of years. I want you to hear something right now. God can do more in your life in six days than you can in your own strength and with your own talents in seven days. I believe that this is the most generous giving church that not only I've ever been a part of, that I've even heard of ever, unbelievable resources because of your generous heart, because of your desire to give and to live the blessed life that we see in Scripture. Now I want us to be famous for two things now. I want us to be famous for being the most rested church. Most ready to receive the next outpouring of God's spirit. Now I'm going to say something that may be a little radical that's going to test a lot of theology, but I believe I can see it in Scripture very clearly. I believe God values our time more than He values our money. God's not in love with our money. Doesn't even need it. Although we should give and we should tide. We should do what God commands us to do. But I believe God wants far more of our time than He wants of our money. He only asked for 10% of our money. He asked for 14% of our time. God wants time because He wants relationship. God wants time because He wants some time with His bride to be. God wants some time with you and me because we're His sons and daughters. And just like I cherish the time that I have with my very small kids, I had a lady tell me cherish every moment. They're five and three. That's a sweet age. And I am. I cherish every day with them. Every day I look at them and I cherish my time with them. I don't take any day for granted with my small kids because one day they will be gone and they'll bring me a bunch of grandkids or something. I want my time to be cherished. You know that God cherishes His time with us. He cherishes those times when we come into His presence and we just sit alone hearing God's voice just eager to hear what He's saying. You know what? It takes faith to believe this though. It takes faith to believe that God can do more in six days than we can in seven. But the same way that tithing breaks the curse of Mammon. It breaks the curse of greed. It breaks the curses of Malachi 3. I believe the Sabbath breaks the curse of fatigue and stress. Sabbath honoring God on that seventh day. And it doesn't have to be a legalistic day. It doesn't have to be always on Sunday. It can be anytime during the week. Sometimes my Sabbath is on Friday. Sometimes it's on Thursday afternoon and Friday morning. There's just a period of time in my life and it takes the same discipline by the way to honor the Sabbath as it does to tithe. Now for those of you who tithe, you know that it's a discipline that you've had to develop. You've had to discipline yourself that when you receive income that the first check you write is tithes checks. You just write it. You don't even think about spending it because it doesn't belong to you. You're spending God's money that way. So we just take the 10%. We set it aside. That's a discipline, Pam, and I've had for 15 years of marriage. Now let me tell you something about time. It's harder to discipline your time than it is your money. I believe that. And I believe that's why we're not as good at it. The same way that you say this time is holy time. This time I've set aside to be with the Lord. This is time that my family and I are going to be together. And we're going to do something together. We're going to seize from our striving today. We're going to seize today from our toils. We're going to seize today from our busy schedule. This is the day the Lord has made. I am looking forward to my Sabbath day. And I've got these pair of shorts at home. They're kind of gym shorts. This is a terrible visual picture, okay? But they're really old. And I've got pain on them from days that I didn't honor the Sabbath when I was wearing them. I've painted more of myself in the wall. And they're old and I'm looking for any day for families to throw them away. I've got shirts that are ten years old, old t-shirts. And when I'm wearing that old t-shirt and that old pair of shorts, Marcus has seen those old pair of shorts. They're terrible. He won't come over when I'm wearing them. And I'm glad. The point is when I'm wearing those clothes, I'm in Sabbath mode. I don't shave. I might brush my teeth. Y'all do brush my teeth. I don't comb my hair. I wear old ratty hat. I don't care. I don't do anything. I had that day yesterday. I'm telling you, it's wonderful. You know what? I'm gonna get a lot done today. I'm gonna get a lot done tomorrow. But I gave the first fruits to the Lord. The time that He asked for me, I gave it. And I was up very early yesterday. And I just sat before the Lord. I came into the office. God, I just needed some time alone with the Lord. And I gave it to Him. I said, "Lord, this is the first fruit of my week today. I'm gonna sit in your presence. I just want to hear you, Lord. What do you have to say to me? I have a lot to say to you. But Lord, what do you want to say?" And I heard some very clear things that I needed to hear. And I came back home rested, refreshed, took a nap, a good lunch. I mean, that's a great day. That's a wonderful day. You know what? I wish everyone in the church had a day like that. It is my prayer that in the next 12 months, every family in this church finds time to do nothing. Have you ever heard a pastor say that? Just find time to do nothing. Find a lazy, lousy day to do nothing. And I believe the glory of the Lord will come into your life. It will radically change your health. It will change your schedule. The favor of the Lord will come upon your business. The favor of the Lord will come upon your schedule in such a powerful way. It will liberate you the same way tithing liberates your money. The Sabbath will liberate your week. It will liberate your time. The word Sabbath is mentioned 113 times in the New King James Version. The word tithe is mentioned 16. Almost 10 times more often the Bible talks about Sabbath than it does tithing. I believe that he wants the first fruits of our time and energy. And I believe when you give him the first fruits of your time and energy that this fatigue, this burdensome life that you live in right now will simply go away. I believe the Lord is going to lift it off of you. In fact, here's what I'm declaring. You can receive this if you want. This afternoon today, July 10th, July 11th will be the most restful afternoon you've had in many, many years if you'll receive this today. You'll wake up in the morning, just give him the afternoon. Don't start with the whole day. Maybe you can't. Just give him the entire afternoon though. Give him the afternoon today. Cancel whatever that's not necessary. And just do nothing. Don't be boring. You have fun. We had fun. We go out to the swimming pool, do those things. Go have fun. But don't do anything that's going to wear you out. Just rest. Will you receive this today? Are you receiving it? Will you just close your eyes with me? I'm going to pray over you. I have such a burden for you today. I know the Lord gave me this message because there is a day coming very soon where the Lord is going to pour his spirit out upon you. And I want that. I want the spirit of the Lord in my life. I want to walk in his power and presence. But I know in order to prepare myself for that. I've got to have time. And I'm in control of my time. And I want to pray for you. Right now, if you're here and you're where you simply are exhausted, you're simply tired, you're fatigued. We just lift your hands right now where you're sitting and receive right now. The rest of the Holy Spirit. It's a promise of the gift from the Lord. It's nothing I can give you. It's simply a gift from the Holy Spirit today. And Holy Spirit, we just welcome you right now into this service. Holy Spirit, we not only believe in you, we receive you today. And I bind fatigue and worry and stress over every person's life right now in this congregation. Lord, I pray in Jesus' name that you would come and fill us with your rest. Fill us with your presence. Fill us with your supernatural anointing in favor. Lord, I pray right now that fatigue would be lifted right now over every man and every woman. And Lord, I especially sense today that there are business owners that they heard your voice to start a business. But Lord, they have somehow in the transition of starting their business, they have taken some burdens upon themselves that you never ask them to take. And Lord, today I pray you give them wisdom to know how to release those burdens. Father, I pray today for moms, for women, for ladies here that are not only working outside the home, but working inside the home. Lord, I pray for favor upon their lives right now in Jesus' name. I pray, Lord, you give them wisdom to see how to change their schedule that would allow more time with you. Lord, I pray for single moms and single dads in this house today. Lord, as they are doing double duty, not only they're being mom and dad, but Lord, they're having to work. Lord, I pray you give them wisdom. Give them favor. Lord, I pray that you'd give them relationships for people to come into their life to help them do the things that they're doing that they would have time with you, Lord. Father, whatever snare, whatever trap the enemy is placed in our lives, to rob us of time, I'm asking you right now, Lord, to make it known to us and to remove it in Jesus' name. And we receive the promise of your rest. We receive it right now. And Lord, we make a choice in our heart today to honor the Sabbath, to honor our time with you, and to look forward to it, Lord, in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.