An Unhurried Life
We’re starting a new 5 week teaching series we’re calling The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, and it’s about how to have peace in a world of hurry. One of the things we’re focusing on as a church this year is the topic of peace. We’re focusing on how we can bring much peace into our lives, families, people in our city, and this is a series that can help us find peace when it comes to our stressed out, burnt out, busy, overcrowded schedules. It’s a series that can help us start the process of eliminating hurry, so we can find peace in our world of hurry. Our primary research for this series comes from a book called The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry written by Pastor John Mark Comer. He did an extensive study on the unhurried life of Jesus, so much of this series is credited to him. But let’s turn to Matthew 11 so we can begin our own extensive study, on the unhurried life of Jesus. If you open your bible to the middle, keep turning right, you’ll find Matthew. We’ll be in Matthew 11:28-30, and the title of the message is An Unhurried Life. The big idea of the message is we need to learn from the life of Jesus, to live an unhurried life like Jesus...We need to learn from the life of Jesus, to live an unhurried life like Jesus...
Here’s your context. At this point in Matthew’s gospel Jesus already commissioned the 12 disciples for ministry, and he’s now teaching in their hometowns. As he’s teaching he gives people an invitation to follow him, and at the end of Matthew 11 he specifically gives them an invitation to find rest for their weary and burdened souls. So as we study this text we’ll learn about the following three things: The Problem, The Solution, The Result. We’ll learn about 1st the problem of hurry, 2nd the solution to hurry, which leads to 3rd the result of getting to rest from a life of hurry. We’ll learn from the life of Jesus, how to live an unhurried life like Jesus. Let’s check it out.
Matthew 11:28-30 states, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened...” Are you feeling weary?...Are you feeling burdened?...What in your life is causing you to feel weary and burdened?...Jesus does an X-Ray on the human soul, and the 1st thing he tells us that we have a problem. He says we have a problem, and it’s that we’re weary and burdened...The truth is we’re weary and burdened by a lot of different things in our lives. The things causing me to feel weary and burdened might be different than yours, but we all have things that are causing us to feel weary and burdened. Jesus doesn’t mention any specific kind of weary and burden, so this can entail any kind of weary and burden we’re going through in life. One of the issues causing people to feel weary and burdened back then, was all the legalistic rules religious leaders said they had to follow to have a relationship with God. But one of the issues causing people to feel weary and burdened today, is having a hurried soul. Having a hurried soul, having a hurried life affects so many different areas of our lives physically, emotionally, spiritually, relationally. Even Carl Jung realized this, who’s the famous psychologist that developed the framework for the introvert extrovert personality types. Carl Jung said, “Hurry isn’t from the devil. Hurry is the devil!” It’s because it affects so many different areas of our lives and relationships. In his book The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry John Mark Comer lists several symptoms of hurry sickness:
1. Irritability - You get mad, frustrated, or just annoyed way too easily.
2. Restlessness - When you actually do try to slow down and rest, you can’t relax. Your mind and body are too hyped up on the drug of speed.
3. Workaholism - You just don’t know when to stop. Or worse, you can’t stop. Your drugs of choice are accomplishment and accumulation. It can show up as careerism, or obsessive housecleaning and errand running. By day’s end you have nothing left to give to your spouse, children, or loved ones. They get the grouchy, curt, overtired you, and it isn’t pretty.
4. Out-Of-Order Priorities - You’re always getting sucked into the tyranny of the urgent, instead of the important. Your life is reactive, not proactive. You’re busier than ever before, and you feel like there’s never enough time for what really matters to you.
5. Lack Of Care For Your Body - You don’t have time for the basics: Eight hours of sleep, daily exercise, a healthy meal, and so you’re tired and live off stimulants.
6. Escapist Behaviors – You’re too tired to do what’s life giving to your soul, and instead turn to your distraction of choice. Overeating, overdrinking, binge-watching Netflix, browsing social media, or some other preferred cultural narcotic.
7. Slippage Of Spiritual Disciplines - When you get over busy, the things that are truly life giving for your soul are often the first to go. Such as spending time with Jesus...
This last one is critical, because it’s the one thing that can heal our hurry sickness. See the primary problem with hurry sickness, with having a hurried soul, is that it pulls us away from spending time with Jesus who can bring rest to our weary, burdened, hurried soul. Dr. Michael Zigarelli from the Charleston Southern University School of Business conducted an “Obstacles to Growth Survey,” of over 20,000 Christians across the globe. What he learned is that busyness is a major hindrance to a growing spiritual life. Dr. Zigarelli states, “It may be the case that Christians are assimilating to a culture of busyness, hurry, and overload. This leads to God becoming more marginalized in their lives, which leads to a deteriorating relationship with God, which leads to Christians becoming even more vulnerable to adopting secular assumptions about how to live.” In other words, we’ve adopted a cultural hurried way of life that’s affecting our time with God, it’s affecting our relationship with God, and it’s causing us to live in ways that aren’t in alignment with God. It’s causing us to live weary and burdened lives. John Ortberg states, “For many of us the great danger isn’t that we’ll renounce our faith. It’s that we’ll become so distracted and rushed and preoccupied, that we’ll settle for a mediocre version of it. We’ll just skim our lives, instead of actually living them.” The problem with having a hurried soul is that it causes us to skim our lives, instead of actually living them. It causes us to skim our relationship with Jesus, and our relationship with others, instead of enjoying good quality time with them. It causes us to feel stressed out, anxious, quick tempered snapping at the very people we love, and neglecting to spend quality time with the very people we love. Simply put, it causes us to feel weary and burdened like Jesus said.
Again vs. 28 states, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, because I am lowly and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” So Jesus 1st tells us about the problem, which is that we’re weary and burdened. But the 2nd thing he tells us about is the solution. He says the solution to the problem of being weary and burdened, is to take my yoke and to learn from me. A yoke is the heavy wooden harness on the shoulders of oxen, forcing them to carry or pull heavy farm equipment. So the implication here is that we’re all yoked to something...We’re all yoked to something that’s heavy, that’s causing us to feel weary and burdened. What are those things for you?...What are those things you’re yoked to, that are causing you to feel weary and burdened?...Are yoked to your career, success, money?...Are yoked to certain expectations in your marriage and family?...Are you yoked to athletics, academics, getting into a certain college?...What are you yoking your life to that’s driving you into the ground? We’re all yoked to something, and the things we’re yoked to are often what’s driving us into the ground. It’s what’s causing us to live a life of hurry and worry that leaves us feeling weary and burdened. Jesus is saying the way to rest your burdened soul is to put that yoke down and yoke your life to him. It’s to stop yoking your life to other things that’ll never satisfy, and instead yoke life to him, live for him, pursue him knowing he’ll never drive you into the ground like the things you’re yoking your life to. That’s what Jesus is saying the solution is for our weary, burdened, hurried souls! It’s that we need to take off whatever we’re yoking our lives to, and yoke our lives to him!
See what this is really about is becoming a disciple of Jesus, an apprentice of Jesus. That’s why he doesn’t just say take my yoke, instead he also says learn from me. It’s an invitation for us to become a disciple of Jesus, an apprentice of Jesus, a person who seeks to learn from Jesus. It’s an invitation for us to travel through daily life with him, so we can learn how to shoulder the weight of daily life that we’ve been trying to carry without him. Tim Keller states, “You can’t just come and get rest on Sunday, then during the rest of the week not be yoked to Jesus. This is about becoming a lifelong learner, where every day you’re seeking to hear what he has to say. You’re reading about him, studying him, reflecting and saying, ‘Lord, I want to learn from you.’” His point is the more you yoke your life to Jesus and learn from Jesus, the more you’ll experience rest for your weary, burdened, hurried soul. In the words of John Mark Comer, “People all over the world outside the church and in—are looking for an escape, a way out from under the crushing weight to life this side of Eden. But there’s no escaping it. The best the world can offer is a temporary distraction to delay the inevitable, or deny the inescapable. That’s why Jesus doesn’t offer us an escape, instead he offers us something far better…He offers his apprentices a whole new way to bear the weight of our humanity with ease, which is by his side. Like two oxen in a field, tied shoulder to shoulder, with Jesus doing all the heavy lifting. It’s a slow, unhurried, present to the moment life, that’s full of love, joy, and peace. An easy life isn’t an option, but an easy yoke is.” An easy life isn’t an option, but carrying an easier yoke than the one we’re currently carrying is an option. But the question is will you keep carrying the yoke that’s burying you into the ground, or will you yoke yourself to Jesus and learn from him? Whatever’s yoking you, choking you, burdening your soul today, it’s most likely because you yoked yourself to something else instead of Jesus. Lay that yoke down, yoke yourself to Jesus, and rest your soul in him. He’s the only one who can lighten the yoke you’re carrying, and he’ll never drive you into the ground.
Again vs. 28 states, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, because I am lowly and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Jesus 1st tells us about the problem, he 2nd tells us about the solution, and he 3rd tells us about the result. He tells us the result will be rest for our souls. In the original Greek language the word rest is used as a verb in vs 28, but then it’s used as a noun in vs 29. So the 1st rest is an action that’s done to you when you yoke yourself to Jesus and learn from him. But the 2nd rest is the result of that action, which is that your soul will be at rest. You’ll be at a place in life where your soul is at rest. So the implication is the more you yoke your life to Jesus, the more you sit to learn from him, the more your soul will be at rest. But the less you yoke your life to him, the less you sit to learn from him, the less your soul will be at rest. Jesus says come to me, which is an invitation for anyone who’s weary and burdened to find rest in him. It’s an invitation for both eternal rest and daily rest. It’s an invitation for both eternal salvation and daily salvation. It’s an invitation for eternal salvation from sin, death, hell, failing to live up to legalistic religious rules like I mentioned before, and it’s also an invitation for daily salvation from whatever we’re yoking our lives to that’s driving us into the ground. As Christians we already found rest in Jesus for our soul eternally, but we often forget to find rest in Jesus daily from the yokes we’re carrying. We often view our salvation and rest as a distant reality in the future, instead of as a daily reality in the present. We often forget Jesus, yoke our lives to something else, start feeling weary and burdened by the yokes we’re carrying. When this happens instead of hurrying to our preferred escapism outlets, we need to hurry to sit with Jesus. We need to take off the yoke we’re carrying, yoke our lives back to Jesus, so we can find rest for our souls in him daily instead of just eternally. The more you yoke your life to Jesus and learn from him daily, the more your soul will find rest in him daily instead of just eternally. Greek Scholar Euguene Peterson captures this very well in his paraphrase of this text in The Message bible: “Are you tired?...Worn out?...Burned out on religion?...Come to me. Get away with me, and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace...and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”
The big idea of the message is we need to learn from the life of Jesus, to live an unhurried life like Jesus...We need to learn from the life of Jesus, to live an unhurried life like Jesus...The burdens of life are way too heavy for us to carry on our own. The good news is we don’t have to carry them on our own, because Jesus offers to carry them with us if we yoke our lives to him, and slow down enough to learn from him. Life is a much heavier burden to carry without Jesus, so we need to be willing to slow down, sit with Jesus, and learn from him daily. A hurried life is a great hindrance to that. In the words of C. S. Lewis’ mentor Walter Adams, “Hurry is the death of prayer!” Hurry is the death of prayer, and the death of so many different areas in our lives physically, emotionally, spiritually, relationally. So we have to address this hindrance of a hurried life that’s killing so many different areas in our lives, leaving us feeling wearied and burdened.
The best way to do that is to learn from the unhurried life of Jesus, which is what we’ll do over the next few weeks. We’ll study the unhurried life of Jesus as his apprentices, so we can learn how to live an unhurried life like Jesus. We’ll learn a few principles from the unhurried life of Jesus that can help us start the process of eliminating hurry in our lives, so we can find daily rest for our souls. Jesus wants you to find rest in him, which is why he gives you the invitation to come to him. But the question is, will you accept his invitation and come to him?...Will you lay your yoke down today, and yoke your life to him?...Will you be his apprentice, learn from him daily, so you can find rest for your weary, burdened, hurried soul?