How Can Jesus Give Me Soul Rest? 3/16/25

Good morning, friends. If you don’t know me, my name is Ryan, and I get to serve you this week and the next two weeks as we jump into Matthew 12.

So for today, I’m just going to get this out on the table. I’m going to say it right off the bat. I am going for a North Hills Church record for the longest introduction to a single sermon. This is a record long held by Peter Hubbard. But I’m going for it. I’ve been in training. I think I’m ready. I even have a technique. I’m going to use three introductions to make one introduction, and I think I can get them. So we’re going to find out.

I do have a reason for this long introduction. I have a couple of goals. First, this is a family worship Sunday. So if your kids, if kids are in here, any of you Kidstuff kids, I am going to work really hard, and I need you to work really hard with me. I think you can follow along with this sermon, if you kind of listen to me. And I’ll work to try to make it interesting for you, even though I’m going to talk for a really, really long time. But we’re going to work together. So that’s goal number one. I hope the introduction will help with that.

Second, this introduction helps connect who Jesus is in Matthew, as we’ve seen him up to chapter 12, Jesus’s claim in Matthew 11, and how Matthew 12 is the answer. So, if my voice will hold out because I keep singing every song, we’ll try to make it. Here we go.

Introduction #1. Jesus makes a gigantic claim that he can give supernatural rest. He can give supernatural rest.

“Come to me and I will give you rest.”

“Take my yoke… and you will find rest for your souls.”

Your soul is kind of everything who you are as a being. Jesus says I can give you soul rest – internal, real eternal rest. I wish I could give people rest. I can do your chores for you to give you an opportunity to rest. I can listen to what’s going on in your life and try to bear a burden for you to provide rest. But I can’t actually give you the thing that is rest.

When Jesus makes that claim, “Come to me and I will give you soul rest,” that’s a crazy claim. If Matt Nestberg walked up on stage right now and said, come to me and I will give your soul rest, we would all think he’s a little wackadoo, a little crazy. You can’t say that. It is a crazy claim, unless Jesus can prove it. That he can give soul rest.

That leads to our question, how do we know Jesus can give soul rest? And I think that’s what Matthew 12 is all about. I’m going to summarize Matthew 12 this way. We’re going to be talking about all of this for the next three weeks.

Jesus, through divine authority, expresses divine mercy with humility to the needy.

Jesus through divine authority — he’s a supernatural King — expresses divine mercy, he expresses divine, forgiving love, and he does it with humility and he gives it to people who are really needy. If Jesus can do that, he can give us soul rest.

Introduction #2, Sabbath. Sabbath is a picture of real rest. Sabbath is all over Matthew chapter 12. We’ve kind of got to know what Sabbath is.

Sabbath is a Jewish holy day, and it would happen something like this. I want you to imagine it’s a Friday night. Jesus and his disciples and followers gather in a house to practice Shabbat, or Sabbath. Now we’re not exactly sure of the forms that Jesus and his followers took, but those records closest to Jesus would say that stuff like this would happen.

About eighteen minutes before sunset, one of the women that followed Jesus would begin Sabbath by lighting some candles, and then there would be ceremonial washing of the hands. And then everybody would bless that woman by quoting from Proverbs 31, blessing the woman of valor.

The night would abound with blessings, and bread, and wine. Challah bread would be covered with a decorative cloth, and if they used a knife to cut the bread, that knife would be covered with a cloth communicating to everybody there that this is a place of peace. Maybe it was Thaddeus or Bartholomew, Jesus’s friends, that would give the blessing that day.

Blessed are you Adonai our God, Sovereign of all, Creator of the fruit of the vine. Blessed are you Adonai our God, in love and favor. You have made the holy Shabbat our heritage, a reminder of the work of creation. As first among our sacred days, it recalls Exodus from Egypt. You chose us and set us apart from all the people. In love and favor you have given us your holy Shabbat as an inheritance.

Then the good part begins: the meal, the food, smoked fish. Now, they weren’t allowed to light a fire or work on Sabbath. More than likely, there was a stew that had been cooking for hours, filling the entire house with the aroma of good food. Jesus and his friends, they knew all about Sabbath in a way that we don’t. They knew that there was a warning about Sabbath in the Law. The Law says everybody who profanes or treats wrongly the Sabbath shall be put to death.

Whoa! That’s super serious language. Why is Sabbath so serious? Well, see, Jesus and his friends would have memories about that day that many of us don’t have.

See, they would remember dependence. God’s people rest on that day because God provides.

See, there was this moment in Israel where they were out in the wilderness, and God provided his people food, supernatural food, that showed up on the ground, and it was called manna. And God said this,

“See! The Lord has given you the Sabbath; therefore on the sixth day he gives you bread for two days.”

They lived in a culture where if they didn’t work, they didn’t eat. They couldn’t run to Publix and get a sub. When God says, don’t work on Sunday, they’re thinking, well, how are we going to eat? God says, I’ll provide for you.

“Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy…”

“but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it, you shall not do any work.”

You depend. They would remember obedience. God’s people rest because God commands it. Sabbath made the cut, the big 10, the 10 commandments right up there with “Thou shalt not murder” is “you shall observe the Sabbath day to keep it holy.”

They would remember omnipotence. They could rest because God possesses all the power. Over and over in the Bible, one of the things that we see that shows God’s power is creation. And this is what it says in the Law.

“For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and then he rested on the [Sabbath] seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.”

It was a day to remember God’s power. Jesus and his friends would remember evidence. They could rest because God chose them.

“Above all you shall keep my Sabbaths, for this is a sign between me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I, the Lord, sanctify you.”

And all sanctify means is you take something and set it apart for a specific reason. So God chose Israel and set it apart to display his love to all the nations of the world. They could rest because God had chosen them.

They would remember deliverance. You can rest because God rescued you. God rescues slaves.

“But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God… You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.”

The Sabbath day wasn’t a version of our weekend, where we get a day off. The Sabbath was a commanded remembrance of our dependence, God’s provision, God’s love, God’s power, and God’s rescue. You needed a day off to try to think about all of that stuff.

If you were to break the Sabbath, or disrespect the Sabbath, or do something on the Sabbath that was against God’s command, it was like you were looking at God and saying, you aren’t who you say you are and you haven’t done what you said you’ve done. That’s why Sabbath was so serious. It was a lot of remembering.

Introduction #3. Who are the Pharisees and what do they know about Jesus?

There are these people in our story called the Pharisees and we’ve got to know about them because they and Jesus do not get along. The Pharisees, they’re just humans first. They’re not caricatures.

There are Pharisees who became followers of Jesus. One of them was named Nicodemus. He came and visited with Jesus. He spoke up for Jesus. Nicodemus is actually the one who brought spices that they use to bury Jesus. They’re human. They’re not cartoon bad guys.

You could define Pharisees this way. I read a lot of books about the Pharisees and some articles, and this is kind of, I’ve taken their definition and made my own.

A Pharisee is an influential Jewish religious leader, hyper-committed, and self-appointed to guard their view of God’s Law and how to obey God’s Law.

Now there are a lot of words in there. These guys had power, they’re influential. They were from Israel, they were Jewish. It was religious, it was about the Law and God. They were hyper-committed. These guys were wound tight. They were ready to go. They were self-appointed. No one in the Law had given them this job. They chose it. And it was their view of the Law and how to obey it. They had written 39, they had 39 ways you were supposed to keep Sabbath that they had written on top of the Bible.

What were they like? These guys were committed scholars. They would literally embarrass all of us with their knowledge of the first five books of the Bible. I think the Pharisees believed that they were protecting God’s Law and the nation of Israel. They believed they were protecting God’s Word and God’s mission.

Imagine leaving your house every day and thinking that your job was to protect all of God’s words and to protect God’s mission in the world. Imagine that burden on your shoulders. That was the Pharisees. The Scriptures describe this group of people, and it’s actually a sad portrait because they are so committed to something good, but they’re so misplaced in how they live it out.

The Pharisees have misplaced faith. They believe in the wrong thing. Matthew 3 says this,

“But when he [John the Baptist] saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, ‘You brood of vipers! [You bunch of snakes] Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not presume to say to yourselves, “We have Abraham as our father, for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham.’”

The Pharisees believed that their ancestry, their connection to Abraham saved them, and they ignored repentance.

The Pharisees had misplaced loves.

They loved money. Luke tells us,

“The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all these things, and they ridiculed him.”

They loved status. Luke says to the Pharisees,

“Woe to you Pharisees! For you love the best seat in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces.”

They love to sit to be seen, and they loved you seeing them and greeting them as an authority in the market.

The Pharisees had misplaced focus. Matthew says later in Matthew, we’ll come to this,

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness.”

Now that might sound weird, but basically what that means, Jesus is saying, as a Pharisee, you’ll sit in your herb garden with a pair of scissors and clip a mint leaf so that you tithe just the right amount. You will worry about a mint leaf, but you will ignore a human who needs mercy. It was misplaced. Jesus continues on this focus,

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they’re full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside may also be clean.”

I eat oatmeal every morning. Oatmeal, after you eat it, is a gross thing in a bowl. It leaves that kind of goopy film all over the bowl that you’re looking at. What Jesus is saying is he’s comparing an oatmeal bowl to the life of a Pharisee. And the way they do dishes is they make sure the outside of that bowl is just mirror bright. They wash that like crazy, but they leave the gross oatmeal stuff in the middle of the bowl, just sitting there, and then they put it back in the cabinet.

Jesus is saying, no, no, no. Wash it inside out. Pharisees, look inside. Live inside out. See, they wanted to present a life of being righteous, but they weren’t living a life of being righteous.

They had misplaced authority.

They thought they had the authority. They actually say this to Jesus at one point in Matthew 9. Jesus casts out a demon, a mute man speaks, and the crowds marveled saying,

“Never was anything like this seen in Israel.”

But the Pharisees said,

“He [Jesus] casts out demons by the prince of demons.”

Using their own authority, they look at Jesus and say, you’re a tool of the evil one. That’s a portrait of a Pharisee.

Now, what we need to know is what did these guys know about Jesus? Why were they in conflict? What did they already know about Jesus? What were the headlines in the news about Jesus? Or in modern terms, what were the hashtags that were all over social media during the time of the Pharisees? What did they hear about Jesus?

Well, they would have heard rumors that Jesus is the promised King and Messiah, and he was born of a virgin. That story would have circulated from shepherds who visited Jesus and from wise men who came to Jerusalem later and gave him really expensive gifts and worshiped a baby.

They would have heard that Jesus is God’s Son. Jesus was baptized and a voice from heaven said,

“This is my beloved Son in whom I’m well pleased.”

They would have heard about Jesus’s teaching. He taught people how to live in God’s kingdom. He preached this wild sermon that we call the Sermon on the Mount. And that teaching was way upside down compared to the Pharisees.

They would have heard and seen that Jesus is divinely powerful.

He healed a mute man. They would have watched as Jesus hangs out with sinners and he teaches losers. You see, Jesus was with all kinds of sinners and his followers, rather than being the religious elite like the Pharisees, and Sadducees, and scribes, were people like fishermen, and a tax collector, and a fringe religious zealot. And because of all of that, crowds were following Jesus.

Now remember, imagine you’re a Pharisee, your job every day, protect God’s Word, protect God’s mission. And you hear all of this about this guy Jesus from Nazareth. Headlines everywhere, social media abuzz, crowds following. How would you feel about Jesus? That guy’s trouble, he’s messing everything up.

I think I did it. Longest introduction in history. Right there, thank you, thank you. It’s not easy, it’s not easy. You’ve got to stick to the fundamentals, you’ve got to stretch.

What I want to do is get us into Matthew 12, and if we could all, kids and everybody, hold in our brains these things that we just worked through. Jesus makes this big claim: I’ll give you supernatural soul rest. The idea of the Sabbath being this serious, beautiful, holy day. The Pharisees who are the ones who guard the Sabbath. And then everything we know about Jesus as a person, that’s where we come to, what I think is, a powder keg of Matthew chapter 12. Would you stand? I’m going to read verses 1-8.

“At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry, and they began to pluck heads of grain and to eat. But when the Pharisees saw it, they said to [Jesus], ‘Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath.’ [Jesus] said to them, ‘Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, and those who were with him: how he entered the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence, which it was not lawful for him to eat nor of those who are with him, but only for the priests? Or have you not read in the Law how on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are guiltless? I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. And if you had known what this means, “I desire mercy and not sacrifice,” you would not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.’”

This is the Word of God. You may be seated.

The Pharisees immediately challenged Jesus. They watched this go down, they can’t believe what they’re seeing, and as Sabbath police, they accuse Jesus because of what his disciples did. They plucked a couple of heads of grain and ate a couple of seeds.

How does Jesus respond? Jesus questions the Pharisees’ understanding of the Law. That should go well. The hyper-committed, self-appointed, police of the law. Jesus’s response, he doesn’t debate the law. He asks them, do you get it? He does this, Jesus twice says, “Have you not read?”

I believe there are two types of people in this world when it comes to IKEA furniture. There are those who read the instructions, and there are those who just start putting it together. I am the former. I read any and all provided instructions. I count the parts. I arrange the parts before I put something together. And if I don’t have the parts that I need, I call the provided number and they send me the parts, and then I put it together, right?

If Rebecca, if I was having trouble — which I probably would — putting together something from IKEA, and Rebecca were to walk in and go, “Well, did you read the directions?” I would literally be offended. 29 years. “Of course, I’ve read the instructions.”

That feeling is what Jesus does to the Pharisees. Asking a Pharisee, have you read the Law? Of course they have. That’s their one thing. That’s their gig. That’s what they do super well. So why ask the question, Jesus?

We can’t miss it. Jesus knows they’ve read it. He wants them to comprehend it. He wants them to get it. And I think this is important. Jesus’s interactions with the Pharisees are often discussed in the church as Jesus reserves his harshest words for the Pharisees. And that’s probably true. Jesus often corrects the Pharisees. Also probably true. But we can never miss that in every moment when Jesus is interacting with the Pharisees, he wants them to get it. The tone of Jesus’s voice, the way he’s speaking to them, he wants them to understand what that law is actually about. Jesus asks these questions,

“Have you not read?”

And he brings up two scenarios for them to consider. In light of them accusing his disciples, he brings up two scenarios and says, well, what do you do with this, guys?

Scenario number one is David. David is on a pretend mission for King Saul. And he arrives in this town. And he and his followers are hungry, so he asks the priest, “Hey, do you have any food?” The priest didn’t have any extra food. The only food the priest had were these 12 loaves that sat in the tabernacle. They’re called the Bread of the Presence, and they represent the 12 tribes of Israel. And that was the food for the priest and his family. They ate it every time it was switched out. No one else could have it.

But the priest in this moment complies with David, I think, because of who David is. He’s on a mission from the king, and he’s the anointed successor to the king. David has authority, and the priest gives it to him because they’re hungry. Authority and mercy.

Scenario number two, the priests in the temple. On the Sabbath, the day we’re not supposed to work or do anything, the really serious Jewish holy day, the priests still had to work. And when they worked, Jesus is saying, they’re not profaning or disrespecting the Law because they have the authority to do this role on the Sabbath. And in doing it, they are being conduits of mercy for God’s people. Authority and mercy.

I believe Jesus uses these two stories to try to teach the Pharisees a truth. Yes, the Law is the authority, but it is always pointing to God’s mercy and your need for mercy. The Law is the authority for this group of people, for the Pharisees, for God’s people, but it is always pointing to God’s mercy and our need for mercy.

Look at how this law works. Consider it, what is it pointing to? What does it show you when you read it and end up feeling lacking? You can’t keep the Law. The Law gives you an answer in mercy, whether it’s a lamb, or a dove, or a grain offering. The Law is always pointing you towards your lack of ability to be right and God’s ability to make you right. The Law is the authority. It’s pointing to God’s mercy.

Jesus also questions their understanding of the Law with another question.

“If you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice’ you would not have condemned the guiltless.”

One, Jesus declares his followers guiltless. They did nothing wrong on Sabbath. And then he questions them. If you guys knew, and he quotes from the Old Testament here, I desire mercy. God desires mercy, not sacrifice. He’s coming right back at them again. Pharisees, this law that you love has a point. The Law’s authority leads us somewhere. It shows us something. The Law is a gigantic directional arrow on a highway pointing to God’s mercy.

Michael Card, in his amazing book, “A Sacred Sorrow,” which is about lamenting, if you are going through a season of difficulty, I highly recommend this book. It is beautiful. He has this one little statement that struck me that applies to the Pharisees in this moment. He writes, God

“looks down on his frustrated, inconsistently Torah abiding children,”

Torah is a word for the Law, the first five books of the Bible. So God

“looks on his people, this nation, who are frustrated and inconsistently obeying his law, and he says to them in effect, ‘How could you even think that that [the Law] was only all I was?’”

Pharisees, when you read the Law, how can you think that that’s all that God is? God is more than the Law. The Law is not God, God’s God. And he has a heart of mercy expressed through his Law that the Pharisees missed. Jesus responds by questioning.

Jesus also responds by declaring his divine authority. Jesus declares his divine authority. If they were already in tension, if the Pharisees were already in tension with everything they knew about Jesus that we talked about, they’re already a little on edge with him, and then there’s this little Sabbath incident where they accuse him. Jesus pushes it even further. He raises the stakes, the stakes of drama in the story.

He says to them, right after

“I desire mercy, not sacrifice,”

telling the story about the priest in the temple, he says,

“something greater than the temple is here.”

Now, I often see things a little dramatically, but at that point, you would think the Pharisees’ eyebrows would have risen so fast, their phylacteries flipped off. Well the phylactery joke didn’t land, did it? Edit for third service.

They had to be confused, angry, freaking out a little bit. What could be greater than the temple? The temple is God’s dwelling place with man. What could be greater than the location where sin is forgiven? What could be greater than the place where the kingdom of God and the kingdom of man still overlap? What could possibly be greater than that?

Matthew has given us an answer all the way back beginning at chapter 1-11. The answer is this Jewish Rabbi from the back woods town of Nazareth. He was born of a virgin with miraculous power. He defeated the evil one in the desert. He defines living in God’s kingdom on the Sermon on the Mount. And through his upcoming death, burial, resurrection, and return will save all of those who put their faith in him. What’s better than the temple? The Messiah. And he’s right there.

I find myself so quickly judging the Pharisees, and then I hate that about myself. These experts in what God said about his coming Messiah, and he’s right there, and they’re missing it. And that scares me. I don’t want to miss it.

What could be greater than the temple? Jesus.

Jesus then declares his authority by saying,

“For the Son of Man is the lord of the Sabbath.”

“The Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.” I don’t know how many of you are C.S. Lewis fans and have read any of his works, but in “Chronicles of Narnia,” Peter and Edmund are called “sons of Adam,” and Susan and Lucy are called “daughters of Eve.” Now, it simply means they’re human beings, but sons of Adam and daughters of Eve sounds way cooler in the books.

In the same way, in Matthew, Son of Man could just mean you’re a human, you’re born of a man and woman. But in this moment, that little phrase that Jesus loves to say about himself, that’s what he refers to himself as the most in the Gospels is the Son of Man.

I think that’s like, when he says it, it’s like hearing an echo. An echo starts over here and then you end up hearing it later. It’s like you’re standing in this large valley, and you yell something out and it takes it a while to travel, but you still hear it out there. When Jesus said, Son of Man, that’s the end of an echo that began in Daniel 7. And I think because the Pharisees knew their old Testament, they would have heard the echo. Let’s go to Daniel 7 and see where this Son of Man began. Daniel says this,

“I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days…”

Ancient of Days is a nickname for God. Ancient of days, the one with no beginning or no end. This Son of Man is presented before the Ancient of Days.

Now remember, in the Bible, there are lots and lots of descriptions of creatures that are around God’s throne, that are around the Ancient of Days. So a description of somebody that’s just human, a Son of Man, it kind of sticks out in the Bible. This is what’s said about this Son of Man.

“And to [the Son of Man] was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting [kingdom], which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.”

The Son of Man in front of the Ancient of Days receives the kingdom of all mankind, every nation and people, and they’re going to serve him. So this Son of Man is a King, but he’s no ordinary King. He’s not normal, because his kingdom is one that is an everlasting kingdom. The Son of Man is a forever and ever King of all peoples, and that kingdom will never be destroyed. That Son of Man sounds way different than just a normal human.

Jesus, like a reverberating echo from Daniel, looks at the Pharisees and says, I’m the Son of Man. I’m the forever and ever King. And the Ancient of Days has given me all people to serve me, and you’re one of them. That is a gigantic authority claim. It’s one more time where we cannot let Jesus be some teacher or some nice human. You cannot say, I’m the Son of Man and not be either crazy or divine.

Now, I imagine at this point the Pharisees are going to need one of those little portable defibrillators, they’re going to need a reset. They’re losing their minds. But one more time, Jesus pushes the authority stakes one step further. And he says this, the Son of Man, the echo from Daniel, he’s also Lord of the Sabbath.

Now remember, Sabbath was serious, one of the 10 commandments. Jesus says, I get to define what happens in the Ten Commandments. I’m Lord of that. I’m Lord of that one about the Sabbath. That’s who I am. I get to tell you what it looks like to Sabbath.

Remember earlier, when we talked about what Jesus and his friends would remember about Sabbath, we did five things.

They would remember dependence. God’s people rest because God provides.

They would remember obedience. God’s people rest because God commands it.

They would remember omnipotence. God has all the power.

They would remember evidence. God’s people rest because God sets his people apart. He chooses them.

They would remember deliverance. God’s people can rest because God rescues slaves.

That’s what they would remember about Sabbath. Jesus is saying, I’m Lord of all of that. You can rest because God provides. This time it isn’t manna, it’s the bread of life. It’s me. Jesus is saying, you can believe in me. You need to obey, and repent, and believe the gospel because you can rest because of who I am.

You need to remember omnipotence. I have all the power. I have displayed my divine power over and over again. I am evidence that God can give you rest because God is going to set you apart through me.

I am your deliverance. Everybody who is a rescued slave, it happens through Jesus. Jesus is just saying all of that stuff is about me. I am the Lord of the Sabbath. And in a way, he’s pushing it even further. I am Sabbath. Jesus’s big original claim, right? I will give you rest for your souls. I will give you Sabbath soul rest forever and ever.

Well, how in the world can that be true? Because Jesus is Lord of it and he is the Sabbath. And I know for especially maybe some of you kids or if you’re new to faith, that’s a weird way to say it. But if Sabbath is God’s given, perfect rest, we enter it through who Jesus is. Which is like saying, I’m going to choose to believe that I am in need of mercy, that Jesus has said he will rescue me through mercy, because he has the authority to do it. And when I believe that, I get to step into a Sabbath rest, a day ceasing from work, and I get to live out of that Sabbath forever and ever and ever and ever and ever. If Jesus is who he says he is in this passage, he can give soul rest.

Matthew doesn’t stop here in the story to explain all of how that happens, we’re going to get there later in the book of Matthew. But what I’d like to do is, I’d like to pair one other section of Scripture to help us see this connection between Jesus’s divine authority, Jesus’s mercy, and even a connection to how we view the Sabbath today.

This is found in Colossians, a guy named Paul wrote this. He was a little bit after Jesus, wrote a lot of the New Testament. Paul says this to a church.

“See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition,”

What does human tradition reminds you of in our story today? Who? The Pharisees. Don’t be captive according to human tradition.

“according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.”

Paul wants us to be captive by something. Be captive by Christ. Don’t be held captive by the teachings of men like the Pharisees who miss the point of the Law. For in Jesus,

“the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily…”

Divine authority.

“And you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority…”

If Jesus is divine, he now has ultimate authority over everything. Well, how do we get to be part of that?

“And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh,”

The Law points to you and says, you have a need.

“God made alive”

God rescued you, God made you alive…

“together with [Jesus], [How?] having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. [God] disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in [Jesus].”

This divine authority that Jesus possesses is expressed in divine mercy to people who are in debt. The Law tells you, you’re indebted. God tells you, I can take care of that. Even the Pharisees knew they were in debt. They still did sacrifices.

Then Paul makes one final link, and this goes back to the idea of Sabbath for us, even today. If that’s true, if that’s what God did in you, if you are free, if you’re forgiven, if you’re rescued,

“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 substance belongs to Christ.”

The substance of Sabbath belongs to Jesus. Even in our day, we can honor a Sabbath.

I was talking with Peter about this passage, and he said that no Jew could have said, “Don’t let anybody judge you about Sabbath.” They had plenty of rules to judge each other about Sabbath. But here Paul is saying, if you are in Jesus, yes, you can give attention to a Sabbath.

So for us today that regular rhythm is still valuable. It is good if you follow Sabbath as a family practice, that is beautiful. But the Scriptures are saying Sabbath is valuable and Sabbath is flexible. You can honor it to the degree that God gives you faith.

Jesus makes a big claim. I can give you internal, eternal soul rest. He can do that because of his divine authority. He’s better than the temple. He’s the Son of Man, and he’s the Lord of the Sabbath, and he provides you mercy through himself, through the story of his life, death, burial, and resurrection.

How can Jesus give us soul rest?

Jesus, through divine authority, expresses divine mercy with humility to the needy.

So friends, on this morning, at the end of this section of Matthew, I just want us to pause and consider if we have interacted with Jesus so that we have soul rest. That’s his claim. Here it is. How do we get it? By believing who he says he is.

Has that happened for you? It’s as simple in one way as saying, take Jesus up on his offer. If you want to live a life of soul rest in the middle of everything that’s wild and weird, where we live right now, the only answer I can give you is the divine authority and mercy found in the humble man named Jesus who looks at needy people and says, I can rescue you.

Let’s just take a few minutes together here in our seats to ponder the authority of Jesus in our life, and then we’re going to sing together.