As a green youth pastor, I thought hosting a lock-in for students was a great idea. 8:00 p.m. to 8:00 a.m. Non-stop activities. No sleeping allowed. Whenever energy would drop, we served more candy and Mountain Dew. By the event’s end, students were moody and difficult to control. Leaders were over it, and I was questioning my call to ministry. After cleaning up, I went home, barely making it to the couch emotionally, physically, and relationally drained.
It doesn’t take a lock-in experience to understand a very important truth: lack of rest debilitates nearly every area of our life, from empathy, to problem solving, to resisting temptation. We also know the converse truth: rest restores!
With the pace of family life today, it’s legitimate to ask, “What does rest look like for the busy Christian family?” We rightly wondered whether there any guidelines in Scripture to inform our understanding of rest and whether the Sabbath principle still applies to Christians. How do we navigate the calendar commitments of life, work, school, and church with such limited time in the day?
Thankfully, Scripture speaks quite clearly to this topic, informing the rhythm of life for Christian families. The Old Testament gives clear instructions for human flourishing and how people and God are to relate to each other. The priests, sacrifices, and temple are all examples of this. In the New Testament we see the arrival of Jesus Christ, the long-awaited Messiah. He is the better and ultimate priest, sacrifice, and temple. He does not abolish the Old Testament commands but fulfills them (Matt. 5:17)! With him in mind, let’s look at five principles of rest that should characterize the life of a Christian family.
Rest Is Rhythmic
God instituted the gift of rhythmic rest within the very fabric of creation, establishing a rhythm in Genesis 2. On the seventh day he finished his work, and then he rested. Rest is the element that finishes work. Work is unfinished until there is rest from it. Believing that God is still working throughout his creation, sustaining all things (Col. 1:15-17) helps us understand that there is a rhythm of rest established on a rotation of time, not just on finishing a job.
We see this truth displayed throughout the created order. A farmer’s work is never done, but his week’s work can be. Or consider a commercial developer. He may say he’ll rest when the job is done. That often takes years! Even secular research1 has told us that work without rest will diminish returns. We see rhythmic rest in our created sleep patterns, in the biblical command to rest fields for a better harvest (Lev. 25:2-7), and on and on. When practiced with a set rhythm, rest is best.
Rest Is Spiritual
Rest is presented as spiritual throughout Scripture. Worship and rest are tied together in the fourth commandment. Psalm 46 calls us to “be still and know God.” The repeated calls to meditate and contemplate the things of the Lord (Phil. 4:8; Psa. 1:2; etc.), require rest through stopping, stillness, and a removal of other tasks. Have you ever tried to have a meaningful quiet time with the Lord while answering emails? Can you multitask confession while crunching numbers for a new budget proposal?
Conversely, to not rest is idolatrous. British theologian David T. Williams says that “we should never be so bound to any activity that we cannot rest from it regularly.”2 If anything totally consumes us to the point that we cannot set it down, it is an idol. More than just a physical action, rest is spiritual, revealing the true condition of our hearts.
Rest Leads Us to Remembrance
A significant part of the Sabbath command was to rest in order to remember the promises and provisions of our great God! Deuteronomy 5:15 commands the people of God to use the Sabbath as a day to remember their former condition of slavery and that it was the mighty hand of God who brought them their freedom!
Similarly, Jesus himself in Luke 22 establishes the Lord’s supper as a rhythmic remembrance. He commands believers to gather and to remember his spilled blood and broken body, given for us. Rest, in this sense, is a guarding of time so that you can stop and focus on what is most important. These truths can easily be forgotten in the busyness and speed of the week.
Rest Requires Us to Trust God to Provide
The American work ethic tells us that if you want it bad enough, then you can work hard enough to achieve all your dreams. It says you are the master of your success. But Scripture disagrees. Instead, it says that God is the one who provides for us. He is the one who makes the crops grow, and any good thing we have is a direct result of God’s giving it to us.
In Exodus 16:22-30, God miraculously provided manna when there was no other food available in the wilderness. The command was to collect only enough for the day and not to overwork or it will stink and rot. God was teaching his people to trust his provision. The only exception was to collect two portions on the day before the Sabbath, because no manna would be provided on the seventh day. This was also a lesson in trust, showing that a God-ordained pause from work highlights his provision.
Rest Is a Gift from God
Mark 2:27-28 tells the story of Pharisees questioning Jesus about why his disciples are picking grain, breaking the Sabbath command. Jesus responds by proclaiming that the Sabbath is a funnel for grace that God gives to his people to guide them to a right relationship with him. A right relationship with God is the fastest path to experiencing his profound blessings! Rest is a gift. It is a mechanism designed to bring us to a place of flourishing in God’s plan.
Jesus, The Greater Gift
Rest, as presented in Scripture, happens in a rhythm, is sacred, draws us to remember his promises and reliance on God’s provision, and is ultimately a gift that leads to our joy and God’s glory. The fourth commandment called the Israelites to remember the Sabbath by keeping it holy (Ex. 20:8-11). Then we see Jesus fulfilling that Sabbath command by calling all people to rest in him (Matt. 11:28). He declares too that he is the Lord of the Sabbath (Matt. 12:8). The author of Hebrews explains in chapter four that when we trust in Christ alone for salvation, Jesus fulfills the fourth commandment and becomes our Sabbath rest. He offers a full and complete spiritual rest that informs believers how to live their lives in the freedom of the New Covenant.
Let’s get practical: how does this play out for busy families today? Just as Jesus provided himself as the ultimate sacrifice, negating any further need for believers to offer the blood of goats and bulls (Heb. 10:1-18), believers are still called to live sacrificially. We don’t pick our best lamb anymore; rather, we are to consider our lives as living sacrifices (Rom. 12:1), giving generously (1 John 3:16-17), loving the least of these (Matt. 25:35-40), and bearing each other’s burdens (Gal. 6:2).
“Sacrifice” is to be a descriptor of the believer’s life because Jesus sacrificed all for us. In the same way, rest is to characterize the believer’s life, because Jesus is the ultimate rest for us!
If you’re looking for more resources to assist you in at-home discipleship, consider using Rooted’s family discipleship video curriculum with your church or small group.
