Faith is a key element in Godly rest, because whatever doesn’t proceed from faith is sin (Romans 14:23). So, if we can’t rest without feeling guilty about it, it’s worth asking why. Do we glorify God in the way we rest (1 Corinthians 10:31)? If the answer is yes, there may be another possibility: the enemy got into our heads.
Welcome to part 3 of the series in which we explore common questions about tiredness, rest, and the Sabbath.
Watch or read this episode below:
“Get back to your burdens!”
Until the Holy Spirit pointed it out, I didn’t realize that the true enemy of rest is the devil. Of course, I knew that if Jesus is our Source of Peace, satan will stand in the way every way he can. But I didn’t realize that the devil actively tries to convince us to work harder. I’m not saying that hard work cannot be a good thing; I am all for working hard for God, since faith without works is dead (James 2:26).
But as we explored in the previous part of this series, the desire to serve God is an expression of our faith and the love we have for Him. However, I’ve seen how Christians can be gripped by works that seem holy but are a) born from oppression and b) outside the scope to which God called them. God pictures this for us in Exodus 5. Let’s read some of that text together, starting with verse 1.
Afterward Moses and Aaron went and said to Pharaoh, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Let my people go, that they may hold a feast to me in the wilderness.’” But Pharaoh said, “Who is the Lord, that I should obey his voice and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, and moreover, I will not let Israel go.” Then they said, “The God of the Hebrews has met with us. Please let us go a three days’ journey into the wilderness that we may sacrifice to the Lord our God, lest he fall upon us with pestilence or with the sword.” But the king of Egypt said to them, “Moses and Aaron, why do you take the people away from their work? Get back to your burdens.” And Pharaoh said, “Behold, the people of the land are now many, and you make them rest from their burdens!” The same day Pharaoh commanded the taskmasters of the people and their foremen, “You shall no longer give the people straw to make bricks, as in the past; let them go and gather straw for themselves. But the number of bricks that they made in the past you shall impose on them, you shall by no means reduce it, for they are idle. Therefore they cry, ‘Let us go and offer sacrifice to our God.’ Let heavier work be laid on the men that they may labor at it and pay no regard to lying words.” (Exodus 5:1-9, ESV).
You may know that in the story of Pharaoh and Moses, Pharaoh is a picture of the devil who opposes God and His children. God’s people needed to be delivered, set apart, and brought to the Promised Land, where they would enter God’s rest, but Pharaoh didn’t want to release his slaves. This is a picture of our salvation and the Sabbath rest we will enter when we continue in obedience (Hebrews 4:1-11).
We discussed this extensively in the previous part. Of course, the devil doesn’t want us to be delivered; he wants us to remain burdened and obedient to him. He wants his kingdom to grow, not God’s. He wants us to keep doing so much work that we have no time to cry out to our God and have fellowship with Him.
Kingdom economics
This is a trap for many of us. Even when we are walking in God’s will and fulfilling His purpose for our lives, we can still be tempted to prioritize the work we do for God over our relationship with Him.
It’s a trap I walk into regularly. Sometimes I’m so excited to go to work that I don’t feel like praying beforehand; I want to get right into it. Other times I feel I have too much to do, and I subconsciously treat sitting at Jesus’s feet as a waste of time. But of course it isn’t. Kingdom economics doesn’t work that way:
- When we invest in our relationship with God, our relationships with others also flourish.
- When we spend time in His Word, our insight and knowledge about Him and our own lives will grow.
- When we take the time to tell God what we need to do His will, He’ll give it to us (James 4:2-3).
So, the more time we spend with God, the more efficient, effective, and powerful our work becomes. That means that in contrast to doing things in our own strength, we gain time instead of losing it.
I’ve learned to choose to spend time with the Author of time in faith, over making time my god in fear.
Again and again, the stress and anxiety I felt proved to be completely unnecessary: somehow spending time with God always turned out to be the best choice.
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Meaningless labor
When we go back to our text, we read that Pharaoh forced the Israelites to do tiresome work, to make bricks for his meaningless buildings. I say meaningless because unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain (Psalm 127:1a). What we build without God is vanity; it wears us out and doesn’t glorify God.
This means that high productivity can be meaningless, even when it looks like fruitfulness and success to the outside world. In my book, Overcoming Burnout through Biblical Tactics, I talk about how, with my eyes wide open, I walked into the trap of doing something that seemed good, Godly even, but wasn’t at all God’s will. That burned me out, and rightfully so. The Bible gives us many warnings about what happens when we step outside God’s will.
Take this text for example: “And if in spite of this you will not listen to me, then I will discipline you again sevenfold for your sins, and I will break the pride of your power, and I will make your heavens like iron and your earth like bronze. And your strength shall be spent in vain, for your land shall not yield its increase, and the trees of the land shall not yield their fruit” (Leviticus 26:18-20, ESV).
We cannot be fruitful outside of God’s will. After a while of trying, we will become tired, because God wants us to understand that without Him, we are not powerful at all.
The “bricks” we make
In our text, the Israelites were burdened with making bricks. The bricks, made with straw, symbolize fleshly works (1 Corinthians 3:3-15). The story about the tower of Babel carries the same symbolism: it tells of people who wanted to reach heaven by their own might (Genesis 11:3-9). They wanted to make a name for themselves, to glorify themselves.
The “bricks” we make nowadays are still works about which we, deep down, believe that they will get us closer to heaven: the faithless deeds of legalism, people-pleasing, perfectionism, and other activities that masquerade as “good” but don’t glorify God. They glorify us!
When we continue to work for our salvation, and so our glory, the devil has us right where he wants us: working in vain for his kingdom, rather than purposefully for God’s. If we continue to work for him, we remain slaves to this world. It traps us in a mindset that we are not good enough in Christ, and that we can only save ourselves from the burden of sin and all the accompanying afflictions by working as hard as we can. This is where false religion comes from, and how traditions, rules, and even religious compulsions take the place of trust and love. With this mindset, any form of rest that doesn’t immediately produce tangible fruit evokes a feeling of guilt because it doesn’t seem to translate to Kingdom growth. But it does. Any spiritual growth you experience contributes to the maturing of the Body of Christ. And faithfully resting in Christ causes spiritual growth. You are part of the Body of Christ, so when you grow, the Body has also grown, and on top of that, you’ll pray more effectively, know God more fully, make wiser decisions, teach better, and so on.
Why they never entered the rest
Even after their deliverance, most Israelites continued to harden their hearts. They couldn’t shake their faithlessness for forty years and never entered the Promised Land (Psalm 95:8-11). Habits die hard. But we have to kill them by walking by the Spirit (Galatians 5:16-24). The Bible warns us not to make the same mistake as the Israelites who hardened their hearts, and tells us that the key to entering His rest is faith (Hebrews 3:7-19).
Unbelief stops us from resting in God: we need faith to know that we can lean on Him, we need faith to not anxiously lean on works, and we need faith to know when to stop working and sit at the Father’s feet to be refreshed. Therefore, the enemy doesn’t only push us to work harder to distract us from spending time with God; he also attacks our faith. If we believe in God but have no faith in His saving grace, we automatically resort back to works that please satan rather than God. That’s why other religions are based on works. Those give glory to people and put their slave driver, satan, on the throne. And truly resting, then, becomes something that is not allowed and is even frowned upon.
Who gave you this workload?
So, how do we triumph? Well, God is the One who sets us free from this slavery, and we walk in that freedom by accepting His grace by faith and, consequently, no longer trying to work for our salvation, for approval, or for acceptance.
God uses people as His hands and feet here on earth, but so does satan. He may inspire a boss, a parent, a teacher, even a pastor, anybody really, to act as Pharaoh did. They may try to convince us to take on burdens that we are not supposed to bear. Or they may try to work us to the bone, pushing us harder and harder until we have no time to spend with Jesus, but instead offer the best of our time and energy to them. It can be hard not to go along with their demands, especially when everybody does it or when people seem to judge you when you don’t. But in the end, we gain nothing by pleasing people without pleasing God first.
So, the first step is recognizing it. The second is setting proper boundaries. To be able to do that, it’s important to constantly remind yourself of what God has called you to. He has called you to have a relationship with Him. And that relationship will help you flourish and be fruitful for His Kingdom, in a way only you can. You can only know what that looks like when you focus on your relationship with Christ, by loving and respecting Him, walking with Him, learning from Him, listening to Him, and most of all, by trusting in Him. That is all He required from the Israelites He saved from the hands of Pharaoh, and that is all He requires of us, whom He saved from the hands of the devil. He wants us to love and trust Him enough to obey Him, no matter what other people may think. Nobody who prioritizes their relationship with God is put to shame. So any guilt you may feel when you do that is not from God.
In the next episode, we’ll talk about how we can rest and be recharged according to the Bible. See you there.