An Appointment with Christ: the Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes (Mark 6:30), Part 3

We have spoken about the importance of living life in complete intimacy with the person of Jesus Christ, about the dependence on God, the Holy Spirit, and Christ Jesus that is required in order to have a happy, effective, and peaceful life.

After going out on their missionary journey, the disciples returned and gathered again with Jesus. It is interesting that when the passage says that they came to Christ, He told them, “Come away by yourselves”—this is in verse 31—“come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while,” because, it says, “many were coming and going, and they did not even have time to eat.” I like the fact that when the disciples approached the Lord Jesus Christ to share with Him the experiences of the last few days, they found that the Lord also wanted to be with them, and He said to them, “Boys, let us go away somewhere; let us not talk here. Instead, let us take a vacation; let us go to a place of rest where we will not have to contend with people and the demands of ministry, and let us talk. I want you to rest; I want you to clear your minds and replenish your physical and emotional energy, and there we will then have an opportunity to share more deeply.”

I love this idea of a Christ who wants us to rest and to have an opportunity to spend time with Him intimately, without interruptions. Brothers and sisters, how important it is for us to set aside time to rest—simply to rest. I am not referring here to anything overly sublime or spiritual, but simply to our understanding that we need to set aside time to relax our bodies and replenish our energy.

You know that when you work, whether with your mind or in any other way, the neurons—the cells in your brain—use certain chemicals that, like anything else, become depleted through use and need to be replenished; and one needs to set aside time to replenish the energy and chemicals that the body and brain need in order to carry out their natural processes. If we are continually consuming, consuming, and expending energy, and we do not take time for the body to replenish that energy and those chemicals, we are going to burn out; we are going to wear ourselves down; we will always be operating at an emotional, mental, and physical deficit. It is like a machine that is always working and working, while we never take time to stop it, oil it, clean it, or even replace some parts that have worn out through use.

How important it is that, if we are working, we set aside time to renew our strength. That reminds me of the story of a man who was using a handsaw—a large saw—to cut down a tree. After a while, the saw began to grow dull because the tree was large, and another man approached him and said, “Hey, why don’t you stop to sharpen the saw?” The man answered, “I can’t, because I’m too busy sawing the tree.”

Brothers and sisters, if we stop to think about it, if this man had stopped and sharpened the saw, he would not have had to work so hard and could have cut down that tree in much less time and with less effort. How important it is for us to take time to sharpen the saw of our lives, so to speak—to take time to rest.

I see many people who are physically worn out and exhausted because they work too much. Homemakers get up early to prepare food for their children, and no sooner have they gotten them ready to go to school than they immediately rush off to work; and when they return, it is back to work again. They go to bed late, burned out and worn down. The next day they repeat the same process, and it is no wonder that they then become irritable, exhausted, and ill-tempered—even depressed and resentful toward their children and husbands—because they do not set aside time to rest. We have to set aside time to rest. So many people work 12 or 14 hours a day, sometimes seven days a week. They do not take time to go away somewhere and rest a while. And you know that when we do not give the body time to rest, we are sinning in a sense, because the Bible says that our body “is the temple of the Holy Spirit.” Our body does not belong to us; the body belongs to God, and God allows us to live within that body, so to speak. He expects us to care for that body and treat it well, giving what belongs to Him the best possible care. And God expects us to set aside time to rest, reflect, and think about eternal things.

I believe that is why God commanded the Hebrews to observe the Sabbath, because man’s natural tendency is to work and work, to worry, to allow himself to be consumed by the concerns and cares of life, and to neglect the need for rest—to become obsessed with work to the point of believing that if we do not keep working, the world will come to a halt and we will suffer losses.

But God, in His wisdom, commanded the Hebrews—and us as well—to set aside time to observe the Sabbath, to stop and take time to reflect on God and spiritual things. We must take our hands off the steering wheel and allow God to show us that He truly is the One who governs and provides in our lives.

Now, let me clarify that when I speak of the Sabbath—and I believe that when God speaks of the Sabbath—He is not necessarily referring to the sixth day of the week, as some Christians believe when they say that if you do not specifically observe Saturday, you are sinning against God. I believe that God is not so concerned with one particular day, but rather with our understanding that we must set aside at least one day. We must set aside an extended period of time to rest, to think about Him, and to reflect on spiritual things; we must stop working and give God an opportunity to demonstrate that He is capable of supplying our needs if we put the affairs of His Kingdom first. How many people say that they do not go to church because they do not have time, because they have to work, tend to the house, or deal with so many other things that concern them? That is a lie; it is self-deception. God wants us to set aside time to be with Him. God wants families to take time so that, on a day such as Sunday—which is the day Christians normally set aside to go to church, in addition to other days that we dedicate to the Lord—we at least set aside the morning to get dressed, go to the house of God, present our offering, our burnt offering, to the Lord, praise Him, bless Him, receive a word from God, fellowship with our brothers and sisters, and celebrate the fact that we are a family of faith. That gives us strength for the rest of the week.

How sad and wasteful it is when we Christians spend our lives going from one job to another, from one worry to another, from Monday through Sunday. We repeat the same toil, the same routine, and do not take time to withdraw. As we see here, the Lord says, “Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while.” If we do not take time to rest, we are being disobedient. If we do not take time at some point to seek God and give Him our offering, we are being disobedient. If we seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, the Word says, the other things about which we worry will be added to us.

May the Lord grant you the wisdom to take time to rest—to rest physically, but also to rest in your spirit by seeking the things of God. May God bless you, and may that peace of Christ which surpasses all understanding be with you.