Well, brothers, as I indicated before the scripture reading, I want to express again, it is good to be in your midst. It's always with a note of joy that I receive the email that carries the invitation to come back to this place, back to Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary, and to have the opportunity to spend at least a few moments back in these classrooms and these hallways and to reflect briefly with you It is with fondness that I remember my own student days at Puritan Reformed Seminary. I began those days in the old building, the old house that sits on the property next to this building, and then completed them in this building. And when I think back upon the student days here at Puritan, many times I have to tell you I wish that I could return to those student days. I have a confession that I fell prey to covetousness when I saw some of the lectures that were going on being listed and I wanted to listen to the auto recordings and perhaps take a few weeks or months or years off of the ministry and just sit and listen to those lectures to be reminded, to be instructed, and to be encouraged. Seminary days are good days. But there are also busy days. When I reflect back upon my own seminary experience, sometimes the goodness of the days was eclipsed by the busyness of the days. Things moved so rapidly that at times it seemed that you could hardly really experience the goodness of the days. And I want to tell you, with the limited pastoral experience that I have, that the same is true of the ministry. The work of the ministry is a good work, and the days spent in the ministry are good days, but they're busy days. And the busyness at times eclipses the goodness of the ministry. I also want to perhaps make another confession. I've struggled. uh... from the outset of being ordained into the ministry and i think the struggle continues perhaps throughout the entire lifetime of a minister but i've i've struggled with what exactly is a minister supposed to be and what exactly is a minister supposed to do and how exactly is he supposed to do what he's supposed to do and if i haven't confused you with my language yet how exactly is he supposed to accomplish everything that he's supposed to do And my own sense of inadequacies has driven me time and time back to the books on practical pastoral theology. I've read them, and I've read them, and I've read them. And they encourage that the minister must do this, and the minister must do that, and he must do this with zeal, and he must do that with energy, and he must be diligent about this, and he must be timely about that. And sometimes the reading of these books even overwhelms a person. And I pulled a few off my shelf in preparation for this morning, and I skimmed the contents. The minister has to do all of these things. And yet in most of them, something was missing. Amongst the busyness of ministers' lives and amongst the busyness of the students' lives, there has to be a place for rest. Now some of the books had a chapter, a small chapter tucked away, and I'll share those with you after our time together, but most of them omitted the necessity of rest. And from my own experience, but ultimately from the instruction here of the Lord Jesus Christ, I want to take you, at least for a few moments this morning, into a meditation upon a divine invitation for pastoral rest. Reflect upon that with me for a few moments this morning. A divine invitation for pastoral rest. That's what our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ gives the disciples in the verses that we've read. If you look at verse 31 especially, he said unto them, come ye yourselves apart into a desert place and rest a while. That ought to be one of the chapters in our books on pastoral theology. Come and rest a while. As you meditate upon this verse with me, notice first of all the setting in which this divine invitation is given. The setting is one of a formal ministry. If you reflect back upon verse 12, the disciples in this time of the History of Redemption had been delegated as the ambassadors of the Lord Jesus Christ and had gone out two by two proclaiming the kingdom of God and also displaying the impact of the kingdom of God. They had been formally commissioned to some extent and they had fulfilled their formal commission. They went out in eagerness and eager obedience and they came back with eagerness. There's almost a spirit of excitement that runs throughout the whole description of this ministry, this formal ministry. And the connection is that in due time, if you have not already, in due time you, in God's good timing, will be called to the office of the minister of the Word of God. And rightfully so, there will be a spirit of excitement about that calling and about the opportunity to fulfill that calling. And as you begin to fulfill that calling, the spirit of excitement will motivate you. We trust to give your full energy to the execution of your office, of your formal ministry. But it's in the midst of the formal ministry that the call comes to rest. Because what can happen at times is the excitement, the spiritual excitement, which ought to characterize the ministry, propels us forward with such great speed and such great diligence that we forget the simple commands such as what Christ gives here, come ye yourselves apart into a desert place and rest a while. The setting's not only one of formal ministry, but it's of a successful ministry. A formal successful ministry. Verse 13 records some of the success, we might say, as the disciples experienced the power of the kingdom of Christ going out, liberating those who had been overcome by demonic spirits, those who were suffering the consequences of the fallen depravity of humanity. Many were healed who were sick. Many were freed from the liberation of the devil. The key that I would emphasize at this point was this was a successful ministry. Successful in the sense that there was evidence of the positive impact of the Kingdom of God. And when that report comes back to the Lord Jesus Christ, notice verse 30, they come and they tell him everything that they had done and what they had taught. Our human nature If you're anything like myself, which I trust you probably are, our human nature would say, now this is the time when we need to double our efforts. This is the time when we need to set up plans for another round of preaching. And we ought to get right back to our studies, get right back to our pulpits, get right back to following up on all of this work. And again, our spiritual energy may have propelled us forward when Christ says, now is the time. Now is the time to come apart and to rest for a while. I would submit to you brothers that in taking times for rest, we are often reactive instead of proactive. When I think of the ministers that I've known who have taken a sabbatical, They've taken it when they needed to take it in the sense of they could no longer continue on in their ministry because of physical limitations, because of spiritual limitations, because situations in the churches had deteriorated to the point that they could no longer function within their office. When I think of myself, and it's a confession, and so I will be honest and tell you I'm speaking to myself more than anyone in this room. When I take a break, sadly, it's usually when someone says you have to take a break. Or your body says you have to take a break. When you can no longer physically or emotionally continue on any longer with the calling of the ministry. We're often reactive. I can remember at one point in my short ministry, there was a meeting at church, an informal meeting, and I told my wife, I don't even wanna go. I don't even wanna see anybody. I don't even have the energy to talk to anybody right now. I took the sabbatical, you might say, the day off, the night off, way too late. And Jesus Christ here shows us that it is when you're in the setting of a formal successful ministry that you need to listen to the command of Christ and set aside time for proper rest. The setting was a formal ministry, a successful ministry, and a demanding ministry. A demanding ministry often times can blind us to the impact and the weight that it takes upon us both physically and also spiritually. When we're in the formal ministry and when things are going successful, we oftentimes forget the draining impact that our ministry has upon our own bodies and our own souls. And of course, we want to give due diligence to the necessity of spiritual rest, but it's connected with physical rest. If you notice carefully in the text, the ground for Christ's statement in verse 31, he says, come apart and rest, for there were many who were coming and going and they had no leisure so much as to eat. So certainly our Lord Jesus Christ is making provision for them to experience spiritual rest, but he recognizes the toll that their formal successful ministry was taking upon their bodies. They didn't even have time to eat. I'm sure we take our meals daily, but ask yourself, have you ever carried your books to the dinner table? Have you ever carried your studies to the dinner table? And again, I confess, I'm the guiltiest one. Eating lunch with the books open? Or maybe not the books open, but have you ever carried in your mind your thoughts and your sermon constructions and your papers to the dinner table. And you sat across perhaps your family, perhaps your wife and your children, and they interacted and you just kind of sat there, off in your own little world. And maybe your wife said, what are you thinking about? And you kind of woke up and, oh, I don't know, my sermon. that I have to visit this person and visit that person, catechism classes for next year, how this individual is doing, how that individual is doing, the issues with different churches, the upcoming classes, meetings, synod next summer. Those are the things that we often carry to our dinner tables. So we eat, but do we rest? Do we come apart for a while? Practically speaking, it is in the setting of a formal, successful, demanding ministry that our Lord Jesus Christ gives this divine invitation to pastoral rest. And in that setting, I wanna know this a little bit also with you brothers, the description of that divine invitation for pastoral rest. It is an authoritative invitation. I struggled with the word invitation and command, but certainly an invitation can be a commanding invitation. And we should not lose sight of the authority behind this invitation. The authority rests in the person who gives it. He said unto them, well, who exactly is the he? No doubt it is Jesus Christ, the Lord, the commissioning one, the one who has sent them forth and the one who, you might say, has the authority to set up their mission and to schedule their days. Think of the Apostle Paul, his favorite form of self-identification, a slave or a servant of Jesus Christ. Now that in one sense applies to all Christians, but in a special sense that applies to the minister of the gospel. I am a slave to the Lord Jesus Christ, a servant to the Lord Jesus Christ. And being a slave and being a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ, given the whole theology of the Lordship of Christ, demands that I then submit to the Lord Jesus Christ. Submit to the invitation that the Lord Jesus Christ gives. The ministry is unique, and I believe part of the uniqueness of the ministry is that oftentimes we work alone. We understand that we're under the authority of the elders, but for most ministers, you set your own hours, generally speaking. No one's there. closely supervising what you do. And I do believe that there are times when this is abused by certain men in the ministry. And laziness is certainly a problem for some in the ministry. But by and far, I would suggest to you that the problem oftentimes is the other way. And may I suggest that studying in this atmosphere at Puritan, can at times create an attitude within ourselves that if we are not putting in 70 hours a week, we've fallen short of our heroes in the faith. We read John Calvin's daily schedule and we think, that's what I need to do. Brothers, that's not what you need to do. You're not John Calvin. I'm not John Calvin. I'm not placed in the role of John Calvin. I'm not called to do the things John Calvin did in his day and in his age. I'm not called to labor 18 hours a day with one meal a day. I'd exhaust myself. I'd kill myself. And I would not do justice to this command, come ye selves apart into a desert place and rest a while. We are men underneath the Lordship of Jesus Christ and that demands obedience to all of His invitations. But not only is it an authoritative invitation, it's a wise invitation. It's given by our Lord Jesus Christ who is wise. who is wisdom personified. And the invitation for pastoral rest flows out of his wisdom. I like to say knowledge knows all the ways something can be done. Wisdom knows the best way that something can be done. And Jesus Christ in his wisdom understands that the best thing for the disciples to do at this point in their public ministry is to rest and is to come apart into a secluded spot. So the authority and the wisdom of this invitation ought to propel us and to motivate us to listen carefully. And notice also the wisdom in even the words that he gives. Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place. I want to draw your attention to the apart and the desert place. A sense of seclusion. A sense of isolation. And that's something that's important for men in the ministry because of the demanding nature of our work. Any congregational function you go to, you go to as the minister. And if you live in a smaller, rural community, anywhere you go, you go as the minister. And certainly, I understand you're always in the office, you always conduct yourself as if you are in the office. But I cannot tell you how many times me and my wife have gone out for dinner and run into someone and they said, oh, I wanted to tell you about this, and I wanted to tell you about that. Or you go to the local school event and you sit down next to your wife and you think, well, we'll have an enjoyable evening watching this performance or whatever it is. And suddenly someone comes up and, did you know what was happening in this church? We heard about this, that's coming to classes and what do you think? And if you know my wife, she rolls her eyes and she says, here we go again. You said we'd have a nice night out. And there you are discussing classes material and discussing pastoral situations. And so the wisdom, of course, comes from Jesus Christ, but it was echoed to me personally by a physician who said, when you take a vacation, you need to go far away, where no one knows you. Not so that you're just on your own, but that you're in a sense of isolation, where you can really have physical rest and also spiritual rest. And wasn't this also imitated and set forth by our Lord himself He had the pressing demands of his redemptive ministry and yet he still took the steps necessary to find times and places of isolation in which he could experience communion with his father. Separated from all of the demands, And I know perhaps with your hermeneutical skills, you're saying, well, you have to notice in verse 33 that this plan doesn't work because the people find them. I understand that in God's providence at this point, the plan you might say doesn't work, but the command still stands and it drives home even more pointedly the necessity of finding an opportunity for isolated and excluded rest. from the stressful demands of a formal, successful, and a demanding ministry. It's necessary for the body. Our Lord created the human body to labor six days and to rest on the seventh, but this perhaps is the one thing most ministers forget to do. Many of us, we labor on the seventh day, and then we labor on the other six also, and we compliment ourselves for our efficiency. But is it obedience? Should we compliment ourselves for neglecting the command of our Lord in creation itself to labor six days and to rest the seventh? Not only bodily rest, but it's necessary for the soul. It's necessary for the soul. And sometimes you would think, well, this goes without saying for for those who are committed to the experiential truths of the Reformed faith. But in the ministry, I find that you need to remind yourself that you need spiritual refreshment also. You need times in which you seriously set apart and devote yourself to spiritual rest and I'm not sure that sermon preparation necessarily falls into the category of spiritual rest. Sometimes we think that way. Well, yeah, honey, I'm resting. I'm reading Calvin's Institutes. And that's how I rest. And I'm resting. I'm exegeting my next sermon. And I enjoy the work. And I love the work. And that's restful. But do we really have times then when we can simply sit back in meditation and in reflection and experience the joy of communion with our God? And times when we just bask in the love of our God as we sit or maybe walk, as we enjoy the goodness of our God. And that brings me to a few points of reflection upon this invitation. And brothers, I'd like you to reflect first of all upon the compassion in this invitation. The compassion of the Lord Jesus Christ that is displayed in this invitation. He is the one who can sympathize with our weaknesses. Made like us in all points with the exception of sin. He knows in a very real personal way the toils of ministry. And he knows the impact of those toils of ministry. You might say it this way, he knows what it is to be exhausted. physically, emotionally, spiritually. And he knows what it is to be exhausted in those areas because of the work of the ministry. And in knowing those things, he sympathizes with us. And in loving concern, with a pity you might say, he looks at his disciples as they return and he says, come, rest for a while. He says that to you and to me because he knows in a very real personal way the weight of the ministry. And he has concern for the spiritual and the physical well-being of his people and especially of his servants. And he understands the limitations of our humanity. He does not expect us to be infinite sources of zeal and of strength. He knows that we need times of retreat from the arena of the public ministry. And that compassion is what motivates this invitation. And so when you look upon this, be reminded that as you go forward into the ministry, you do not serve a cold, hard taskmaster who is interested in getting the maximum that he can out of you with the minimum investment. but that you serve a Lord who cares for you, body and soul, and that it's out of that care that he says, rest a while. Reflect not only upon the compassion, but then reflect upon the necessity of the obedience to the invitation. We preach for obedience. We command men to obey the gospel, to repent, and to believe. We teach and we preach sanctification and the necessity of a holy life. But sometimes I wonder if we ourselves do it in an abstract way and not in a practical way. Do we obey Christ and this command? Do we recognize that it is the duty to take rest even when it's against our own wills, our wills which can for perhaps legitimate reasons be characterized with a spirit of a workaholic attitude. But sometimes when you look at ourselves and when we say why do we pour ourselves into our ministries at the expense of our physical and spiritual and emotional health? And why do we sometimes neglect other important areas of life? Isn't it, a little bit of it, the pride of our will? Isn't there a little bit of it that says, I've put in more time and energy than the others? I simply ask the question. You, of course, have to provide the answer. But I know in the bottom of my heart that that old man still lives. And it says, you can do more. And then you can go to the classes meeting or the synod meeting and look around and say, well, this is what I've done. All these things. And men can then perhaps praise us a little bit and say, how do you do it? And we can in mock humility say, I don't know. Is the answer I do it by disobeying the command of Christ to rest for a while? And is the answer, well, I do it by neglecting my wife and my children. And I do it at the expense of my own spiritual well-being and at the expense of my own physical well-being. Again, we're not pointing the finger at anyone more than ourselves, but ask ourselves, what is it that propels us into the ministry? Isn't it obedience? Obedience to the call of the Lord to be a minister. Of course, that has to be the answer. And then if what propels us into the ministry is obedience to our master, then we have to obey this command also. that we come apart and that we rest for a while. In closing, I wanna quote from Charles Bridges. He writes, in the midst of the incessant pressing and active avocations of the Christian ministry, how seasonable is the considerate advice of our gracious master. Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place and rest a while. Let's close together in a time of prayer. Our Lord and our God, we do thank you and praise you that you are a compassionate Lord and a compassionate Savior, and that you not only know us, but you also take consideration of us, consideration of our weaknesses in our body and in our soul, and that you give clear commands that address our weaknesses out of your love and out of your concern for us. We pray, Heavenly Father, that in our Christian life and also in our Christian ministry that we might be balanced. And that all of the commands and all of the imperatives that come forth from Holy Scripture might be balanced within our own hearts and within our own lives. That we might not be prone to lazy slothfulness, but also that we might not be prone to overextending ourselves. frustrating not only ourselves but also those whom we are called upon to serve and to labor with. And we ask that your blessing would rest upon this institution and the men called to teach and to train here. May they set forth the whole counsel of God's Word to those who are studying. And would you prepare these men, Heavenly Father, and send them forth in due time well-equipped to be good servants and good stewards of the gospel ministry that will be committed unto them. We ask that you would use us to glorify your name rather than our own name, and may we be increasing in humility as we stand forth in boldness proclaiming the gospel message of repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Bless us in this day also with the forgiveness of our sins, the sins also when we have overextended ourselves, the sins when we have failed to take care of our own body, and our own soul, and those who are closest and dearest to us. Give us much of your grace and fill us with your Spirit. We ask all of these things in the name of our Lord and Savior. Amen.