You Asked For It: Find True Rest
August 3, 2025Pastor Cleve Masten presented today's message, "You Asked For It: Find True Rest" A video of today's message is here on YouTube. This series started with folks being asked to submit scriptures that they would like explained/explored. So, it's quite literally: "You asked for it!"
Today's scripture is Matthew 11:28 (NIV): "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest." See also verses 25-30.
Pastor Cleve mentioned one of my favorite phrases from the Psalms: "Be still, and know that I am God" (Psalm 46:10). The "be still" is not so much be quiet in God's presence as it is a call to stop all your (often misguided or useless) activities (including warfare in the context of this psalm) and look to God for help and salvation. Know suggests being certain and acknowledging God's sovereignty which interestingly leads to trusting Him. For more on this quote, see The Real Meaning of Psalm 46:10.
Toward the end of his message, Pastor Cleve briefly told the story of Jacob wrestling with a man (angel? God?) after which he is renamed Israel. He pointed out that wRESTling contains the word REST. He suggested that there was no rest without wrestling. It's also interesting to note that the word Israel (is-rah-ale, יִשְׂרָאֵל) is commonly understood as meaning "struggle with God" (isra = struggle, el = God)? Or wrestle with God, if you will. Here is an Chabad.org article with a simple description of the meaning. The notion of wrestling is supported by the fact that Jacob is renamed Israel immediately following his wrestling with someone and by that someone, mostly understood as God (Genesis 32:22-32). In Hebrew it may more exactly mean "God strives" or "he will rule as God." Abarim Publications has an article that discusses in some detail these nuances to the word/name Israel: here, with an interesting conclusion.
For a little more about "rest" in the Bible, see: Rest in the Bible (meaning and importance) and How Many Times Is 'Rest' Mentioned In The Bible?.
Sidenote: This essay completes my 4th year of writing these weekly essays. Year 5 starts next week.
Bonus
A Few Commonly Misunderstood Old Testament Verses
Proverbs 22:6 – "Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it." It's not a guarantee, as many suggest. Proverbs are bits of wisdom, not guarantees. In this case, the children still have free will and may choose to go astray. The wisdom is that they are more likely to remain faithful if you train them up than if you don't.
Exodus 20:13 – "Thou shalt not kill." The problem is with the translation. Biblical Hebrew, and Greek, and English all have two clear and separate words for 1. kill in general and 2. murder of human beings. The word used in this verse is the word for murder. It is intended to apply to unjustified killing of human beings. Justified would include self-defense, soldiering in a justified war, and capital punishment.
Psalm 37:4, "Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart." Similar to our first misunderstanding, this verse is not saying that you'll get whatever you want. It says that if you delight yourself in the Lord, in other words, have faith in Him, that your heart will be filled with desires that match God's heart.
This is more interesting than wrong. Isaiah 11:6 actually says, "The wolf will live with the lamb." We tend to quote it with a bit more drama, "the lion shall lie down with the lamb." Either way, it gets at the peace offered by God's Kingdom. Actually, there a number of other unlikely pairs used in this scripture; here are verses 6-8: "The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling[a] together; and a little child will lead them. The cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox. The infant will play near the cobra's den, and the young child will put its hand into the viper's nest."
Here's cute mistranslation. Genesis 37:3, "Now Israel (Jacob) loved Joseph more than all his children, because he was the son of his old age: and he made him a coat of many colours." The word translated as multi-colored actually means flat, palm, or sole. It is more accurately translated as long-sleeved (as in 2 Samuel 13:18-19).
"But if there is harm, then you shall pay life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe," Exodus 21:23–25 ESV. Some think this encourages revenge and unnecessary brutality. The truth is that this was an incredible advance in justice during a period when revenge for a relatively minor incident would be the annihilation of an entire family. It brought sanity to justice. Think of it as "no more than an eye for an eye." It also made it clear that a king's eye was no more valuable than a peasant's eye.
While God may hear all prayers, prayers are not for God. God does not need our prayers. This is clear in Biblical Hebrew. Prayer (tefilah, תְּפִלָּה) and to pray (hitpael, לְהִתְפַּלֵּל) are very interesting verbs. The verb form is reflexive, that is, the action goes back onto the subject (in other words, the subject is the object of the verb as well). For example, "I cleanse" as reflexive means "I cleanse myself". So, praying comes back to the person praying; praying is for the benefit of the person praying. The other wrinkle is that there are two forms of reflexive verbs, direct and indirect. Direct is when the subject acts on himself. Indirect is when someone else acts on the subject. So, depending on which form of reflexive you think this is, you are asking yourself to have an effect back on you, or you are asking an effect on you from someone/something else. The key to understanding prayer is that it is for you, the one praying. It's additionally interesting to note that "to pray" in Biblical Hebrew can also mean to think or assess, to intervene, or to judge.
"As a man thinks in his heart, so he is," Proverbs 23:7. This is often thought to suggest having a positive mental attitude in life, think positively! However, a more accurate translation would be, "For as he thinks within himself, so he is." The verse refers to a specific man, not man in general. Read Proverbs 23:6-8 for context. The message is to guard yourself against selfish people.
Bonus2
Ghosts of Christmas Always (Movie)
Yup, let's talk about another Christmas movie: Ghosts of Christmas Always.
As the title suggests, this is yet another take on Dicken's "A Christmas Carol." But I guarantee that this one is different, a unique and quirky take on the classic. While in the Dickens tale the ghosts act independently, in this film you could say they act as teams. Yes, that's teams plural; there are many teams scrooging about (see below).
For most Christmas movies, one can tell where it's going in the first 30 minutes. Not this one. There are several surprises you won't see coming as well as a tearjerker surprise at the end.
And a new form of the word Scrooge... To scrooge someone, or a scrooging, meaning to put the Christmas spirit back into someone.
Enjoy!