After the Sermon: 12/8/25

12/8/2025 | Will DuVal | The Antidote: God’s Cures for the World’s Contagions

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Welcome to After the Sermon podcast. Our pastor will answers follow-up questions and we share your personal applications from the sermon for the benefit of the church. My name is Brian. I'm here with our lead pastor Will.

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Yes, hello.

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We want to remind you with this podcast that sermons are not just a Sunday thing. First question for our podcast this morning is from Allie. Allie, thanks for your question. She wrote in what is considered work our Monday through Friday job, what does resting look like? And she said, finding ways to rest, especially in this season as an application.

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Yeah. So quick reminder that our message yesterday we're going through this advent series on Gods cures for the world's contagions and we looked at the infection of busyness in our culture and in the church and personally in many of our lives and how we cure that with God's rest. And so I try to define busyness. I think biblically, even though it's not a word we find in the Bible explicitly, in actually technically no English word you find in the Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic Bible, but some translations I believe have the word busyness anyway, but we read Luke 10 38 through 42, the story of Martha and Mary and Jesus coming to town, and Martha in particular just being so caught up in busyness that she couldn't make time for just sitting and being with and worshiping and learning from Jesus.

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But I tried to define busyness in contrast to work in particular and being or staying busy. So try to make the point that being busy and in other words, having things to do is not just good, it's important. It's a calling, it's a commandment. Gosh, 3 23, 1 of the most obvious, it's like Paul says, work, whatever you do, work heartily as unto the Lord. I think it was Ecclesiastes nine verse 10 or something. I can't remember the exact reference, but where Solomon says, kind of same thing. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might because there's no work in Sheel where you're going after this and we'll get to that in a moment. We had some follow up questions on that, but allie's asking here, so then what is considered work? I think I would then, personally, I think it's fair to define work as in contrast similarly to busyness.

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If busyness is unnecessary activity, that was Jesus' rebuke of Martha is gentle rebuke is like, Hey, you're anxious, you're staying busy, you're stressed. You're troubled by many things. Only one thing is truly necessary here in this context anyway and with me here in your house. And so I think I would want to, if busyness is unnecessary activity, then I think work is necessary activity. Now we could probably define it even more narrowly than that because there might be some things that again, you could, where does play come into that right play. I'm going to go, didn't take a day off last week and somebody will email, but I'm going to go play volleyball in the middle of the day here in two hours I'm going to play volleyball. Is that necessary? I mean, I think I could make the argument that again, we're designed for work, we're designed for rest, and somewhere in the middle or maybe touching on kind of boat because playing volleyball is physically strenuous.

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I'm going to work up a sweat, but it's also really restful. It's rejuvenating for me. It reenergizes me, but is it necessary? If I didn't play today, I don't think I'd be sinning. I don't think I'd be, but I definitely don't think I'm sinning by playing. So all that to say with work, how narrowly do you want to define it? But I think necessary activity is like whether that's, yeah, Allie, your Monday to Friday job, that's what typically if you say, oh, where do you work? Well, Allie is a elementary school teacher. That's where she works. Maybe middle school. I think she's elementary, that's where she works. But I think work is more broad than that than just where we get our paycheck from. You and I, Brian work here at the church, but I mentioned as an example of last Friday, I took off at three o'clock to go home and spend four hours getting my house ready for 60 women to come over for a Christmas party and I was putting up Christmas trees and hanging up Christmas lights and vacuuming and cleaning out bathrooms with toys in 'em.

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  And so that's work and it's necessary, again, necessary is a relative term. I would say it's important and it's worthwhile activity to make sure that the women can hopefully safely get to my front door without slipping on the ice that I still had not shoveled from my front door. What's that called? Walkway that we never use. We don't use our front door. We'd go in the garage. So that's all. But yeah, that's how I would define work is necessary. Things that you're doing that's worth doing, what does resting look like? I think so maybe how we could define rest. Then how about this? Try this. I'm just off the top of the dome here. Maybe rest is necessary inactivity.

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  So if busyness is unnecessary activity and work is necessary activity, maybe rest is necessary. Inactivity, it's like whether that's sleep. And it's interesting, I cut this from the sermon for time and whatever focus, but I also pulled a lot of stats on rest and how unrested people feel and things like that. But interestingly, if you Google or chat GPT, whatever for statistics on rest, everything you're going to find is about sleep. It's all about how much sleep we get or don't get. It's all about and specifically anything, how rested do you feel? And it's all going to be when you wake up, which is interesting, isn't it? It's like the way that our society, or at least our robots that we have built that give us search results and polling and statistics and surveys, that questions that we ask, it's all about the expectation is that the way that we rest and the only way seemingly that we rest is through sleep. And I mean I will give you the rest that sleep should be restful hopefully

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  Even when I only slept five hours night before last because I had to wake up early to finish the sermon on Sunday morning. I woke up after five hours and I certainly felt a lot more resting than I would have if I'd tried to pull in all nighter. I'll tell you that now five hours of sleep isn't as restful as eight and so you shouldn't do it night after night, many nights in a row. But all that to say, but think about what does that say about us that the only kind of expectation of rest is you would wake up feeling rest and not that you would be able to make it to the end of a day even along and a busy and a work filled day, but that there would be the opportunity and the invitation, the ability for us to find ways of resting throughout the day enough that we're not just completely Now I think there's a degree to which, yeah, if you're working the way that God wants you to, maybe you should really just collapse into bed some days at the end of the day and feel spent.

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  But also, again, I think, I don't know, some folks would probably want to put watching a half hour of a TV show at the end of the night in bed with your wife like Polly and I do pretty much every night after we get the kids in bed, it's like it's not work. Is it rest? Is it restful? Is it busyness? Is it just filling our day with an half hour of inactivity that we would be better served to just try and go to sleep? I mean, for me, maybe I need to do even more prayer, soul searching I feel like. But depending on the situation, I think more often than not for me that feels like rest. That feels like, and I want to give myself enough grace. And again, some people will argue with that and whatever, you've bought the culture's Kool-Aid and that's just unhelpful unrestful inactivity and you ought to quit streaming that and pick up your Bible instead or whatever.

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  It's like I had lots of Bible yesterday. At the end of the day, I think it's okay to have a half hour of Netflix. And it felt restful and it felt like frankly it shuts my brain off. I'm able to sleep. And I think having some of those kinds of escapes are not the end of the world and I get kind of leery of being too legalistic about that. So that I think can be what resting looks like, but I think it is so individualized for people. I think for a lot of people it's picking up a good book by the fireplace at the end of the get the kids tucked in bed, whatever. For some people reading feels like work and not rest. For some people, what some of us might call work, I think there are genuinely people who get energy from weird people that get energy from folding laundry or cooking. I mean, I think for some of us, cooking is a chore. It's like something you got to do to keep your kids, your family alive. For others it's like they look forward to that. That's not their day job and that's a hobby they really enjoy and get into what volleyball is. For me, cooking is for them or baking. So I think anyway, you could go down the list. There's any number of, but I like that definition. See how that sits with you, Allie and others work necessary activity, rest, necessary inactivity, busyness, unnecessary activity. Yeah,

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  That's good. Thanks. The Jacksons wrote in, how do I stop slash avoid being so busy and rest in Jesus? And they also added thank you for this sermon. I needed this.

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  Well, thanks for the question. I don't know how much more I can or want to elaborate on kind of what I tried to already point out in the sermon. I tried to make that turn to be kind of practical with some of the litmus test questions of, well, just identifying in the text first of all how Martha's busyness is taxing her. It's taxing her emotionally, it's taxing her relationally and it's taxing her spiritually. And so asking ourselves to start with those three questions is this activity I've got my kids in or this daily habit of mine or this or whatever is it, in what ways is it taxing me? I think that so that maybe the first step just is trying to really prayerfully discern whether this is again, work that is needful for me that I'm just going to have to, and again, maybe my heart just needs to, my heart posture needs to shift and I can't stop doing dishes and laundry, but I can pray and ask God to change my heart toward it and not be as grumbly and whatever stressful about it, worried and troubled and distracted and all the things that Jesus says there.

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  I think probably the first thing that should be said is preaching the gospel to yourself every day. I mean, we need the gospel every single day. We need that reminder of where I tried to end the sermon and Jesus's beautiful words of Matthew 1128 through 30, come to me, all you who are weary, heavy laden, I'll give you rest for your souls. My yoke is easy, my burden is light. All of that I think, and the reminder that our worth is not found in our doing, but in his doing for us, it's not our worth is not again proportionate to our productivity, but proportionate to his love for us, which is infinite and unchanging. And so anyway, I think it starts with that.

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  And yeah, I think there's so many other things I could add to that being a part of a gospel community, gospel relationships and people that really challenge you in that knowing that tendency about yourself and asking for prayer and accountability with that and just reminders and loving encouragement from others around you in the same way that if you were an alcoholic seeking to get sober or whatever, you would surround yourself with a community of others who are again loving you enough to hold you accountable. Hey, how is that sin struggle going for you? If you're a busyness aholic, you surround yourself by people who are going to be praying for you and checking in with you. Okay, so I don't know. Hopefully that's a good, and I'll just maybe say one more thing at the end of the day for the heart change toward desiring rest and relationship with Jesus more than more and more and more activity, I think at the end of the day it's like what you pray for is just again is more of a heart that loves Jesus more than anything I've said this time and time again in servants, no one has to twist my arm to spend more time to make me spend more time with my family.

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  I love them. I want to spend time with them. No matter how busy things get here at church and how much I want the sermon to be better, I'm never going to allow work or busyness to get in the way of me spending time with my family. I love them too much for that.

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  And so I don't even necessarily feel like I need to sit down and prioritize that. It's just, I'm going to be home for dinner every night. I'm going to tuck my kids into bed even no matter how behind I am on the sermon or that there are certain things that just with very few exceptions, I'm not missing my kids' basketball games, volleyball. Not only that, but I coached them because I love doing that and I love spending that time with them. So there's just certain things that, and I say all that to say the same should be true of us with Jesus. No one should have to twist my arm to spend time in his word, spend time in prayer, spend time with him like Mary did you want to be a Mary, not a Martha. And so I think it probably just starts and ends with just praying and asking him to help you to see him for who he is because to know Jesus is to love him and to love him is to prioritize him. So yeah, I hope that's helpful.

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  Yeah, that's good. Elena wrote in, why do I feel guilty for resting or saying no to events, job opportunities, et cetera.

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  Thanks for the question and your honesty, transparency there I think, yeah, so clearly Elena is self-identifying in that category of 37% of Americans who when they were polled, I think it was a Pew research poll that I referenced yesterday in the sermon, 37% of Americans say they feel guilty when they're not busy, or perhaps she's saying more specifically guilty saying no to certain things, whether it's a invite to a party, I just need to rest. And that would feel like, again, more taxing than restful at this point or whether that's, I think she even mentioned job opportunities like I interviewed for these jobs and a job interview goes two ways and it's like just because you offer me the job and you want me, doesn't mean that this is the right job for me. And why do you feel guilty saying no? I mean I think it could be a number of things could obviously, one immediate example to go off the sermon is you could have an addiction to busyness and you see something, oh, this is a job that needs to get done.

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  Oh, this is a party that needs to be attended. I mean, if nobody shows up to this party, you invited everybody to, you're going to cry yourself to sleep the host and no one loves me anymore, and so somebody's got to come. So maybe this is activity that is needful for someone. And so I just unnecessarily take that upon myself. And so maybe, yeah, there is almost, again, a need for busy or to make it more personal to Elena and her schedule. It's like, well, yeah, I need to fill Friday night with something and here's someone inviting me to this thing.

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  So it could be basically boil down to a busyness thing for you and that's why you feel guilty saying no. It could be, I think certainly another front runner would be a people pleasing thing, and there's probably some overlap there, but certainly people pleasing so that for probably a lot, maybe most people who feel guilty saying no, like, Hey, can you come to the birthday party? Hey, can you help me move on Saturday or whatever, and we say no, or Hey, I need a fourth player for volleyball today. And that for instance feels guilty saying no. It's like, well, they need this and they're going to judge me or be upset with me if I have to say no. So could be, and some of that to be sure is good.

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  It's certainly better when possible to be in, I mean Romans 12 says, as much as depends on, you strive to be at peace with everybody, you'd love to have peaceful relationships with everyone and for everyone to be happy with each other all the time, kumbaya. But that's just not reality in a fallen world, and you can't say yes to everything in a fallen world. And so you have to learn to say no one thing just on this real quick too that I was reminded of, probably could have found a way to fit into the sermon maybe should have that someone said to me that was like, whoa. Yeah, pretty eyeopening at some point. It's like just keeping in mind for people who struggle to say no, and that's maybe even language I should have worked into. The sermon is like, it's okay to say no to something is to point out.

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  By the way, you're always saying no to actually every, yes you give, you're giving a million implicit nos. Like when I say yes to playing volleyball with guys today at noon, I'm saying a million other nos. I'm saying no to being here in the office. I'm saying no to the emails that are still coming in right now that I'm going to need to get to at some point today. I'm saying no to going home and spending those two hours with while Bo's napping. I mean, I'm saying a million other nos, but this, yes, is important enough that I'm going to say those nos without maybe explicitly saying those nos, but I think, oh, that can shift our perspective on you're always saying no. So just because you say no to that party or no to that job offer doesn't mean if you said yes to it, you'd have to say no to another job opportunity that might crop up next week or whatever.

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  So maybe that helps shift your perspective a little bit on that as well, Elena. But yeah, I mean could be a number of reasons that you feel guilty. I saying no, but I mean certainly again with the busyness one and the idolatry of busyness, I think that yeah, the worst kind of reason that I hope is not true for Lynn is, but frankly sadly is true a lot for myself included. A lot of us is if and when we do tend to idolize and find our worth and our value in our yeses, in our work, in our activity, in our friendships, being able to say yes to everyone and being important to those people, being able to say yes to everything that comes across your desk in the office at work and finding your value and your job security and your worth and whatever in that as opposed to getting that identity value meaning worth security in Christ and in the truths of the gospel that he loves us and that's enough and every yes that I'm able to say after that is flowing out of not to try and earn something that I've already got but just flowing out of, yeah, because he loved me this much.

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  I can love my friends and say yes to that party. I can love my job and say yes to that task or whatever. So more could be said there, but I think it would be a personal, that would have to be a personal like, Hey, let me sit down and ask you a couple of follow up questions to try and help you parse through. Yeah, why do you feel guilty saying no? But thank you, Elena.

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  I kind of got two similar questions, lumping these together. First one's from Maggie wrote in online, you said there won't be work in heaven. Is that true? Adam had a job in the garden, so I wonder if we might have jobs in heaven. And then Vicki wrote a similar question she wrote in your sermon, you said there is no work in heaven. Then what do we do? I know some work is pleasurable, especially if we take time to rest and thank the Lord.

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  So I love these questions and thank you. And this is why we do this podcast and I had to look up a couple articles real quick just and read three, four minute scan before we started recording to check myself on this. So here's what I'll say. The short answer is that I'm going to punt on this, well not punt, but I'm going to suggest that we actually make this a, because I don't think we've done a specific ask the pastor on this. And interestingly, Vicky's on her, she wrote it on and asked the pastor car, which I don't know if she purposely did that because she wanted it to be a whole separate standalone episode on its own. But suffice it to say, I think it could and should be because I think there's a lot more here to dig into. I think it's a great question.

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  I'll be honest enough to say that if it's Ecclesiastes nine verse 10 or something like that, when I quoted that, what Solomon says there, whatever your hand finds to do. Well, lemme just real quick, see if I can pull it up and check myself on that. Ecclesiastes chapter nine, I think it was nine 10. Yep. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might for. There is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in shield to which you were going. So I put in, we had a slide for it. It didn't show in the first service our tech was broken, but second service, you saw the slide and I put in the brackets, which indicates that I'm substituting my word in for the Bible's word instead of sheel. I put in the afterlife because I wanted it to apply to us, but maybe that was not biblical and fair of me because maybe there was no work in Sheel, the afterlife destination of the Old Testament time folks, everyone before Jesus, but maybe there is work in heaven, the new destination.

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  And just a couple of the quick hitter kind of articles that I go to got questions.org and the ones that I like that I check for that I think I find to be very biblical. A couple of 'em do push back and a couple of 'em do say, yeah, we think there's going to be work in heaven. Now, I did a quick scan of their biblical evidence for that, and I would say it's pretty thin for me. It's pretty specious. So I think I want to do a follow-up, ask the pastor with you and Thad and dig into this more and clearly a third or fourth tier issue.

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  We can read the same biblical evidence and interpret it differently. Is there going to be work in heaven? And so again, maybe partially depends on your definition of work, but again, we know work is good. Adam was given work in the garden like Maggie points out before the curse, before the fall. So certainly that's not the problem with it. But yeah, I want to do a deeper dive. I don't want to say too much now. I want to save it. Great. I'm glad that they both kind of caught that and well, you said that. Is it really true? It'll give me a chance to do even more of the reading homework. Put my thoughts together on that. Yeah. Yeah. You want to read Sam's whole thing? Whole thing, yeah. Yeah.

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  Sam wrote in, God showed me this morning that I've been addicted to earning others' approval and a feeling of self-importance through busyness for decades. Pray that God would help me repent and truly rest in Jesus. And he included a few book recommendations. Number one, crazy Busy by Kevin D. Young.

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  That's a good one.

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  Number two, biblical Productivity by CJ Mahaney.

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  I haven't read that one. I'd curious too.

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  Ebook blog post series.

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  Oh, so you can get that one free ebook.

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  Yeah,

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  I'll definitely have to check it out.

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  It looks like a quote application from your

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  Sermon. Please

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  Don't confuse spiritual activity for God, for intimacy with God.

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  I think that was probably our tweetable moment from Sunday.

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  Yeah, I agree.

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  Always we try and for our socials capture, maybe it's a minute, maybe it's 10 seconds. Just what's the tweetable? I don't even have Twitter anymore. X,

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  We're not on Twitter. Twitter's not a thing. Want to be on Twitter? Let me

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  Know. I'm not. Yeah,

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  Yeah.

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  More work for you, right? Work. But yeah, X, that would be a great little under 150 character.

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  Yeah.

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  And again, not so y. I am sure I heard someone else say that in a sermon and I just kind of stole it. But I think it's very true, very good reminder for myself. I need it more than y'all. It's helpful for me too. Don't confuse your spirit. You can do your Bible reading and you're praying every day and not really be getting rest with Jesus. Thanks, Sam for the book recs for the again vulnerability for him to confess his. I'm right there with you, brother. Yeah, with the people pleasing with the finding my importance. And look, I'm important. I'm busy. So yeah, we can pray for each other.

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  Darlene wrote in this word of encouragement. Thank you. Thank you as always, pastor will for wonderful prayer and sermon and worship ministry for always having great praise and worship songs. Merry Christmas joy be to all of you. Thanks Darlene.

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  You too. Darlene.

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  Next one we have is that dude, it's from Emily. We think the first word is dude.

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  Dude, either that or rude. I

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  Hope it's not rude, rude. Like be an R. Emily let us know. I

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  Think she said, dude,

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  Dude, I need to have faith that God will take care of me rather than always trying to do something that won't solve anything. Being busy solves nothing. I can rest

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  If it's busyness, it doesn't solve. But if it's needful work, then if it's God working through you, unless the Lord builds the house, we labor in vain. But we know that he uses us to build houses. So there is good meaningful work that he calls us to and he empowers us for. It's just about discerning the difference, which is again, it's a case by case, person by person, situation by situation. Moving target, the million dollar thing, if you could figure out a foolproof like, yeah, let me just give you these 10 easy things to do, or to ask yourself to figure out exactly whether or not this is needful versus not needful. But that's why. But then we wouldn't need the Holy Spirit, then we wouldn't need to pray and ask God for wisdom and discernment with before signing our kid up for that new extra activity or before saying yes to that party or before switching jobs or whatever it might be. So we need the holy, holy Spirit all the time leading and guiding.

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  Lastly, Megan wrote in as an application, thank you, pastor Will and God for this beautiful sermon. It was convicting but also a balm. Praise God. The cure to busyness is not another thing to do, but rest and trust.

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  Yeah, thank you Megan, and thank all of you for even in addition to the cards and emails, I feel like I got a lot of just in-person, positive feedback, text messages, whatever from folks. It is encouraging and validating just again, not because of, hopefully because I need that. And again, the people pleasing. But you always wonder when you take a break, especially as an expository teaching kind of church, where 95% of what we're doing Sundays is going through books of the Bible at a time and finishing up Galatians a couple of weeks ago and just, Hey, we've got these five weeks. What do we want to do? And you're always kind of, I don't know, insecurity, like second guessing yourself. And is this the sermon series? Are these the topics? Are these the contagions we need to be addressing? And so it is just always affirming when you hear from people, I needed to hear that this Sunday. That was the exact message that our family, we've been just struggling. We've been arguing and we needed that. So thank you. So anyway, I appreciate that feedback from y'all, and thank you for listening even after the sermon and you already listened to 45 minutes and you just now listen to an extra 40. So thank y'all, appreciate and just love our church. So thanks.

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  And we hope that this has been an edifying listen for you as you seek to be changed and to love God more as you apply God's word after the sermon. So go continue to apply the sermon and make disciples and Lord willing will catch you right back here next week.