a video that I posted on my personal
Facebook page of a song that it's called The Lamb Wins, and
it's a good song that captures the basic message. Can't hear? Okay. Is that better? Okay. The song does a pretty good job
of capturing the basic message of the book of Revelation. And
I found it to be very uplifting. But I recognized the woman who
was singing the lead part. Back in December of 2012, I had
found a video of her singing a hymn, He Surrendered All. And she'd done the same thing
I did, took that old song, I Surrendered All, and change the words around
to more accurately reflect what the scriptures teach us. It was
him that did the surrendering, not us. And she used, you know,
she went a little different direction than me, but the same basic thing.
So I contacted her by email and told her I appreciated her song
and enjoyed it and said back in the mid 90s, I kind of did
the same thing and just sent her the words I had written and
she wrote back. And the other day I was going through my emails,
trying to clear out a whole lot of emails in the inbox and came
across those emails. And that's when I started looking
for her again on YouTube and found that video about the book
of Revelation. But I noticed that I couldn't
find anything that she had done past about the year, I think
it was 2016. And I just don't like not knowing
things. Why did somebody suddenly disappear?
Well, she hasn't. But she has a different website
now. And she's remarkably changed
her appearance and the kind of music she sings. And I'm not
saying that by any means in judgment of her. But she's doing, I don't
even know what they call it now. It's one of those I haven't heard
a whole lot of, so it's not the kind of music that I would turn
on on purpose. But she's singing secular music.
And so I kind of, well, what caused that big change? And like
many online who wisely keep their cards close to the vest, you
know, you don't get a lot of details, but she made this comment
in one of her blog entries. about how she felt so much better
now that she wasn't singing the songs that she thought she was
supposed to sing. She was singing the songs she
wanted to sing. Now, I understand that. I know what exactly what it's
like to be in a religion that tells you what kind of songs
you're supposed to sing. tells you the style of music,
which is appropriate and what's not. And you know, there are
a lot of kids that their music, first exposure to performing
music's in church. And then you have these churches
that afterward, they think, well, you know, Christian music's all
you ought to sing. And so I assume that's kind of
what happened to this young woman. And she finally broke free of
that. And I thought maybe I'll write her a note or something,
word of encouragement, and I thought, well, you know, what would I
say? After all, I hardly know her,
and it's not my business to butt in anyway. But I thought, what
would I wish for a person like that, having gone through similar
experiences myself? I thought, well, I would wish
them happiness. And I do. You know, I like people. to enjoy what they're doing,
to find success in the things they want to pursue, so long
as they're not essentially bad things. I don't want folks to
be miserable. I don't see any real value in
that. But I thought a little longer and I thought, no, really
what I wish for her is rest. Rest. We don't rest much. We don't rest much as human beings,
just in our day-to-day existence. And in religion, people don't
rest, because for the most part, religious leaders won't let them. The idea that the life of faith
is a life of resting It just doesn't occur to them. And then this past week, I've
been working with a company trying to build a website for us that will
be useful to us. I think I'm probably the only
one that goes to our website. And over the years that we've
had it, I've put together whatever's up there. I've slowly but surely now been
trying to get an active internet presence for our church, because
that's just the way things are now. If you're not on the internet,
you don't exist. Trying to reach out, let some
folks that don't realize we exist find out that we do, and maybe
some of them will want to come hear what we have to say. A website is an advertising tool,
essentially. You're operating in sales, and
anytime you sell something, you're trying to get somebody to take
what it is you are offering, you have to find out what's distinct
about what you're offering that separates it from what everybody
else is offering. You and I could come up with
a lot of things, probably a lot of details that are different
about what we believe, how we go about worshiping, how we conduct
our lives as believers in this world. We could go through that. And actually, on our website,
what you see here at the top of the bulletin, that's the banner
on our website. And it has that slogan, preaching
Christ, nothing more, nothing less, nothing else. And that
is distinctive about us. I'm not saying there are no other
churches that do that. We've got brother or sister churches
that do that. I'm not aware of anybody, any
of them near here. I'm not saying they don't exist,
because I don't know all the churches, but I'm not aware of anyone that
thinks that's a real important matter to be able to say about your
church. And that's what I told them to put up there. The lady
that I'm working with called up, you know, and so they've
got these question and answer things. What do you want for
this? What do you want for that? You know, and, uh, this was Thursday and really
Thursday was a day I'd set aside to kind of go through and figure
this stuff out. She called me early in the morning,
started asking me the questions. And so I was trying to, you know,
I was having to try to make these decisions pretty quick. And I
told her to put that one up preaching Christ, you know, nothing more,
nothing less, nothing else. After she got off the phone and
I was actually able to have some time, I got to thinking, well,
what is it about our church that is distinctive, unique,
something that's not unique in a way that only other believers
would be able to recognize? Because this preaching Christ
thing, you know other people that believe like you and me,
they'd see that. And if they'd move to the area, that would
get their attention. But an unbeliever doesn't have
a clue why that's an important point to make about our church. And what I'm trying to do, what
the church is supposed to be trying to do is reach out and
find those that don't know our Lord and tell them about our
Lord. So you've got to speak to them
in a language they can identify with. And so I kept thinking. And as I was thinking, I was
also thinking about, well, I went to a website that said 25 best
church websites. And they told you which ones,
and it's this guy who does this for a living, you know, and he
tells you why he believes that's among the top 25. And in nearly
every one of them, he mentioned the calls to action on the website. Now, I realize that has a particular
meaning with websites. All they're talking about is
the website is set up to get you to click on something. It's
a call to action. For example, one of them was,
if you just have a little box, what to expect. In other words,
if somebody wants to visit, you've got a page that'll tell them
what they can expect to find. So it's a call to action. It's
a call to get them to click. It's a sales gimmick is what
it is, because the more involved they get in interacting with
your website, the better it is. But I looked at that, calls to
action, and I thought, that's what religion is. They're always
calling people to action. And then it hit me. rest. That's what the gospel calls
us to do. It calls us not to action, it calls us to inaction. And I know that in my preaching
that I aim for that even if I don't consciously understand that's
what I'm doing, but having preached the gospel as long as I have,
I understand that's part and parcel of what the gospel is.
It's a call to rest, not a call to action. It's not a call to
get busy. It's a call to cease from your
busyness and trust in the actions, the
work, the labor that Christ has done. And so I thought, well, maybe
a good slogan would be something like Grace Community Church,
a place for the weary to find rest. I was talking to Eric. I said, but weary is an old-fashioned
word. And I mean, it was an old-fashioned word when I was young. So it's
only gotten old. We talk about people being tired,
but we don't usually say, oh, I was so weary. And it sounds
religious, because people use weary, normally speaking, only
in a religious sense. And so I'm going to try to find
another way to express the same thing that identifies more with
the way English-speaking people express those ideas. But here's
the point. God calls his people to rest,
not to work. And that's who we're looking
for. We're looking for those who are
wore out. We're looking for those who've
been trying, because that's what somebody told them to do. Their
own conscience said, get busy. The law said, get busy. The preacher
said, get busy. And they've been trying very
hard to meet the standard laid before them, but they can never
meet it to their satisfaction. And therefore, they're in a constant
state of unrest. I want to find those people.
They're out there. And I will tell them, you all
come over here. Now we can't give you rest, but
we can tell you someone who can. We can show you someone who can
bring you rest. There in the middle of chapter
three of Hebrews, the writer begins speaking of
salvation in terms of rest. In other words, Hebrews calls
or describes gospel salvation in terms of resting. But it's
not like that's a new idea. It's been from the very beginning.
The original curse on Adam when he sinned, the original curse
was what? Work. By the sweat of your brow,
you will eat. And if sin brought fruitless
labor, then you would assume that salvation brings the opposite
of that. And then, Noah, when he was born,
his father said, named him Noah, because he said, for in his days
the Lord will give us rest. The Jews were given two symbols
of rest, the Sabbath day, and then the land of promise, which
was told to them would be a land of rest. Several times in the Psalms,
salvation is described as finding rest. I remember preaching on
the one psalm that says, return to your rest, O my soul. Why
would it say that? Because we're so foolish, we
keep leaving it. We keep letting the flesh convince us there's
still something to do. And we go out there and start
trying to do it, and we wear ourselves out. Return to your rest, O my
soul. Paul and Peter taught us that
salvation is without works. You know, sometimes you wonder
if the apostles wouldn't have appreciated that kind of sarcastic
phrase that's often used. You can plug any words in here
you want, but just what part of without works didn't you understand? What was so confusing When it
says, for by grace are you saved through faith, and that's not
of yourselves, it's a gift of God. It's not of works. What
part of that did you miss? Because, oh, I believe that. Then why are you so busy? And
why are you trying to make everybody else so busy? And why are you
laying guilt on people? And why are you constantly telling
them about how they fall short and they need to be more energetic? If it's without works, and you
believe that, how come you keep giving people works to do? Doesn't seem to go together,
does it? But most important in this concept of rest and seeing
how it is part and parcel of the idea of the gospel, our Lord
Jesus Christ said this, come to me, all you who are weary
and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you
and learn from me, for I'm gentle and humble in heart, and you
will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden
is light. Rest. I love the sound of that
word. It's something how some words,
just the very sound of them, kind of, Gives you the feel of
what they're describing. And that S in there, rest. That's nice, rest. It actually makes the word take
a little bit longer to say and gives it a soft ending. The exact
opposite of fret, which abruptly ends. They both end with the
letter T, but that letter S in there just softens it all up,
rest. In verse one of chapter four, we read this, therefore, since
the promise of entering his rest still stands. I wanna think about that phrase
for a few minutes. Now the key feature of the experience
of God's salvation is rest. It says in verse three of chapter
four, now we who have believed enter that rest. We know that
salvation is by grace through faith, but how does the writer
here describe that faith? that faith is entering God's
rest. It's believing, not working. Paul, in describing justification,
he says, to those who believe and do not work, their faith
is credited as righteousness. Now there's lots of people who
believe after a fashion. They were raised to believe that
the Bible is the word of God and that Jesus is the way of
salvation. They learn all these things from
their childhood up. And they believe many of the
same doctrines we believe. But here's the thing, they believe
and work. Paul says to him, believes and
does not work. His faith is credited as righteousness. Our experience of this rest may
go up and down because that's just the nature of our existence
right now. We may not feel at rest. We may
be troubled about many things. We may even from time to time
labor under a burden of legal guilt and the fear that that
engenders. But that's just the flesh. That's
just the natural part of us is still there and it's never going
to be gone until it dies. And in time, God, by His Spirit,
will testify with our spirits that we are the children of God.
And if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs
with Christ Jesus, that we've got nothing to work for because
everything's already ours. But even if our experience of
the rest goes up and down, the reality of our rest does not. Now, what rest are we talking
about? Well, it's not physical rest being spoken of here. I
mentioned the curse put upon Adam. Now, eventually we'll get
rest from those labors, but right now, God does not tell believers,
well, you know, you can enter rest. You don't have to work
for a living anymore. That's not true. Everybody's supposed
to do what they can to earn their bread. And that's just part of
the way this world works. So he's not talking about that
rest. He's not talking about psychological rest or emotional
rest. Now, there are some who do find
a great deal of emotional rest because of faith in the gospel,
and that's because their emotional unrest was caused by their unbelief. But if your unrest wasn't caused
by unbelief, belief isn't going to fix it. I mean, there's just
plain old physical medical conditions that caused you to be psychologically
messed up. And while God can heal them and
has healed those situations, he doesn't promise that he will
during this lifetime. And there are many of his precious
saints who have struggled with emotional unrest their entire
lives. So that's not what he's talking
about when he mentions rest. It's not rest from the warfare
between flesh and spirit. The truth is, the warfare between
flesh and spirit never starts until you are a believer. Oh,
there may be a warfare between conscience and desire, even in
the unbelieving. That happens. But that's not the warfare between
flesh and spirit, because you see the conscience of an unbelieving
man is every bit as much a part of his flesh as his more corrupt
desires that his conscience speaks out against. What the world does not realize
is that the efforts of the unbelieving man to act properly, to do what
a person should do, And his success in all of that is every bit as
much an act of his flesh as if he had never even tried to resist
transgression. You see, until a man is born
again, all he is is flesh, and everything he does is flesh,
and everything he desires comes from the flesh. And it may be
that he has the corrupt sort of fleshly desires that everybody
understands, or he may be full of those fleshly desires of self-righteousness. Or in all reality, everybody's
got some of both. But once, The Spirit of God gives
life, spiritual life to a person. Immediately, there arises a warfare,
an unceasing warfare between the Spirit and the flesh, and
the Spirit is as much at war against the self-righteousness
of the flesh as it is against all the transgressions that the
flesh might delight in. Do you see that? That's a difficult
thing for people to grasp. You know, they'll say, well,
you know, those that God saves, you know, that we're being good
people, you know, that part remains, no. We don't repent of the bad
things we do, we repent of everything we have ever done. Because everything
we have ever done is nothing but flesh. And though it may
look beautiful to other men, be highly esteemed by other people,
it's an abomination to God. My wife and I have been married. I'll get it here in a minute.
Just give me some time. OK, 41 years and a little peace. I don't
do math as fast as I used to. No, 42 years. There you go. Now Bonnie's shaking, nodding
her head. 42 years. And I'm glad. I'm glad that I've remained faithful. I'm glad that we didn't split
up. I'm glad of all of those things. But it is not acceptable in the
sight of God. It's not. For all that I have
done and all that Bonnie has done in trying to be good husband,
good wife, None of it has been good enough. Now, there's great benefit in
this life to living that way, but it won't gain you anything
when it comes to eternal life. And if I were to come to God
in that day and say, well, I never cheated, and we stayed married
to the bitter end, Wouldn't that be awful to call your marriage
a bitter end? The Lord would say, depart from
me, you workers of iniquity. I never knew you. So the struggle between flesh
and spirit is gonna go right on. And this is not a rest from our
labors to seek the Lord. It takes intention. to seek the
Lord, because the natural tendency is to seek natural things. And therefore, there are times
we simply have to say, I gotta stop doing this and put my mind
on the things of God. I know this, there's always enough
to attract your attention and to seem like it's something that
has to be done. There's always gonna be enough
of that to keep you from the worship of God, keep you from
seeking the Lord. I mean, there's a whole world
full of things to get involved in. And some of them seem real
good, seem like they'd be a good idea, and they may be. But nothing's good when it takes
the place of that which is perfect. So we struggle with that. Rather, this rest is spiritual
rest. In Edom, man had his rest. Adam and Eve did not need to
do anything to have all the blessings of God. But once they sinned against
God, they instantly began a pattern of working. laboring, trying
to restore the relationship that their sin had broken, they immediately began to struggle
under a sense of guilt, shame, estrangement, and fear. They were no longer at rest.
This spiritual rest is a rest from all that a person may think
that he needs to do in order to appease God's wrath and win
back the blessings of God. It amazes me, on the one hand,
people will say they want to be free and they demand freedom
to do this, that, and the other. Put them in a religious environment
and they will immediately start making a bunch of rules that
limit their freedom. It's just so natural to us. Paul
described it this way, touch not, taste not, handle not. And then he says about such rules
that religious people like to make up. These rules which have
to do with things that are all destined to perish with use are
based on merely human commands and teachings. And oh, they can
come up with a lot of them. They can make it to where you're
afraid to come out of your house because you're going to do something
wrong. God's wrath might fall on you in a minute. They'll put demands upon your
time, demands upon your money. bands on this, here's how you
gotta dress, here's the music you gotta listen to, you can't
go to this place, you must go to that place. Don't drink that,
don't eat that. And it only gets worse. I have never seen any church
start shedding rules. They always add. a promise of entering rest still
stands. You can be free of that. Now,
that's not the worst thing in the world. I mean, you know,
there are people who believe God entered his rest and their
conscience still tells them, well, I'm just not gonna drink
anything alcoholic. Fine. But I'm not gonna tell
you. I'm not gonna lay that rule on
you. Well, I'm not gonna go to the movies. Okay, fine, if you
don't wanna go to the movies, don't go. But I'm never gonna tell
you that's a rule from God, and if you wanna be a really good
Christian, you gotta quit going to movies. Useless human regulations, all
which have to do with things that as soon as you use them,
they're used up and gone, and they act like it was really important.
is to rest from all that God has demanded in the law as a
means of restoring fellowship with him and paying the debt
of your sin against God. Now, here's the one that right
away, you'll get religious people all in a tizzy over this, but
that's the primary thing that this rest is talking about. God
has made demands. There's no question about that,
is there? He has law, doesn't he? And he says, you do these
things, you'll live by them. Can you do them? I've never met anybody that can,
least of all me. And yet they wear themselves
out trying. And I think they do that partly
because they think, well, God will at least see I'm doing the
best I can. I'm trying. He'll notice how
hard I'm working. Yes, he will. And he will condemn you for your
work. Because it is not that you gain life through such
obedience by doing the best you can. and working real hard, the
only way to gain life by the law is to keep it perfectly all
the time. And seeing that the moment you
were conceived, you were already guilty of breaking the law because
as descendants of Adam, his sin is charged to you. You came into
this world already guilty. and you cannot become unguilty
by the law. I really do feel sorry for these
people that I see laboring so hard under the law. I feel sorry
for them, and I feel sorry for those who think that they have
succeeded. They're in even worse shape. They feel that they've achieved
a certain level of legal obedience that God's gonna be impressed
with, and they stand tall. And there are those who put on
that false humility. Oh, I'm so wicked, you know.
All you gotta do to prove that it's false humility is just agree
with them. Say, yeah, I know you are. I
was thinking about that the other day. God ought to send you to
hell right now. Well, I'm as good as you. You weren't as sinful
as you were acting on. You don't think you're as sinful
as you were letting on, do you? Oh, no. We all got some goodness
in us, we think. All to rest. Therefore, it says
in Romans 8, verse one and two, therefore, there is now no condemnation
for those who in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus,
the law of the Spirit who gives life has set us free from the
law of sin and death. Well, but that's just regarding
salvation and getting into heaven. You still gotta live by that
law. How can you set somebody free with a chain? Tell me that. How can you say, well, I'm gonna
set you free on this arm, but then I'm gonna bring the shackle
over and put it on this arm. Now you're free. No, that doesn't
work. The only way to be free is to
be free. And so long as I am shackled
to the law in any way, I am under a curse, for it is written, curse
it is everyone who does not continue in every point of the law to
do it, not to try to do it, to do it. And the only way that
anyone can ever be set free from the curse of the law is to be
set free from the law itself. So when you do that, people are
going to go out and sin all they want. They're going to do that
anyway. Really. I don't care how much
law you lay on them, they're going to find a way to do their
sinning. It is to rest from a guilty conscience
in the sight of God. Hebrews 9 verse 9 says, this
is an illustration for the present time, and it was speaking of
the old covenant sacrifices, indicating that the gifts and
sacrifices being offered were not able to clear the conscience
of the worshiper. In other words, the very fact
that they had to keep offering them year after year after year
after year was proof of this. Those sacrifices could not clear
a man's conscience. Why? They were sacrifices of
animals. Now, let's understand what he
means by conscience. He's talking about conscience before God.
When we do wrong on a human level, it ought to bother our human
conscience. If we steal something, that should bother us, but that's
not the kind of conscience he's talking about. He's talking about
the sense of guilt in the presence of God. And the sacrifice of
the Lord Jesus Christ has put our guilt away. And the man who
has entered God's rest, he is bold to come before God. Why? His conscience is clear before
God. He knows that he is without sin in the sight of God. And therefore, he is free from
that sense of guilt. In Hebrews chapter 10, verse
two, speaking of those old covenant sacrifices, he said, if they
could have worked, would they not have stopped being offered?
For the worshipers would have been cleansed once for all and
would no longer have felt guilty for their sins. But we have been called on to
enter God's rest. Rest from that burdensome sense
of guilt in the sight of God that no amount of labor has ever
been able to get that burden off of us. I feel awful about the kind of
person I am. My conscience grieves me terribly
over the things I do, but I am never afraid to go to
God and plead His blood. Why? He has given me rest. I know that between me and Him,
everything's okay, despite what I do. Not because of what I do,
in spite of what I do. Everything between God and me
is in good shape because of what Christ has done. And that can't
be changed. And then we have rest from the
fear of judgment. It's appointed unto man once
to die and after that the judgment. Oh, what a scary and sobering
thought that is. Unless you've been given grace
to enter God's rest. In Hebrews chapter two, 14 and
15, since the children have flesh and blood, He, that is the Lord
Jesus Christ, also shared in their humanity so that by his
death, he might destroy him who holds the power of death, that
is the devil, and free those who all their lives were held
in slavery by their fear of death. You see, religion thinks it's being very
godly when it lays guilt upon people. and rules them by that
guilt. But in this scripture, who is
it that is identified as the one who does that very thing?
The devil himself. Everyone's afraid to die because
they know when they die, they face God. And they know that
they're guilty. And the devil uses that guilt
to hold people into religious bondage without Christ. And Jesus Christ came and he
died. He did the work of living right
and then he did the labor of dying under the penalty of the
sin he bore. And when he did, he disarmed
the devil. Why? Because we have absolutely
no reason to fear death. Because while it's appointed
unto man once to die and after the judgment, if you are in Christ,
judgment has already passed for you. For you, it's appointed unto
you once to die and to be with Christ. To be with Christ. This promise
is from God himself. This isn't a Baptist promise,
this isn't a preacher's promise. I'm not saying believe me, this
is true. I'm saying believe God, this is true. The promise still
stands. The door's not closed. Isn't
that a wonderful thing? God made this promise of entering
his rest and the door's still wide open. Now, nobody's gonna come in unless
God does a work of grace in their hearts first. But I tell you
this, if you want that rest, there it is, it's Christ. He
is the door, he is the way. Enter in, relax. It's all been done. The work
is finished. How does a person take advantage
of the promise? Well, it's just so obvious. You almost
think you wouldn't have to say it, but that's the thing about
religious stuff. People don't exercise good sense
when it comes to religion. When you're working, how do you
rest? First thing you do is quit working.
Isn't that kind of obvious? You're out there hoeing away,
you know, on your garden. You say, man, I wish I had some
rest. I'm going to rest. Well, what's the first thing
you're going to do? You're going to lay the hoe down. Just put it on the
ground. Okay, I'm done. I'm finished with the working. You need to
go inside and sit down. Quit working. And secondly, believe, trust
him who already did all the work. Do you believe that Jesus Christ
did all the work necessary to restore the relationship between
God and men and to purchase for his people all the blessings
that God has for a righteous man? Do you really believe he
got it all done? Well, if he got it all done,
Just don't make any sense for you to do anything, does it? In fact, it'd be an insult to
Christ if you did. Because when you try to do something
to improve on what Christ did, you're saying you can do better
than Jesus did. I can improve on that. No, you
can't. Oh, rest. Rest from all your worries. about
God. Not a presumptive rest, a rest
that comes from a confidence in what Christ has done. He has
brought us rest by finishing the work. And the promise of
entering rest still stands. And he says, let us be careful
that none of us should be found to have fallen short of it. How
could that happen? There's a difference between
starting and finishing. Nothing has grieved me more in
all my time here than to see people start and then quit. Because you see, the Jews started. They went out of Egypt. walked
through the Red Sea and they got right up to the land of Canaan.
They were right there. God said, go in, I'm giving it
to you. I'm handing it to you. And they
sent some spies in. And of the 12 spies, two of them
said, yeah, let's go in. God said, he's gonna give it
to us. The other 10 said, oh, no, no. I did, boy, it does flow
with milk and honey, like the Lord said, but he didn't mention
the giants that live there. We're like grasshoppers to them.
No, it wouldn't be good. We need to rethink this. And
you know what God said? And this is sobering now. He
swore, you will never enter my rest. The Jews were guilty of all kinds
of transgressions against God's law as they were going across
the wilderness and God forgave every transgression. But when
they got to the line and refused to go in, he said,
fine, you'll never go in. There was no remedy for their
unbelief. Spurgeon put it this way. For
every transgression against the law, there is a remedy in the
gospel. But for transgression of the
gospel, there is no remedy. Now, I know that anybody who
truly believes, you know, we've got our doctrines. Anybody that
truly believes will continue to believe. We know that. But
we don't know that anybody's truly believed until they believe
to the end. And so he gives warning. He says,
enter, rest. But make sure you stay there.
Don't you be tempted out into the fields to work again, lest
you fall the same way they did. Well, God be thanked for his
rest. May we all learn to enjoy it.