So we're continuing in our studies
of Simon Peter, an apostle of Christ, and what the Lord is
showing us in his word, how he goes about teaching the apostles,
how he went about teaching them in person, considering that the
teachings that he does with his apostles and his disciples are
the same teachings that he does with you and I. Our Lord is not
a respecter of persons. He saves everyone the same. He
teaches everyone the same. We may learn it differently than
others do. But for the most part, everything
is pretty much the same. Christ is God Almighty in the
flesh. The Lord Jesus Christ came to this earth as God in
the flesh to perfectly accomplish the will of the Father by going
to the cross and making the payment in full, total, complete, and
perfect for His saints. Those that He had loved before
the world was. Those for whom the Father hath
given Him before the world was. Those who were chosen before
the foundation of the world. This same Christ who went to
the cross, took the sins of all of those that the Father gave
Him into the grave, left them there, and was arisen again,
holy, completely holy. He who knew no sin was made sin
and died for us that we would be righteous in Him. Now that
very one sits on His throne in heaven, working everything out
according to His will, accomplishing everything that He has purpose
to accomplish. And in doing so, these points
that He has taught the apostles, the disciples, are also being
taught to us. Now, God may not use us like
He did Peter to write two epistles. But who knows what the Lord is
going to use us for. I had no idea that God was going to use
me to be a pastor of a church. I really, really did not until
the very day that He made me pastor of this church. We just do not know what our
Lord is going to use us for. Our Lord is now using our dear
brother Bill to write things. And what a wonderful thing it
is. I'm going to use it in his latest article in today's message.
But these are the things that we're looking at in viewing what
Simon Peter went through before he got to that point of writing
his epistles. Peter was being taught the things
of Christ by Christ. Just as you and I are learning
of Christ by Christ. Many look into this book and
see the Word of God, do they not? Could we not say the Pope
of the Catholic Church probably knows more about Scripture than
anyone else that I can think of does? But yet I know that
because he does not worship the true and living God for who he
is, His hopes and his faith is in something that man is doing.
For that reason, I know that he does not see Christ, and Christ
is not teaching him anything. Many read scriptures, but only
Christ can teach each and every one of us what it is about Christ
in this scripture. We were talking about this in
Friday night's Bible study. How can people read something so
simple, so simple that we see in scriptures? and not see the truth of it.
It's because Christ hasn't opened their eyes to those things, right?
Isn't that what we talked about? The Lord has hid these things
from the wise and the prudent. In John 1.1, our Lord is teaching
by telling us, in the beginning was the Word. This Word, right
here. Maybe not this book that I'm
holding, but the very words that are in it have been from the
beginning of time, before time began. Peter heard and saw the Lord
of glory stand there right before him, teaching the things of himself
openly that all may hear." Our Lord didn't hide over in a corner
with His apostles, saying, come on over here, we'll keep it all
to ourselves. No, He spoke openly. He healed
openly. People left and right were being
healed from their deafness, from their blindness, from their leprosy,
from their lameness. We see and hear and proclaim
the word of God to all who may hear, but not all profit from
these things, do they? We see and hear and proclaim
the word of God to all who may hear, but not all--" oh, I just
read that. Only those who have been given
ears of the heart can hear the truths of God. Only those. who have had the
old stony heart cut away and a brand new heart, new life,
not a better old life, but new life in Christ Jesus the Lord. They will hear and learn of God. They have new eyes to see the
Word of God for what it is, truth. They have a new heart that believes
every word. We don't understand everything,
that's for sure. But every word in this book that
our Lord has given us, I believe. Many heard, but few believed. In chapter 10 of Matthew, it
was expounding of the troubles that those who follow Christ
will face. We'll go back to chapter Matthew,
if you would, please. And as we went through chapter
10, looking at the troubles that the apostles would go through,
that the disciples would go through, as God sent them out, as the
Lord Jesus Christ sent them out to preach, the kingdom of heaven
is at hand. And then in chapter 11, he leads
them to go, as John the Baptist did, and preach that very thing. The kingdom of heaven is at hand,
or near, in other words. And then Jesus went out and taught
himself and he preached in their cities, it says in verse 1 of
chapter 11. What I want to look at this morning is the first
verses of chapter 12 and the last couple verses of chapter
11 together. There's a lot of stuff in chapter
11, and I'm not skipping over it because it's not worthy to
look at. It's just not part of what we're
looking at in this subject, Peter. Simon Peter, an apostle to Jesus
Christ. We're looking at what the Lord
is doing personally, teaching Peter. Well, Peter's been off.
So, let's look at the first verses of chapter 12 and the last verses
of chapter 11 together, and let us not forget that we are looking
into those things that our Lord is teaching this one who is to
be used to speak to many. Jesus had given thanks to His
Father for revealing the truths to babes, that we read in Matthew
11, 25, where it says, and at that time Jesus answered and
said, I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because
Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent and has
revealed them unto babes. God the Father hid the things
that Jesus had just been spoken of. Woe unto the Charisees, and
to them, and to Bezalel. For if the mighty works which
were done in you, that had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they
would have repented long ago, and sat clothed in ashes, that
we read in verse 21. But in verse 22 it says, But
I say unto you, it shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon
at the day of judgment than it is for you. I thank you, Father. I thank you, Lord. Our Lord and
Savior is praying to his Father, thank you for hiding, for revealing
these things unto babes, unto some. He could have left it all,
he could have left us all, we all deserve to be left to ourselves,
do we not? And he could have left us that
way, but he did not. He revealed these very things to some. Many
heard the Lord speak, And many saw Him healed, but few had the
truths of these very works and what they meant revealed to their
hearts. In verse 26 of 11 it says, Even so, Father, for it
seemed good in Thy sight. Why did He reveal it to babes
and hide it from others? Because it seemed good in His
sight. He's the potter, is He not? And as the potter, does
He not have the right to do that? Who are we? Who are we, the creation,
to question the Creator of what He wants and what He's done? All things are delivered unto
me of my Father, continuing in verse 27, and no man knoweth
the Son, but the Father, neither knoweth any man the Father, save
the Son, and He to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him. So we
find the religious hypocrites pointing fingers at our Savior
and His disciples in verse 2. of chapter 12. Let's skip up
to chapter 12 and begin at verse 1. And at that time Jesus went
on the Sabbath day through the corn and his disciples were hungered
and began to pluck the ears of corn and to eat. Now remember
we're talking about Peter being taught. Obviously, now the disciples
are back with the Lord Jesus Christ. We don't know exactly
when they came back. We know that Matthew was either
told or he came back in time to see and hear what the Lord
would do and wrote of it. That's why we read in chapter
11 all these things that Jesus went out and did. But it isn't
until verse 1 of 12 where we read the disciples were actually
back with Him again and began to pluck the ears and corn to
eat. And as I said about verse 2, let's read that, but when
the Pharisees saw it, the very religious ones of that day, the
so-called holy and righteous religious leaders of the people, when they heard that Jesus had
walked with His disciples through the corn and plucked, because
that was the way they would do it at that time, the poor could
go through and pluck when they needed to eat. That was part
of their law. Behold thy disciples do that
which is not lawful to do upon the Sabbath day. Isn't that the way of the self-righteous
religious people when it comes to man? Look what those guys
are doing over there. Look what that so-called religious
man is doing. He's smoking a cigarette. He's
not religious. He's doing this, or that, or
this, or that. But it's OK for me to do it because
I'm not a religious person. That's what they're doing. That's
what these very religious people here are doing, aren't they?
I'm more righteous than he is. How can he be a religious leader? This is why Paul, when writing
to the Colossians, he wrote this. You don't need to turn there
in Colossians 2, verse 8. It says, beware lest any man spoil
you through philosophy and vain deceit. Our Lord's ways are not our ways,
folks. Vain philosophy and deceit. After the tradition of men, after
the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. Beware of those
who try to get you to do this and get you to do that. Our Lord and Savior had just
taught in verse 27-30 of chapter 11, All things are delivered
unto Me of My Father, and no man knoweth the Son, but the
Father neither knoweth any man. The Father saith the Son, and
He to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him. Our Lord then says
to us, He says to His people, Come unto Me, all ye that labor
and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. But He says it
openly. He's not off in some corner speaking.
He's saying it openly to everyone. The invitation goes out to all.
Come unto the Lord. Whosoever calleth upon the name
of the Lord Jesus Christ shall be saved. But with your old nature you
will not come. Your old nature is bound by sin. It takes the new nature that
God gives us to come to Him. Take my yoke upon you, and learn
of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest
unto your souls, for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. Put your works aside, for Christ
the Lord, our great substitute, shall fulfill all things. And that includes salvation.
Most importantly, salvation is of the Lord. There's no greater
message that anyone can be taught. Especially in the world we live
in today, where every religion, Cheryl was sharing with us about
her brother's group and what they believe in our Friday night
Bible study. Every religion out there requires
something of you. This is what makes God, our Lord
Jesus Christ, yoke so easy, so light. It's all of Him. When
you say salvation is of the Lord, and you're saying it in truth. Now there's a lot, there's a
lot of people out there who declare that salvation is of the Lord.
You can get that from a lot of people who say they're Christians.
But you have to. But you need to. But there's
this one thing that you're required to do. Isn't that what we hear
from all the other religions out there? When I first started coming to
church, it's quite a ways up here for me, as it is for many
of you also. I think you can ask Bill this. I used to tell him, I said, hey,
you know, I heard about this church over here. I want to go
check it out this Sunday. You want to go with me? Why? Why, John? The water of life
is already at rescue. We already know where it's at.
Why go looking over there? It's right up there already. How many times
did you tell me that? He never went with me to any
of those other churches, ever. None of them. And I know why
now. They were all about the works
of men, every single one that I went to. And I went to several.
Tom Sawyer started coming to this church. And when he first
came to this church, he heard Pastor Gene preach, I think,
two or three times. And he came up to Pastor Gene,
and he goes, you know what? I'm going to go test you. And
he literally pulled out his telephone book, found every single church
between here in Folsom and here in Placerville. And I don't know
if he went to every single one of them, but he spent two or
three months gone going to Bible studies, going to Friday night
studies, going to worship services on Sunday morning, going to a
different one Sunday evening. And he came back three months
later and he said, you're right. There's not a single church in
this area. that I could find that preaches grace. I'm not trying to single us out
as the only ones. We don't know who God has out
there. I know that there's a church in Marysville where grace is
preached. I know that the pastor over in San Leandro preaches
grace. I know there's one in Oregon in the Dallas. I know
there's a small group in Colorado. I know there's a small group
in San Diego. I know there's a small group
down in Modesto. We know that there's grace gatherings
around, but there are so far and so few between. Put your
works aside for Christ the Lord our great substitute shall fulfill
all things. Don Fortner wrote this about
Matthew 11, 28 through 30. He said, Jesus Christ, the Son
of God, the Savior of the world, commands and invites and persuades
sinners to come to Him, promising salvation of eternal life to
all who do. He says, come unto me in those
very words in Matthew 28, 11, 28. Come unto me. Faulkner writes, the Lord Jesus
Christ calls sinners to come to Him. He does not call us to
come to an altar. He does not call us to come to
the church. He does not call us to come to a preacher, or
a priest, or a baptistry, or the Lord's table, or the law
of Moses, or even His doctrine. He says, come unto Me. What does that mean? What is
it to come to Christ? He does not leave us to guess
anything about that. No. He says in John 6.35, and
Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life. He that cometh
to me shall never hunger, and he that believeth on me shall
never thirst. That's what it means to come
to Christ. We don't hunger for salvation because our salvation
is in our Savior. To come to Christ is to believe
on Him. In fact, it is in fact an act
of faith. Come unto me all ye that labor
and are heavy laden. The word here, the word that
is here translated labor means to toil. Toil with weariness. All of you who toil with weariness
trying to keep the law. All of you who work to make righteousness
for yourself. And it doesn't get you anywhere
because tomorrow you get up and you're just as filthy in sin
as you were today. All of you who work and labor,
who toil with weariness and are heavy laden, burdened down with
the load that they cannot get rid of, are bidden to come to
Christ. Some labor and are heavy laden,
seeking salvation by their own righteousness, by their own works,
and they are engaged in impossible tasks. There is no righteousness
in us except for Christ. And it's His righteousness, not
ours. If that is your case, that case
of working the impossible task, quit trying to save yourself
and come to Christ. Are you laboring and are heavy
laden with the temptations of the devil? Are inward corruption,
unbelief, and worldly care? Come to Christ. The Lord Jesus
Christ promises that He will, without exception, receive all
who come to God by Him. It also says in those verses,
I will give you rest. The word rest expresses much
more than relaxation. It also has in it the idea of
refreshment. This is the rest our Savior gives
to sinners, both a cessation from labor and a reviving of
life. It is given rest, it cost Him
dear, but He gives it to us freely. He earned it and bought it for
us, and now He gives it freely to all who trust in Him. It is
a present. All who believe do, and when
they believe, they enter into His rest, the rest of faith. And this is a satisfying rest
because it is a rest from all guilt. It's a rest from all fear. It's a rest from all toil and
legal work. A rest from the curse and the
condemnation of sin. A complete rest from the law.
And the rest promised in this passage is also a future rest. It is a rest beyond all that
can be experienced here. It is a perfect rest of complete
salvation. A rest from all sin. A rest from
all afflictions. A rest from all temptations.
A rest from all sorrow. A rest from all unsatisfied desires. Our Lord says, take my yoke upon
you. We're going to get to why we
read those first two verses here in just a moment. But I want
you to finish this. He says, take my yoke upon you. This is a call to voluntary submission
and obedience. It is something that we must
do. We must bow to and slip upon ourselves the yoke of this profession,
the yoke of his precepts, the yoke of his providence. It also
says, and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart. Here
He appoints His appointed means by which sinners are unable to
bear this threefold yoke He has given us an example to follow.
He endured great hardship for us. He became obedient to God
to save us. He submitted to the will of God
for us. In all things our Redeemer has
left us an example that we should follow His steps. And then He
says, And ye shall find rest unto your souls, trusting Christ
alone as our Savior and Lord. God's elect find rest for their
souls in Him and in trusting Him. His obedience unto death is our
only righteousness and redemption. We obtain the rest of good, of
a good conscience. Following His steps, trusting
and obeying His revealed will, we obtain the rest of a faithful
servant. Trusting His providence, we obtain a rest of a believing
heart. Now, Peter is one who must learn
these very truths. And sometimes we have to learn
things the hard way, as many in our own generation are, myself
included. I understand a lot about what
Peter may be going through, because I tend to do the same thing. Maybe not as much as I used to,
but there was a day when I flew off the handle a lot. And we'd
go off, oh, no, no, no, no, and just worry about this, or go
off, no, no, no, no, and just worry about that. And the Lord
is teaching me, and I pray that He'll continue teaching me. Rest in Him. One of the greatest
things I saw from Pastor Gene Harmon, one of the greatest things
my Lord could teach me from Pastor Gene Harmon was this. Rest in the Lord. I saw it through
him. The trials that he would bring
into this congregation, our Lord would bring into this congregation, And I saw how Pastor Gene would
deal with those things. And he got to a point towards
the end where everything, the Lord helped me to get to that
point, where everything, okay, that's the Lord's will. Cool,
we'll just keep right on going. Okay, so I never heard Pastor
Gene say cool. But that's what I thought he was saying. You
know what I mean? He would just keep on going.
All right. Don't worry about it, John. It
didn't work out. No problem. It'll come around
some way, another way. Don't worry about it. It'll happen.
And I'm learning that. There's some, I got to tell you
this, the dealing with the residents and how it's taken, you know,
we're almost a year now into this, and it's going pretty slow. That would have driven me absolutely
nuts. Ask Kathy, she'll tell you. She'll
verify that. But that's the way the Lord has
it. There was a time when diminishing
numbers of this congregation worried me greatly. It doesn't
anymore. There's not many here this morning.
That's okay. There was only three of us for
Friday night Bible study. I would have canceled it, but
I called up the other two and I said, you know, if you guys
want to do this, let's do this. Okay, and we did. And we had an absolutely
wonderful Bible study. With just three people, it's
easy to start getting into a little conversation about what it is
we're reading about. And we actually saw some things
that I'm not going to share with you because you weren't there,
so I'm sorry. No, I'm just kidding. It was just absolutely fantastic. We actually saw our Lord answer
a question that was brought up at the beginning of the Bible
study. that really couldn't be answered, even though we tried
to look at it and how other ministers have answered it for us, it still
wasn't a complete understanding, at least to one or two, me being one of them. Because I
was sitting there questioning myself, too, and going, yeah,
you know, that's a good question. I don't know. That doesn't make
sense to me either. And our Lord brought Don Fortner, however
long it was that he wrote that book, Seeing Christ in Galatians,
however long ago that was, he quoted a piece of scripture in
there that answered that very question. The question was, what
is the unforgivable sin? And I don't remember the exact
scripture, and I don't want to even try to quote it without
having it in front of me. It's in the Bible study if you
guys want to read it. But it answered that question perfectly.
You see what I mean about not worrying? You see what I mean
about taking the yoke of our Lord Jesus Christ and putting
it upon Him, taking His yoke upon us? It's so easy. It's so
much more easier than John worrying about this and John worrying
about that. My rest is becoming more and more and
more in my Lord. And that's what Peter is having
to learn here. That's what it's talking about when the Pharisees
saw that they said unto him in verse 2, Behold, thy disciples
do that which is unlawful. Look what our Lord says next.
But he said unto them, Have ye not read what David did when
he was hungered and that they were with him? How he entered into the house
of God and did eat the showbread which was lawful for him to eat?
neither for them which were with him, but only for the priests? Or have ye not read in the law
of how on the Sabbath days the priests in the temple profane
the Sabbath and are blameless?" Who's our great High Priest?
Our Lord Jesus Christ. Is it blameless for Him to go
into the field and eat on that day? No, it wasn't against the
law for the priests to eat and fix their meals. The same thing
for the high priest of all things. They knew that law, but yet they
wanted something to point at Jesus and His disciples. See
those people? They're not religious like we
are. But I say unto you that in this
place, verse 6, is one greater than the temple. But if ye had known what this
meaneth, I will have mercy and not sacrifice, ye would not have
condemned the guiltless. For the Son of Man, and here's
what Peter had to learn, just as you and I have to learn, for the Son of Man is Lord even
of the Sabbath. He is our Sabbath. We need to put our works aside. I need to put those things that
I think I have to do aside. Today we're going to come to
this table. It's called this due remembrance of me. We call
it the remembrance table. It reminds us of the works that
our Lord did. And if He's done those works
and perfectly done them as He had, there's nothing left for
us to do but to rest in Him. Our Lord says to each and every
one of us, come unto Me. Amen?