We Shall Enter His Rest
Notes
Transcript
Greetings
Greetings
Hello everyone I am glad to be back and preaching once again.
Intro Proper
Intro Proper
Just going to be honest here, I didn’t really know what to preach on until last Thursday. But then an idea started brewing in my mind and I just couldn’t stop going over it in my head, developing the thought. Going through what the sermon would be like.
I must confess once again the great gift that God has granted me, to be able to write sermons and the such, because before my becoming a Christian I lacked the ability to write anything, I would always get stuck at the very start and wouldn’t have that much progress even after a few hours. But after my repentance and then curiosity about preaching, God gave me the ability to write sermons out, to develop the thought and be able to be used as an instrument by Him to edify and build up the saints.
Today I will hopefully be able to encourage you all to be able to continue on in your walk with Christ, to run the race, to fight the good fight. Today we will be talking about the mindset that we need as Christians to continue persevering in the faith, and not just remaining in it, but growing as Christians, growing in our Christ-likeness as we continue to be conformed to the image of God’s own Son Jesus Christ. And as we continue in our sanctification day in and day out.
Point 1
Point 1
Please open with me to Numbers 13:25, even though we will not spend much time in this passage, I believe it is important to read it because it will establish the context for most of the verses which we will be going over later.
Numbers 13:25–14:4 (LSB)
25 Then they returned from spying out the land, at the end of forty days,
26 and went and came to Moses and Aaron and to all the congregation of the sons of Israel in the wilderness of Paran, at Kadesh; and they brought back word to them and to all the congregation and showed them the fruit of the land.
27 Thus they recounted to him and said, “We went in to the land where you sent us; and it certainly does flow with milk and honey, and this is its fruit.
28 “Nevertheless, the people who live in the land are strong, and the cities are fortified and very large; and moreover, we saw the descendants of Anak there.
29 “Amalek is living in the land of the Negev and the Hittites and the Jebusites and the Amorites are living in the hill country, and the Canaanites are living by the sea and by the side of the Jordan.”
30 Then Caleb quieted the people before Moses and said, “We should by all means go up and take possession of it, for we are surely able to overcome it.”
31 But the men who had gone up with him said, “We are not able to go up against the people, for they are too strong for us.”
32 So they gave out to the sons of Israel a bad report of the land which they had spied out, saying, “The land, which we have passed through to spy out on, is a land that devours its inhabitants; and all the people whom we saw in it are men of great size.
33 “There also we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak are part of the Nephilim); and we became like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight.”
1 Then all the congregation lifted up their voices and cried, and the people wept that night.
2 And all the sons of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron; and the whole congregation said to them, “Would that we had died in the land of Egypt! Or would that we had died in this wilderness!
3 “And why is Yahweh bringing us into this land, to fall by the sword? Our wives and our little ones will become plunder; would it not be better for us to return to Egypt?”
4 So they said to one another, “Let us appoint a leader and return to Egypt.”
You all know this story, most of us have heard it from our youth. This entire section of the OT where God has redeemed the Israelites, He has brought them out of Egypt and is bringing them to the promised land by leading them through the wilderness and providing for them all that they need. Be that daily food through the miraculous manna that fell from heaven, or the victory against the various tribes that attempted to destroy Israel. And finally bringing them to the promised land. This journey from Egypt, from slavery through many trials and temptations to the promised land can be seen as a metaphor, an illustration of the Christian life. Jesus Christ, who is our redeemer, leading us in an Exodus from our slavery to sin, and leading us through the wilderness as we sojourn through this life, providing for us victory in our battles and providing us with food and drink as we sojourn, until we reach our destination, the promised land, where we shed the garments of our flesh and enter into the rest promised to us by God the Father. We will get into the texts that support this in a bit, but just as a side note, it is interesting that the eschatology of the Jews, their views of the end times, based on various texts from the OT, they were looking forward to a new exodus, this is supported by passages like Jeremiah 16:14–15
14 “Therefore behold, days are coming,” declares Yahweh, “when it will no longer be said, ‘As Yahweh lives, who brought up the sons of Israel out of the land of Egypt,’
15 but, ‘As Yahweh lives, who brought up the sons of Israel from the land of the north and from all the lands where He had banished them.’ For I will return them to their own land which I gave to their fathers.
The sons of Israel were waiting for the next exodus which would happen when the Messiah came and established his earthly kingdom and then the Messiah would rule over the entire earth while exalting the Hebrews above all other nations because of the promises made to them by God. Unfortunately most of the Jews missed this second Exodus when the Messiah, Jesus Christ who is Himself God incarnate came to personally lead His people out of slavery and to His glorious kingdom. Some would say this is an imperfect illustration, the one about the journey after the Exodus, because as we see from the text we just read out of the book of Numbers, the Israelites due to their unbelief weren’t able to enter the Promised land. And that is exactly right. They weren’t able to enter because of unbelief, despite the fact that they saw so many miracles on their way out of Egypt, and many more on their trek through the wilderness. This leads me to a conclusion that even if someone sees the miraculous, they will not believe in God unless God changes their hearts. And that was the main issue here. It was a heart issue, we will spend more time talking about that later. But this illustration is further supported by texts like Hebrews 11:13–16 which says:
13 All these died in faith, without receiving the promises, but having seen them and having welcomed them from a distance, and having confessed that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.
14 For those who say such things make it clear that they are seeking a country of their own.
15 And indeed if they had been remembering that country from which they went out, they would have had opportunity to return.
16 But now, they aspire to a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He prepared a city for them.
This passage which is smack dab in the middle of the heroes of faith segment in Hebrews talks about those who died having faith that they will enter a country not on earth but a heavenly one. And here specifically its attributing that to the land of promise which was promised to Abraham. So in making our journey out of the land of slavery to the promised land, which is heaven. We are sojourners and exiles here as the text we just read says. This place is not our home, it is not our permanent residence.
The Israelites were given a promise by God, and because they were the descendants of Abraham, they were supposed to attain that promise. But that promise could never be fully realized by the Israelites, because they had no way to keep the law. They were stopped from doing so, by their sinful nature, that stain of original sin. Like I said before, it was a heart issue. But we have a better promise, one built on a more sure covenant, unlike with Israel the covenant we have with God is one where God takes care of the heart issue, as we see in the terms of the new covenant in Ezekiel 36:24–27
24 “And I will take you from the nations, gather you from all the lands, and bring you into your own land.
25 “Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your uncleanness and from all your idols.
26 “Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.
27 “I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to do My judgments.
and the writer to the Hebrews goes through great lengths to show this, in fact the largest quotation from the Old Testament in the New, is found in Hebrews 8:8-11, which is a quotation of Jeremiah 31:31-34. and it says this:
8 For finding fault with them, He says,
“Behold, days are coming, says the Lord,
When I will complete a new covenant
With the house of israel and with the house of Judah;
9 Not like the covenant which I made with their fathers
In the day when I took them by the hand
To lead them out of the land of Egypt;
For they did not continue in My covenant,
And I did not care for them, says the Lord.
10 “For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel
After those days, says the Lord:
I will put My laws into their minds,
And upon their hearts I will write them.
And I will be their God,
And they shall be My people.
11 “And they shall not teach everyone his fellow citizen,
And everyone his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’
For all will know Me,
From the least to the greatest of them.
Now even though God took care of the heart issue, by removing from us the heart of stone, and giving us a heart of flesh, and making us a new creation, giving us the Holy Spirit to sanctify us. All of us still struggle with the temptation, to go back, to return to our old ways, our old habits. To things that do not please God. To things that are contrary to our new nature. That’s because we still have our old nature with us. Our old flesh, who despises God, and hates doing anything for him. That was our old self, the self that did everything for me, with no thought given to others. And every time we sin, we are in a sense going back, we are turning back from God. And its kind of funny. I just recently thought about this, how I often found myself chastising the Israelites who went through the Exodus, thinking to myself things like, “You stupid Israelites, why are you turning your back on God by worshipping idols? Why are you wanting to return to Egypt? After all you have been through, after all that God has done for you?” And yet, we do the same each time we sin. It is the human condition. Because our old flesh yearns to return to its old ways. Back to sin, back to slavery. Because fundamentally that is what it wants. Earlier we read the passage from Numbers, and I wonder if any of you picked up on this. In Numbers 14:3, what were the Israelites fundamentally saying? To remind you here is the verse again.
3 “And why is Yahweh bringing us into this land, to fall by the sword? Our wives and our little ones will become plunder; would it not be better for us to return to Egypt?”
They are saying, it would be better for us to return to Egypt, to return to slavery, then to die here. Did any of you pick up on this? They are saying it would be better to be a slave than this. Despite the fact that God has been with them every step and is telling them that He will help them conquer. And this is the temptation that our old flesh constantly gives us, every time we struggle with sin, it whispers to us, “Would it not be better to return to Egypt? To return to slavery? It was so much easier then...” Because all of us are born in bondage to sin. We are “...slaves to sin...”, as Paul puts it in his letter to the Romans. Every single Christian goes through this struggle. Even “Spiritual Giants” like Paul struggled with this. He says this in Romans 7:19:
19 For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want.
and then later on in the verse 24, he says this (Romans 7:24):
24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from the body of this death?
It is a difficult pill to swallow my brothers and sisters. That even as Christians, even as those who have received a new heart, and the Holy Spirit who sanctifies us, and we are by nature new creations through Christ, even with all this, we still don’t measure up to the standard of what a Christian should be. Within the past few months I underwent some serious self examination as to whether I was in the faith or not. There was not a doubt in my mind that Christianity was true, what I doubted was my place in it. Before that I also had minor doubts, but my response to them wasn’t serious at all. “of course your a Christian” was what I thought to myself. This time was a bit more serious. I kept stumbling, I kept falling, I kept failing. There was no way that a Christian would fall this much. I will not lie, sometimes I would be in my bed at night thinking, “God, strike me down, end it now. I do not wish to sin against you anymore...” And the thing that kept me going most of all, was when I randomly remember verses from scripture, verses like the ones we read earlier from Paul lamenting about his inability, verses like Proverbs 24:16, which says:
16 For a righteous man falls seven times, and rises again,
But the wicked will stumble in calamity.
And I would remember snippets from sermons that I heard, where a prominent preacher or pastor, this seeming spiritual giant, also laments about their inability. Preachers like Voddie Baucham, who once said in a sermon, “I’m not who I’m meant to be, but praise the Lord! I’m not who I was!” Preachers like Paul Washer, who during a sermon shared about how he was reading scripture once with his mother and she would break down crying and saying “I don’t understand how I can be a Christian when I falter so much” and Paul would encourage his mother saying, “The fact that you realize that is proof that you are a Christian!” And I would of course remember my old life, and see how much I have changed. Like I mentioned earlier before my conversion I couldn’t write to save my life, but upon my conversion and taking an interest in preaching God’s word, God has granted me the ability to write and used me as an instrument to proclaim His word. And other things like my love for God’s word, for God’s people, the Church. These are things I did not have before. Before hand I was a terrible curser, I would curse almost every other word. And praise the Lord! Those words don’t even enter my mind now, even when I am very upset. And Praise the Lord! God has quieted my heart and once again showed me that I am still His child, that His love for me that He first showed on the cross has not diminished, nor all the love He has shown me afterwards. Every time I prayed for God to strike me down, I woke up in the morning, and every time that we do wake up in the morning it is God telling us, “I am not finished with you yet, I will still use you to glorify My name on this earth.” So take heart brothers and sisters. Justification is instant, but sanctification is a process. It takes time. In fact it will take your whole life, however long that may be, for God to sanctify you. And just to kind of bookend this particular part of the sermon before we move on to application, allow me to tell an illustration. I’m a big fan of history, it was one of my favorite subjects in school. And in particular what fascinates me is South American history. And even more so the time period of the conquests, it astounds me how a relatively small group of Spaniards could conquer the entirety of central America, especially with how large and powerful the Aztec empire was at the time. Before I continue, I do wish to say that what men like Cortes, who conquered the Aztecs, and men like Pizarro, who conquered the Incas, what they did in the name of Christianity was wrong, what they did and taught wasn’t Christianity at all. But a particular moment that I find fascinating was that after Cortes had landed in central America, and then got permission to continue inland from the Spanish government, what did he do? Some of you probably heard this before, but he gave the order to his men to burn the ships, destroy them. Because as far as he was concerned, there was no going back. He instilled in his men that thought that they won’t be going back to Spain, all that they have left now is to conquer as much as possible in, what they thought, was the name of God and for Spain. The point that I would like to make now is this. The moment we have repented and started to follow Christ. We have burned the ships. Christ through His conquest of souls has won us over from the kingdom of darkness, He has removed us from our old bondage to our flesh, and our slavery to sin. He has in their place given us a new heart, He has made us a new creation, He has given us the Holy Spirit to sanctify and cleanse us. And now we have become His soldiers. We have become conquerors through Christ as we march forth to continue His conquest, to conquer souls for God by preaching His word, by proclaiming His name, by glorifying His name in all that we do as we preach and proclaim the gospel, the good news, that “the kingdom of heaven is at hand, repent and believe the gospel.” Brothers and sisters, we have burned the ships, and there is no going back to the way things were. There is no going back to Egypt, there is no going back to slavery.
But that still leaves me with the question, why did I fall so much? Why was I so weak in my battle against sin? And upon self reflection I noticed what was missing. You see when our bodies are drained, what do we do? We re-energize them. We eat food, and we drink water. The same goes for our spiritual lives as well. When we don’t energize and feed ourselves spiritual food, or drink our spiritual water, we will find that we cannot stand against the enemy. And this is the most basic thing in Christianity. This, this Bible here, this is our food, and prayer, that is our drink. Jesus said during His temptation in the wilderness in Matthew 4:4,
4 But He answered and said, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.’”
We must constantly be reading and and meditating on the word of God, thinking about it, applying it to our daily life, that is one of the most important ways that God communicates with us. Through His word, and the more we read about it, the more we will understand, and the more God will open it to us in proportion with how fast we are growing. And prayer, is how we daily rely on God, it is how we communicate with Him our needs, our thanks, our wants, our worries. Anything. This is something that we need to do, it is as basic as eating and drinking. We need to be consumed by these things. They need to fill our lives, our thoughts. Bible reading and prayer shouldn’t just be confined to the church building, but should go with us wherever we go. It should influence how we talk to others, how we act towards others and how we make our day to day decisions. Paul Washer once said, “the hardest thing for me to do is to read the Bible, and pray.” Because despite it being so easy to do, it is also very easy for our flesh to distract us from this very crucial part of our walk. It is very easy, in my experience at least, to say, “You know what, I will read the Bible some other time” or “I’ll pray tomorrow right now I’m too tired” and of course whenever we put it off, we don’t find the time for it later either. I heard this thought, I don’t remember from where, but it went like this, “if you find yourself thinking, ‘I need to pray for so-and-so’ do not delay, take the time then and there to pray for that person or need, because you will not find that time later”. Again this sounds basic but without this we will become so feeble and weak that we will fail at the slightest temptation. We need to strengthen ourselves by relying not on our own strength, not on our own understanding. But relying on God’s strength, relying on God’s understanding. Abiding in His word. Brothers and sisters, it is only by God that we can do anything. We have been freed from the kingdom of darkness and our slavery to sin through Jesus’ death on the cross. It is He who did that. It is He who clothes us with righteousness and allows us to stand before the Father. It is He who gives us our every breath. It is He who gives us the strength when we are being tempted. It is all Him. It is all Christ, it is all God’s doing. So brothers and sisters, to bring things back to the beginning where we started, with the Israelites failing to enter into the promised land due to unbelief. I don’t know about all of you but I see God’s hand in so much of my life, even before I became a believer He was guiding me, setting my life in the direction that would land me straight in front of Him. Setting me in the right direction that I would have my repentance, my exodus out of sin. I see so much of His work in my life as I look back. How much He has done for me. And how much He continues to do for me. It is such a blessing to be His child. And as I continue my sojourning here in this land that isn’t my home, I hope that I, and all of you with me, will be able to continue following God until, Lord willing, we all make it there, to the Promised Land. Where we will see Him face to face. And hear those words from our Lord, (Matthew 25:23)
Matthew 25:23 (LSB)
23 “‘Well done, good and faithful slave.”
Amen, let us pray.