POWER REST

POWER REST

                Come let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord our Maker, for He is our God and we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand. Today if you would hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as at Meribah, as in the day of Massah in the wilderness; when the fathers tested Me. They tried Me though they had seen My work.  For forty years I loathed that generation and said they are a people who err in their heart. Therefore I swore in my anger. Truly they shall not enter My rest. Psalm 95:6-11

                The children of Israel had seen God’s mighty works. The watched Him part the Red Sea. They had trembled at His power at Mt. Sinai. They had seen Him provide water from a rock. They had followed Him in the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night, and yet, when they came to the borders of the Promised Land the listened to the bad report of the 10 spies and hearing that there were giants in the land, they forgot all the mighty works that God had already done. They lost confidence in God and looked to their own flesh to deliver them.

                The Promised Land was to be their REST. God was going to fight every battle for them, just as He did 40 years later at Jericho.

                There is a kind of rest that we can enter into of which the keeping of the Sabbath is only a symbol. It is a rest in Christ that causes us not to look at our flesh, or to fight our own battles, but to trust in Yeshua’s work.

                Col. 2:16, 17 tells us that Festivals and new moons and Sabbaths are a mere shadow of what is to come, BUT THE SUBSTANCE BELONGS TO CHRIST. So keeping the Sabbath will not enter you into the kind of rest that Paul is talking about here. It is a rest in the power of God.

                Jesus said in Mt. 11:28-30: “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart; and you shall find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and my load is light.”

                Many Israelites had worn themselves out trying to please God in the flesh. By the time Jesus came, the Pharisees had created so many laws on how to keep the law and the Sabbath that the people were frazzled and discouraged. Jesus looked at their plight. He had many unkind words to say to those that had placed so many burdens on the people. We don’t fight giants in the flesh. We fight them like David fought Goliath…”IN the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel…” 1 Sam 17:45.

                The writer of Hebrews reminded the Hebrew Christians of their wilderness experience saying: “For if Joshua had given them rest, He would not have spoken of another day after that. There remains therefore a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for the one who has entered His rest has himself also rested from his works as God did from His.” Heb. 4:8-10.

                Here Paul (I believe) was not telling them to keep the Sabbath day better than they were. He was talking about entering into the rest of faith in the works of God, of which the Sabbath day is only a symbol.

                Our rest is in Christ and His great work, for indeed the salvation HE brought to us was much greater even than the parting of the Red Sea, or His thunder on Mt. Sinai or any of His miracles. Jesus did not merely rescue us from the wilderness… HE rescued us from eternal separation from God. He rescued us from hell and from outer darkness… from the hopelessness of a godless existence.  He rescued us from our own works so that we could put all of our faith in His mighty works.

                This is the POWER REST of which our title speaks. It is in trading in our weakness for His mighty power. It is in putting no faith in our own flesh, but in walking by His Spirit.

                Whenever you begin thinking that this Christian life is too hard… whenever you consider giving up because the load is just too heavy and the requirements too steep, chances are, you have begun to look to your flesh again. OF COURSE WE CAN’T DO IT! If we could have done it, the Jesus would not have needed to come down and provided a way of escape for us.

                To enter into the death of His cross is to lay down all of our fleshly efforts and to put our full faith in Him. HE is the Author and finisher of our faith. We can’t add anything to it and we dare not take anything away from His plan. It is a package deal, this dying to self so that Christ may live in us. It is like trading in your 2 horse Briggs and Stratton, for a Ford V10. POWER REST! It’s His power and our rest.

                We have a race to run and a course to finish… and we may be facing the greatest time of trouble the world has ever seen. If we can’t enter that REST in times of ease, how are we going to enter it when all hell breaks loose?

                It may sound strange, but we are in training to learn how to rest. And the kind of rest I’m talking about is not about keeping the Sabbath better. It is about learning how to rest in the finished work of Christ for our salvation. If we can once come to a complete rest in that, then we will be able to face whatever comes our way with faith and grace.

                Watchmen warn us of what is coming, not to engender fear, but to toughen us up and to prepare us for battle. WE have the armor and we have the weapons, but do we know how to use them?

                “For thou we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. WE are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.” 2Cor. 10:3-5

                “Finely, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might. Put on the full armor of god, that you may be able to stand firm against the schemes of eh devil. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. (Satan’s domain) Therefore take up the full armor of God that you may be able to resist in the evil day and having done everything to stand firm.

                “Stand firm therefore, having girded your loins with truth and having put on the breastplate of righteousness and having shod your feet with the preparation of the Gospel of peace; in addition to all, taking up the shield of faith with which you will be able to extinguish all the flaming missiles of the evil one, and take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, with all prayer and petition, pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints…” Ephesians 6:10-17

                Some people, especially those in the false grace movement will shrug off all responsibility for the battle and just carelessly say that Jesus did it all for them. But that doesn’t prepare us for what lies ahead. There is a battle coming for which Yeshua has prepared us… with divine weapons and divine armor. The Battle is real and there will be many casualties and many who fall away because they have never tried their armor or proved their weapons.

                Divine rest is not the absence of a battle, but in knowing how to use our armor and our weapons in the Spirit. David didn’t just sit back in camp and tell everyone to relax… that God was going to fight for them. He took up His sling and faced Goliath in the name of the Lord of Hosts

                Walking in the Spirit is tough business. It is not escape and evasion, but facing straight on what comes our way and to do it in a state of faith and rest. The Lord will fight for us, but only as we are engaged with the enemy.

                False grace does nothing to toughen our faith or prepare us for battle. That is why there is going to be a great falling away from the faith, a great apostasy... and what will that falling away do? It will make way for the rise of the antichrist, the global bully, the Beast of Revelation 13 and the Mark of the Beast.

                What will be left on the battle field when all is said and done, is God’s Remnant, battle ready and training to reign with Christ on His throne… not spiritual wimps, but battle hardened soldiers of the cross. We are His warrior Bride, His Gideon’s army… overcoming by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of our testimony.

                “But in all things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor heights, nor depth nor any other created thing shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:37-39.

                So when we talk about the things we see coming upon the world it is not to scare us, but to prepare us. If we as watchmen feed you cupcakes when we should be feeding you meat, your blood will be on our hands. But we also need to remind each other of the power and the victory that is guaranteed through Jesus Christ our Lord. Everything we will soon face, we can face in the power of His Rest.