The Rest Of God 6
HEB. 4:9-11

God created man to bask in the sunlight of His love and fellowship.
1. All man would ever need in life would be God and God’s perfect love and provision.
1. God's love, generosity is so overwhelming that man's natural response is to offer God the love,
honor and respect He deserves.
a. When man received from God he would be totally fulfilled in body, soul and spirit. And that
would express, define the entire meaning of life lived in the rest of God
(A) But man selfishly rejected God and His provision as the entirety of his life.
(B) The human race degenerated rapidly. Man groping in the darkness of selfishness and
unlove, grows more wicked and degenerate each day. He becomes like that which he
now worships, which is himself.
(C) GEN. 6:5-8.
b. God destroyed the world. Only Noah and his family found favor in God's eyes.
(A) But even then man did not learn the lesson for very long and continues to be wicked.
(1) Forgot the message repeated by Paul, ACTS 17:24-28.
(C) Apart from God man continued to struggle, labor in the sweat of his brow.
(1) Both to feed himself and in his efforts to be righteous by himself, apart from God.
(2) In the midst of a struggling, sweating world God set a nation who would be His
resting people. Israel was their name.
(a) Israel was the guide post of what God intended for the world.
(1) They were not the real thing. They were the shadow land people.
(c) Example of what man should not be. The shadow of the reality yet to come.
(d) They reveal to man his sin problem. He needs One to save him from that sin.
(3) Israel was the architectural rendering. The actual building is the Church in Jesus.
(a) At the mall is a rendering of the floor plan. It shows you where you are going. (b) When you follow the floor plan you will not get lost.
2. In the same way we can go back and look at Israel and learn from their mistakes.
a. ROM. 15:4; I COR. 10:11.
(A) From the architectural rendering we understand the mind of God in the reality of Jesus.
(1) Follow it and It will bring us to the Church of God which is the House of God.
(2) In that nation of Israel God gave the Jews a celebration to be observed every 7th day.
(a) Called Sabbath. Do not confuse it with Sunday. Not the Christian Sabbath.
(b) Difference between 1st day & 7th day. Sunday is 1st day of week, the Sabbath is
the 7th day of the week.
(B) Sabbath was a declaration to the world that this is what God intended for man.
(1) Man was created to live in the rest of God. God reenforced that concept every 7th week. Every 7th month had an extra Sabbath. Every 7th year an extra Sabbath day.
(a) The 49th year (Multiple of 7) was called JUBILEE. All debts are forgiven, animals are not worked.
(b) You are to plant your crops the 48th year and you harvest enough to last until the harvest of the 50th year.

(c) Total Freedom. No occupational work for a year. A year to contemplate God. You spend that entire year learning that life is to be out of what God provides and discovering that the purpose of life is to live in God's rest and provision.
(2) Jesus taught this eternal principle. It is the subject of most of Sermon on the Mount.
(a) Over half of that sermon is devoted to the concept of resting in God.
(b) It's a concept most Christians have failed to understand and live.
(B) It's the subject of the entire 6th chapter of Matthew. It begins by teaching about people who work at trying to be righteous.
(1) MATT. 6:1, 3-5, 19-20, 24. This has reference to Spiritual Sins.
(2) You don’t have to work, labor and sweat at having your sins forgiven.
(a) God has already made complete, perfect provision for that in Jesus.
(b) Jesus is our promised rest.
(B) Then God cautions about soulish sins (Sins of the flesh). VS. 25-34. Live in God's rest and He will provide for your every need.
(1) Don’t be like Godless, heathen people. They live for physical, material things of world.
(a) They think life consists in the abundance of things you can acquire in life.
(b) When life is over they lose. Loose the things and their soul eternally.
(2) The most important thing in life is not status, presteige, wealth and physical ease
(a) You do not have to live like Pharoah to be happy and fulfilled. If you have two
meals a day, a change of clothes and a warm tent, you are blessed.
(2) What’s the point? Make God your life and you will receive these things.
(c) Don't sweat it. You don’t have to. PHIP. 4:19. That's the promise. So believe it ,
receive it and live in it.
(b) That's the perfect provision of God. You cannot add one thing. It Is complete.
b. Rom. 8:1. That’s the promised rest and it can be yours.
(A) You can receive the promised rest of God MATT.11:28-29.
(B) That's His promise. He calls you to enter into His rest.
(2) ACTS 20:32.

Spur - 12/31/2000 am