Bro Gary Sunday AM 5/29/11

Bro Gary Sunday AM 5/29/11

Isa 11:10  And in that day there shall be a root of Jesse, which shall stand for an ensign of the people; to it shall the Gentiles seek: and his rest shall be glorious.

Five points of emphasis:

1.       Speaking of Jesus as the root of Jesse: it starts out as “in that day” this refers to the days from the birth of Christ to the end of time.

2.       Dealing with the thought of the root of Jesse:  Jesus came of a lowly birth.  He was not born in a castle, he was not born of parents that were famous or looked up to in the community.  Yet He is the King of kings and Lord of lords.  The part of the scriptures that prophesy of where he was to be born and those dealing with the shepherds and wise men showing up are all a part of the ensign and the infallible proofs that Jesus is Lord.

3.       The ensign:  Everywhere we look, we see the handiwork of God.  When you see a tree you see the handiwork of God.  Someone being an atheist doesn’t change God; it just creates a bad affect on them.  We see God in a baby’s smile.  As we get older we want our life to be evidence that God is real and we are headed to a better country. 

The life of Christ recorded in the Gospels according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the recording that He lived.  The cross: We sing the song, “the world behind me the cross before me.”  The cross represents death to the world and new life to those that have confessed and received life. 

We cannot refute that the stone was rolled away.  These proofs are all given that we might believe.  There are infallible proofs that he was here for forty days after His death.  After He’d resurrected, He showed up and they were fishing, when they came to the shore he was cooking something for them to eat and asked, “Lovest thou me more than these? 

There is no question about the ascension, he led them towards Bethany and blessed them and was there lifted up.  There was an angel there that said, “As you have seen him leave…”  Infallible proofs. 

4.       To it shall the gentiles seek; God is still drawing on hearts today.  It is a wonderful thing that there is something within men and women that identify that they need God.

5.       His rest shall be glorious.  His Rest.  Many times, well meaning as we are, we struggle for our rest instead of seeking God’s rest.  Let us remember that the rest that is glorious is Christ in us.  It is HIS REST.  The meaning of the word Rest according to the Hebrew language is comfortable, quiet; this is His rest. 

We need comfort and we need to be comforted.  It doesn’t really matter what happens in life, we can enter into His rest.  

There is nothing in this world that I know of that is producing either comfortableness or quiet.  Everywhere you go people will tell you how unhappy they are about everything.

Dear ones, there is rest, there is quietness, and there is a place of being comfortable because of His rest.  The word ‘still’, God wants us to be still.  You will never be that on your own terms.  ‘Ease’ this word is of a different meaning than in our use of it today, it represents the rest that God gives to us in our soul.

Isa 11:1  And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots:

Isa 11:2  And the spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD;

Isa 11:3  And shall make him of quick understanding in the fear of the LORD: and he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of his ears:

Isa 11:4  But with righteousness shall he judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth: and he shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked.

Isa 11:5  And righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins, and faithfulness the girdle of his reins.

From a very humble beginning came the King of kings.  This is the anointing that rests upon Christ who is our rest and that is on the Spirit of the Lord.  Our lives will be so empty and void unless The Spirit of Christ rests upon us, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might and of the knowledge and fear of the Lord.

Isaiah prophesied that this messiah would come from a humble origin.  All of us in this audience come from humble backgrounds, we cannot help what our background is.  Those that come from prestigious backgrounds must become humble in order to come to Jesus.

Jesus had much respect to the fear of God.  True fear of God is not the thought of fearing that something bad would happen to us; it is the thought that we love God so much that we don’t want to grieve Him.

He didn’t judge after the sight of His eyes.  He is who we are to pattern our life after.  His thought is not ‘who’ you are, but what He can make of you.  We are to sow beside all waters and not judge after the seeing of the eyes. 

It isn’t who we are; we’re glad of what God has done for everyone that is right where God wants them to be this morning, but God can come back and choose to use each in a different capacity than He’s ever used us before.

He reproves the meek without partiality and knows how to send forth His word and accomplish all that He wants to accomplish. 

Righteousness and faithfulness are two characteristics of Christ.

Isa 32:17  And the work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance for ever.

God always works to bring us to quietness.  Our lives are filled with things that can upset us and we’d have a right to be upset except that God wants us to have quietness.  We need to reach the line of “I have utmost confidence in God and no matter what happens, He will care for me.” 

I read of a time that D.S. Warner was sitting on a curb about to eat his lunch, as he took time to pray, his prayer turned into a time of rejoicing not because of his cheese and crackers but because of God.  Until God brings an assurance to our souls that He is God and we are His and have entered into His rest then we will not experience this rejoicing in life.

Isa 65:25  The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the bullock: and dust shall be the serpent's meat. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, saith the LORD.

The affect of the faithfulness and righteousness of Jesus Christ is that the lion and the lamb can lie together.   

The nature of the one is to kill and to destroy; the nature of the other is gentle.  The asp kills by poison, other snakes kill by squeezing.  Through Jesus Christ and His righteousness those that have a nature to kill and destroy can be changed to a new nature.  “They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain.”

The cockatrice (according to my study) is a monster developed by some individual yielding to evil.  Where have these monsters come from that are in the world today?  They are bad beyond description.  The nature of wolves is to become a pack.  The nature of cockatrices are to become a den. 

God used this to show the glorious rest of Christ.  The nature of degenerate man likens them to wolves, snakes, and cockatrices.  The affect of God upon the soul causes natures to change from being destructive and poisonous to being full of rest. 

The nature of a snake is to attack.  The nature of a wolf is to kill just to kill.  When my mother got rattlesnake bit, she wondered if he’d actually gotten her because he was so quick.  Had we not yielded to God, we could have yielded to evil to such an extent that we could have become a monster.  The only bounds and limits that can be put upon evil is by the power of the Word and Spirit of God.

His rest is glorious.  How does one become a lion or a wolf? By yielding to the nature to sin, to carnality, to self to a greater and greater extent in life; becoming a monster by being overcome by evil, and deceived by self and yielding to evil.  There are those in prison that have become monsters by yielding to evil.  They have become nothing more than a monster by yielding to the lusts of the flesh: rebellion, lawlessness, selfishness.  May God ever stir me to be full of the fear of God so that there would never be anything in my heart and mind that would want to hurt and to destroy. 

This glorious rest begins with Jesus Christ.  It is given in dimensions.  There is a definite rest when you confess and repent from your sin.  Not full rest, but definite rest.  Matt 11:28 says, “Come to me all that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.”  The rest I ever had in my physical body is the night after I got saved.

Resting all in Jesus Christ, Romans 12:1,2 says, “I beseech you therefore brothern by the mercies of God that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy acceptable unto God which is your reasonable service.  And be not conformed to the world but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind...”  This is a definite rest.

Heb 4:9  There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God.

Heb 4:10  For he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his.

Heb 4:11  Let us labour therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief.

There is a rest to the people of God.  You haven’t come to complete full rest when you get saved.  There is a further rest of ceasing from all your labors.  “Jesus suffered without the gate that He might sanctify His people…”

Sanctification means to cleanse and set apart. God wants us resting in His rest.

2Pe 1:4  Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.

In order for you to receive the divine nature, you must be cleansed from your human, fleshly nature.  You will never escape the corruption that is in the world unless you are cleansed from the nature to sin.  You will never be able to add to your faith virtue as the next verse says unless you are sanctified.

There is a glorious rest that is obtained and maintained by labor.  The need for labor is one of the greatest things that has worked to be a delusion to people that have gotten saved and have thought that once they’re saved they don’t need to put much effort into it.  When you get saved you are just in shape to start to work hard.

Holiness movements think that just because they believe and have an outward standard they have arrived.  We must maintain this rest by labor. 

My mom spoke of getting sanctified and putting her all on the altar.  Her all at that time was my dad and us five children.  I remember her talking of weeping and putting the love of her life, my dad, on the altar. “God, I have to put him on the altar too.”

Her firstborn as much as she loved him had to be put on the altar as well.  Her next son, Bill, had to be put on the altar too. 

Gyme came next, he was her prayer baby, Gyme could stand a little taller than everyone else.  He could cut logs a little bit better.  He had few words but they were the most precious words my mother ever heard.  When he came to visit, the sun shone brighter and the meal was better.  My mom loved Gyme.  She had to put him on the altar too. 

Joanne came next and mom had wanted a daughter, and named her after herself.  Joanne had to be put on the altar.  Mom did it by labor.  The labor didn’t end there.  I can still see and hear my mother praying when my brother was in trouble.  (My brother was wounded in Korea.)  Her sanctification was maintained by labor. 

The blessing is received by soul-rest.  Not only do we need soul-rest, we need mind-rest.  WE must get our mind to a point of resting, “God, I’m not going to try to figure things out, I tried and it didn’t work.”

His rest is glorious rest.