December 29, 2013
The Coming Rest
All wickedness will be eradicated by the wisdom and Spirit of God. The kingship of Jesus breaks into history, transforming and restoring everything fallen.
Scripture: Isaiah 11:1-10
Sermon Notes:
- The glorious rest of God is not relaxation, leisure or sleep; it is the internal and external peace, satisfaction, and contentment in God’s victory and completed work.
- We are to enter into the rest of salvation, victory provided by God’s Son, and enjoy the results of peace and joy.
- In a sin-sick and weary world, we are like a parched and thirsty man in a scorching desert (John 7:37).
- Jesus is the only one able to quench our thirst for peace and contentment in our total being.
- Our hearts are restless until we find our rest in God.
- All wickedness will be eradicated by the gospel wisdom and Spirit of God. The kingship of Jesus breaks into history transforming and restoring everything fallen.
- Rest is breaking into history renewing all of creation.
- In the gospel the re-creating work of the Spirit transforms lives and history itself.
- The earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea (Isaiah 11:9).
- Jesus will reign over the Gentiles (Romans 15:12-13).
- The rest of God is not only deliverance from evil, but under His reign we also cease to fear evil.
- The glorious rest of God is procured for us in Christ.
- The Sabbath rest of God’s people is based on the victory of Christ over sin and death.
- God’s rest is the sure and peaceful confidence that all things are in God’s hands.
- People are bothered by the Bible because they do understand it, and it reminds us of our sin and guilt.
- We either participate in the meaning and purpose of God in history, or we work against it.
- Modern man does not want to accept a history that is governed by God and that condemns our sin.
- We are not like historicists who declare an inner meaning to history; we declare what God has revealed.
- A true historian attempts to find causal links and to discover the meaning that is already there.
- History will never conform itself to man’s ideas, which lead only to disillusionment and frustration: Darwin says history is the struggle for survival; Marx says economic processes govern history; modern progressivism seeks to break down divisions between right and wrong.
- But the earth will only ever conform to God’s purposes as outlined in Isaiah 11.
- People build a false sense of peace and rest, by their own religious delusions, rejecting the Bible’s declarations.
- The procrastinator’s plan for rest is to resolve things with God later when circumstances are better.
- Some people have a false sense of rest, ignorantly relying on their own goodness.
- The preaching of the gospel shatters our false rest, calling us each to enter the glorious rest of the people of God.
Application Questions:
- What is the rest of God?
- What does the rest of God look like in the life of the believer?
- Our society is bored with endless leisure. Contrast this quest for rest with the rest of God.
- Contrast the biblical view of history with man’s ideas about history’s meaning.
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