Rest In Peace

This is a series of devotions and meditations on scripture that reject fear and champion faith. Rest is important for our well-being, but worldly rest is just consumerism. The Lord offers rest and peace if we walk in obedience and worship. It is crucial to avoid straying from the Lord and putting other gods before Him. This is emphasized in Jewish traditions and the importance of rooting out sinful behavior. To truly love someone is to obey them, as obedience comes from actively loving and seeking to please them. Welcome to Fear No Fear. Grace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. May the Holy Spirit embrace you today. This is a series of devotions and meditations on scripture. We reject fear in any and all forms. Fear is a spiritual force, the currency of darkness and ignorance. It's what we inherited when Adam gave up his faith and Satan uses it to keep people down. His only weapon is words. If he can get you believing or looking at words of fear, he's got you. Instead, we champion faith as an allegiance to God, as a belief and trust and loyalty to the Lord God Almighty. We accept the evidence of his word as unvarnished truth, as is, just as it's written. We get close to his perfect love through the word, and perfect love casts out fear. 1 John 4.18 All scripture is taken from the World English Bible, which is in the public domain. Visit eBible.org Micah 4.4 But every man will sit under his vine and under his fig tree. No one will make them afraid, for the mouth of the Lord of armies has spoken. Indeed, all the nations may walk in the name of their gods, but we will walk in the name of the Lord our God forever and ever. Who doesn't like a good sitting down? A chance to lie down and do a little of nothing, to relax, to rest. It's the motivator for so much work in the world. An ocean of beer has been sold on the idea that after a long day at work, you deserve to have one. The market size of the tourism sector worldwide is about two trillion dollars, because we deserve rest. There are even chocolate bars that sell on the premise that they are a short break from life, and you deserve that. Rest was built into the human species by the Lord. God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because he rested in it from all his work of creation which he had done. Genesis 2.3 We have a need for rest. A good night's sleep pauses amid our work day. On the Sabbath, or on Sunday, whichever day you utilize, we tend to think of things as a chore, needing to get through church, because it's God's day. Like it's in the way of our relaxation. But the Sabbath was put in place to ensure that we had a rest from toil. Jesus said in Mark 2.27, The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. Rest is important, and we start to break down if we don't get it. The medical field promotes rest for better mental health, increased concentration and memory, a healthier immune system, reduced stress, improved mood, and even a better metabolism. Rest is important. The question quickly becomes, what is rest, and how do we get it? Rest is more than unplugging from the world. Rest is more than just not working. Rest is more than doing simple things we enjoy. Rest is a renewal. It is a time that the body and the mind are not actively working to achieve a goal. You're not expending energy working out problems, moving the body to accomplish work tasks. There isn't effort being spent to manage the world and bring it from chaos into order. All that is being done is repair and maintaining equilibrium, a calming down, a taking our engines offline from even idling. We aren't doing. We're being. And that's difficult to achieve in this world. This world is decaying. It's corrupted, and it's corrupting at a steady rate. It takes effort to hold that back. It's pretty much what humanity has been doing for thousands of years, striving to survive and hold back the chaos, to keep the world from falling apart long enough for us to enjoy it, or at least not have to fight to keep a piece of it. It can be hard to take a break from that without feeling that it is all going to come crashing down. We tend to try and stay in a cat-like state of readiness to protect us and those around us from the crisis that are constantly cropping up. Take the millennial generation. I've heard it said that they won't experience a midlife crisis because there hasn't been a time that they haven't been dealing with a crisis. Two recessions, wars, threats of wars, wage issues, supply issues. It goes on and on. They don't have careers, just jobs to pay the bills. And they'll switch it up as often as they need to stay ahead of the bills. They're not doing long-term saving, but often still living from paycheck to paycheck. They won't experience that pause from decades of work and frugality to just snap and have a period of catch-up-on-rest craziness before hunkering down for the second half before retirement. Instead, millennials seem to be heading toward total burnout and collapse with no ability to classically retire in sight. It's the state that the world is embracing more and more. But we need rest. We don't often have the opportunity for it. Worldly rest is just consumerism under another name. The pipe dream of earning the golden years of rest or a paper tiger always exposed to open flame. Is there a solution? Yes. In the hands of the one who built rest into us, the Lord has rest for us. Exodus 33.14, he says, My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest. That's a great start. Oh, too old testimony for you? Mark 11.28, Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy burdened, and I will give you rest. Jesus is the same yesterday as he is today as he will be tomorrow. Hebrews 13.8. The Lord is all about giving us rest. But if you look around those two verses, and others like them, you'll find that in context, they are not stand-alone. They are not bold and singular claims. There is another side to rest. In Matthew, Jesus is talking about us being yoked to him, being obedient and following in the statutes and commands of the Lord. In Exodus, it's all about the Lord going up with an obedient people or considering not going with a stiff-necked disobedient people into the promised land. The rest is more than conditional. It is situational. If you are situated correctly, you will have it. If we are not set and established at this determined spot, we will not have rest. What is the spot? It is the will of the Lord in the place of obedience, at the altar of submission and worship. The Lord of armies has spoken on our behalf. He will send his angels to protect us and guard us, to keep all from disturbing our rest, to keep us so secure that there will be no opportunity, much less a desire to fear. That is some rest. That is the rest that Jesus had in the bottom of the boat in the storm. Matthew 8, 23-27. That is the rest of the believer. Total peace amidst whatever is happening around us. That is prosperity. To be eligible, we need to walk in the name of the Lord our God forever and ever. Micah 4, 4. There is no middle ground. This is serious. This is so serious that to protect the people from straying, those who entice the Israelites to follow other gods were put to death. Deuteronomy 13. It is evil to avoid the Lord. It is what caused the downfall of humanity, what exposed us to the evil intent. It is the birthplace of all sin. Stage 4 terminal cancer is an ice cream on a perfect summer day compared to this. People often cite the books of the law, Genesis through Deuteronomy and Joshua, as bloodthirsty books of conquest, as the blueprint that all other, predominantly white, empire-making people followed when they went out to enslave the world through colonization. But these actions that were decreed were not a matter of violence or conquest. It was protection, and it was nurturing. Just like we have brutal treatments for cancer. I mean, these treatments can kill you. The Lord had to get it into the heads of His children, the importance from staying far from this evil. It was so important. Threads of it are found in every major and most minor Jewish traditions that Moses established. Take the hunt for leaven, for example. Leaven, yeast, was used as a picture for sin. Only a little yeast is needed to contaminate a whole batch of dough. So for Passover, and this whole thing is a simplification, they had to get rid of it. For about 10 days or so, I can't remember exactly how long, they couldn't have any leaven in any area they owned. That means no breadcrumbs in your keyboard, no yeast dust in your cupboard, no bread in the freezer, nothing. Not even other products that contained yeast. It didn't matter if you weren't done with it. It didn't matter if it had sentimental value. At Passover, once a year, you got rid of it all. Gone from your life permanently. It was a symbol of how harsh you needed to be to root sinful behavior out, or things that caused you to sin. Anything that promoted anything that put anything in place of God in your heart and mind. To do so is to invite destruction, because you were leaving the protection of the Lord God Almighty and stepping out into the open and exposing yourself to the elements of this world and the effects of the curse. There is no two ways about it. This is black and white. We should be as strict about this as they were in the Old Testament. If we serve the Lord and we keep Him first and foremost, then we will be obedient. Why? Because it's hard to truly love someone and disobey them. Kids do it all the time, you say. Not really. The kids aren't loving their parents all the time. They love their parents, but they aren't loving them. When you're actively loving someone, you're thinking of them. You want to bring a smile to your face. You want to mold your behavior to match the desires of your beloved. Ask any couple who are madly in love and actively wooing each other. When you pass that phase, you love them, but they aren't on your mind all the time. Ask anyone who's been married for 10 or 30 years. When that is true, you don't try and mold yourself to their desires. You're you, and they're them, and you love each other. For kids, that means they love their parents, but the rules their parents set are a different thing. They don't see them as indivisible. They see them as separate things. Rules go with punishment. Love goes with parents. Not a big deal if you break a rule. Don't be a big deal if you're found out. The rule has nothing to do with the parents or with the love. That's where the Pharisees and the Sadducees were at. They were following rules in order not to endure punishment. But they had divorced the rules from the love of Yahweh God. The rules were just rules attached to punishment. They had long ceased to be rules, which were mere guidelines to show how to walk in the ways of the Lord and stay within the framework of righteousness. Now, Jesus fulfilled the law, Matthew 5, 17-20. He took it from rules to a matter of the heart, that it was more than behavior, but it was a lifestyle of thought. So it was no longer about not sleeping with your neighbor's spouse, because that's a rule, but it was about seeing them as a human being only, with no lust or desire attached to that thought, not in your mind, not in your heart. Just seeing them as a valuable member of the community, a fellow brother or sister in the Lord, and nothing else. To be pure in our thinking. Not to say we're pure. We're not doing it to be able to say, Huh, I'm pure. But because when our focus is on the Lord and loving the Lord, there's no room for anything else. Do you realize what that means? That means if we're doing that, we're never going to sin again. That's the hard part. That's why we're told again and again, we don't make it. Because we're human. Because we're not perfect. Now, in Jesus, we can be, but we need to abide in Him, because He's the perfect one. He's the one who keeps us safe. He's the one who does that. In ourselves, we don't do that. We don't achieve that. But He's there to help us when we repent, when we realize we've done wrong, and we move so that we don't do it again ever. He helps us to do what we should do, to love the Lord our God with all our heart and all our soul and all our mind and with all our all, to take up our cross and follow Him, to view everything through the eyeglasses of the empty tomb, to put to death self and embrace the Lord, to leave aside our I know best and submit to His wisdom, to walk in His ways, to let the perfect Lord of creation love on us and to love Him unconditionally in return. He is unique. He is God, and He loves you. If we abide in Jesus and let Jesus lead us, we will love on Him today and every day as if we are wooing Him and He is wooing us. We will love Him as a verb, an action. Don't lose sight of that. Don't step out of that. Just abide, dude. Abide. This is where your peace will always be. Our daily affirmation of God's love is 2 Thessalonians 3.16. It's easy to forget the still small voice. It's easy to focus on the glory coming down and floating through a place visibly. It's easy to focus on deliverance and rejoice as the demonic is loosed from a person's life. It's easy to focus on healing and seeing the blind gain sight and the lame walk. It's easy to sit back and soak in the sound of a hundred angels' wings. It's easy to see it, or at least the effects of it, all around us. But those aren't the thing. Those are byproducts of the thing. Lose sight of the thing, and they become shows, shams, and empty events of participation. It doesn't mean the Lord won't honor the faith of the faithful and still show up for them. But if we don't have the thing, it won't benefit us. The thing is a reverence for the still small voice. You can't hear it if you're not resting in the Lord. You can't hear it if you're not full of worship and praise. You can't hear it if you're not focused on the Word. You can't hear it if you're full of yourself. You can't hear it if you're not reverent and broken before the Lord. But when you're striving to put Him first, to listen for His voice, to read His Word, to want His approval in all things, then it will happen. Then you'll hear it. Whispers into your heart. He's always speaking to us because He loves us. He never, ever, ever stops. But we can't hear it unless we tune out self and tune in Jesus. If we don't stop listening to the evil intent, if we don't stop actively dwelling on committing sin, if we don't stop us, we need to be listening, striving to listen no matter where we are at, good, bad, saved, freed, jailed, repentant. God loves us wherever we are. God wants us to know it, that He loves us. And if you listen, you'll hear Him saying it. It's whispered on the breath of His peace that He's trying to blow over you. Put down the umbrella and receive it. As we close, remember that you have earth. You are precious and valuable. Declare this. Today, God loves that I, now you, fill in the blank. Was it a meal you made? A smile you gave? Did you get out of bed? Read? Put on socks? There's no wrong answers here. There is no end to God's love and no end to the things about you that He loves each and every day. Pick one. And remember, the Lord loves you just because you're you. 1 John 4, 9-10 tells us, By this, God's love was revealed in us, that God has sent His only-born Son into the world that we might live through Him. And this is love, not that we love God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as the atoning sacrifice for our sins. His perfect love turned away God's wrath because of sin. And it casts out our fear, too. See verses 18 and 19. We love because He first loved us. He just loves us. Can't get enough of us. And that is wonderful. See you next time.