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.