Why Your Soul Is Always Searching for Rest | Stay Close

Father, I thank you so much for everybody here.

I thank you that you have good purposes.

I pray that whether we're watching online, listening later on, or right here in the auditorium, I pray you'd blow into our spirits living spirit breath.

Wake stuff up, kick stuff out, show us who we're supposed to be, and give us the grace to be it.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

God's rest is so mind-blowing that we should tremble and rejoice.

God's rest is so mind-blowing that we should tremble and rejoice.

We're going to talk about God's rest today.

Sometimes I think about, I think we've probably pretty normal things.

I think about like when I'm going to die, and I think, oh Lord, I hope that before I die, I get to see like not only all my kids get married, but I like to see my grandkids get married.

I want to be around.

Like I want to be around for certain events.

I want to be able to, you know, if God would let me impart wisdom to my kids when they're in their 20s and 30s, and my grandkids even, if God would give me years.

And I think those are probably normal thoughts, right?

Like we all think those kinds of things, maybe.

Um, other times I think of maybe things, I don't know if they're very normal to think.

Like, I'll think, oh Lord, I hope I don't die for the next Avengers movie.

So I'm like, I would want to watch that.

Like, what's gonna happen?

Is there a version?

Like, do we get a heavenly, like really super clean version up there?

How does that work?

Or is it just like, oh man, you just said goodbye.

You don't get to watch the next.

I mean, maybe someday there's gonna be a good Star Wars movie again.

I don't know.

But if there is, I don't want to like die the day before that comes out.

You know what I'm saying?

Let me go see it and then I'll die.

That's fine.

Whenever I go, I'm gonna be entering into God's rest in the fullest expression.

But there's rest here now, and I want to talk to you about it.

Before I do, I want to remind you that next weekend, it's kind of like a fall launch of sorts for the church.

It's like the new season of church.

And in our new season of church, we're gonna talk about AI, aliens, and algorithms.

I want to encourage you for the new season, invite a friend to see the new season because I think it's gonna be worth your time.

You know, sometimes people they'll go to something like this and they're interested maybe in like AI or aliens, but it really what it can be is an introduction.

It can be a doorway opening to the person of Jesus Christ.

So I want to encourage you to think about that this week.

Think about who you could invite, think about who you could be praying for.

I also want to invite just a very select few people, the few people that have these kinds of gifts.

Some of us are so excited about people that when you walk into a room of people, you come alive and you want to talk to everybody.

I think that's like 3% of the population of our church.

Most of us are introverts and we don't, we're like, uh like I'll talk to you if if I'm made to.

But there's some of us, you want to race in, you're smiling, you'd love to call some people.

We need some some folks we call connectors.

We need some folks who are you would love to be on the team that helps people get acclimated, helps people get connected, helps people find their way into the church in a way that they feel welcome and and like befriended and and they know some folks here.

If that might be you, would you go ahead and sign up?

You can uh scan that connect that or that RX code or whatever that is, or you can just tell me, Carter, I'm I'm one of those three percent.

Let me in, and we'll do it.

Sound like a deal?

God had rescued the Israelites out of Egypt, and he didn't do it a little bit.

He laid the beat down on Egypt.

Like it was clear they they were the most powerful nation on earth, but they were smashed down, like they lost.

And Israel comes out of Egypt and they get right up to the edge of what was the promised land.

It was a place that God had promised them.

It was a place, really a place of rest.

It was a place that they could finally, you know, they'd they'd finally have a place of their own.

They'd they'd be able to grow their own crops, they'd be able to grow their own families, and they get right up to the edge, and they see some really tall people over there.

They sent them some some some spies to see them, and they were really tall and they got afraid of the really tall people.

And so they came back and said, Hey guys, uh we can't go in there.

They're really tall.

But two of them were like, no, no, no, we should go, but they were outnumbered, and so the the the naysayers began to spread the word.

Hey, listen, I know God told us to run into that promised land and take it.

But I don't know that God's gonna come through this time.

And God's like, Do you remember like when I just we just did Egypt?

Remember like when I totally like solved everything for you and got you out of there?

Remember when I I like it's never been done.

I made a pathway through a Red Sea and you walked through it.

Remember how I did that?

And you don't think I can handle these tall people?

But because they still said, no, we're not we're not going, we don't trust that God will really have our back this time.

He said, Okay, I'll tell you what, I'm gonna bring your kids in once y'all are dead.

Now you're gonna wander around the wilderness for 40 years because of their unbelief.

What we're gonna do today is we're gonna lay their story over our story as we look at the book of Hebrews.

And we're gonna find that we wanna be careful because just as they lost the rest and the promise that they could have had, we're in danger of missing the rest and the promise that God has for us.

Let's pick it up in Hebrews 4, number one.

God's promise of entering his rest.

Okay, now this is centuries and centuries later, and God is talking through the writer of Hebrews to the Christians at that time, but he's also talking to us at this time.

God's promise of entering his rest still stands, so we ought to tremble with fear that some of you might fail to experience it.

For this good news that God has prepared this rest has been announced to us just as it was to them.

Remember when they were on the edge of the promised land?

You could have this promised land rest if you go in, but it did them no good because they didn't share the faith of those who listened to God.

For only we who believe can enter his rest.

Sin is always affecting us on this on this side of heaven right now.

And what it one of the things it does is it distorts our perception of what is truly valuable and what only appears valuable.

So we value stuff like really, if we're if we're honest, we value stuff like, well, I value my entertainment.

I value um being in control.

If you're a really productive person, you might value productivity.

And all these things have their place.

You might value money a whole lot, and and we we arrange our lives of this is what I need to get.

The more control I get, the better.

The more money I get, the better.

The more of the things I get, the better.

And we're deceived for a second.

We're we're getting static in our antenna, making us unable to truly understand what's valuable.

What's most valuable is not that stuff.

What's most valuable is God's rest.

That's right.

That's really what it is.

We underestimate and we put all of our faith in our circumstances.

And and but you know this.

If you've lived for very long, you've tried to get those things, you got a little bit of them, and you found no rest this time.

I'll just try to get more.

Right?

Like you're appeased for a second, you know that like like you're you're thinking about something, you you finally get it, you pay the money, you put it down, you're like, finally, I got this thing, and it's cool for a day.

You're like, man, that car is gonna be so great.

Then you get in the car, and like that's pretty good.

But the rest that you thought was gonna be in there was not in there.

The rest really isn't in that stuff, the the soul's true rest.

Where it really is, it's in the person of Jesus Christ.

And God's rest, God's rest, not that stuff, God's rest is so mind-blowing that we should tremble and rejoice.

Picking it back up in verse 3.

For only we who believe can enter his rest, as for the others, God said of that first generation almost going into the promised land, God said, In my anger I took an oath, they'll never enter my place of rest, even though this rest has been ready since he made the world.

What?

He didn't change the subject.

What was that?

They were going into the land and now, but there's another rest that has been ready since the beginning of the world.

Verse 4, we know it is ready because the place in the scriptures where it mentions the seventh day.

On the seventh day, God rested from all his work.

Let's follow rest through the Bible.

We're gonna start at creation itself.

This is where rest first appears.

Genesis 2, 2.

On the seventh day, God had finished his work of creation, so he rested from all his work.

How many know that God did not need rest?

He was not fatigued, he was not like, man, I was rough.

I better recover from that thing.

No, when God rested, it was it was the period at the end of the sentence.

It was God setting up, leaning back on his throne over all the over all that he ruled, which was everything, and it was all good and it was all flowing, right?

And it was all peaceful, and there was no evil, and it was just exploding love and exploding wisdom and exploding life everywhere.

And God sat back and said, That is good.

You know, kind of like like a brilliant artist, maybe they they create a giant painting and they're working so hard on it, but then at some point they step back when it's done, and they're like, Ah, yes, that that is what I was after.

There's a there's an exhale, and what God has done, it's so weird that He mentions that at the very front of the Bible.

He mentions, I've as I'm creating everything, I've woven right into reality, right into the principles that uphold the universe.

I've woven in there, just so everybody understands, at the very beginning, there is this thing called God's rest.

Yeah, it's not that I'm tired, it's a place.

It's a thing that you can access.

It's a place that He was, and real, really, the original humans were there too.

But like us, they chose to rebel against God.

They chose, I'll tell you what, they're like, maybe we can run the whole joint better.

And immediately rest was taken out.

Immediately sin entered, and the sin disease entered into their bones, and now there was death, and now there was work where there would have been work before, but it was peaceful and it wasn't hard and it wasn't toilsome.

Now there's toilsome work.

And we can never, no matter what we try to get, no matter over the centuries, no matter what I try to grab or hoard or put in the cave, I can't get rest.

See, rest was the goal of creation.

And it's still the goal.

Rest is a place where there's, think about it, it's it's a it's a place where there's perfect, there's there's no sin, there's perfect fellowship with other humans that are in perfect fellowship, perfectly loving one another, perfectly worshiping together, a giant worship service that isn't just like about songs or something.

It's everybody is focused on the one and saying, you are good and you are awesome, and you did all this, and this is fantastic.

And it has the sense of a Sabbath.

Everything is at peace, and everything is at not sleeping, not not working, but at rest.

This is how it's supposed to be.

It's not a lack of activity, it's a presence of life.

I feel like there's one day a year when I usually access something like this, maybe some earthly version.

It's usually Christmas morning.

Okay?

I'm a pastor, so for a lot of years, Christmas Eve is very hectic.

There's a lot of stuff going on, maybe lots of services at church.

And so Christmas morning, we get up, and especially when my kids were younger, we open all the presents, and so it's like awesome to watch them open their presents, and then Kenzie will make something delicious for dinner, and then we're all sitting there together as a family, and then they'll all run away and go play with their toys.

And there's this quiet Christmas music on.

Maybe it's in the family room, maybe I'm up in my room, but I have a giant.

It's done.

It's all done.

I'm just at peace with my God.

I can read my books, I can do whatever I want.

There's nothing coming.

We're gonna be off for a few days.

I'm surrounded by the people I love.

It is awesome.

It's a version of a kind of a rest.

Good picture, Cotton.

Thanks, brother.

But it's very fleeting.

See, if I think too hard, I'm like, yeah, but I'm I still have the sin disease inside of me.

Like, I'm I'm rested for a minute and it's beautiful, and it's a taste of heaven, and maybe the Spirit of God is even giving me that personally in that moment, but it's not done, and I'm not accessing rest entirely.

Let's go to the second biblical story of rest.

That's the Sabbath command.

So finally, the the children of the ones who rebelled are headed into the promised land, and as they're going, God gives them commands.

And strangely, one of the commands is you're gonna rest one day a week.

You're gonna stop everything.

Exodus 28.

Remember to observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.

You have six days each week for your ordinary work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath day of rest dedicated to the Lord your God.

On that day, no one in your household may do any work.

God builds into the law itself.

Something they've got to repeat every seven days.

He wants his people.

I want you to internalize this, guys.

There's something that I want for you.

I want rest.

And there's a component of rest that we see in that it's it's stopping work, toilsome work.

It is leaning back.

God can handle everything.

I don't need to handle everything.

Part of God's rest is God's got it.

I don't need to do it.

I don't bring it about.

I just enjoy it, sit back with him.

God's got it.

Let's go to the next biblical story of rest.

It actually is the promised land itself.

See, they're being promised.

Dude, when you go into the promised land, it's a place flowing with milk and honey.

And that doesn't mean there's rivers of milk and honey.

It means sweetness and sustenance.

It means you're gonna have plenty, you're gonna have all you need, and it's gonna be sweet.

It's gonna taste good.

It's gonna have just a touch of sweetness that you know God's blessing is on it.

But for that first generation, remember what God said?

Let's go back to Hebrews 4, 5.

But in the other passage, God said, They will never enter my place of rest.

So, listen what it says.

God's rest is there for people to enter, but those who first heard the good news failed to enter because they disobeyed God.

What they really did was they disbelieved God, leading them to disobey God.

See, Moses, he tried to get them in there first.

They couldn't go in, and then when finally the children were gonna go in, Moses himself couldn't go in because for all the awesome, awesome stuff that he did as a leader, at the end of the day, right before it was all over, he misrepresented God, and God said, Hey man, you're a big deal.

So when you mess up, there's gonna be consequences.

You now can't go into the promised land.

This is a little bit of a sidelight, a little bit of a side.

Anytime you see major people that are supposed to represent God failing, don't think for a minute that God doesn't notice, and that God doesn't ultimately bring about justice.

Even to Moses, he brought it about, he'll bring it about to other, especially pastors on TV that are having specials about them right now.

Don't worry about it.

God will bring justice.

So they finally, Joshua, Moses' next leader in line, brings them in.

And they go into real battles, and they're going into battles, and Joshua, in some sense, he he gets them in.

Like they're in the promised land now.

But you know, in another sense, even though they're in, something is wrong here.

It was supposed to be like the promise on right, this is gonna be the rest that God promised us, but something is still wrong.

The sin is still here, and you can tell because the entire book of Judges, dude, it just keeps deteriorating.

Like they're just, they're they're not even really obeying God's law at all, and then less and then less, and then they're doing whack stuff.

And ultimately, so even though they're in the land of promise where there's supposed to be rest, there's no rest inside of them, and it's causing chaos all over again.

There's no peace, something is wrong here.

And so then 400 years later, King David, who's now at the pinnacle of where Israel is even gonna go, aside from his son Solomon, meaning the whole promise to Abraham that you're gonna go and have this awesome land, your descendants are gonna be blessed, it like worked.

David is like the good, righteous king that is on the throne, he's reigning, and he's winning, and everything's like going his way.

It's like, wow, that promise came true now.

Like the promised land came true.

But even David, he writes Psalm 95 and he lets us know that he has a sense, but that promise wasn't the whole promise.

There's something still wrong, David knows.

And so we get to, I'll just call it David's today.

This is the next step in the revelation of what rest is in the Bible.

It's David's today.

And he says this, verse 7.

So God set another time for entering his rest, and at that time is today.

God announced this through David much later, 400 years later, in words already quoted today.

This is the Psalm he wrote, Psalm 95, today, when you hear his voice, don't harden your hearts.

And so we're learning in the moment of David's today, God's rest is not just physical, it wasn't just a land, it wasn't just dirt, it wasn't just trees, it's also spiritual.

There's a higher, deeper, not quite reached yet rest that is there that we can have.

Verse 8.

Now, if Joshua had succeeded in giving them rest, God would not have spoken of another day of rest still to come.

Because real rest, real rest was the first rest.

Remember?

Real rest is God's rest.

That's the real rest.

Verse 9.

So there is a special rest still waiting for the people of God.

For all who have entered into God's rest have rested from their labors just as God did after creating the world.

So let us do our best to enter that rest.

But if we disobey God as the people of Israel did, we will fall.

So what do we do?

We've got this broken world, sin is still a part of it.

We're getting glimpses of rest, and yet we can't seem to get it.

And then Jesus comes along and he says, Come unto me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

And that rest word that he uses is not the first time rest has shown up in the Bible as we now know.

I will give you rest.

He attaches the rest to him, and it's not totally understandable.

Well, how do we get that rest?

Jesus, just by following you?

No, it's through the next revelation of rest in the Bible.

It's the forgiveness of the cross.

See, see, what's left?

You got to deal with the sin.

The sin is the thing that keeps causing the unrest.

Somehow we've got to deal with it.

So Jesus opens the door to the true heavenly rest, and it starts with his cross.

And this is what Colossians 2.13 says about this.

Two Christians writing after the cross, you were dead because of your sins, and because your sinful nature was not yet cut away.

Then God made you alive with Christ, for he forgave all our sins, and he canceled the record of charges against us and took them away by nailing them to the cross.

Jesus takes the very unrest causer on himself, and he dies in our place, and he gives us his rest, which is why it's so trippy, because now, still on planet earth, we can be walking with Jesus and experiencing something deeper than a rest we'd known before.

It's a deeper kind of a rest.

It's a rest that even when I'm working, I can still feel some kind of rest because I'm resting in him.

I know that he approves of my work, even if my boss doesn't approve of my work, he approves of my work.

He accepts me, they don't accept me, but he accepts me.

I don't have to strive to get into their favor.

He accepts me.

I'm good with him.

The most important person of in the universe regards me.

So I'm fully regarded whether or not anyone else regards me.

I can rest finally.

There's a stability that comes from the rest of Jesus.

See, some of you, you're like me, and you'll unwisely work on vacation.

You'll go on vacation and be like, I ain't gonna work, but then you bust open the laptop and you're working.

You can't even get, even on vacation, you can't get away from your need to work.

And then you come home and like, doggone, you know, we had some fun, but I'm tired.

Because all you really did was cover that need to do stuff until we refocus on Jesus.

Jesus is my rest.

So I can be actually at work and not even think about it, not even worry about it because I'm in his rest.

And even when I'm being shamed, I'm in his rest, even when people are abandoning me, I'm in his rest.

No matter what happens, I'm in his rest because God's rest is so mind-blowing that we should tremble and we should rejoice.

Here there's another one, the rest of death.

So then, like there's something else.

There's death.

And death is so crazy because death, on one hand, is an enemy, according to the Bible.

It was the enemy that came with the curse.

But now in Christ, because Jesus grabbed that snake death and he ripped out its fangs, now death is in a lot of ways a helper.

Now death gets us to a much awesomer, if you're in Christ, a much awesomer rest.

Finally, finally, finally, the rest of death.

Revelation 14 13.

And I heard a voice from heaven saying, Write this down Blessed are those who die in the Lord from now on.

Yes, says the Spirit.

They're blessed indeed, for they will rest from their hard work, for their good deeds follow them.

I know it's weird to think like death is good.

It's good to stay here as long as you possibly can and work unto the Lord and help all kinds of folks as much as you possibly can.

But when God finally decides, when God decides, when God decides to bring you home, he's doing you a favor because he's finally giving you rest from all the evil and all the hell and all the pain of all the stuff you would ever experience here.

He's finally blessing us with a realer rest.

And isn't it so awesome the way Jesus dignifies death?

And he doesn't tell us, well, you know, they just went away somewhere.

They just are some vague ethereal thing floating out in the atmosphere.

No, baby.

He took them to a very awesome place that is filled with his presence where they're very much alive and they're enjoying rest that they never have before.

And check it, they get to enjoy it for the rest of forever.

And the curse never gets to mess with them ever again.

But there's one more.

Let's just talk about the greatest one, the best one, the new heaven and the new earth.

All of this is accessed through Jesus the door, the new heaven and the new earth.

See, at some point, when when Jesus is done with this whole planet, when this whole thing runs its cycle, and and he's brought everyone who will possibly come to him and trust him and be forgiven.

Once that's finally all done, those of us, I think, I think I'll probably be in heaven by then.

Maybe not, but I think I probably will.

Those of us who are still in heaven, it's gonna be like, all right, we're all done.

Jesus is gonna gather us all up.

Hey guys, let's go back.

We're gonna go rescue everybody, and we're gonna bring heaven itself down to earth.

And it sounds weird if you'd never heard this before, but heaven's gonna be on earth now.

It's new heaven and it's new earth.

The thing that was lost is now back.

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, and the old heaven, old earth had disappeared, and the sea was gone.

And I saw a holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, like a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.

I heard a loud shout from the throne saying, Look, God's home is now among his people.

He will live with them, and they will be his people.

God himself will be with them, he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and there'll be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain.

All these things are gone forever.

And can you see it?

Can you picture it?

Can you see Jesus back up and look at the whole thing and go, now we're all at rest.

We're all at rest again because of what the Son of God did.

God's rest is so mind-blowing that we should tremble and we should rejoice.

What should we do?

Well, we should tremble that we might undervalue it.

We should tremble that we might be like that first generation of Israelites and disbelieve and disobey and say, you know, I don't, I don't think I need to make this a priority right now.

They were told, guys, run into the promised land.

Go get it.

I've given it to you.

Believe me and go.

And God says to everyone today, run toward Jesus right now, run toward him and find his rest.

He is the real promised land.

Run toward him and do it.

And for us to say, well, you know, my my I kind of want all of this though, and I want to do this though, and I'll get to that God, but I want to do my thing.

And I think I need to hoard this stuff over here.

I need to make sure this all works out for them.

No, no, no, no, no.

You're undervaluing the whole thing.

Do all that, fine, but first run to Jesus.

Go into the promise of believe him.

It's the most important thing.

Verse 1 God's promise of entering his rest still stands.

So we ought to tremble with fear that some of us might fail to experience it.

Run, it's a good fear.

It's a good fear, baby.

I got this illustration from another preacher, so I'm ripping it off just so you know.

But I can I can imagine a bunch of times when my kids were kids, when this would have been something similar would have been true.

A dad is playing in the front yard with his little girl.

And he's told her, he's mentioned it, don't go into the street.

But as they're playing ball, something the ball rolls into the street and she runs after it.

And he runs after her.

And he gets her, he gets down on his knee.

He says, Baby, don't ever go in the street.

Don't do it.

And she starts to cry.

And she's crying because she she didn't mean to make her dad mad and she didn't know that she was in that much danger.

But then later on, every time even a ball goes into the street, she comes, I ain't going on that street, dude.

My daddy don't like that.

And it's dangerous.

Guys, that's the kind of fear God is asking.

Don't you don't have to fear like you have to keep God happy.

You don't have to fear like you have to like keep getting saved.

You don't have to do that.

But we have to listen and say, God says don't go into the street.

Don't stay close to Jesus.

That means when we begin to slip, when we begin to get into sin, we begin to start to feel guilty and start to doubt, and we just, I'm just gonna take a break from the whole God thing for a while.

Be careful, dude.

Don't go in the street.

You know what you do?

You go back to Jesus, run to the promised land.

And you know, I gotta do this like multiple times a month.

What I mean is I'll begin to get tempted.

I'll begin to get sucked into certain mental patterns in my in my head.

And it's it's pulling me toward the street.

And I'll just give myself for this for a little while.

No, I call the elders, I call my accountability partner.

Guys, pray for me because I'm being sucked toward this.

And they do, and I confess it.

And the power of confession pulls me away from the magnetism of the street so that I can run toward Jesus, the promised land.

It's not me doing it, it's just me knowing that's a street right there.

Where's your streets?

Where's the things that, dude, they will suck you away from Jesus' presence?

Dude, get away, whatever you gotta do.

The writer goes on to say, by the way, you should fear, you should tremble, because this can't be faked.

The word of God will not allow us to fake it.

If we want to, if we ever want to say to ourselves, you know, I'm just gonna like, I'm gonna exteriorly show everybody that I want to run toward Jesus, but in my heart, I'm gonna keep some other stuff going on the side.

Verse 12, for the word of God is alive and powerful, it is sharper than the sharpest two-edged sword.

Cutting between soul and spirit, between joint and marrow, it exposes our innermost thoughts and desires.

Nothing in all creation is hidden from God.

Everything is naked and exposed before his eyes, and he is the one to whom we are accountable.

See, faking it won't work.

He's giving us a picture of, okay, like your arm is sliced open, dude, and all the ligaments and all the muscle and all the bone is laid bare.

God sees everything.

Whatever we're hiding in our heart, you're not hiding it.

God knows it.

And so someday we're gonna say, Oh, Jesus, look, I follow Jesus.

You can say, No, I displayed the whole thing open.

I know what your heart was.

I know what you were doing.

Now, what we can do is we can right now tremble at that moment and run toward Jesus, the promised land, and we can let the word correct us now.

That's what it does.

It it reads us, it goes into our heart and says, Well, we're gonna have to get rid of that.

And okay, you need to get filled with the spirit, so you're not doing so much of that anymore.

And we let the word of God read us every day of our pilgrimage here on earth.

So we keep our eyes on the prize of Jesus Christ.

Do we can have it read us now, or we can have it read us later?

The the writer of Hebrews says, Why don't you just go ahead and do it right now?

Just do it right now.

And Jesus leaves the door open.

We're in the season on planet earth when the door is still open.

So we tremble, but then here's the best part.

Are you ready for the best part?

Dude, it's good.

You should really pay attention right now.

Like try to like get internalize this for the rest of your life.

Rejoice and come boldly.

Rejoice and come boldly.

I think one of the greatest mistakes I see of Christians, they don't come boldly.

They don't really believe the following.

Here we go.

So then, since we have a great high priest who has entered heaven, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold firmly to what we believe.

This high priest of ours understands our weakness, for he has faced all the same testings we do, yet he did not sin.

So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God.

There we will, somebody say we will.

We will receive mercy and we'll find grace to help us when we need it most.

Jesus, he knows and understands, like he gets temptation.

He was tempted in every way that we were, yet without sin.

He knows the press of temptation.

So he says, Guys, I get you.

Like I'm not, I'm not unsympathetic.

He's tenderhearted, he's sympathetic, he thinks about us and he his compassion makes him act.

He runs to us and come to me, come to me, come to me.

I want to help you in the moment of temptation.

And when you fail, I want to give you mercy and grace.

Mercy and grace.

Are we hearing this?

And he doesn't say, like, now, and I'll give it to you.

If you come very meekly and you you beg for it, then I'll give it to you.

He says, You come boldly.

I spilled a lot of blood for your privilege to do this.

So you come boldly.

Even when you feel horrible, you come boldly.

Even when you just messed up super huge, you come boldly.

Even when you don't know what's going on, you come boldly because you now have you have the approval of God in Jesus Christ.

You have the rest, you have a right to the rest.

You can take the rest boldly and say, God, I don't know why I did that.

I don't know why I'm so dumb sometimes, but I'm here.

So give me your grace and your help.

I'm coming boldly before the throne of a gracious God.

That means when you're tempted to feel like a fake Christian, you come boldly to the throne of a gracious God.

That means when you're stuck in a pattern of sin again, you come boldly to the throne of a gracious God.

That means when your friends at school reject you, you come boldly to the throne of a gracious God.

That means when you feel like I should have been wiser than this by now, I shouldn't have gotten in that argument.

No, who cares?

Come boldly to the throne of a gracious God.

When you feel hopeless, when you feel ashamed, I'm gonna come boldly to the throne of a gracious God.

I'm not gonna wait until I feel like it.

I'm gonna come and I'm come boldly because Jesus Christ died for me to have the rest of God.

He's earned it for me.

So I'm gonna take it and I'm going to rejoice in it.

And I want to do that right now.

I want us to see Jesus and run toward the promised land.

I want to ask you to close your eyes and bow your heads.

God, your rest is so mind-blowing that the only response, legitimate response, is trembling and rejoicing.

We see you, Jesus, and we drop everything we've got, everything holding us back, and we run toward you.

We recognize that you are the real rest, you are the door that opens up rest to everywhere else.

And God, we just follow on you.

Whatever we've done.

And whether it's the first time or it's the seventh time today, we just run toward you.

We run toward the promised land.

God, we come boldly.

We say, Jesus, would you forgive me again?

We trust that you, just like you promised, you're a tender high priest, you're sympathetic to us, and you're going to give us mercy and grace in our time of need.

God, there's some in here.

Some friends of ours.

As for them, they've never really heard it like this.

They've they've they know about Jesus and they know about stuff, but they never personally knew that they were invited personally to run toward the promised land of Jesus opens arms so they can finally enjoy God's rest in part now and in fullness then.

God, would you draw every heart to yourself?

Open us up.

Show us that now is the time to tremble and rejoice.

Now's the time.

We are on the edge of the promise land.

Let's run now.

Like we're after a whole bunch of stuff, and we keep putting you on the back burner.

So would you forgive us for that?

Would you train us in our earthly journey to get better and better at not making those things the things we're chasing?

And instead, magnetize our hearts to your heart.

That we would believe and obey.

Believe and run toward our Jesus.

Forgive us.

Fill us with the Holy Spirit today.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

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