Bible Teaching

Calvary Temple Teaching Library

Promises, Promises Pt.2

Hallelujah! Amen! I shared this morning we are excited about the kids and their ministry in Tennessee, and we'll be talking a little about that later on. We're going to probably put communion off until next week, we don't want to rush through the recognition of the Lord's Supper and His body that's broken for us. So we have a few other things we're going to be tending to later on in the service so we'll get a hold of those shortly.

Let's turn back to Hebrews, I want to finish just this one point into our transition into this new teaching and then we're going to give some time to the kids' ministry in Tennessee. We're really excited about that and the work that was accomplished there. I was kind of.... I was laughing prior to service this evening, it's been an interesting week. I've been fighting the flu myself all week and battling with that, fevers, as many of you have, up and down and just thanking the Lord for what He's doing in our body and the.... Had a pretty high fever the morning of Janet's surgery, and we went down and it was kind of funny, I was trying to remember part of the admission process-where we were admitting her. It's a good thing that we did it at that time, because we got her in the right place, but I couldn't remember any of it taking place. I was trying to go back and finally one word jogged my memory and got me back to that certain sequence of about an hour of time that somehow had gotten lost. I don't know if it got lost because of all of that that happens-the Bill Cosby video, if any of you saw that, at 50? Maybe I needed to go sit down somewhere and I would have remembered where it went, but anyway, trying to recall that day. Then I got to thinking about something else that had happened that day that I had forgotten about that went along with what I was sharing this morning about just your natural persistence and the fact that I said I'm not, that's not really how I am most of the time, but it occurs quite a bit. Chuck said, "I thought you were going to tell about the incident at the restaurant." I said, "I'd forgotten about it."

That particular morning, after Janet was back in the room and she was fine and Kimberly was going to stay there while she was still coming a little more out of the anesthesia, so I took the rest of the guys that were there to lunch. It was Jeff, Chuck, Richard, Star and myself went to lunch. We went to the-I think it was called the Silver Diner-the one there at Gallows and 50. So we went in, I was reading the menu and it was a diner. It was kind of cool, you had the old jukebox, and so I was singing for the guys. Richard said, "how do you..., do you know all those songs?" And I said, "yeah." He said, "man, you're almost as old as Steve!" So we were going through some of that and looking at some of the old 50's and 60's songs and stuff. I was looking, so I thought, man, we're in this diner, I'm going to order a classic! "Give me a classic hamburger and a chocolate shake." And the guy says, "we don't have any ice cream." I said, "this whole page is full of ice cream." I said, "there's sundaes, and banana splits, and a la modes, and..." I said, "this is a diner." He said, "the truck didn't come in today." And I said, "okay, will you go to 7-11 for me?" He said, "just a minute." He went away and came back with a chocolate milkshake, now you figure out where he got it, all I know was there was no ice cream-you have not because you ask not-and the ice cream appeared. Sometimes we take "no" for an answer too easily, don't we? I wasn't rude. I wasn't causing any kind of a scene, I just wasn't the proof that there was no ice cream. I can live with it, if there was no ice cream on the premises, I could live with that. But don't tell me there's no ice cream and you've got some stashed. I have no idea where he got that ice cream. I think they were saving it for the manager. But there's that desire to always-and I think the need, there is for me anyway, to ask the question, have I done everything I can do to acquire the promises of God? Have I left anything unturned? And this is one of the things I was trying to share with the boys this year in Basketball. When the gun goes off and you walk off the court and you go into the locker room, did you leave anything on the court, or did you do your best? Can you say there's only one reason that they won and we lost, and that's because they scored more points, but we did everything possible, we played as good as we could play? That's how you hear well done in the spirit realm.

So those are things that you try to work at in your life. I'm sure many of us are that way in the different endeavors that we take, but we need to be that way really in our spiritual pursuit. Now there's the fallacy, and we can't for a moment think that we're going to wear God out or that somehow through our perseverance that He that neither slumbers nor sleeps nor in any way vacillates and changes. We can change by our tenacity-I'm not saying that. I'm saying, for our own hearts, have we done what we know we could do? That's the laboring principle of Hebrews that's necessary for us to prepare for the rest of God.

So in Hebrews chapter 4, let's pick it up there. And it will help you understand that rest aspect. The one thing I don't want us thinking is that the rest of God is passivity. It isn't passiveness, it's an abstinence from our own ability-the rest of God is ceasing to trust in your own ability. The rest of God is ceasing to look for a natural means and having assurance of the character, the love, and the eternal purpose of our Heavenly Father. This ability to apprehend the promises of God is based completely on understanding the character of God, of knowing that it's your Father's good pleasure to give you the Kingdom. It's an exciting thing, and how tragic is it that in the natural life you see it, men that have built big companies and businesses, whether it's a corporation or a family business or whatever it is. How often they just continue to tell their kids my father never gave me anything, I worked for all that I have, and bless God, you're going to start from the bottom and you're going to work your way up. You should have built the character in the kid before it came to that. You should have built enough character in the kid so that when he's old enough to operate in the business he can come in at a level that honors you. The honor is not in him being the lowest man on the totem pole, the honor is in building a kid good enough to work beside you and to honor you, someone who has been blessed, and that you can trust and not someone who has to now prove himself to you. Well, all I want him to do is to prove himself to those who are working for me. If you're proven to those and you appoint them then they should be proven. And that's where God works in this as it relates to you and I. And so many of us approach Father from this peon or this servant mentality, and beloved, I'm here to tell you this evening that we come as heirs and joint-heirs with Christ Jesus. We come into the presence of God having been accepted in the beloved, and Father desiring to give us this victory and all of these things that have been purchased for us by Jesus. So that's exciting, and what we're looking to do is to be able to divest ourselves of all of our self-trust.

Hebrews 4, let's begin reading there, and of course you know we're coming off the great narrative of the need to enter into this rest by faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ, and so he says, "Let us therefore fear, lest, a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it." Okay, get it in your notes, you can come short of the rest. This tells us then there's not a predestination for us acquiring these promises regardless of our pursuit. There is a pursuit necessary in our lives, and you can come short of God's best for you by your lack of diligence, by your lack of trust and reliance in what God's accomplished. "For unto us was the gospel preached [verse 2], as well as unto them: but the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith...." Now we shared this morning that there were two aspects that you and I could rest upon in Hebrews chapter 6 that were absolutely immutable. Verse 18 of chapter 6, "That by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us". What are these two immutable things? The word of God and the character of God-get it in your notes, put it in your Bible margin, whatever you need to do-there are two immutable facts: the word of God, it lasts forever, heaven and earth will pass away, my word will not pass away. There's never going to be lost ever, one jot, one tittle from God's revelation, they are all yea and amen. The word is that sure foundation. Then the other is of course the character of God. Do you really understand this evening who your heavenly Father is and what His plan is for your life? As we shared this morning that He wants to do good to you all the days of His life, that He wants to, it's His good pleasure to give you His Kingdom? Do you understand this evening that He's the giver of every good and perfect gift? Can you understand that His eternal purpose for you is to do exceeding abundant above anything that you could ask or think? Put it out there as far as your mind can take it, and if you'll find the rest of God, He'll go past that. That's exciting, when you begin to move into that realm and understand the character of God. Do you understand that our Father has the capacity to love us unconditionally? And to love us eternally? Do you realize the intimacy that He has with us and that the hairs of our head are numbered? He can call us by our names, praise God! Before you were even formed in your mother's womb, He knew you. Everything that's happened in your life has been orchestrated by God to prepare you for a relationship with Him in eternal dominance. That's exciting, man, and that's what God's doing on our behalf. And so when we approach Father to obtain the promises, we have to understand that He's wanting to work these things for us.

I was sharing in the back just prior to the service, Chuck was asking some questions about, "how does this apply in this particular situation?" I was sharing with him that where we get into problems is we start focusing on promises based upon an immediate circumstance, and of course one of the best-and we were talking about healing this morning, and when we're praying we're beginning to go through our concordance with all of the promises about healing, and we're starting to think, "well praise God, He sent His word and He healed us. I am the Lord that healeth thee. They shall lay hands upon the sick and they shall recover. The prayer of faith shall save the sick, the Lord shall raise them up." All of these things, "is any sick among you, let him call for the elders of the church." And we begin to hear all of these great promises and we start quoting all of these and one of the problems is in the midst of that, because we've focused on the promise of healing, we missed the fact that there are some promises that are taking place in our lives about character, patience, humility, rest, all of these other things that are so important for us, according to James, that when we enter into one of these tests-to stop and rest and say: "Father give me wisdom as James says show me the wisdom, give me some understanding as to what you are wanting to accomplish in my life," and then you can appropriate by His faith, the right promises. The right thing for you at that moment may not be instantaneous healing even though healing is God's purpose for us. But what good is it to enter in healed, to enter into hell whole with many of these things in our lives that need to be dealt with and purged out that become real to us in the midst of adversity many times, and the principle, hey it was good for me to have been afflicted! So in our teaching what I'm looking for us is to find that balance of being able to as we saw in Daniel this morning, say, my God will-that bold declaration, and then the assurance and the confidence in His character, and that He does right, and say, if He doesn't, we'll not serve your gods. So that is what we're looking for in this particular study that we're involved in.

Back here in Hebrews 4 we see then that it says, the problem with the children of Israel was that the word that was preached was not mixed with faith. Well now wait a minute, faith comes by what? Hearing, and hearing by the word of God. So how could you have the word and not have faith? You could have all the word you want but if you miss the character of God you're never going to have biblical faith. Biblical faith manifests itself from the word when you come to an understanding of the character of God. So we have these two immutable things, the word and the character. We saw that those then generate the assurance to us. The word presents the promises, and the character establishes the oath- those two immutable things, that great oath that causes us to rest. As we were ending the service this morning, we were talking about that rest and that oath of God, just when everything else is gone and you can quote all the scriptures out of your mind but there's the awareness in your life that the energy is not there and that the anointing is not tangible, but the assurance of the love of your Father, and the character of God is, and you're able then at that time to have the word mixed with faith because of the assurance of God's purpose. And you're not saying have you brought us out here these ten times to kill us, as the children of Israel did, and God responded to them and said, ten times you said I've brought you out here to kill you, it's not my purpose for you, but if that's how you perceive me, there's no hope for you to survive, and they died in the wilderness because they didn't know the character of God, because they didn't know the love of their Father and they couldn't see the eternal purpose that God had for them. A land that flowed with milk and honey, to live in houses they didn't build and to drink from wells that they didn't dig. All they could see was that for the moment their lips were parched, for a moment their stomachs were growling, and all they had was "what is it". I don't know what it is, what's it going to be tomorrow? Who knows? And no 7-11 to send them to for ice cream. So when that begins to happen-and you'll see it in the study as we're going on-when that begins to happen, what's the tendency of natural man? We look back to where we've come from and we say, you know it wasn't all that bad in Egypt, and we forget what manner of man we were.

So the Apostle tells us here that the word did not profit them-didn't say the word's not profitable, it said it didn't profit them. The word is profitable, amen? The scripture makes that very clear. The word is profitable for doctrine! So we understand that the truths of God are there for us. The word is profitable for instruction into righteousness that the man of God may be perfect and thoroughly furnished unto every good work. The word is profitable, it is profitable for reproof, correction. The word is profitable but it didn't profit them because it wasn't mixed with the understanding of the character of God. For we which have believed, that really see the eternal purpose of God, that see that the picture is bigger than this drink of water out here in the wilderness. How can we die if God's promised us a land that flows with milk and honey? Let's step back for just a moment and stop focusing on the fact that we're hungry and understand that God made a promise. Now is He going to take us in or isn't He? Yeah, but man, if we don't drink this water quick, we're all dead. Well then God's going to have to raise us up because there's an eternal purpose. Beloved I want you to know there are always streams in the desert when you trust in God. We can't see it, we don't have the understanding, we don't have the eternal perspective at all times, but in these times of adversity step back and say, what has God promised? And then realize that His promises to His church, corporate, transcend and are bigger than any individual promise that we might have-and I'll explain that as we go on. They are sure, they are specific, they are individual, but there is a corporate work taking place that many times will affect you as a member of the body for the purpose of edifying another member of the body and you don't even know they've ever been affected. As they sit back and the scripture gives us this exact example of it-how many times have you looked back through the scriptures this great cloud of witnesses, how many times have you in admiration looked at men of courage, whether it's a Joshua, or a Moses, or a Paul, or a Peter or one of these and your life has been inspired by them, or you look at some contemporary believer, and their lives are examples and your life is motivated by their faithfulness and their courage, and their ability to stand, and your life is effected by that and they don't even know why they're having to war against these particular areas in their lives, but it's for you. Many of us will never know until eternity the effect that many of these unanswered questions have had on others' lives. You never got your answer, but they received the necessary edification.

So he says, "For we which have believed do enter into rest, [and he goes on and says] as he said, As I have sworn in my wrath, if they shall enter into my rest: although the works were finished from the foundation of the world." In other words, He made certain promises but because they broke fellowship with God by questioning His character they brought upon themselves separation, judgment, and destruction. He said because of their unbelief, because of their questioning Me, I will not let them enter in. It doesn't matter from this moment what kind of strong crying and repentance comes, I've already spoken it. Beloved, if we're going to inherit the promises of God, be very careful in judging God. Be careful about being rash with your lips, put your hand over your mouth, as we were talking about in the teaching of Job, and just trust God. I don't understand why. God, how come this-oh Lord! It's very dangerous, beloved, and we don't want to find ourselves under this promise: no matter what, they won't enter in. That's a promise, and it's sure, because it's based upon the character of God. How arrogant we become thinking that God needs to answer to us, to justify His decision to us. You see if you are going to move in the power of God you're going to have to lay down your own understanding. Your little peanut brain thinks it has everything figured out, goes to West Point, comes up with tactics from Genghis Khan to General Lee, stirs them up, puts them in a Schwartzkopf, and people say what an ingenious plan! And that works historically and practically, but our weapons are not carnal. So we come into a situation and we find this walled city and we say, how do we breach this? And the commander-in-chief says, "here's what I want you to do, I want you to march around the wall one time and don't say a word." And you march and they are up there and they are mocking and laughing and throwing stuff at you, saying "your mama," and all this kind of stuff, and you can't talk back. They are trash talking and you are just quiet. They are ending notes that we're going to take this city as they did to Jerusalem, and a fox will jump on this wall and it will come down, and you're going to be captive just like everybody else that opposed us. They'll make all kinds of threats against our God and against His promises. He says just shut up and don't say a word. What are we going to do tomorrow Lord? You're going to march one more time, don't say anything. At about the second day the geniuses among us start saying, we didn't learn this at West Point. Surely there's some way to build a catapult. We have to somehow breach it. Let's build a catapult, we'll put Joe in there, we'll throw him over the wall, we'll get in there somehow. You notice it's always Joe we want to send and not ourselves. Come on Joe, you can do it, we're right behind you-ping! Never did like him anyway. All the natural tactics of man and-Lord, we don't understand, what are we going to do tomorrow? March and be quiet. We won't belabor the point, you're getting it, it's hard to be quiet! When you are going in a direction that most people don't go, wouldn't go, they say it's stupid! Those guys are sitting there on the wall saying, "I don't believe this!" Thousands of years later, even though they have now found the site, everybody says, "I don't believe that really happened, that's a fairy tale." Ask the dudes that got whipped what kind of fairy tale this was. If God is for us who can be against us? It's foolishness to the natural mind, beloved, but you don't dare say a word when God's called us to rest.

The scripture goes on and verse 4 says, "For he spake in a certain place of the seventh day on this wise, and God did rest the seventh day from all his works. And in this place again, if they shall enter into my rest [or they shall not, is probably a better rendering, enter into my rest]. Seeing therefore it remaineth that some must enter therein, and they to whom it was first preached entered not in [say it with me] because of [what?] unbelief." What kind of unbelief was this? What was it that caused the children not to enter in? It was a failure to understand the long-range purpose of what God is doing in our lives. The people that got taken up too much in the immediate circumstance, and of course this is, as prophetic circumstances do so many times, this not only pertains to their inheriting of the natural promised land, but it also, of course, appertains to our appropriation of the eternal Kingdom and the final promise and the seed which is Jesus. And he goes on and he says look, those that first heard it couldn't enter because of unbelief. And "he limiteth a certain day, saying in David, To day, after so long a time as it is said, To day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts." You want to be able to hear the promise of God? Then go in with a heart that's teachable, a humble heart. Humility is just exchanging your plans for God's. "For if Jesus had given them rest, then would he not afterward have spoken of another day," prophetically, that there is coming, verse 9 says, "There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God. For he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his." We begin to find one of the greatest revelations on the apprehension of the promises of God. Faith is ceasing from our own works, okay? Once you've begun to understand the character of God and the eternal purpose of God, oh beloved, once you've come to the place of really believing that your Heavenly Father cares. Do you tonight believe that your Father knows that you have need of these things? Can you believe tonight that He really does know and care?

Richard was asking me the other day some questions. He said, "you know with teenagers in the house now things are really different than when they were little children." I said, "yeah, tell me about it." He said, "what's the most important thing? What do they need most to know right now? What can I teach them the most? What instruction can I give them? What word of wisdom can I say? What can I do to help them through this toughest time of life? What is it, what can I teach them?" I told him, "there's one thing that you have to make sure at this time, if you're ever going to help your kids make this transition, if your children are ever going to be able to walk this journey into the promised land, here's what they need to know: that you love them, just that you love them." They are not going to have to earn it. There's not certain merits that are going to be made for this much bible reading and this much success and how many verses I've memorized and give me a dollar for every "A" in my report card and all of that kind of stuff. If they can have the assurance that they are loved, accepted, that you desire good for them, and that they never have to question coming to you in a time of need and say, "I need help," and knowing that everything else stops to minister to their needs. Have you ever tried getting through to somebody who is a big shot? They've got 12 secretaries intercepting all their calls and all their associates, and nobody can get through and all of these things. I thought it was interesting, one of the big shakers and movers. They were doing an interview for this person, I can't remember what it was on, whether it was biography or one of these particular things. They were talking to him about all of these corporations that he ran and all of this kind of stuff. Then they asked him, "what has priority in your day's schedule?" And he said, "you see this telephone right here?" They said, "yeah." He said, "only two people have that telephone number, my kids and when that phone rings, everything else stops. It doesn't matter how big the deal is, it doesn't matter how many people are in the conference room or whatever else, that's my treasure." Oh beloved, if we could understand that's the way it is with our Father, and can enter into that rest, and realize that we don't have to gain His acceptance, and we don't have to prove ourselves worthy, that we are accepted in the beloved. He goes on and he says look you've got to labor to enter into that rest, you have to cease from your own works and then you must labor to enter that rest. Here's where the laboring comes-we'll finish with this part for this evening, we said we're going to keep it short. Here's where the laboring comes though, the part that you and I are responsible for. We have to work at not working, okay, and that's one of the hardest things there is to do. But we need to ask ourselves at every juncture, am I in faith, or am I in works, am I trusting God or am I trusting myself, am I trying to cover my rear, or do I believe that the glory is my rearguard? Can I say that I have to watch out for myself because nobody else cares? You know that the fact of the matter is that most of us in this room don't have very good examples, experiential examples of being unconditionally loved. It's tragic, but there's many of our marriages here this morning, there's not an unconditional love in these marriages. An unconditional love for children or for parents, an unconditional love for brothers and sisters. It's not a natural thing, it's not common to us. We're so selfish, we're so concerned of our own self-preservation, whether we're trying to preserve the skin of our teeth or whether we're trying to preserve an image, or whether we're trying to in some way preserve our sanity, or whatever it is, and we're sitting there and we're saying, I have to protect myself, it's me against the world, everybody is out to get me, if I don't watch out for me nobody else is going to. And tragically, that's what is in natural man.

So many of us have never had natural examples, that it's hard to identify with our Father. Now the better our natural example, the better comprehension that we'll have of God's love for us, but the fact that we've been loved of our natural parents doesn't mean we're automatically going to respond to the love of God, but we do have a better understanding of it. The greatest understanding that I have of God's love for me is not my parents' love for me, but my love for my children. I know what I would do for my kids, I know what I've done for my kids, and it pales, it can't even be compared, it would be blasphemy to try to compare that to the love of my Father. And when I can look at it from that perspective, I feel safe, and I'm at rest, and now I've been able to labor at ceasing from my own works. You see in my members there's always that tendency to fight and to preserve myself and protect myself. But you know there are people out there that are stronger than I am, and smarter than I am, and tougher than I am-and it really ticks me off now-younger than I am, and there's times when I have to sleep, try to sleep with one eye open. I'm one of those guys that's sitting in the restaurant, wants to sit with my back to the wall. I want to see who is coming at me. You say, "you're paranoid." No, there's people out there like I used to be, you can't trust them, got to keep an eye on these folks at all times. Then you can begin to rest and cease from labor and you know if God is for me, nobody can be against me. He's given His angels charge over me lest I dash my foot against a stone, the angel of the Lord will in fact bear us up, praise God! You pull them all down and you say, "Father, I am absolutely trusting you. I've made no provision in the natural, I'm looking to you." Ceasing from our own works, laboring to enter into the rest lest we fall after the same example of unbelief. You see, the greatest example of unbelief, the greatest example of denying God is trusting in yourself. The greatest example of denying God is trusting in yourself! There's a lot of people that are walking around saying, "oh man, I don't know if the Bible is true or not, and I don't know if I believe in Jesus or not. Not saying I do, I don't know." Some of them are good old boys that wake up in the morning and go out and sow in their fields and wait for the rain to fall and truly believe that the rain falls upon the just and the unjust. They go through the natural course of life, actually many of them, trusting in God, more than many of us that can quote scripture, because they are believing in the fact that the seed they planted will grow and that the rains will come because this is the season for it, and they move in an assurance that those things will occur, and many of us can't trust God to that simplistic of a lifestyle, and yet we can quote scripture and we name the name of Jesus. His rain does fall on the just and the unjust. To everything there is a season, there is a time to sow and a time to reap, there is a time to laugh and a time to cry. Do we believe that, do we believe that God is orchestrating and that our steps are being ordered, and that we have to be able to trust in His concern for us and His provision for us? It is not as easy to rest as we think it is, is it? So many of us that want to boast in our faith in God, how often are we trusting in our own abilities?

I'll talk some more about the specifics on Wednesday, for tonight let's end with this: "Let us labour therefore to enter into that rest." That word labor is a very interesting word, it means to be diligent in pursuit or study or knowing God. In other words, the more you know God, the more you labor to know God, the more you meditate upon His word, the more you pray, the more you commune, the more you obey, the easier it is to cease from your own labors. You are not doing these things to get God to work on your behalf, you are doing these things to know Him, and when you know Him, you know that He wants to do these things on your behalf, that it is His good pleasure, and you cease from your works and God begins to bless you exceeding abundantly above anything you could ask or even think. It's real, beloved, and the rest of God is the most refreshing place you can be. In Daniel's lion's den, you just fluff up a lion and take a nap for the praise of God has been upon your lips, the obedience to God has been there as you throw the windows open and begin to manifest His greatness and His majesty regardless of the cost. You haven't looked for some cunning way to try to seek God and then lie when they come to interrogate you, you say, "yeah, that's what I've been up to, and God's my source, and my God will deliver me. And even if He doesn't, I'm not serving your god."

Father, we thank You for your word tonight and we just ask that we could receive Your grace to be diligent, to labor to enter into that rest. To know You more is to know ourselves in truth. To know You more is to have revelation of our motives. To know You is to cease to rely upon ourselves, that makes us then Lord, the recipients of Your great promises, and for those affecting themselves in us, we just want to say, thank You, thank You, Lord, that we can stand firm on the assurance that every promise of God in Christ Jesus is yea and amen to the glory of God by us. Finish the work for your glory Father, in Jesus name. Amen.

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