A REST FOR GOD'S PEOPLE

                  ^{A REST FOR GOD'S PEOPLE}

^28-30 “Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep Company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”{Matthew 11:28-30 MSG}

I see many people tired and burdened by the yoke of religion.They know they dont enjoy the rituals but can’t just stop the routine.They have laid heavy loads on themselves which Christ Jesus has not placed on them.They are labouring so hard on the doctrines of men .They need rest and Jesus is calling them to recieve that rest today.

What can you and I do today to receive this rest from all our labour? It is very simple, just faith in Christ Jesus. Until we believe in Christ as our righteousness, we can never enter God’s rest. We will keep labouring to be righteous like the children of Israel did. The majority of them died in the wilderness and never entered their promised land because of unbelief. The same unbelief is what I see in most Christians today. They don’t believe that Christ is their righteousness. They think that it’s too good to be true that they can be righteous without labouring to keep the commandments. They want to labour and sweat it out first before they can see themselves as righteous. 

They are rejecting the righteousness gift of God and hoping to get it as a reward for their rule keeping. They have refused to enter their promised land of rest because of unbelief. They feel they are not good enough. They see themselves as grasshoppers and even think that God sees them that way. They have simply failed to enter God’s rest. That promised land of rest; Canaan land, was a shadow of Jesus Christ who was to come and give us rest if only we could believe. If anyone will believe like Joshua and Caleb, then the land is theirs. They will definitely enter into their rest. If we can be courageous and have confidence in Christ then that rest is ours. We are well able to possess the land because God has qualified us. We refuse to die in unbelief. 

For whoever shall believe in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life. I believe He is my righteousness therefore I receive rest from all my labour. I am God’s righteousness. I will not labour to become what I already am. I accept His grace and reject the laws with its religious rituals. I believe in Christ. His yoke is easy and His burden is light. I enter my rest.

⁶ But Christ is faithful as the Son in charge of God's house. We are his house if we keep up our courage and our confidence in what we hope for.

A Rest for God's People

⁷ So then, as the Holy Spirit says,

“If you hear God's voice today,⁸     do not be stubborn, as your ancestors were when they rebelled against God,    as they were that day in the desert when they put him to the test.⁹ There they put me to the test and tried me, says God,    although they had seen what I did for forty years.¹⁰ And so I was angry with those people and said,    ‘They are always disloyal    and refuse to obey my commands.’¹¹ I was angry and made a solemn promise:    ‘They will never enter the land where I would have given them rest!’”

¹² My friends, be careful that none of you have a heart so evil and unbelieving that you will turn away from the living God. ¹³ Instead, in order that none of you be deceived by sin and become stubborn, you must help one another every day, as long as the word “Today” in the scripture applies to us. ¹⁴ For we are all partners with Christ if we hold firmly to the end the confidence we had at the beginning.

¹⁵ This is what the scripture says:

“If you hear God's voice today,    do not be stubborn, as your ancestors were    when they rebelled against God.”

¹⁶ Who were the people who heard God's voice and rebelled against him? All those who were led out of Egypt by Moses. ¹⁷ With whom was God angry for forty years? With the people who sinned, who fell down dead in the desert.¹⁸ When God made his solemn promise, “They will never enter the land where I would have given them rest”—of whom was he speaking? Of those who rebelled. ¹⁹ We see, then, that they were not able to enter the land, because they did not believe. {Hebrews 3:6-19 GNT}

Be careful my friends, do not have a heart so evil and unbelieving that you will turn away from God. To doubt God is to rebel against Him. Unbelief is what God described as sin in this passage. God swore that they will never enter their land of rest because He was angry at their unbelief and stubbornness of heart. They didn’t enter their rest because of unbelief. Do you want to be like them? Do you want to enter your rest or you want to keep doubting God? Will you receive rest or you prefer to keep labouring by yourself? There is a promise of rest. Will you accept it?

Now, God has offered us the promise that we may receive that rest he spoke about. Let us take care, then, that none of you will be found to have failed to receive that promised rest. ² For we have heard the Good News, just as they did. They heard the message, but it did them no good, because when they heard it, they did not accept it with faith. ³ We who believe, then, do receive that rest which God promised. It is just as he said,

“I was angry and made a solemn promise:
    ‘They will never enter the land where I would have given them rest!’”
He said this even though his work had been finished from the time he created the world.

⁴ For somewhere in the Scriptures this is said about the seventh day: “God rested on the seventh day from all his work.” ⁵ This same matter is spoken of again: “They will never enter that land where I would have given them rest.”⁶ Those who first heard the Good News did not receive that rest, because they did not believe. There are, then, others who are allowed to receive it. ⁷ This is shown by the fact that God sets another day, which is called “Today.” Many years later he spoke of it through David in the scripture already quoted:

“If you hear God's voice today,
    do not be stubborn.”

⁸ If Joshua had given the people the rest that God had promised, God would not have spoken later about another day. ⁹ As it is, however, there still remains for God's people a rest like God's resting on the seventh day. ¹⁰ For those who receive that rest which God promised will rest from their own work, just as God rested from his. ¹¹ Let us, then, do our best to receive that rest, so that no one of us will fail as they did because of their lack of faith.{ Hebrews 4:1-11 GNT}

The rest promised by God was not just the promised land of Canaan. That was only a shadow of Christ who will give us that rest today. The rest will be the kind of rest God had on the seventh day. To cease from, to stop, to finish the works of righteousness. To end the labour with the law not just to take a break and resume again but to bring to an end that struggle. To take away the yoke for good. If Joshua and the Children of Israel had that promised rest, David would not have spoken of it again. It was futuristic as David described it and it pointed towards the coming of Christ. Now Christ has come and all that is needed to enter that rest is FAITH in Him. Yes! Faith in Christ will end all the labour for righteousness. The yoke of the law will be broken by faith and we will enter our rest to enjoy our righteousness Gift. Mix the gospel with faith and it will profit you righteousness. The only thing we should labour for is to enter that rest which God has promised and by faith you will enter into it. Once you enter that rest, you cease from all your works.

^4-5 If you’re a hard worker and do a good job, you deserve your pay; we don’t call your wages a gift. But if you see that the job is too big for you, that it’s something only God can do, and you trust him to do it—you could never do it for yourself no matter how hard and long you worked—well, that trusting-him-to-do-it is what gets you set right with God, by God. Sheer gift. {Romans 4:4-5 MSG}

Someone may want to ask; what if I have faith and receive this rest but still fall into sin. Will I still be righteous? Well the answer is this: You must keep confessing your faith and keep believing that you are God’s righteousness because you got it by grace not by works of the law. You must not return to labour because you will still fail because of unbelief. Enjoy your rest by faith. You can enter God’s throne of grace with boldness and you will find help whenever you need it.

¹⁴ Let us, then, hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we have a great High Priest who has gone into the very presence of God—Jesus, the Son of God.¹⁵ Our High Priest is not one who cannot feel sympathy for our weaknesses. On the contrary, we have a High Priest who was tempted in every way that we are, but did not sin. ¹⁶ Let us have confidence, then, and approach God's throne, where there is grace. There we will receive mercy and find grace to help us just when we need it. {Hebrews 4:14-16 GNT}

My heart cry is for the church to receive her rest. Many claim to be born again but they have not received rest. They are still labouring and trying so hard to be righteous. They still do not believe that Christ is their righteousness. They are celebrating religion and bearing the burden of its yoke alone. They are unbelieving believers, I call them. 

They have a form of Godliness but deny the power of Godliness-the gospel of Christ. They have not mixed the gospel with faith. They have heard the good news of rest but they prefer to labour due to their unbelief. My heart bleeds for them. I wish I could repeat Paul’s prayer for them “that the eyes of their understanding be enlightened” and that they know and understand the things that have been freely given them-righteousness.

God is still warning and speaking from heaven to His church {the spiritual Jews} today. Many have stumbled already and many more are yet to stumble over the rock of our salvation, Christ the rest giver. Faith is all we need to enter our rest. Stop labouring by yourself. Receive Rest!

30 Well then, what shall we say about these things? Just this, that God has given the Gentiles the opportunity to be ‪acquitted by faith, even though they had not been really seeking God. 31 But the Jews, who tried so hard to get right with God by keeping his laws, never succeeded. 32 Why not? Because they were trying to be saved by keeping the law and being good instead of by depending on faith. They have stumbled over the great stumbling stone. 33 God warned them of this in the Scriptures when he said, “I have put a Rock in the path of the Jews, and many will stumble over him (Jesus). Those who ‎believe in him will ‎never be ‪disappointed.”{ROMANS 9 TLB}

So Christ has made us free. Now make sure that you stay free, and don’t get all tied up again in the chains of slavery to Jewish laws and ceremonies. ² Listen to me, for this is serious: if you are counting on circumcision and keeping the Jewish laws to make you right with God, then Christ cannot save you. ³ I’ll say it again. Anyone trying to find favor with God by being circumcised must always obey every other Jewish law or perish. ⁴ Christ is useless to you if you are counting on clearing your debt to God by keeping those laws; you are lost from God’s grace.

⁵ But we by the help of the Holy Spirit are counting on Christ’s death to clear away our sins and make us right with God. ⁶ And we to whom Christ has given eternal life don’t need to worry about whether we have been circumcised or not, or whether we are obeying the Jewish ceremonies or not; for all we need is faith working through love.{Galatians 5:1-6 TLB}

⁴ Even that question wouldn’t have come up except for some so-called “Christians” there—false ones, really—who came to spy on us and see what freedom we enjoyed in Christ Jesus, as to whether we obeyed the Jewish laws or not. They tried to get us all tied up in their rules, like slaves in chains. ⁵ But we did not listen to them for a single moment, for we did not want to confuse you into thinking that salvation can be earned by being circumcised and by obeying Jewish laws.{Galatians 2:4-5 TLB}

LEADERSHIP COURSE VLC 101

   GRACESTAND LEADERSHIP ACADEMY

{GSGC BIBLE SCHOOL}

LEVEL ONE: CERTIFICATE

COURSE TITLE: TEN LAWS OF LEADERSHIP

COURSE CODE: VLC 101-VISION

GRACESTAND GOSPEL CHURCH UKRAINE

Clemzyclementministry.blogspot.com

gracestandleadershipacademy@gmail.com

WHAT IS VISION?

Leadership is the special ability to influence others. To lead you must have vision.

Vision is the ability to see beyond what others can see. Vision is the ability to dream big. Vision is to see with closed eyes what people with open eyes cannot see. Vision is to build empires in your mind by the power of imagination. Too many people have sight but only a few have vision.

Vision is the key to understanding leadership. To be a leader without a vision is to be a blind man leading other blind men.

Vision is what motivates followers to follow their leader’s dream. Every follower wants to be part of the team that accomplished the vision. Vision excites followers to be committed to work.

-If you must succeed in life then you must take time to determine exactly what it is you want to do with your life.

-An unexamined life is not worth living. Without a clear vision of your life, you are as good as a dead man.

-The secret of a successful life is to determine what is your purpose in life to do and then do it.

-To accomplish great things in life, you will have to first of all have a big dream.

What are your goals for the next 1,3,5…..10 years?

Until you answer the following questions, you are not yet ready to lead.

(1}What do I want to do?

(2)What do I want to be?

(3)What do I want to see?

(4)What do I want to have?

(5) Where do I want to go?

(6)What would I like to share?

No one ever accomplishes anything of consequence without a goal. Goal setting is the strongest human force for self –motivation…..Paul Myer

Research shows that about 95% of people have never written out their goals in life. Of the 5% who have,95% have achieved their goals. In 1953 at Yale University, 3% of the graduating class had specific written goals for their lives. In 1975 research found out that the 3% who wrote down their goals had accomplished more than the other 97% put together.

GUIDELINES FOR GOAL SETTING

Your goals must include others

Your goals must be worthwhile

Your goals must be clear

Your goals must be measurable

Your goals must be expandable

Your goals must be filled with conviction

                     BENEFITS OF GOAL SETTING

(1)Goals make decision making process easier

When you know your direction in life after setting your goals, you can easily evaluate and make wise decisions. You no longer allow circumstances determine your direction

(2)Goals help mental and physical health

Most oil workers and government workers die after retirement because they failed to set goals for the future.

(3)Goals will make people respect you

People will naturally respect and follow any man who knows where he is going.

(4)Goals help you to feel fulfilled

Once you accomplish a project, you feel fulfilled and believe you can do more.

What you cannot measure. You cannot monitor

(5)Goals produce persistence

People who quit too easily are people who have no goals

Your vision will keep you going. Habakkuk 2:2

(6)Goals deliver you from living in the past

When you have goals to accomplish, you cannot be deceived by the applause of your past glories. You will forget the things which are behind and reach out for the things which are ahead. Philippians 3:14

NUGGETS ON VISION

# If you don’t know where you are going you will probably wind up somewhere else

# The world gives way for the man who knows where he is going

# Too much association with visionless people will blur your vision until you finally lose sight of your true identity

# If you follow the crowd. No man will follow you. Develop your vision and men will follow you.

IF YOU KNOW WHERE YOU ARE GOING IN LIFE YOU WILL BE AMAZED HOW OPPURTUNITIES WILL COME TO HELP YOU GET THERE…..You can easily recognize opputunities

TWO KINDS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS

TWO KINDS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS

TWO KINDS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS

At this juncture, I deem it fit to state that there are two kinds of righteousness, one is a reward; the other is a gift. I am going to explain the both of them with examples of people who got the reward or the gift.

 

The first kind of righteousness I want to explain is the reward kind of righteousness or what I will call “our righteousness”. This righteousness is gotten as a reward of a work done. It is the wages paid for labour. It is credited into our accounts when we are able to do righteous works. It is something you deserve because you’ve worked for it.

⁷ Little children, let no man deceive you: he that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous. {1 John 3:7}

You may want to ask: Does it mean if I do righteous works, I will be righteous? Well yes you will but you need to know that it is temporary. You are only paid for that work just as workers are paid monthly only for the work of that month. It is temporary because, you need to keep working to keep getting the reward of righteousness. The day you cannot work because of the weakness of your flesh, you will not be paid and you become unrighteous for that day. And if the trumpet sounds on the day of your unrighteousness, you are heading straight up in Hell.

Again, the day you become unrighteous because your short comings led you to fall into sin, you lose your confidence. A sense of condemnation overwhelms you due to your guilty conscience and fear sets in. Once the spirit of bondage to fear takes over you, you become handicapped and can’t do anything for the kingdom. You become useless and unqualified. You can’t even pray for a sick person, neither can you go out to preach because you feel God will not answer your prayers. You shrink away from God’s presence in fear until the guilt gradually disappears.

You bounce back again when you are able to resume work by keeping rules and regulations. Of course you get paid and you feel righteous once again. Now you feel qualified to pray for the sick and preach the gospel. You can now go for choir rehearsals and sing on Sundays without the fear of “thus says the Lord”. Your confidence is back. You see, the truth is that you are putting confidence in the flesh. You think that you can heal the sick by yourself because of righteous works. It is no longer about God but about you. Your belief is in yourself not in God. This reward righteousness is unstable. One day you are up, the next day you are down. Righteous today, unrighteous the following day.

The reward righteousness is yours if and only if you are able to keep God’s commandments.

²⁵ And it shall be our righteousness, if we observe to do all these commandments before the Lord our God, as he hath commanded us. {Deuteronomy 6:25}

Notice from the above verse that the children of Israel will be righteous only if they will do ALL the commandments. What! Are you kidding me? Is it possible to keep all the commandments? The answer is NO, if you want to obey all by yourself. No man ever did, not even Moses who brought the law. He broke it no sooner than he received it. He slashed the tablets of stones on the ground and they broke into pieces. The children of Israel broke the commandments even before Moses could come down from the mountain. To depend on adherence to the laws of Moses for righteousness is to come under a curse.

¹⁰ But those who depend on the law to make them right with God are under his curse, for the Scriptures say, “Cursed is everyone who does not observe and obey all the commands that are written in God’s Book of the Law.”^[d] 11 So it is clear that no one can be made right with God by trying to keep the law. For the Scriptures say, “It is through faith that a righteous person has life.”^[e] 12 This way of faith is very different from the way of law, which says, “It is through obeying the law that a person has life.” {Galatians 3:10-12 NLT}

Can’t you see that you are under a curse if you want to be righteous by depending on works? The reward-righteousness is only available if you can obey all the commandments. If you fail one you have failed all. The man who keeps nine and fails one is as guilty and unrighteous as the man who keeps one and fails nine.

¹⁰ For the person who keeps all of the laws except one is as guilty as a person who has broken all of God’s laws. ¹¹ For the same God who said, “You must not commit adultery,” also said, “You must not murder.”^[e] So if you murder someone but do not commit adultery, you have still broken the law. {James 2:10 NLT}

In fact you are doomed to failure and utterly cursed if you depend on self- righteousness. There is an obvious impossibility of carrying out such a moral program and no man can become righteous by this plan. You can’t have life by rule keeping because you will always break them. Sin is a transgression of the law and once you transgress a law you die. The wages of sin is death. The children of Israel died in their numbers in the wilderness because they transgressed God’s laws. If they couldn’t keep the laws, then you also cannot keep the law.

It is obvious now that the reward-righteousness leads to death because it is unstable and short-lived. Everyone who depends on it is under a curse. It is self-centred and not God-focused. It is practically impossible to achieve, no matter how hard we try.

                                                                                                              

The second kind of righteousness is the gift-righteousness. You don’t labour for it. It is not a reward of what you’ve done neither is it credited into your account because you deserve it. This gift righteousness is imputed into us simply by having faith in Christ Jesus. It is an undeserved righteousness and abides with us even when we fail to keep the commandments. It is simply unmerited.

³ For the Scriptures tell us, “Abraham believed God, and God counted him as righteous because of his faith.”^[a]

⁴ When people work, their wages are not a gift, but something they have earned. ⁵ But people are counted as righteous, not because of their work, but because of their faith in God who forgives sinners. ⁶ David also spoke of this when he described the happiness of those who are declared righteous without working for it:

⁷ “Oh, what joy for those
    whose disobedience is forgiven,
    whose sins are put out of sight.
⁸ Yes, what joy for those
    whose record the Lord has cleared of sin.”^[b {Romans 4:3-8 NLT}

The gift-righteousness looks beyond our sins. It is not diminished by sin. Even when one transgresses the law, one is still righteous. This is because the gift-righteousness is not a reward for obeying the laws. It is imputed into us only by faith in Christ Jesus. It is Jesus focus and not self-centred. We cannot feel confident one day and feel fearful the next day. Our confidence is steadfast and we are always useful to the kingdom. We don’t walk around with guilt and condemnation. We are confident always because whenever we disobey out of our shortcomings, we are forgiven and our sins are taken out of sight. God doesn’t keep record of our wrongs because we have faith in Christ Jesus as our righteousness-Gift.

 ²² And because of Abraham’s faith, God counted him as righteous. ²³ And when God counted him as righteous, it wasn’t just for Abraham’s benefit. It was recorded ²⁴ for our benefit, too, assuring us that God will also count us as righteous if we believe in him, the one who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. ²⁵ He was handed over to die because of our sins, and he was raised to life to make us right with God. {Romans 4:22-25 NLT}.

We are certain that whenever the trumpet sounds we are heading straight for heaven. We are always righteous. We don’t become righteous one day and unrighteous the following day. This righteousness has nothing to do with our works of keeping the law. It is exclusively God’s gift to us. Anyone who will dare to believe God will also be counted as righteous.

 Everyone who believes is freed from the penalty of their sins because Christ Jesus took the penalty of our sins when He became the scape goat for our sins. When He resurrected, we were all declared righteous and no longer guilty of sin as long as we have faith in Him.

²¹ But now God has shown us a way to be made right with him without keeping the requirements of the law, as was promised in the writings of Moses^[i] and the prophets long ago. ²² We are made right with God by placing our faith in Jesus Christ. And this is true for everyone who believes, no matter who we are.

²³ For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard. ²⁴ Yet God freely and graciously declares that we are righteous. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins. ²⁵ For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin. People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood. This sacrifice shows that God was being fair when he held back and did not punish those who sinned in times past, ²⁶ for he was looking ahead and including them in what he would do in this present time. God did this to demonstrate his righteousness, for he himself is fair and just, and he declares sinners to be right in his sight when they believe in Jesus.{Romans 3:21-26 NLT}

This righteousness-gift is ours not because of our obedience but because of Christ’s obedience. His obedience was all that God needed to declare us righteous because we always disobey. Now we have life because of His obedience. Even though we are guilty of many sins, He still declares us righteous. He gives us this righteousness-gift though we don’t deserve it. Is this not wonderful? It makes us want to love God more and more.

¹⁵ But there is a great difference between Adam’s sin and God’s gracious gift. For the sin of this one man, Adam, brought death to many. But even greater is God’s wonderful grace and his gift of forgiveness to many through this other man, Jesus Christ. ¹⁶ And the result of God’s gracious gift is very different from the result of that one man’s sin. For Adam’s sin led to condemnation, but God’s free gift leads to our being made right with God, even though we are guilty of many sins. ¹⁷ For the sin of this one man, Adam, caused death to rule over many. But even greater is God’s wonderful grace and his gift of righteousness, for all who receive it will live in triumph over sin and death through this one man, Jesus Christ.

¹⁸ Yes, Adam’s one sin brings condemnation for everyone, but Christ’s one act of righteousness brings a right relationship with God and new life for everyone.¹⁹ Because one person disobeyed God, many became sinners. But because one other person obeyed God, many will be made righteous. {Romans 5:15-19 NLT}

Having seen the two kinds of righteousness, you will now have to choose which one you want. Do you prefer to labour like the children of Israel and be paid the reward righteousness or you want to have faith like father Abraham and receive the gift-righteousness? Do you really want to struggle to obey God’s laws or you want to rest on Jesus’ obedience and be declared righteous? The choice is yours to make. As for me and my house, we will keep having faith in Jesus Christ and enjoy His righteousness gift to us.


I didn’t want some petty, inferior brand of righteousness that comes from keeping a list of rules when I could get the robust kind that comes from trusting Christ—God’srighteousness.{Philipians 3:9}