As we come to look in God’s Word, there is a principle of Bible study that is absolutely indispensable—a principle you cannot take for granted, a principle you cannot live without. That principle is total reliance on God’s Holy Spirit.
Only God can reveal God. He has promised that if we come as little children—and only He can work that attitude in our hearts—He will dawn Christ upon us. He will feed us, and He delights to do that.
Before we pray, I want to share a verse that is not on the sheet: Psalm 119:130:
The unfolding of Your Word gives light;
It gives understanding to the simple.
That goes along with John 1:4:
In Him was life;
And the life was the light of men.
When we are trusting the Holy Spirit to give us light, it is His life that is the light of men.
It is absolutely impossible, brothers, for anyone to be neutral when light is given from God. You cannot be neutral. You will either run to the light, receive the light, and be relieved by the revelation, or you will shun it, push it away, and try to avoid it. You cannot be neutral when God gives light.
I think a big explanation for many Christians who struggle and live in bondage and defeat is that they are trying to be neutral when God has dawned Christ upon them. It is not possible to be neutral.
Tom and I have waited before the Lord, and we believe that we have a message to share. We are praying that the Holy Spirit would unfold the life of Christ through His Word. As He unfolds that, then we decide. We choose.
With that thought in mind, let us bow before the Lord and commit our time to Him.
Our Father, we thank You so much that Christ is the life, the light of men. We ask that, by Your grace, You might take us past the light and show us the life of Christ. Unfold that to us through Your Word, by Your Holy Spirit, we pray.
Meet us where we are. Take us where You desire us to be. We thank You that we can trust You for that. Now we commit this session unto You in the matchless name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
Let me begin by expressing our gratitude. Tom and I are very thankful to Family Ministries for inviting us and giving us this privilege to address you. We are so very thankful for that privilege.
With Family Ministries, I want to express a welcome to all of you. We are so glad that you are here. We welcome those who have been here before, and we welcome you brothers for whom this may be your first time. In a special way, we want to welcome some of you young brothers.
We thank the Lord for all of you young brothers. Psalm 63:1 says:
O God, You are my God;
I shall seek You early.
In the margin, it says, “Early I shall seek You earnestly.”
I am so glad for young brothers, because when you come young, when you seek the Lord early, He not only saves your soul; He saves your life. We are thankful that you are here, and we pray that God would give all of us an open heart to receive His revelation.
I think the theme of our gathering is known by most of us. I think Paul Greenlee has let it be known. Let me rehearse that, tell you where we are and where we are going, and then we will begin.
We are calling this series “Conformed to His Vision.” We do not mean by that what we generally mean when we say, “Conformed to the vision of Christ.” There is a slightly different emphasis here.
Usually, when we gather together, we come to see Jesus. Then we say, “We want to be conformed to that.” Maybe we see Him as the preeminent Lord, as the Priest, as a miracle worker, as our life, or as our sufficiency. We see the Lord, and we want to be conformed to the vision of Christ that we have seen.
This is a little different. Of course, it includes that. Of course, we want to see Jesus, and of course, we want God to conform us to the Lord Jesus. But the emphasis is slightly different when we say that we want to see the vision of Jesus.
It is not seeing Him; it is seeing what He saw. It is the vision of Jesus. It is seeing what Jesus has seen. What did He look at? What captured His attention? What struck Him?
We are praying that we might be able to see what He saw as He saw it, and then be conformed to that which He has seen. I think it will make more sense as we go on.
This particular focus was suggested by an observation made by Graham Scroggie. I think some of you are familiar with that author. He was a Scottish Bible teacher who lived in England. If you are not familiar with him, I suggest that he would make a great contribution to your Christian library.
He has saved me many hours of research. He was just a wonderful brother and has many helpful books: one on the Psalms, a book on the Gospels, and what I think is his great work, The Unfolding Drama of Redemption, an overview of the history of redemption. He also has a devotional book on Joshua called The Land and the Life of Rest, a book on prayer, a book on prophecy, a commentary on Revelation, and a book on principles of Bible study. He was prolific and would make a great contribution to your own library.
Graham Scroggie observed that there was one special Greek word used only in the Gospel of Mark—not in Matthew, with one little exception in Luke, and not in the Gospel of John. It has to do with Jesus looking.
There are other Greek words that speak about Jesus looking. Who has ever studied the Bible and not been captured when He looked at Peter? You remember that? That is a different Greek word. Or when He looked up to heaven before feeding the five thousand—that is a different word. Or when, at Lazarus’s grave, the Bible says that He lifted up His eyes to heaven and looked—that is a different word.
This word—I probably will not pronounce it correctly—periblepō, something like that. Blepō means “to look,” and peri means “around.” So, He looked around. But if that is all you get out of it—that He just looked around—you miss the heart. You miss the heart of the Lord. You miss the essence.
Scroggie said that the word means “a slow, searching gaze.” You have to picture Jesus looking around. Yet I think even Scroggie did not get to the heart of that word.
I did a little study. I do not know Greek, but I have reference books. They know Greek, and I am trusting them. We have a word that we use: “pan.” You hear it on the news. They take the cameras and pan around to see the extent of the damage from a storm, or they pan around to see the size of the crowd.
Our Lord Jesus looked around—periblepō—but He did not pan like that. He did not simply see how many were in the crowd. He saw the trees, not just the forest. He looked with that slow, deliberate, searching look. He saw every individual in the crowd, and then He focused on one particular thing.
It is that thing, God assisting us, that we want to see.
A couple of verses demonstrate this gaze. Revelation 1:14 says:
His eyes were like a flame of fire.
It was with that kind of eyes that He looked—that all-penetrating sharpness.
Hebrews 4:13 says:
There is no creature hidden from His sight,
But all things are open and bare before the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.
It is that kind of a glance, where He sees everything, misses nothing, and focuses in a special way on one particular thing.
I think Paul Greenlee provided a general outline of the occasions where these looks appear. The Lord guided Tom and me to those Bible stories. Where did He look, and what did He see?
Every time that look is mentioned—five times in relation to Jesus and one time in relation to the disciples—there is an illumination of some great truth. That is what we want to see. What was that truth?
It is almost as if the Lord says, “I have been with you, ministering for these three and a half years, and you have seen many things. But I do not want you to miss these five.”
There are five things that this word focuses on. It is as if the Lord says, “There are some precious realities, and whatever else you see, do not miss this. Do not miss this.”
Each one of those looks comes with a Bible story. We have studied the stories, tried to follow that look, and tried to discover before the Lord what that glorious thing was that He saw. Brothers, we want to see it too. We want to see it the same way He saw it, and we want it to do for us what it did for Him.
We are not trying to trick you, be dramatic, or worry about stealing our own thunder. So I am going to mention the five right up front. I will tell you right away what He saw, and then we will go to the stories and try to go a little deeper.
The first thing He saw—and we will look at it this evening—was rest. He looked around and saw rest. He saw the Sabbath. He saw that they did not understand the Sabbath, and He stopped. He looked around and said, “You have got to see rest the same way I see it.”
The second thing: He said, “Who is My mother? Who is My brother?” He looked around and saw relationship. You cannot miss that. You have got to see that.
In the third story, He looked around and said, “Who touched Me?” You have got to see faith. You have got to see faith the same way He saw it. We have got to see rest as He saw rest, relationship as He saw relationship, and faith as He saw faith.
Then He looked around at the rich young ruler and said, “Sell everything. Get rid of it.” He saw surrender. You have got to see surrender the way He saw surrender.
Finally—and Tom will bring us to this—the last thing He saw was revelation. That one needs a little explanation, but I will leave it to Tom.
With that as an introduction, I would like us to look at the first story. We want to see these five things the way He saw them.
Mark 3:1-6:
He entered again into a synagogue; and a man was there whose hand was withered.
And they were watching Him to see if He would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse Him.
And He said to the man with the withered hand, “Get up and come forward!”
And He said to them, “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save a life or to kill?” But they kept silent.
After looking around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, He said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” And he stretched it out, and his hand was restored.
The Pharisees went out and immediately began conspiring with the Herodians against Him, as to how they might destroy Him.
Mark 3:5 says:
After looking around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, He said to the man, “Stretch forth your hand.”
That is the first use of the word. He looked around with that penetrating, searching gaze—a deliberate look.
The Bible says that He was angry. The Bible says that He was grieved in His heart at their hardness. I want us to look at that story. What grieved our Lord Jesus? What made Him so angry?
Mark 3:2 says:
They were watching Him to see if He would heal on the Sabbath.
It has to do with the Sabbath. They were watching carefully to see if Jesus would violate the Sabbath as they understood the Sabbath.
In the context, the story just before this—in Matthew, Mark, and Luke—has the same issue. Mark 2:23 says:
It happened that He was passing through the grainfields on the Sabbath, and His disciples began to make their way along while picking the heads of grain.
The Pharisees were saying to Him, “Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?”
The Sabbath was a large issue with the Pharisees. I am going to quote a few passages—just sort of machine-gun the verses. You do not really need the story to get the point. I want you to see the attitude of the Pharisees’ hearts.
John 5:16:
For this reason the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because He was doing these things on the Sabbath.
Persecuting Him is one thing, but listen to John 5:18:
For this reason therefore the Jews were seeking all the more to kill Him, because He was not only breaking the Sabbath, but also was calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God.
John 9:16:
Therefore some of the Pharisees were saying, “This man is not from God, because He does not keep the Sabbath.”
Luke 13:14:
The synagogue official, indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, began saying to the crowd in response, “There are six days in which work should be done; so come during them and get healed, and not on the Sabbath day.”
Let me tell you where the Pharisees got their warped idea about the Sabbath. They did not get it from the Bible. That is not where they got their idea.
They had three books. Maybe you have heard of them: the Torah, the Mishnah, and the Midrash. Those were their three commentaries. The Torah technically was the first five books, the Pentateuch—Genesis through Deuteronomy. Later, those other two commentaries came into the Torah. But basically, they were commentaries. They commented on the Bible.
Here is the difference between our commentary and their commentary: our commentary comments on the Bible. Their commentary commented on the Bible, but also on additions—the oral traditions that were handed down by word of mouth. In other words, it was not Bible; it was their oral tradition.
The point I am going to make comes from their Mishnah. In their commentary, the Mishnah, they had a large section called “Sabbath.” In that section they had thirty-nine classifications of prohibitions. They had rules against everything, and many of them bordered on the absurd.
They had petty restrictions on sowing, plowing, reaping, threshing, winnowing, house cleaning, grinding, traveling, dressing, and interrelationships with neighbors. They had laws on everything concerning the Sabbath, and it went way beyond the Bible.
The Bible had some rules, such as not picking up sticks on the Sabbath. But they said, for example, that if you wore sandals and your toe made a little furrow in the dust, you had broken the Sabbath because you were plowing. You could not plow on the Sabbath day.
Anything you could not tie or untie with one hand was forbidden, because you could not work on the Sabbath day. If you had a toothache, you were allowed to rinse your mouth with vinegar. But spitting was work, so you had to swallow the vinegar. You could not spit.
When the disciples walked through the grainfield in the story before this, they were plucking grain. Well, that was reaping. Then they rubbed it in their hands. Well, that was threshing. Then they ate it, but it was before nine o’clock in the morning, and they were breaking the fast. All of these were violations.
They even had a rule against self-defense on the Sabbath. Let me describe the way they described it: if a fly landed on your face, you were not allowed to swat it, because that was self-defense and that was work. You could not do that on the Sabbath day.
This is not my illustration; it is theirs. If a flea crawled into your eye, you were not allowed to rub your eye to get that flea out. That was the Sabbath they believed in when our Lord Jesus was on earth and began to do His miracles, many of them on the Sabbath day.
The Sabbath had become a great bondage to God’s people. It had been encrusted with man-made religion and man-made traditions.
One summer, I needed a job. I saw in the newspaper in Newport, Rhode Island, that someone wanted a person to scrape barnacles off a boat. So I signed up. I am telling you, I did not last a day trying to scrape those barnacles off that boat. That is hard work. Those things really cling to the bottom of the boat.
The point I am making is that this is what happened to the Sabbath. They had all these barnacles, all these accretions, all these additions that they put on God’s beautiful Sabbath.
It seems that the thing which caught Jesus’ attention, as He looked around and saw their attitude toward the Sabbath, was that He became very angry at that attitude. His heart was grieved because of the way they were looking at the Sabbath. It filled Him with righteous indignation because He knew what the Sabbath was really supposed to be.
He understood the Sabbath. In the story just before this, when Jesus was walking in the grainfield, Mark 2:27 says:
The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath; so the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.
Brothers, I do not think we will ever appreciate that look—the anger of our Lord Jesus and the grief that filled His heart—until we see the contrast between what they thought the Sabbath was and what He knew the Sabbath was.
Four thousand years before this, when God instituted the Sabbath, we know from John that all things were made by Him. Nothing was made that was not made by Him. This same Jesus was there four thousand years earlier when He instituted the Sabbath.
I would not be surprised if God created man at the end of the sixth day, at least in part, so that man would not try to help Him with creation. If Adam had been around on the second or third day, I can picture him hanging on God’s legs and saying, “Please, let me help You a little bit. One drop of water, one blade of grass, one feather—something!”
God says, “No, I am not even going to have you around. I am going to finish the work, and then I am going to create you, so that your first day will be My Sabbath.” That was deliberate by the Lord.
God was wise, and He created man after everything was done. The crowning act of God’s creation was to create man in His image so that man could enter into His Sabbath and enjoy that rest.
I like to word it this way: you cannot understand God’s heart concerning the Sabbath because Sabbath and rest are tied together. What He saw—we are using Sabbath as an illustration—was rest. We have got to see rest as He saw rest.
Now, you know what rest is not. It is not refreshment after fatigue. God was not tired after He created. He could have created, every six days since then, a whole universe and never duplicated one shape, size, color, law, or anything. He could have done that over and over, every six days, until the present day and into eternity.
It is not retirement from work. That is not what rest is. He said, “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.” It is not Jesus needing to lean on a post. I tried to walk up the stairs here, and by the time I got to the top, I was all out of breath. I need to lean on something. I need to sit down. God was not tired like that.
God did not rest because He was tired. He rested because He was done. He rested because it was finished, and He was satisfied. He looked and said, “It is good.” The work was a completed work. Creation cannot be improved upon. You cannot add to it or take from it.
You cannot understand that seventh day unless you tie it into the first six days and see how satisfied God was. It was a finished work.
So wonderful was that first Sabbath which God created that He said, “I do not ever want people to miss it.” So, paraphrasing, God said, “I want them to remember My Sabbath every week.” He set aside one day, a Sabbath day, every week so that they would not miss it.
Then He said, “I am going to set aside the seventh month.” Every seventh month was set aside because He did not want them to miss His Sabbath. Then He said, “Every seven years, I am going to set aside a whole year—a sabbatical year.”
Then He said, “Seven times seven—every Sabbath of seven—I am going to have a Sabbath Jubilee.” Do you realize the miracle of that Sabbath Jubilee? From the harvest of the forty-eighth year, they did not work in the forty-ninth year because that was the Sabbath, and they did not work in the fiftieth year because that was the Jubilee, until the harvest of the fifty-first year.
They had to trust God: “Go home. Relax. I will take care of your needs.” If you were a weatherman, you would have had a good job then, because you would know that in the forty-eighth year there was going to be a super-duper harvest. It had to last for four years.
God had the Sabbath on His heart. I think you are all familiar with Bible history and the Babylonian captivity. The Southern Kingdom had to go into captivity. How long did they stay in captivity in Babylon? Seventy years. Why not sixty-nine? Why not seventy-one?
Second Chronicles 36:20-21 says:
Those who had escaped from the sword he carried away to Babylon; and they were servants to him and to his sons until the rule of the kingdom of Persia,
To fulfill the Word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed its Sabbaths.
All the days of its desolation it kept Sabbath until seventy years were complete.
For four hundred and ninety years, they did not keep the sabbatical year. You say, “Who is counting?” I will tell you who is counting: God is counting. God is counting. He said, “Four hundred and ninety years—that is seventy sabbatical years you missed. You are going into captivity for seventy years until My land gets to rest.”
The Sabbath was big on God’s heart. When you look at Israel or Judah at that time, you say they went into captivity because they turned to idolatry. That is true. You say they went into captivity because of their immorality. They were immoral. You say they went into captivity because of unholy and unwise alliances with foreign nations. Yes, they did.
But that is not why they went into captivity. It was not their formality, hypocrisy, oppression, or idolatry—all those terrible sins. They went in because they did not recognize God’s rest. That is what it was all about.
I love, in this connection, Isaiah 58:13-14:
If because of the Sabbath, you turn your foot from doing your own pleasure on My holy day,
And call the Sabbath a delight, the holy day of the Lord honorable,
And honor it, desisting from your own ways, from seeking your own pleasure and speaking your own word,
Then you will take delight in the Lord,
And I will make you ride on the heights of the earth;
And I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father,
For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.
The heart of that is this: if you would only keep My Sabbath and delight in the Lord. That is what the Sabbath is all about—delighting in Him.
The Sabbath was on the heart of the Lord Jesus. When He saw those Pharisees a million light-years away from everything God intended the Sabbath to be, it broke His heart. It broke His heart to see what they had done to the Sabbath.
That precious picture had become a taskmaster with a whip. It was putting God’s people in bondage, but it was made to set them free so that they could delight in the Lord.
It puzzled me for a while. I went through the New Testament and saw that seven times Jesus worked miracles on the Sabbath day. At first, I thought it was like, “In your face.” Here were the Pharisees, and the Lord was saying, “I do not care what you believe. This is My Sabbath.”
The rabbi was right in one sense: He could have done the miracle on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday. Why did He choose the Sabbath?
I believe it was because He wanted to recover His Sabbath day. He wanted to recover the truth of rest and bring the Sabbath back to its original intention—what God had always intended it to be. They had destroyed it, and it had morphed into a monster. He saw what they did to His Sabbath, and He said, “I am bringing it back.”
Luke 11:46 says:
Woe to you lawyers as well! For you weigh men down with burdens hard to bear, while you yourselves will not even touch the burdens with one of your fingers.
The Sabbath had become the most dreaded day of the week. They hated it. His heart was burdened. He was angry. They were ready to leave that man with the withered hand helpless.
They had oppressive commands that left people in captivity and bondage. No one could keep up with the nuances they put upon the law.
How graphic was God’s stand for truth. Mark 3:2-5 says:
They were watching Him to see if He would heal on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse Him.
And He said to the man with the withered hand, “Get up and come forward!”
And He said to them, “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save a life or to kill?” But they kept silent.
After looking around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, He said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.”
And he stretched it out, and his hand was restored.
Jesus would not let that man stay anonymous. He called him up to the front of the synagogue. “Hey, you, come up here. Take a public stand. I want you to demonstrate before these Sabbath breakers what the Sabbath really is.”
Notice Mark 3:5:
After looking around with anger, He said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was restored.
Dr. Luke tells us that it was his right hand.
Those who know Greek tell us that his hand was probably withered, but it was not congenital. He was not born that way. According to the Greek word, something happened—some kind of injury. We do not know what it was. Maybe his hand was cut, smashed in some way, infected, or injured by a clot. Something had happened to his hand.
The Lord said, “Come up here.” He came up. Then, on the level of earth—and I speak as a fool—He commanded the unreasonable. It was very unreasonable to say, “Stretch forth your withered hand.”
Brothers, may God help us see this: when God commands the unreasonable, it means that He is about to do the impossible.
That is what this was all about. This man could have argued on the level of earth: “Why do You give me such an unreasonable command? Stretch forth my hand? I cannot. It is withered. That is a cruel command. Why are You giving me such a cruel command? It is unreasonable.”
Yes, but not on God’s Sabbath. Not if you understood Sabbath.
If that man dared, even for a moment, to resort to human wisdom and human reasoning, he would have been wiped out. He would have been absolutely wiped out. If he had looked at his anatomy, his hand, his arm—limp and atrophied—and said, “God is asking me to do the impossible. He is asking me to do the unreasonable. What He commands me to do is against logic, against reason, and against science.”
Brothers, it is my duty to obey the Lord. It is your duty. It is not your power, but it is your duty. It is your responsibility to obey the Lord. It is my responsibility.
The withered hand is no excuse for not obeying the Lord. The reason is that with the command, He gives an enablement. He enables us to do it.
The duty is mine; the power is His. If I believe that I am not withered, I am a fool. If you believe that you are not withered, you are a fool.
Jesus said, “Get up. Come to Me. Come to Me.” You look into the face of Christ and hear His commands. In every case, it is because you have a withered hand. You cannot.
He says, “Count it all joy when you fall into diverse temptations.” That is a command. He says, “Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church.” That is a withered hand. I cannot do that.
“Turn the other cheek. Go the second mile. Pray for those who deceitfully use you and despise you. Be filled with the Spirit. Abide in Christ. In everything give thanks. Be perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect.”
If you do not think you have a withered hand, we need to come before the Lord and search that out. This is a graphic demonstration in the face of those who do not get it.
Jesus worked this miracle on the Sabbath day. That is what His rest was all about. That is God’s original intention. He is determined to rescue His Sabbath day and open eyes to that original intention.
Let me show you in the context by the story that precedes it. This will sort of clinch it for us. The story that precedes it is what prompted this story and that gaze which made Him angry and grieved His heart.
Mark 2:23 says:
It happened that He was passing through the grainfields on the Sabbath, and His disciples began to make their way along while picking the heads of grain.
The Pharisees were saying to Him, “Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?”
Then again, in Mark 2:27-28:
The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath;
So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.
The reason I want to tie this story of the disciples walking with Jesus in the grainfields on the Sabbath day to this message is because it perfectly illustrates and demonstrates original intention. This is what He saw. This is real rest.
I will tell it to you in a sentence. What is Sabbath rest? What is a Sabbath Christian? It is someone who has learned to walk with the Lord Jesus in the grainfields, where He provides for all their hunger—everything for which they hunger—and He does it right in the face of the legalist.
That is what Sabbath rest is in all its beautiful simplicity. It is simply walking with Jesus in the grainfield.
Mark 2:23 says:
It happened that He was passing through the grainfield on the Sabbath; and His disciples began to make their way along while picking the heads of grain.
There is something beautiful, in my thinking, about walking with Jesus on the Sabbath day in the grainfields, having my hunger satisfied—this union with Christ.
Even though I think it is a picture and not complete, you know that song, “I Come to the Garden Alone”? It makes me think of this walking in the grainfield:
I come to the garden alone,
While the dew is still on the roses;
And the voice I hear, falling on my ear,
The Son of God discloses.
He walks with me, and He talks with me,
And He tells me I am His own.
That is rest. That is Sabbath rest.
As they walked along, the Lord Jesus was satisfying their hunger. On that Sabbath day of rest, these hungry disciples had their hunger met.
This picture of the Christian life is so simple. It is walking and fellowshipping with Jesus in the grainfield.
I say that the Christian life is you walking with Him, but that is not the way it is written. That is not the way it is written. Mark 2:23 says:
It happened that He was passing through the grainfield on the Sabbath day.
He is the One doing the walking.
It is not so much me walking with Jesus. The wonder is that Jesus is walking with me. Jesus is walking with you. That is His Sabbath. That is His party. That is the miracle of the Sabbath day.
It makes sense that I want to walk with Him, but that He would walk with me and satisfy my hunger at the same time—that is the wonder.
Let me call attention to the thing that brings this story back to the theme we are considering. Mark 2:24 says:
The Pharisees were saying to Him, “Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?”
The legalists, brothers, cannot stand it when you simply want to walk with Jesus in the grainfield and have Him satisfy your hunger. That bothers them a lot.
Our Lord Jesus wants us to see what He saw. They would rather see you manacled to a system of laws, rules, regulations, and a bunch of do’s and don’ts.
Did you notice in verse 24 that the Pharisees came to Jesus? They did not come to the disciples. They did not rebuke the disciples. In fact, if you read the record, the disciples never said a word in the whole story.
They did not have to defend themselves. They did not have to stick up for themselves. They did not have to interrupt their hunger and try to give an explanation to the legalists. They did not have to come out of rest and justify their walk with Jesus.
I will tell you, one of the great liberties I have had in recent years is not trying to defend myself to the legalist. I am serious. I do not have to explain my rest in Jesus to them.
I used to think I owed them an explanation. They would come and accuse me: “You are lazy. You are just resting. You are detached. You are passive,” and all that kind of thing.
You know what I do now? I just keep walking, eating, enjoying, and delighting in the Lord. If He wants to defend me, He can defend me.
They are trying to get me out of the grainfield. They are trying to break the fellowship. They are trying to make the Christian life complicated. It is not complicated.
The Christian life, and this is how Jesus saw it, is strolling with Jesus in the grainfield, allowing Him to satisfy all the desires of your heart. He will defend you all the way.
If ever a verse resembled this, it is this:
He has set a table before me in the presence of my enemies.
That is exactly what this is. That is what the Christian life is all about: fellowship with Christ.
Let me close with an emphasis that is so vital in understanding rest and the Sabbath. I want to call attention to whose rest it is.
Hebrews 3:11 says:
As I swore in My wrath,
They shall not enter My rest.
He calls it His rest.
Hebrews 3:18 says:
And to whom did He swear that they would not enter His rest, but to those who were disobedient?
Hebrews 4:3 says:
We who have believed enter into that rest, just as He has said,
As I swore in My wrath,
They shall not enter My rest,
Although His works were finished from the foundation of the world.
Hebrews 4:4 says:
He has said somewhere concerning the seventh day: “And God rested on the seventh day.”
It is His rest.
Hebrews 4:5 says:
They shall not enter My rest.
Hebrews 4:10 says:
The one who has entered His rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from His.
The rest of which we are speaking is not some rest that He gives to you. It is a rest that He has. He is inviting us into His rest, His satisfaction. He is satisfied with the finished work. He is satisfied.
Let me ask you this. Do not answer; just think. How much anxiety does Jesus have about your life?
You have some decisions to make in the days ahead. Is He anxious about that? Is He worried about that? Some of you young men ask, “What am I going to do with my life? Who am I going to marry? How is God going to guide me? What school should I go to?” Is God concerned about that?
God is at rest, and He has invited you to enter His rest. You can be as anxiety-free about everything in your life as God is anxiety-free. I can be as anxiety-free about everything in my life.
God is not concerned that I might not survive because of a certain thing. He is at rest, and He has invited us to enter His rest.
We prayed at the beginning, and we are going to pray throughout the weekend, that we would be conformed to His vision. In this story, that means two things, as I understand it.
It means that I will enter into rest as He sees rest. I will enter into His rest. But it also means that I will be conformed to His vision concerning those who miss it and do not enter in.
I really missed this. The Lord dealt with me as I went through this, because my attitude toward those who miss rest was one of pity. I felt sorry for them. They are missing out.
That is not His vision. He was not feeling sorry for them. He was angry. He was grieved in His heart. He said it was because of the hardness of their hearts that they were missing it.
We need to be conformed to His vision. I was soft on the legalist. I just felt pity. I felt sorry. I wished they could enter in. “Oh, they are missing this. They are missing that.”
I have asked God to put a holy anger in my heart and to make me distressed in my spirit over those who are missing rest.
We want to be conformed to His image. In His first picture, He looked around and saw the Sabbath. It was so maligned and distorted, and He tried to recover it.
I do not want Him angry at me, and I do not want Him distressed. The opposite is that, if I get it, He is happy. I minister to His heart.
May God conform us to that first image. That is what He saw. He saw rest. He saw Sabbath. May God work in every one of you brothers to learn the glory and simplicity of just walking, strolling with Jesus in the grainfield, letting Him satisfy all your needs.
Let Him defend you. You do not have to defend yourself.
Let us pray.
Father, thank You for Your Word. We have to say again: not what we understand it to be, or what we think it means, but You have inspired Your Word. So we ask You to work in our hearts everything You have inspired it to mean. We ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.