— Brother Phil Enlow: Praise God! I appreciate so much His mercy and His presence with us. I believe that God desires to do something special for His people in a time that is growing increasingly dark. We’re gonna need Him like we’ve never needed Him before. But I am confident, and I believe He wants us to be confident that He is with us and will be with us till the end of the age.
And He doesn’t want us to face life full of fear, full of uncertainty, full of all the things the devil wants to minister to us, but He wants us to have a peace and a rest. I had a…you know, last night was…we talked a whole lot about…what did we talk about? Praise God!
( congregational response ).
Being wholehearted, yes. That was a…this is very connected to that. And I had a scripture come to me, toward the end of the service, but I didn’t feel like it was time for me to get up and I believe the Lord ended the service exactly the way He wanted to, don’t you?
( congregational amens ).
Yeah. He did it, and that’s what we want. We want Him to lead and to direct what we say and who says it. And, it isn’t about personalities. It’s about the One personality we worship. You know, if He isn’t here, we’re just practicing religion. We need Him to be a resident Lord over His Body, ministering to us out of His heart and the Father’s will. And that’s my desire.
But anyway, I just was thinking about this and it really does connect to what was said and it’s a very familiar scripture in Matthew 11, beginning in verse 28. But I’m praying that the Lord will just make it fresh, make it relevant to where we’re at, because there’s a need.
I mean, we can affirm Scriptures like this all we want to and sing about them and say they’re wonderful and praise God that this is true, and, unfortunately, it doesn’t often connect to our daily lives the way God wants it to.
Jesus said these words, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (NIV).
Now I don’t think, if I were to ask a question, how many of you have just gone through today with perfect peace in your heart, there’s just been a deep rest and nothing has troubled that rest or interfered with it at all, it’s just been awesome? I don’t think I would get any hands.
So, I dare say we need some of what Jesus is talking about here, in a practical sense. He desires to bring us to a place where we can have a peace regardless of what is going on in our lives, regardless of what’s going on around us.
Now, how many of you believe that Jesus, in His earthly life, given all that came against Him from the devil, from the people, and ultimately His own crucifixion, how many of you feel like He went around with a feeling of anxiety, and, what’s gonna happen, and I don’t like this, and it shouldn’t be that way? And yet, every single one of us deals with that, don’t we, in one degree or another?
You know, I was thinking about this. There’s so much you could bring out and I’m just trusting the Lord to emphasize what He wants to emphasize, to make it fresh. But you know, one word jumped out to me. Now the first place, we asked last night, what does the Lord want from us? And you might…this might be an answer to a question, what does the Lord want for us? What does He desire that we experience? What does He want to give us?
And we can say, oh, He wants to take me to heaven someday, wants to forgive my sins, and all of that’s true. But I mean from a functional, practical, this is what my life…this is the characteristic of my life. What does He want for us? I would say…wouldn’t you say this is a pretty good picture, right here?
( congregational response ).
Yeah. Come to me. And the word that jumped out at me, as I was beginning to think about this, is ‘all.’ Now all…of course it is qualified by those who are weary and burdened, but I mean it’s not qualified by anything else. It’s not limited to the worthy. It’s not limited to people who haven’t done this or that, or this is wrong with them, or that’s wrong with them. This is just ‘all’ who are weary and burdened. I dare say that would apply, in some measure, to everyone here.
( congregational amens ).
We carry burdens in our lives. You know, we mentioned last night the Scripture about, “…casting all your care…” (KJV). “…Your anxiety on him because he cares for you.” (NIV). And, I keep…every time I use this scripture, I have this picture in my mind from the old “Dick Van Dyke Show” and I know I’ve used this many, many times before, but he was a master of physical comedy, still is, I guess. He’s still around.
But he would walk out of the room in that show. And his wife would be telling him to put something down. Maybe that was the scenario. And so he’d put it down and he’d walk out and then his arm would reach back and grab it, and walk right out with it, in perfect harmony.
But you know, we don’t do it quite as a comedy routine. But the reality is we bring our anxieties to the Lord and then we take them away with us. And we just go right on. Okay, I cast them upon You. But if you cast them upon Him it means you’re not carrying it anymore. It’s His now.
It’s…I mean, how many times have you found the faith to have a real situation and a need, and somehow the Lord helped you to bring it to Him and then to walk away and say, Lord…it’s Your job now? This is what You told me to do. I gave it to You. This is Your battle, not mine. I’m not gonna worry about this anymore. I’m gonna go on about my business.
Man, that’s a place that God desires to bring us to. Is that not what His Word says? Do you think He gets joy out of watching us carrying life’s burdens and being anxious and angry and all of the emotions that we carry? Of course He doesn’t!
And yet, you see this verse…we’ve often used…heard this used, and I think it’s an accurate way to use it, that coming to Him to find rest is about salvation. Learning from Him is the Christian life. Well…if I could honestly say that I never have a burden and I never have a care, then I don’t need the first part of the verse, right? Yeah, we all need it! Yes, it’s true that there is a salvation rest, because if you are looking, if anybody who hears this is looking for a place of rest and satisfaction out of this world, you’re an idiot! Excuse my language!
( laughter ).
( laughing ).
You’re a fool! You’re blind, at worst. You ain’t gonna get it here. You know, we are in a world that is at war with its Creator, that is built on self and self-seeking! There is no way to ever acquire anything resembling real peace in the heart! If you’re living for yourself and what you can get out of this world, you might acquire a pleasant emotion for a short season. But it’s gonna be gone, and then you’ll feel more empty than ever.
Oh, my God, if there’s somebody here who’s in that place and you’re still on the fence and you haven’t really made up your mind, this is God’s invitation to you!
( congregational amens ).
Isaiah described the people of the world and he said there’s no rest for the wicked. “…No peace…for the wicked.” There’s no way to find…to fill the empty place, the void that God put in the human heart. He didn’t make you to live for self. You weren’t designed for that.
And when we do it it’s just like using something in the world for a purpose for which it wasn’t designed. It isn’t gonna work out. God longs to give peace to the human heart and as long as His direction is this way and you’re going this way, trying to find some way to fill that void, you will never, ever do it.
( congregational amens ).
Until you come and you lay every bit of your life at His feet and say, it belongs to You, it no longer belongs to me, you will never have peace!
( congregational amens ).
Oh, the peace that comes from being reconciled with God! Only Jesus’ blood, as we’ve sung tonight, only that can erase the sins that have separated you from a Holy God! Oh, praise God that we have a basis because of what Jesus did! For He could give such an invitation, come to me, I have the power to give you peace! I can make your heart so free as if you had never, ever sinned!
( congregational amens ).
Praise God! Praise God! Our guilt can be gone! That’s what the Gospel offers. But you don’t get it if you just…if you’re hanging on to this and hanging on to that. There’s got to be a surrender! You’ve got to come to Him with a free and open heart.
Obviously you can’t come and bring your burdens and hang onto them and expect what He’s talking about here. God wants to give you and me rest. But oh, it’s the same principle when we’re…we find ourselves in those places. God longs for us to take advantage of the simplicity.
I mean, we talked last night about how simple all of this really is. Isn’t this simple? You’re running in your own strength. You’re reacting like a person out of the world. It’s your human nature in charge, from a practical standpoint? Be honest about it.
If it weren’t your human nature, what is it? It’s not Jesus. Oh, it’s that bad devil! Yeah, but you’re listening to him. Jesus had to deal with a bad devil, too, a whole lot worse than we did, and yet there was a peace. Where did He get that peace? What is that peace? What is it, really?
It’s peace with God! It isn’t a place of just personal, self-centered satisfaction, somehow. This is what…this is coming into a place of harmony with our Creator, where we’re willing to surrender to the purpose for which He made us, in the beginning. Only He can do that.
I’ll tell you, when we come to that place of surrender and faith, we have peace with God, as Paul said so plainly. Do you have that? Oh, praise God! Praise God!
Boy, I’m in need of this. I mean, every single day there’s something. There’s something that gets to me. But you know, we’re…I’m trying to think how to say this. But the thought, very distinctly, came to me last night that virtually, everything that robs us of our peace, robs us of our rest, is because of something in us. Don’t you go pointing your finger at somebody else in your life and say, it’s their fault! If only they would stop annoying me then I would stop being annoyed!
( laughter ).
Well, is that how Jesus handled it? Did He try to rearrange His environment and the people He was around to straighten up and fly right so He could have a peaceful life? That’s not what it’s about, folks. God wants to give you a peace that will stand strong in the storm, and there will be storms!
( congregational amens ).
The reality is if we’re not at peace, there’s something here that God needs to set us free from. It’s that simple. That’s why Jesus said, “Take my yoke….” Yes, we need to come to Him, be willing to lay it all down. But we’ve got stuff to learn. We think we know so much. We think…we have so many ways of identifying the source of our trouble, and it’s always out there, somewhere.
And God says this is what I want to fix. I want you to have My peace. And do you think I’m enjoying watching you go around in a stew all the time, upset about this, and upset about that, and struggling, and fear and everything else but peace, everything else but rest?
Oh, He longs to teach us. We just don’t want to be taught. That’s the problem. We don’t like it. And we’re so quick when God does something in our lives to try to bring something to our attention that He wants to set us free from, man, we’re good at, like I said, at pointing the finger, and complaining to Him about that person and how they’re annoying us and whatever…it goes on and on.
You could apply this to every kind of emotion, every kind of situation. But the reality is, God’s looking in here and He’s putting His finger. That’s why I need to walk with Him. I need to have a walk with Jesus every day. Yoked to Him, there’s a connection that I’m not gonna walk away from.
You know, one scripture I thought about was from Paul’s testimony. I believe it was the third time he gave…well, you have the account of his conversion, when Jesus met him, on the road, revealed Himself to him and then he tells the Jewish Sanhedrin in chapter 22, I think, of Acts…26, I think he’s talking about…to a Roman ruler, or a ruler, anyway. And in that particular occasion, he said the voice said to me, “…Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? It is hard for you to kick against…” The pricks, is what it says in the King James or the goads or the…what do they call it…now what they have?
( congregational response ).
Yeah, anyway, whatever it is that you stick in a horse to make him go that way? Well, Paul’s life was defined by such a strong, religious, self-will that even God Himself, or Jesus Himself couldn’t prick him to make him go this way. He was gonna go this way come hell or high water.
But we are the ones who make our own trouble. Ooh, don’t tell me that. We are the ones who make trouble for ourselves by the way we react to the things that God designs and allows in our lives. Let’s let that sink in.
Quit blaming the stuff that happened ten years ago, twenty years ago, thirty years ago, or whenever. Stop blaming the people in your life. You look in the mirror and say, I’m the one. Jesus experienced a lot more than you and I did. How did He handle it? Oh, yeah, but He was the Son of God! Yeah, He was a man, too. He came down to experience every temptation, everything that we experience. Did He not?
( congregational amens ).
Thank God, He showed us what it’s like to do that without sin. Thank God for the Lamb—the spotless Lamb! Praise God! But He doesn’t just say, learn from…I’m gonna give you a course in this. I’m gonna teach you the concepts and then you go out and do it. Learn from Me!
How did he do what He did? There was a…not just a union with the Father, in the sense that He agreed with Him. He did that. That’s a key right there. We fight God. So many times in our lives, He’s trying to do something, we’re fighting Him. We don’t even realize we’re fighting Him because we think we’re right, and He doesn’t have any right touching that. Or, it’s not really Him, or something. You know, there’s always some excuse to deflect. But see, not only was Jesus in complete agreement with His Father about everything…that’s a pretty good prescription for peace, isn’t it?
( congregational response ).
He was in agreement with the Father, but He was dependent upon the Father, because the reality is even when we know what to do, we don’t have the power to do it! God wants us to take that place. It does something in us that nothing else can do.
You could get people to be religious and proud of it. But for us to take a lowly, humble, dependent, needy…the only hope that I can have is mercy, that is as contrary to human nature as you can get. But that is what salvation is about. Do we want to enjoy what Jesus is so freely offering to all? This is how it happens.
