We welcome you to the We Are Zion sermon podcast.
We are a church based out of Chennai, India.
We are thrilled that you tuned in today and hope that you will
be refreshed, revived, and energized by what you hear.
Our desire is that you will live life with a renewed sense of
purpose that stems from a vibrant faith in Jesus.
The Holy Spirit is on the move, and yet many times we miss out
on what He's doing in and around us because we are agitated,
anxious, or too busy. When we enter the rest that God
has given us in Jesus, we are able to experience the Holy
Spirit with greater sensitivity and live with greater
confidence. This Pentecost, we meditate on
how the Holy Spirit brings rest to us and also enables us to
live at our fullest capacity and potential.
As we get into God's Word, I just want to.
Remind you that the Pentecost Sunday, while it's not many,
many times we've actually overlooked it.
We're like, it's just, you know, well, fifty days after
resurrection or whatever, but you have to understand it
literally shifted church history.
The church which was starting to gather.
People are starting to gather together and pray and wait on
God. And he had said wait for the
gift that I'm going to give you. And when they waited, when they
tarried in Jerusalem, the Spirit of God fell on them.
And that was the day that the Jews had Shavuot.
We celebrated as Pentecost when the gift of the Holy Spirit was
given. He is a gift.
And so even as we get into God's Word, my desire for you is that
you will desire this gift if you haven't experienced him yet,
that you would invite him. And He's already in your life.
The minute you said yes to Jesus, he came into your heart.
But the experience of him is an ongoing, everyday thing.
And sometimes it really requires us to surrender our preconceived
notions about Him, letting us side our biases.
Maybe you've, you know, been wounded by people misusing, you
know, the understanding of the Holy Spirit.
But today I pray for a fresh revelation for you personally.
So even as we get into God's word, I was just, when you look
at the news all around, right, the world seems to be in chaos.
Wars around the world, markets are crashing.
There are lockdown precautions being set in place.
It looks like it's not getting better.
In fact, it looks like it's going.
From bad to worse. But where does this leave us?
The Spirit filled believer follower of Jesus.
Where does it leave us? What is our stance supposed to
be? And when I was just thinking
about it, we took a short break as a family and I had a lot of
time just to meditate on things on, you know, kind of.
Allowing God to. Heal certain things, give me
revelation on certain things, Help me pray again.
I hadn't hadn't been able to pray for a while because of the
kind of chaos that was created around, you know, us because of
different circumstances. But in the midst of it, the
three things I realized which caused the greatest chaos in our
life are three PS. The first thing is problems.
The second thing is people, and the third thing is our
personality. Three PS And these are usually
the reasons for continual chaos in our lives, the problems that
just seem to come out of every closet, every corner, just kind
of blind side us people, difficult people, people who are
divisive, people who are deceptive.
Come in, shake your life up. And then of course our
personality doesn't help because some of us are aggressive, some
of us are very docile, some of us are evasive.
Our personality types are different.
But all of it contributes to the fact that chaos exists, coexists
with us. We don't live in a non chaotic
world. Even the most calm person
experiences some level of stress and strain thanks to one of
these three. PS And the sad thing about
these, the agitation and the stress that is caused because of
one of these three PS, is that it begins to disrupt our
emotions, right? It hurts our bodies because it
hurts our minds. And then it eventually starts to
leak into relationships and eventually our faith takes a
beating. And I realized that in all our
lives, this happens whether we like it or not.
We feel a bit weather beaten after a certain set back.
We feel a bit, you know, crashed.
After a particular. Encounter.
But I believe in this next season with Pentecost being the
pivotal, you know, moment, God is shifting us and calling us
and beckoning to us to step into a season of rest.
And if you're like me, you're probably going, God, I could use
some rest. But what we mean by rest is not
exactly what God means by rest. And that's what I want to look
at today because I believe that this Pentecost, Ruach brings the
rest in restoration. That's what I've titled today's
sermon. Ruach brings the rest in
restoration. When we talk about rest, there's
a frequent misunderstanding. We think of rest as, you know,
sleeping it off, slacking off, taking a back step, sabbaticals.
We have so many words for it, and none of these are bad on
their own. But many times we inadvertently
give up on our responsibilities. Many times the things we are
paid to do, we don't do in the name of I need rest.
And many times we abdicate responsibilities in the name of
pursuing rest. And that is not the rest that
God is talking about. Because when you rest in these
ways, when you slack off in your job, when you are signing out
and checking out of responsibilities, there is an
element of guilt that creeps in, shame creeps in, sinful habits
get put in place that is not of God.
And so that's not the rest that God is talking about.
God in Hebrews chapter 3 through the writer of Hebrews talks
about a different kind of rest and that is what we are going to
be looking at today. When God says strive to enter
the rest, he's talking about the rest that.
Jesus, God for us, when he died on the cross, when he rose
again, when he ascended and gave us the Holy Spirit, He now says,
you have the word of God, which is powerful, which is able to,
you know, distinguish between spirit and soul, bone and
marrow. It's so powerful.
He says, now that you've entered this rest as followers of Jesus,
it's important that you enjoy that rest, right?
And so the rest that he's talking about is different.
It is basically doing all that you were created to do, doing
all that you were called to do from a place of inner stillness
and calm confidence. Not a confidence in yourself,
but a confidence in the God who called and created you.
So let's look at Hebrews chapter 3, verses 7 to 14 to understand
better what this looks like in context.
Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says today, if you hear His
voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion on the day
of. Testing in the wilderness where
your Father's put me to the test and saw my works for 40 years.
Therefore I was provoked to that generation and said they always
go astray. In their heart they have not
known my ways. As I swore in my wrath they
shall not enter my rest. Take care, brothers, lest there
be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart leading you to
fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every
day, as long as it is called today, that none of you may be
hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.
For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our
original confidence firm to the end, as it is said today.
If you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as in the
rebellion. Going down to Hebrews chapter 4,
verses 1:00 to 3:00 and 9:00 to 11:00, it says.
Therefore, while the promise of entering His rest still stands,
let us fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to
reach it. For good news came to us just as
to them, but the message they heard did not benefit them,
because they were not united by faith with those who listened.
For we who have believed, enter that rest.
So then there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for
whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from his works,
as God did from his. Let us therefore strive to enter
that rest so that no one may fall by the same sort of
disobedience. We who have believed enter that
rest. You and I, as believers in
Jesus, have entered the rest already.
Isn't that amazing? And yet it says, verse 11 says,
let us therefore strive to enter that rest, which means I have
entered the rest but not yet achieved the fullness of that
rest. And therefore there's this
process for as long as I'm alive, I'm in that rest, but not
yet fully in it. So it's it's striving to keep
entering that rest. And so today we're going to be
looking at how does Ruach bring rest in the restoration.
All of us, as followers of Jesus are, have entered a new
dimension of the new creation life.
It is a life where the old is gone, the new has come.
So I'm in the process of my life being restored.
I am out of the clutches of the enemy.
I'm in the Kingdom of light. The Kingdom of darkness has
stopped holding, exercising control over me.
But as I walk in the Kingdom of light, I'm still letting go of
the snares and the sins and the struggles that the old man had.
And in that process God is rebuilding me.
He is restoring me. And I find that many times in
this process of needing restoration, I start to strive
to restore myself. For example, I've always had a
problem with anger. I can in a moment, my anger will
hit from zero to 100. I could say a bunch of things
that are completely terrible, and I could hurt the ones that
love me the most. And yet it has been an ongoing
work in progress when there have been months on end when I didn't
get angry. But there could just be one
trigger point when I let loose of my tongue and cause a lot of
damage in a man in a span of 5 minutes.
And I'm learning that in the midst of that restoration, the
Holy Spirit being the agent of renewal and restoration, I have
so many times strived to shut my mouth, strived to say the right
thing, but it came across false. It came across inauthentic, it
came across insufficient because I was striving in my own
strength. But on the other hand, in recent
years I've employed the Holy Spirit in this space and said,
Lord, I am really. Dying to say something mean
right now. I don't know how to shut my
mouth. Can you help me?
And immediately the Holy Spirit brings this level of
self-control. Sometimes he won't let me say
it, but he'll make me actually walk backwards within myself and
see, hey, is this a them problem or is it a me problem?
Invariably it's a me problem. And so this is what it looks
like when we start striving too much for our own restoration.
Many times you might have been hit with a particular set back
or a struggle where your name was on the line.
Or maybe you had to save face and you found yourself striving
to protect your reputation, to protect your name, to actually
vindicate yourself. The beautiful thing is that in
the new creation life, when you're walking in step with
Jesus, He is our vindication. He fights for us.
He saves our face. He gives us the words to say
when accused. We forget that, and we begin to
strive. And there's this beautiful
passage where it says, work out your own salvation with fear and
trembling. And some of us take it to the
next level of of trying to work every detail out.
But what that actually means is you need to invite the Holy
Spirit in where He wrestles with you, He brings things to
resolution, He brings conviction.
He works in you and through you to afford a change.
It isn't a solo business. We are Co laboring with him.
And so here I want to help us understand that in the process
of restoration, we need to enter a place of rest knowing that
God, you do all the heavy lifting.
I need to keep showing up. I need to keep surrendering.
I keep need to keep submitting my hard headedness to you, my
stubbornness to you, my wilfulness to you so that you
can do your greatest thing in me.
Everything about salvation was a gift.
By grace through faith, we have been saved.
Nothing about salvation had anything to do with you, and
it's all done on that. At that moment when God made
this covenant with us, He took up everything on Himself.
All I need to do is I had to call on His name, repent of my
sins, confess. And I walked into a relationship
and that's all. But the process of restoration
requires me to keep coming back to that throne room and with the
help of the Holy Spirit, walking forward, confronting the darkest
sides of me, bringing it into the light and continuing to
walk. Forward When you look at the
restoration of an art piece. I was watching a couple of
videos to better understand this.
When there's an art piece that has been kept in storage for a
long time, fungus or mould or it's just gotten, you know, old
and the colours have faded, expert artists work on restoring
it and it takes hours. Very intricate.
They have to sit in the right room, right?
Lighting work on every detail of the original painting without
spoiling what was originally done by the master, but
restoring it to its original beauty.
Restoration is hard work and so many times we take it on
ourselves to bring restoration. God may have given you a promise
about restoring you financially, and here you find yourself
hustling and bustling, doing multiple jobs, you know,
moonlighting and this and that, and you're wondering why it's
not happening. Well, maybe it's time you stop
striving for your own restoration and find rest as God
restores you. Maybe you've been waiting for
restoration in your health. You've been claiming those
promises, you've been visiting those doctors, you're eating
those supplements, but you're yet to see the promise.
I want to encourage you. Would you find rest?
As the Holy Spirit brings restoration.
That's what I mean when it says Ruach.
Brings the rest in restoration. We were recently in Vietnam and.
As we were there, there's this beautiful basilica called the
Notre Dame Basilica. It looks very much like the
Notre Dame Cathedral in France, but this is a smaller version
and we couldn't visit it because they were renovating it.
And if you look at this picture, this is what I took from where I
was standing. The entire frontage was covered
by scaffolding. And they were doing an intricate
remodeling by keeping the original, you know how it should
look, but they were kind of doing a lot of repairs on it.
And as they were working this, the scaffolding looked like it
was obscuring the view of the basilica.
But nevertheless, you could see behind the scaffolding as to how
beautiful the original structure was.
And then, as we were just standing outside and looking at
it, one wall. Where the scaffolding was very
intensely put together had beautiful Bourgain villa just
popping over it right And this is the picture of that and it
had the sign said sorry for the inconvenience, but as I was.
Taking that picture, it was like for me.
A prophetic image of what our lives look like when the Holy
Spirit is actively at work in restoring our lives.
Because while we might look like we have scaffolding on us being
overhauled by God, being reworked, being touched up,
there is still rest that God is giving us because the Holy
Spirit is doing the heavy lifting.
I keep showing up. I keep saying here I am Lord,
work on me, use me. And what people get to see is a
sight for sore eyes. As I stood there looking at
those flowers, I thought of what God does in my life while I'm
being restored for the next 40 years.
I'm probably going to be getting restored.
But along the way, the fruit that my life bears, the aroma of
Christ that I carry, will keep blessing people along the way.
And that's the beauty of experiencing rest in the
restoration. And that is only mediated by the
Holy Spirit. You and I on our own are
incapable of resting truly, because just the way we are
wired, we are wired to, you know, get excited.
We have an adrenaline gland which is always ready to pump.
We have our amygdala which is always on high alert for
anything fearful or anxiety causing.
But we have a God, a Holy Spirit who knows the mind of God, who
knows the ways of God, who is drawing us closer to Jesus.
He's the one who's advocating for this restoration, working
hard at it, but he's also bringing rest at the same time
and. A year back when I was just
waiting on God for the direction for church, I believe God gave
me this verse, Acts Chapter 9 verse 31 which I want to share
with you because I didn't have the leading at any point in the
last year to share it out loud. It was just something I was
quietly believing for Acts 931. I'm reading it from the KJV.
Then had the church's rest throughout all Judea and Galilee
and Samaria and were edified. Walking in the fear of the Lord
and in the comfort of the Holy Ghost were multiplied.
This is post the death of Stephen.
There's huge amount of persecution which broke out.
When the persecution happened, the church broke into bits and
dispersed. And the beautiful thing was the
disciples were going across the lands and home groups were being
started up. Churches were starting to be
birthed. It was not the end, it was
merely the beginning. But at that moment this
inconspicuous verse jumps out at us.
It says then the churches had rest throughout all these
regions and what happened when they had rest?
They were edified. They walked in the fear of the
Lord and the comfort of the Holy Ghost, and they multiplied.
They grew in number, and that's what I want to bring us today.
I believe that God is bringing the church into a season of
rest, but it's not a season of rest where we slack back, you
know, just kind of lay back and say, you know what, our job's
done. Let people come in.
That's not what it means. It is talking about a deep sense
of trust in God, His Word, His promises, and his impending
return. It is trusting that God is who
he says he is. It is trusting that the Kingdom
is in His hands, not in the hands of our leaders.
It is trusting that everything He allows on the earth is
completely watched over by Him, that He is mindful of us.
That's what it looks like to be at rest.
And the interesting thing is when you and I, as part of the
church, when we are at rest, God can move upon us and do His work
in US in wholeness. Think about it.
If you are agitated, if you are going through upheaval after
upheaval, ups and downs, ups and downs.
Your faith is all over the place.
You're questioning. God, you're one minute doubtful,
one minute high on faith. And you're going through these
incredible ups and downs many times when you're in the
doldrums, when you're actually doubting God.
Your doubt comes from a place of is God really with me?
Is he hearing my prayer? Did he really say these things
to me? But when I come to a place of
deep rest internally, when I'm resting in the fact that you
know what, God is almighty, He's solved and he knows what he's
doing, I can actually begin to see God move.
I can actually begin to sense his voice again.
I can actually begin to see Him change things on the earth for
for the betterment of people. I can actually begin to see His
Kingdom come and His will be done in spite of global
upheavals. That's what happens when you and
I come to a place of rest. And just like that verses, there
are three things that the Holy Spirit does when we allow
ourselves to rest in him. When I rest in Christ, when I
rest in God, the Holy Spirit first of all brings edification.
What is it to be edified? The word edifice, right, of a
building comes from this word and basically it means to be
rebuilt, to be strengthened, to be reinforced, to be built up.
The word is oikodomio, which means that there is a enabling
to be strong and sturdy and to stand fast.
And the Holy Spirit is the one who helps us to do that.
You know, in the coming seasons of our lives, things are not
going to get better in the sense that all the wars are all going
to disappear. Things are just going to, you
know, plateau out. No, it's going to probably get
more intense because that's what the word of God says.
But when I am at rest. When my spirit is at rest, when
the. Spirit of God rests on me.
I begin to be edified by Him. I begin to be rebuilt.
I begin to be strengthened by Him.
And this deep enrichment happens where He nourishes me from
within. He begins to fill me with a
strength that is not my own. He begins to help me see things
the way God sees it. And He leaves me more refreshed
than I ever was. He also reinforces my faith.
Many times our faith gets wobbly.
If you've been watching the news of late, even in our own
country, some days are scary when you think, God, where is
this all going to go? What's going to happen to
minority groups? What's going to happen to us?
Lord, it feels like the end times are closer than ever
before, too close for comfort. And that's when your faith gets
reinforced, when you sit with the Holy Spirit in this place of
rest and say, Lord, speak to me. Tell me how I actually face all
of this. Foundations which are shaky get
reinforced. We are edified from within, The
psalmist writes. The sons of Korah write in Psalm
46, verses 10:50. Be still and know that I am God.
I will be exalted among the nations.
I will be exalted in the earth. The Lord of hosts is with us.
The God of Jacob is our fortress seller.
The last verse of the sun, that's what we read.
Be still and know that I am God. If I'm not still I will not know
him. The sons of Korra, they were the
descendants of Korra and his gang who led a rebellion with
Moses as their leader. When Moses they they rebelled
against Moses leadership and what happened was God told Moses
separate the rest of the community away from Korra and
God opened the ground up under Kora's family tents and
swallowed all of them up and then the ground closed back over
them. And so when these guys wrote the
Psalm, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the
heart of the ocean, yet I will not be shaken for God is within
her. These guys knew the reality of
who their God was and so they were instructing generations to
come be still and know God. Be still and know Him.
He will be exalted. They knew the problem with man
exalting himself above God and so they could confidently stay
still yourself and know. God know that he is God.
That's what edification looks like, coming to a place of
stillness and saying, Lord, I want to know you.
And in knowing God, he fills us with his strength.
He fills us with his love. He fills us with wisdom and
understanding. The second thing that we saw
from that Acts 931, it says they were edified.
They were walking in the fear of the Lord.
The second thing that the Holy Spirit does when He's resting on
us is enables us to walk in the fear of God.
In Isaiah 11 verses 2 to 3, there's this prophecy that
Isaiah gives about Jesus who is coming.
It says the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit
of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the
spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord and His delight
shall be in the fear of the Lord.
He shall not judge by what is I see or decide disputes by what
his years hear. They were talking about Jesus.
He was talking about Jesus who was going to come.
But the interesting thing is the reinforcement of the word fear
of the Lord. What is this fear of the Lord?
Jesus would walk in the fear of the Lord.
Jesus was God himself and yet he was walking in the fear of the
Lord, and his delight will be in the fear of the Lord.
Jesus was modelling what it looks like to walk in an awe
filled reverence of God himself. He was basically.
Bringing to us first hand understanding of what it was
like to walk on this earth sinless.
And yes, you and I are frail. We are.
Human we are prone to sin, but the model.
Was set for us in Jesus and walking in the fear of the Lord
is basically walking in a way that pleases.
When Jesus got baptized, he came out this voice from heaven said
here is my son in whom I am well pleased.
Jesus had done nothing yet he had not pursued the Kingdom.
He had not established it. He had just come, came to the
Jordan, got baptized by his cousin and that was it.
That was all God needed. And he said, here's my son in
whom I am pleased, walking in the fear of the Lord is walking
in obedience, it's walking in submission.
It is keeping the first thing first, which is God himself.
And it is walking in a way that delights his heart, walking in
such a way that every part of our life, the private, the
public, the personal, everything pleases him, honours him.
Many times we think, well, if I, you know, I behave well at
church. God's pleased God.
Desires that you live in such a way that pleases him Monday to
Sunday and Sunday to Monday again.
He cares that you live in such a way that honours him.
When you're all alone in a room, when you're in front of your
pastor, when you're sitting with your children, when you're with
your extended family who drive you crazy.
How you behave in every place, how you live, The decisions you
make in your business behind closed doors, the way you work,
the way you live with a certain integrity, all of it matters for
the Christian. The compartments are all
connected. There is a leakage from each
thing. If I'm living in a with a lack
of integrity at work, it will seep into my marriage.
It will seep into my parenting. It will see sweep into my seep
into my leadership. There is no separation.
Too many of us are living in this place where we live in the
fear of man. We've forgotten what it looks
like to live in the fear of God. Living in the fear of God means
that I'm living conscious of God's gaze upon me.
He cares how I speak to my maid. He cares how I speak to my
little child. He cares how I speak to my
parent. He cares how I how I live
privately. The choices I make.
Many of us think God cares about only the huge things.
Well, I'm sorry to say, God cares about the smallest thing.
Not because he's a micromanager, but because he he delights in
his people. I am the apple of his eye, which
means he keeps his gaze on me all the time.
Which means it brings a smile to his face when I forgive someone.
It brings a smile to his face when I go out of my way to love
someone who's not so loving towards me.
That is the God we worship. His gaze is on us.
How are you living? When you are at rest and the
Holy Spirit rests on you, you walk in the fear of God.
The third thing is that you will grow and multiply many times.
This is always met with this. Or is it?
Is this a prosperity teaching? No growth multiplication
expansion is a Kingdom thing. You look at all of Jesus
analogies about the Kingdom, it'll always show something
small starting out really really tiny and inconspicuous and just
growing accommodating more spreading white.
The apostle Paul wrote in two Corinthians Chapter 9 verses
11:50. He said he who supplies seed to
the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your
seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness.
You will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way,
which through US will produce Thanksgiving to God.
For the ministry of this service is not only supplying the needs
of the Saints, but is also overflowing in many
thanksgivings to God. Basically, the Corinthian church
had been generous and Paul was commending them and saying, hey,
you know what? Your generosity, it didn't just
bless one person or two, it blessed the body.
And your generosity is going to cause so much of an overflow of
Thanksgiving. And he's saying, because you
gave your seed to someone else, God who supplies seed will
multiply it. He will also multiply the
harvest of your righteousness. You will be enriched in every
way, he says. So that you will be blessed and
you will continue to be a blessing to others.
When the Spirit of God is resting on you, there will be
growth in your life, a supernatural kind of increase.
It will not look like what you can calculate on your excel
sheet or. What you can plan for it will be
beyond your plans. It will be in such a way that
you cannot take credit for it because you didn't plan for
that. He will do.
What only God can do, it'll be God induced, it'll be God LED,
but it'll be purely supernatural that you and I cannot take
credit. Our striving, our hustling will
not bring that kind of increase. It is God.
This is talked about throughout. Scripture in Isaiah 54, he says
strengthen, lengthen your tent pegs, you know, spread your
curtains while you're going to expand.
He's talking to people who are heading into exile because that
is the promise of the Kingdom. The Kingdom is ever increasing.
It is growing. Many people tell us, oh, I loved
it when church was just five people or 10 people.
But anything that is healthy grows.
Anything that is not healthy will not grow.
That's a biological fact. And whatever is in biology is
informed by the creator of all the earth.
And So what is healthy will grow.
And so when the. Spirit of God rests on you
without beyond your control. Things will start to multiply.
Things will start to grow. You will begin to be a blessing
to many. And as I was meditating on this,
the Lord gave me this beautiful story that I want to leave with
you from the Word of God. It is the story of David and
Abigail. Abigail was the wife of Nabal,
and the story is found in One Samuel chapter 25, verses 1 to
33. I'm not going to read the whole
of it. It's a long passage, but I'm
just going to pick and choose some verses from it to help you
understand what it looks like to be at rest and to employ the
Holy Spirit's help in the way we live.
David was not yet king. He was on the run from Saul.
He was hiding in the wilderness. And while he was in the
wilderness, Nabal, who was this? He was a bit of a cranky guy.
Was was very foolish in the way he dealt with things, short
tempered, loudmouthed. He was married to a beautiful
woman called Abigail, who was said to have been a woman of
discernment. He's one of the most popular
baby girl names actually for the last 10 years at least.
Now David was in the wilderness when Nabal's guys had shepherds
had been in the same region. So David and his men, he had a
group of men who were warriors who were lionhearted men.
They had kept guard of Nabal's guys.
So a couple of months later he hears that Nabal's whole company
would shearing their sheep. So basically when they shear the
sheep, it was the the season shift.
They were actually going to probably sell it.
There was there was going to be an increase of, you know, wealth
already. Nabal was very rich.
That's what it says. He was very rich.
He had so much. He had thousands of cattle, you
know, 1000 donkeys and etcetera. So what David does was he says
to his young men, go up to. Carmel and ask Nabal to give us
some of its feast time. They're feasting.
They probably have surplus. Let them give us something to
eat. Right?
So David's men go to Nabal. They request just as their
leader David had asked them. They requested very kindly.
They said, you know your men were in Kamal cup some time
back. We looked after them.
Nothing of theirs got you know went missing.
So could you please reward us by giving us something to eat?
You guys are feasting anyway, can you share with us?
And this is what David answered. Nabal answered David's servants.
It says, Who is David, who is the son of Jesse?
There are many servants these days who are breaking away from
their master. Shall I take my bread and my
water and my meat that I have killed for my shearers, and give
it to men who come from I don't know where?
So David's young men turned away, came back and told him all
this. Then David told his men, Every
man, strap on your sword. David also strapped on his
sword. And 400 men went up after David,
but one of the young men told Abigail what happened.
And this is. What the man told David, he
says, Behold, David, send messengers out of the wilderness
to greet our master, and he railed at them.
Yet the men were very good to us, and we suffered no harm, and
we did not miss anything when we were in the fields, as long as
we went with them. They were a wall to us both by
night and by day, all the while we were with them keeping the
sheep. Now, therefore, know this, and
consider what you should do, for harm is determined against our
master and against all his house, and he's such a worthless
man that one cannot speak to him.
What did Abigail do next? Abigail made haste, took 200
loaves and two skins of wine and five sheep already prepared, and
five sears of parched grain and 100 clusters of raisins, 200
cakes of figs, laid them on donkeys said to her, Young men,
go before me, I will come after you.
I'm going to stop right there. Abigail was a woman of
discernment. This is what was used to
describe her earlier in the chapter.
How did she know what to provide?
She just knew she had to do what she had to do, and the alarm at
hearing how her husband had responded to good men, to men
who had protected, spurred her on to do this.
Now coming further down, she's going down the hill, David and
his men angry, ready for war, ready to wipe out.
All the males of Nabal's family are walking up the same
mountain. They come face to face and this
is what happens. When Abigail saw David, she
hurried and got down from the donkey, fell before David on her
face, bow to the ground. She fell at his feet and said,
On me alone, my Lord, be the guilt.
Please let your servant speak in your ears, and hear the words of
your servant. Let not, my Lord, regard this
worthless fellow Nabal, For as his name is, so is he.
Nabal is his name. Folly is with him.
But I, your servant, did not see the young men of my Lord whom
you send. Now then, as the Lord, as the
Lord lives. And as your soul lives, because
the Lord has restrained you from blood guilt and from saving with
your own hand, now then, let your enemies and those who seek
to do evil to my Lord be as Nabal.
Now let his present that your servant has brought to my Lord
be given to the young men who follow my Lord.
Please forgive the trespass of your servant, for the Lord will
certainly make my Lord a sure house, because my Lord is
fighting the battles of the Lord, and evil shall not be
found in you so long as you live.
If men rise up to pursue you and to seek your life, the life of
my Lord shall be bound in the bundle of the living, in the
care of the Lord your God and the lives of your enemies.
He shall sling out as from the hollow of a sling.
And the Lord has done to my Lord according to all the good that
He has spoken concerning you and has appointed you Prince of
Israel. My Lord shall have no cause of
grief or pangs of conscience for having shed blood without cause,
or for my. God working salvation himself.
And when the Lord is dealt well, my Lord, then remember your
servant David said to Abigail, Blessed be the Lord, the God of
Israel who sent you this day to meet me.
Blessed be your discretion. Blessed be you who have kept me
this day from blood guilt and from working salvation with my
own hand. If you look at the narrative,
it's so in line with what we've been talking about, where many
times in our desperation to be restored, we are working out our
own methods of being saved. David was promised a throne, but
for 13 years he was treated like a dog.
He was made to run around, hide. Saul, instead of pursuing his
enemies, was pursuing David. David had to hide out in the
wilderness. He had to take his parents away,
hide them, too. He had a motley crew of about
400 men who had disgruntled, angry young men who surrounded
them him with, you know, and they came together.
He had to go to the Philistines. He had to defect there to
protect himself. What a life.
So much of stress, so much of anxiety.
No wonder he's such a powerful poet when he writes those
Psalms. But here's the thing.
Abigail, having the spirit of discernment in her, knew that
she could intercept this because she did that.
She saved her household, she prevented unwanted bloodshed,
and she eventually grew her home.
We'll look at that in a bit. But here's the thing.
Here's what you know stood out to me out of the whole story.
Sometimes we're so stressed and stretched to mental and
emotional full capacity, we've hit our mark.
We cannot do more. We're desperately trying to work
out how we can save ourselves, how we can get ourselves out of
a problem to save our name. We begin to fight the wrong
battles. And Abigail in discernment was
able to point that out to David. She said, you know what?
You've been called to fight the Lord's battles.
This is not a battle you need to fight.
Nabal is not your enemy. Nabal is crazy, yes, but this is
not something you need to dirty your hands over, because when
you are going to get on the throne, which you will, may your
hands be clean. And I wonder if because she
whispered these things to him in the next chapter, he has a
chance to actually kill Saul. Saul and his men are in a cave.
David is so close. He could, his guys say, why
don't you just kill him? But he's as far be it from me
that I would touch the anointed. I wonder if this piece of
discerning advice caused him to take the right choice there,
make the right choice there. It's time to ask the Spirit of
God, Lord, what battle must I fight?
There are some battles some of us are fighting.
We have no business fighting it because it is not meant for us.
But we have stepped into this because of maybe the pressure to
save someone else or you know, to save our own face.
When God is saying, hey, can you be silent because I want to
fight for you? Can you step, step out of this
so that I can make these things workout in your, in your favour.
I am your vindication. You can't do it on your own.
It's interesting that Abigail didn't turn to Nabal and fight
with him. She decided to save the
household by going to the source directly.
David could have easily wiped out all the males.
There was number scope for anything.
Further, she had tons of servants, shearers, and
shepherds, all of whom would have perished if David was
allowed to fight these men. In gentleness with discernment,
she fought for her household. She didn't argue about what has
to be done, she just did what she knew she had to do.
When we live in hyper anxiety, eternal rush, some of us live
like this. I think most of us, we live in a
if you live in the fast-paced cities of India, at least you
feel like you wake up and you're ready to run.
You just get up, you have to do things.
The buzz around you doesn't die till about 12 in the night.
You're still, you know, a buzz. You have adrenaline running
through you. You have to make quick
decisions. But the problem is when we live
in this permanently rushed and stressed stage, we tend to turn
away from God. He isn't our top most priority.
We tend to make decisions that are not always God honouring and
it's time that you ask God to help you make decisions where
you are positioned in aweful. Reverence of him here if you
look at it in the beginning of that chapter.
David, when he wants to talk to Nabal's people, he says tell
them peace be to you, peace be to your house, peace be to all
that you have. This is the greeting that David
gave. And the interesting thing is
David spoke peace over Nabal's men's men, but Nabal didn't
receive that peace. But the beautiful thing was
Abigail read into that. Abigail became a peacemaker.
Isn't that beautiful? She accepted the peace extended
and in discernment she dealt with it.
She spoke peace to an agitated warrior.
He was a warrior. He he knew how to use his word.
He knew how to rally his men. He knew how to annihilate an
enemy. But she calmed him down.
She alerted him of how to walk, walk in the fear of the Lord.
She told him. She literally gave her forecast.
You're going to be king soon. Do you want this on your on your
plate? Do you want this kill on your
roster? She was basically giving him
direction of how to live in the fear of God.
David was edified because of Abigail's discernment.
She edified not just herself, but an entire household.
She strengthened them because she was able to operate out of
the spirit of rest. She was able to direct David in
the fear of God because she was coming from a place of deep
rest, deep discernment. And finally, like I was saying,
when we live edified, when we walk in the fear of God, growth
and multiplication happens. You know what happens soon
after, 10 days later, she does. She immediately tells Nabal she
doesn't keep it a secret. She said, this is what I've
done. He has a heart attack and 10
days later he dies. David hears about it, sends for
her and makes her his wife. She is his second wife, the
first being Mikhal, son of her daughter of Saul.
But this is her second wife. And eventually it says that she
has a child with him. His name was Daniel.
I think she has a child with David.
They become part of the royal family because soon after Saul
and his family die. David ascends the throne.
She's part of the royal entourage.
Now here's the deal. I'm not advocating for going and
choosing some other spouse. That's not what I'm advocating
at all. This is what the word of God
says. But her obedience to that spirit
of discernment within her, her ability to speak peace over a
very stressful, anxious situation, her ability to stand
in the gap as a peacemaker, to walk in the fear of the Lord.
And to draw. Others to that fear of the Lord,
caused her line to not die out. God expanded her family.
God gave her greater visibility. God multiplied her.
And here's the thing that I believe all of us need to
understand that God is always on the move.
He's always moving. The Spirit of God is like he's
likened to wind that goes here and there.
We don't know where it comes from, where it goes.
But The thing is, many a times we don't feel the move because
we are so agitated. We are so stressed.
We have made it, you know, part of our language to say I am, you
know, anxious. I, I I.
Am just so agitated. I'm in a state of panic.
But what if the onus is on you and me to enter the rest that
Jesus already got for us? What if it's on us to come to a
place of inner stillness just so that the Holy Spirit can do what
He has to do in wholeness in entirety?
When you and I begin to live from a place of rest, God shows
us the larger landscape of impact that our life is
creating. Abigail didn't know when she
stood in the gap for her husband and her household that one day
she would be married to David and have a child who would be
part of the royal household. She didn't know this.
She did what she had to do eventually.
She saw the larger landscape of it.
Right today you don't know what your life actually is going to
create in terms of impact. If only you would come to a
place of rest and allow God to begin to rebuild you like only
He can, you will find that He will take the little you have
and begin to multiply it. I remember a couple of months
back I got a mail from someone in a nation where the the gospel
is actually not welcome. She read one of my Bible plans.
She wrote a mail to me to say thank you.
I was able to read the Bible plan in my language.
I was so blessed by it and it moved me to tears because here I
am sitting in a small room in Chennai, India, writing a plan.
My plan is translated by someone in that nation and it's going
out to people who have underground churches, who don't
have the freedom to worship our God and who are being edified.
That's when God showed me the larger landscape.
When you are working at a call centre or in an IT park, the job
you do. And the support you offer could
be blessing. Someone in another nation across
the ocean. Your tech solution, The app you
create could bless some organization somewhere, which
lightens the load on some individual.
Your smile could change the life of a student you teach.
Your gentle touch as a nurse or a healthcare provider can change
the life of that person who's come in for treatment.
Your generosity towards your maid.
Your kindness towards your Watchmen.
These impact lives for years to come.
Many of us forget that this life is not about us.
You're living in this small little bubble of yourself, your
needs, your mental health, your capacity.
But I want to remind you that the Spirit of God, as He
restores you, is restoring you to bring restoration to others.
He's rebuilding me so that I would rebuild others.
It's never about me. And so as He edifies me when I'm
in rest, He begins to edify me. He teaches me to walk in the
fear of the Lord, and then he causes growth and multiplication
all around me. The opposite of Abigail's life
was King Saul. He didn't have a spirit of
discernment. The Spirit of God left him, and
an evil spirit from God was sent to torment him.
He was fighting all the wrong battles.
He forgot how to live in the fear of God.
He partially obeyed, blatantly disobeyed, walked in rebellion.
He consulted A soothsayer, which was considered absolutely evil
in the eyes of God. His principles were not led by
the Holy Spirit, but on a whim. And eventually his entire family
line dies. His three sons along with him
die on the battlefield. He leaves behind one son who's a
cripple who doesn't make it to the throne.
His line eventually ends. Here's the thing, you want to
see growth and multiplication. There is a process.
It doesn't just happen. Are you resting enough in the
Holy Spirit so that you are edified, you are reinforced, you
are rebuilt? Are you walking in the fear of
the Lord? If you aren't, it's OK, Now's a
good time as any to start. Would you allow the Holy Spirit
to lead you into a place of walking daily in the fear of
God? And will you then be open to
seeing the growth and multiplication that God brings,
which will blow your mind even as we close?
I've been listening to the song Come rest on us This.
Beautiful song that I've just been resting on really.
And the lines in that song was fire and wind.
Come and do it again. Open up the gates, let heaven
on, re in. Come rest on us.
Too many of us are in so much motion all of the time, running
here and there, looking for solutions here and there.
Chat chief eating this web MD ING that talking to this
counsellor and that we have missed the greatest gift of this
time that we have the Holy Spirit, our helper, our
counsellor, our guide. If only we would rest because in
that upper room, if you read Acts chapter 2, I was just
reading it. In the message it says when the
feast of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place
without warning. There was a sound like a strong
wind, Gale force. No one could tell where it came
from. It filled the whole building.
Then like like a wildfire, the Holy Spirit spread through their
ranks and they started speaking in a number of different
languages as the Spirit prompted them.
Fire, wind. Many of us are living without
that fire. We need the wind of the Holy
Spirit to come and again ignite it.
Many of us have closed off our lives to the wind that is moving
all around us. We put up tight shutters and
we're like, you know what, I'm good, I love Jesus, I have the
Father's love. That is enough.
I'm asking, would you lift the shutters of your life and say,
Spirit of God, come, wind of the Holy Spirit, come.
Remove the shaft, remove the drawers so that what is left is
pleasing to you, so that what is left blesses others.
When you look at Genesis chapter one, just before God created the
earth, it says that the Spirit of God was hovering over the
waters. Hovering is basically resting on
the waters. It is not devoid of movement.
It is not devoid of creative capacity.
In fact, it's teeming with it and that's the Spirit of God.
He's ready to move. There is movement, there's
momentum. There is no chaos or confusion.
That is the enemy. But the Spirit of God, when he
is hovering over us, there is endless capacity, endless
opportunities and possibilities because that is when He has the
movement, the freedom of movement in our lives.
So I want to pray with you, asking you to give God a chance
that the fire of God will be set ablaze in your life, not just
for yourself, but for others. That others would see the fire
of God in you and say I want what they have.
And that you would remove every blockade to the wind of the Holy
Spirit, and you would allow Him to come in and fan into flame
everything that has to be fanned into flame.
Can we just pray together? Father, I just welcome you.
I thank you for your great love towards us in sending us the
Holy Spirit. We thank You for the Spirit of
Jesus that is working in our lives already.
We thank you Lord, even when we are unaware of Him.
He is so present. He is so real.
And I just. Welcome you, Holy Spirit, Would
you come in? Would you fan into flame every
dying ember? Put a passion for your name.
Put a holy passion, Lord, to live in a way that honours you.
Give us, Lord, a deep discernment.
Spirit of God, Spirit of wisdom, spirit of counsel and mind.
Fill us with your strength so that we are edified.
And Lord, bring growth and multiplication in your people's
lives as they are edified, as they grow in the fear of the
Lord. We pray God, that territories
will enlarge. We pray, O God, that greater
exploits are done in the Kingdom for you.
We pray, O Lord, that people will be blessed not.
Just with physical or financial prosperity, but with prosperity
of their soul. O God, minds will be set free,
hearts will be softened. I pray that Lord hands will be
opened up in generosity towards the the world all around them.
We pray in Jesus name that Lord, you will.
Do something powerful in this moment, fire and wind, Would you
do it again? Would you just come in, come
rest on us, rest on us. I pray for those with agitated
minds, restless hearts, that they will be stilled in Jesus
name so that God, you can move in their hearts, you can move in
their lives. We love you, we honour you, we
bless your holy name. In Jesus name I pray, Amen,
Amen, God bless you. I'm believing that starting from
today, this is not a one off thing, this is an everyday thing
that the day of Pentecost as we celebrate it, that will become a
lifelong pursuit of you to say, Lord, I want to enter that rest
today. I want to enter that rest today.
I don't want to be rebellious. I want to enter your rest.
If that can be our everyday pursuit, I think our lives would
look dramatically different. God bless you have an amazing
week. We hope you enjoyed today's
message and we're blessed. If you liked what you heard and
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