Rest

I am weak but thou art strong. Jesus keep me from all wrong. I'll be satisfied as long as I walk.

Let me walk close to thee. Just a closer walk with thee. Granted, Jesus is my plea.

Daily walking close to thee. Let it be, dear Lord, let it be. Greetings from Japan again.

I am missionary Richard Yerby in Japan, coming to you in the name of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. This sermon's title is Rest. I have finished my sermons on safety, but one more thought.

I thrill so much over safety that I won't add now how blessed to be able to proclaim of a surety that I am safe forever. And the only human souls who can do that are the blood-bought children of God, purchased by God, by the shed blood of the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world, that Lamb being the Lord Jesus Christ. Later, if you would, please look at the word safety in the concordance to your authorized version of the Holy Bible, the King James Bible.

Read each passage of scripture in Psalms and Proverbs that has the word safety in it. For example, but safety is of the Lord. And other similar passages with that blessed assurance, so reassuring it is to me to know of a certainty that I am safe, safe am I for all eternity without end.

Now, at the end of my last sermon, I was talking about rest, saying, Christian parent, if you do not want your children to perish in eternal hell fire, then you must do much frequent and long interceding for them before the throne of grace. In this evil high-tech world that the devil has built, there is so much sin and evil readily available that is highly appealing to young souls, cesspools of sin and evil unthought of by any person until the late 1900s. Also, this modern sin and evil brought on by man's progress is greatly praised by so many people.

It is pushed on to the youth by their educators and peers. The destroyer is certainly destroying many in our present day by evil unknown to mankind in the past. To properly train up your children, it will be necessary for you to regularly lay aside rest, lay aside your own cell phone, and intercede in prayer for them.

It is not an option on your part as a Christian parent totally responsible to God for training up your children in the way they should go. It is a must for your children's spiritual well-being and for their eternal salvation. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, please help me to be ever aware of my responsibility to intercede on thee on behalf of my intercede to thee on behalf of my children and descendants. Help me to know what an important part intercessory prayer is in training them up in the way they should go. Please help me not to shirk this responsibility or be the least bit slack in it.

Please give me perseverance and stamina to intercede much for them. I pray this for all other Christian parents also. Amen.

A good missionary friend of mine here in Japan decades ago, he's in heaven now, him and his wife. But their son went deep into devil worship and such, mainly influenced by his peers. And those two parents interceded and saw him delivered from that.

And he also became a missionary, married, had three sons, and served several years, good missionary work in Japan. Prayer is power. To my carnal, natural man nature, intercessory prayer is one of the blandest undertakings that I do.

I mentioned that I said to my carnal, natural man flesh. And I do not mean praying for 10 or 15 minutes. I mean three, six, or 12 hours, or all day and night.

You're probably saying, huh? Or getting along with God for three days or so and spending as much of that time praying as I possibly can. It is a most tiring and most weary task. And if you enter into this noble labor, you're going to have to be like Job and put aside rest from time to time.

You're probably saying by now, well, I know by now for a certainty that old man missionary Richard Gerber is a bachelor. He couldn't get alone like that otherwise. And it's true, I'm a bachelor.

Isaiah 59, verse 16. And he, the Lord God, meaning the Lord God, and he saw that there was no man and wondered that there was no intercessor. The only place the word intercessor appears in the Bible is in this passage.

Intercede, intercession, intercessory, and such are in the Bible also. But the person himself who is known as an intercessor, this is the only reference to him. And it really catches my attention that in relation to the word intercessor, there was not one.

I think that tells us how few there are among those who claim to believe on God, who do any interceding or much at all. God looked down to earth, wondering, marveling that there was no intercessor. I'm going to read that again.

And he saw that there was no man and wondered that there was no intercessor. Isaiah 59, 16. So much sin and evil were abounding at that time, but as God's eyes searched the earth, he could not find anyone interceding to him to stop it.

It is likely he sees the same today. Few are no intercessors. What a tragedy, what a loss, what devastation.

How God longs to hear those intercessory prayers reaching up to his throne, delighting in their sound. How he delights to act in answer to them by pouring out his power, sending revival, changing lives, putting down evil and such. But because most believers are not like Job, there are few intercessors.

Therefore, the cause of Christ suffers because of our sin of laziness and indifference. We need to pray, Lord God, please help me to be a fervent intercessor, a prayer warrior. Help me to pray without ceasing.

Help me to always pray and not faint. Give me a great burden and a broken heart for lost souls around me who are perishing. Give me a holy hatred against the much sin and evil abounding in this present world.

Stir up an urgency within me to cry out unto thee against it. Teach me and show me just how greatly intercessory prayer changes things. Give me strength and endurance to cry out to thee long and loud, day and night.

Always guide me to pray according to thy will. Grant me strong faith to see my prayers answered. I do want to know the close, precious fellowship with God, which comes through constant prayer and interceding with thee.

I pray this for Brother Richard and for all other Christians also. Please grant these things for all of us, Lord, I pray. Amen.

We can learn an important spiritual lesson by looking at the ratio of numbers here. Job had 10 children, so we have 10 people playing while one is working overtime for God. The ratio today of playing Christians compared to praying Christians, I said playing Christians compared to praying Christians, I hope I'm coming through clear, is probably a lot more than 10 to 1. For each believer who is like Job by being an intercessor, there are probably many more than 10 spiritual babes now, carnal believers, lovers of this present world, and thus they spend their time eating, drinking, and making merry and such.

For each person in the church who is going all out to serve God the best he can, likely there are more than 10 who are madly chasing the things of the world and are doing nothing for God. If you are the one who is like Job, rest assured that there will be more than 10 other Christians around you who will continually ridicule and make fun of you for being like that and tell you and everyone else that there's no need to get so worked up, so excited, and go overboard doing things of the Lord that will matter for all eternity. They'll do all they can to weaken your hands and cause you to cease from the great work you are doing.

And because they outnumber you more than 10 to 1, that fact alone will tend to make you cower under them. Don't cave into them. Turn a deaf ear to them.

Stay faithful to God. No matter how badly the lazy loafers outnumber you, do right. Rest assured that they will greatly outnumber you.

Rest assured that you will have to put up with their snickering and scorning and talking behind your back as long as you are like Job and have no rest. Rest assured that they will weary and discourage you. Rest assured that it will be fine upstanding Christians and not the devil's crowd.

And rest assured that it would be much easier to slack off and live peaceably among them. And the temptation to do so will be ever so great. But don't do it.

Determine that you will be like Job, battle them as long as necessary, and on judgment day be able to say along with Job, neither had I rest. Let's pray again. Lord Jesus, please deliver me from allowing other people to hinder me to be an intercessor to thee.

Help me to not be the least bit concerned about what sinful, spiritually lazy, pleasure loving, carnal Christians think or say about my prayer life and my zeal for thee. Help me to storm heaven with much intercession. As for those souls who ridicule and make light of my dedication to thee, change them, Lord.

Set them on fire with a burning zeal to want to pray to thee without ceasing. By thy power, change them into believers who will intercede like Job did without rest. Shake them up, Lord, to awaken their careless, indifferent, backslidden, sinful souls.

Amen. A godly saint of bygone days said and wrote, feed the sheep instead of trying to amuse the goats. The less knowledge and piety a church has, the more clubs, societies, oysters, ice cream, and fun it takes to run it, and the faster it runs from God.

The author is unknown to me. I say, amen. That is so true.

Pastor, you are most likely to fill up your church with whatever kind of people you choose to cater to. And if you schedule a lot of eating, drinking, and making merry, playing, recreation, and such on your church property, then you will end up with a gang of people who live to please self with all those earthly and worldly pleasures and who are absolutely worthless to the cause of Christ. What a stinking saver you all will be to God.

And your Lord and judge will not be bragging to the devil about you being perfect and upright. Much of the body of Christ is plunging headlong downhill because they have ceased to work overtime for God and have lunged into playing overtime instead. In past days, church services were typically held in simple church buildings with few or no other activities carried on at church.

Now, a typical church is an expensive, large complex of buildings, much of which was built to be used for eating, drinking, playing, and various other pleasures. First Corinthians chapter 11, verse 22 reads, What? Have ye not houses to eat and to drink in? You think on that. Verse 34 reads, And if any man hunger, let him eat at home, that ye come not together under condemnation.

All you church goers who are listening to me, have you ever heard anyone comment on those verses from the pulpit in any favorable, agreeable manner with those verses? Think on that. While in the states on furlough in 1985, I was scheduled to speak at a church that I had attended some back in 1970 before I came to Japan. Now in 1985, they invited me to speak on a Wednesday night to the young people.

And back in 1970 when I first went there, I had seen that church spiritually alive with a strong preacher as pastor. Now there was a different younger pastor and a lot of other changes also. Friends there had told me that the church had built a gymnasium since I was there last.

I sort of gulped at that news. And when we arrived together at church on that Wednesday evening, sure enough, there on the backside of the church property was that large monument raised to the idol God of organized sports and recreation. I didn't even get inside the church building that evening.

There in the parking lot, I was told that the young people meet in the gym on Wednesday nights. Oh, so I followed one of their leaders to the gym. I'm getting suspicious and disappointed.

I didn't even get to go to church that evening. Instead, I went to gym. Now earlier in the day, with a great concern and burden, one of my closest friends in that church, a godly sister in Christ, had already talked to me about the church's young people saying, I hope you can do something for our young people.

I said, what seems to be the problem? She said, they seem so unconcerned. They show little or no interest in spiritual things from outward appearances. Some of them appear to be lost and need to get saved.

I'm really concerned about them. So I says, after I speak to them, do you think I should give an invitation? Yes, I think it would be really good to do that, she tells me. So I had prayed up and carefully prepared the sermon, the message my Lord laid on my heart for them.

I was hoping and praying to see God blessed with some definite results that evening. But now I was plainly disappointed at the setup I faced. As we entered the gym, most of the boys were on the court playing with basketball, several basketballs before the service started.

Blap, blap, blap. I was met with the sound of three or four basketballs in action. It was time for church to start.

So one of the teachers got their attention in the kindest way possible and asked them to cease playing and move on into the side room in the gym where we were to meet. That was finally accomplished with some continual urging by the ones in charge. And they all got seated, the boys huffing and sweating.

That sort of made me wonder how well they would be listening to what I had to say. At the start of our service, the youth leader read through a list of announcements of their planned social and sports activities coming up. Play, play, and more play.

That's what most all of the announcements were about. Then the missionary guest speaker was introduced. And my spirit was already stirred within me over this mess going on at church.

But none of the young people there had met me before and thereby didn't know me. So I opened up on the friendliest note possible and tried to get acquainted with the teenagers. Then I said, open your Bibles too.

Suddenly, I stopped seeing that not a one of those young people had a Bible with them. Rage against this world and this church rose within me. None of those teenagers brought a Bible to church on Wednesday night.

I controlled my rage as God led, purposely letting out some fury, saying, what? No one has a Bible? What kind of church is this? Two of their teachers were present, as I think they had combined their two classes for all the young people to listen to the missionary. Anyway, those two teachers sort of smiled nervously and tucked their heads slightly in embarrassment. The youth leader, the young man youth leader, he frowned at me like he was displeased with my remark and as if to say, well, what do you expect? I continue, okay, if you don't have your Bibles, then listen really close as I read because I want you to remember this short scripture.

So I read, God has power to help and to cast down, second Chronicles 25, eight. Now here, it tells us that God has power to do two things. What are those two things? And with that question, I pointed to one of the young basketball players right in front of me.

I didn't know anyone's name, so I just pointed at him for an answer. You should have seen the surprised look on his face. He waited in embarrassed silence for a few seconds, likely hoping I would let him off the hook and continue talking, but he was out of luck.

I patiently stared at him till he finally sheepishly said, I don't know. I see. Well, this scripture is important, so I want you all to get it.

Listen up and I'll read it one more time. God has power to help and to cast down. Then I pointed to a different young man and asked him the same question I had asked his basketball team member.

What are the two things that it says God has power to do? He was just as surprised and just as ignorant of the answer as the other church ball player. They weren't listening, not even to one short sentence. You really expect me to be listening to what you are saying? Look on his face.

He answered, I don't know. Folks, I'm not talking about little kiddies. These teens were in senior high school.

Little kiddies will usually listen much better than that. And this was not the Sunday morning crowd, many of whom did not come to church on Wednesday nights. Supposedly the Wednesday night crowd is the cream of the crop, the ones who attend all the weekly church services.

They were the children of the faithful Christians who were the pillows of this church. These teens were the ones we expect to become preachers and church leaders when they get grown. That's why my godly friend has spoken to me about them with such concern.

In my opening remarks, I had said I would not talk long, urging them to listen carefully. So now I said I may have been mistaken when I said I wouldn't talk long. At this rate, we're going.

It may take all night. By then I had gotten mad enough about their minds being on the recreation that that church had so generously provided on church night for them with tens of thousands of God's money in building that gymnasium. I was so mad that I was prepared to stay there as long as it took for them to remember these nine short words for just a few seconds.

God had power to help and to cast down. So I said I'll read it again. And I did.

Then I pointed to a young lady and asked her, what are the two things stated here that God has power to do? Either girls are a lot smarter than boys, or by now they were coming to realize that I was most desirous for them to listen to what I said because she answered the question correctly. No doubt girls are smarter than boys. I proceeded to preach to them on how that God has power to help and to cast down and that he was going to do one or the other to each of them.

And they are the ones who make the decision as to which of these things God will do to them. If they choose to obey God, then he will help them in many great and wonderful ways that only God can do. But if they choose to disobey God, then he will cast them down.

And the disobedience of refusing Christ as a savior would result in being cast down into hell to be tormented in fire forever. Though that was a conservative fundamental Baptist church, most of those teens were looking around wide eyed as if to say, what's going on here? Never heard anything like this. That was the only Wednesday night I was there.

So I have no idea what usually goes on there out there in that gym during church time on Wednesday night with those youngins. But I concluded that it was not anything like what I was doing. No wonder that godless sister said, we have several in our youth group who appear to be lost.

She had related that to me. As I preached it straight as I could, the youth director was glaring at me with disapproval as if to say, what do you think you're doing? He was the product of a Bible college that hounds the Christians in that Baptist denomination to give much money to it, to train young adults for Christ. What a sinful lie that appears to be.

Because it looked like to me that he had been trained to provide recreation, amusement, and light, worthless speeches to those young souls when they came to church on Wednesday nights. I felt so bound in my spirit as I preached that sermon. Few of those teens showed any interest in listening to it.

I tried to create an atmosphere that would be conducive to giving an invitation, but I didn't feel like I succeeded. So I ended with that. And my time is up here for today.

So I must end here preaching to you. I hope you've taken this well. I've enjoyed preaching it.

I just hope you've enjoyed listening to it just as much. God bless you. I love you and appreciate you.

I want the best for you. And until the next time, God be with you.