A Holy Convocation

I've been thinking about this sermon for a while. It's more like a Bible study. In fact, in our Bible study, you know, I like to have some open discussion. I'd like to discuss a couple things about this. Specifically, I'll tell you what I'd like to discuss here as we go through this.

But have we taken the Sabbath? We do it. We know it. We believe it. I mean, you stand up for it. You won't work on the Sabbath. You, you know, this is one of your basic core beliefs. You're here every week. But have we sometimes made the Sabbath so commonplace that we do it without truly thinking about what we're doing?

Which is just normal as human beings. You do it. You do it. You do it. And after a while, why am I doing this? Well, you don't even ask the question. You just do it. I want to talk about something like this. It's more like a Bible study. I'm going to talk about and go through some scriptures about the Sabbath. Nothing new here. But I want to emphasize something specific in the Sabbath that if we keep it long enough, we sometimes forget. And yet it is such a vital reason why God has us doing this.

So let's go to Genesis 2. Genesis 2. No new scriptures on the Sabbath, but I just want to emphasize something specific here. Genesis 2, verse 1. Thus the heavens and the earth and all the hosts of them were finished. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had done. That God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it because he rested from all his work which God had created and made. Now this is the establishment of the Sabbath. The Sabbath isn't established in the Ten Commandments.

This is where it becomes part of creation. It's only part of creation. Now what's interesting when we go through this is to think about God resting. God wasn't tired, right? God didn't say my brain hurts. Well, he doesn't have a brain, his spirit, but his mind. My mind hurts because I've been doing all this work. God was like, I'm tired. It says he rested because of what he created. He took time. He's also teaching us something in this, and that's why this is an important starting point.

He took time to step back and said, this is wonderful. Look at this. Look how it works. I'm sure the angels are just amazed. How's this work? All these different animals, all these different things all have to work together for this creation to work. And then you have this man and this woman, a brand new concept. Creatures made in the image of God with the potential of eternal life.

I mean, this is a brand new thing, and he stops and he rests. And I want to zero in on him resting, because once again, he's not tired. He's not stressed out. He's enjoying what he just did, what he created, and he stops and he rests. And there's something important in this concept when we look through what the Sabbath, the Sabbath instructions on resting, on resting, because we know physically we're supposed to rest this day, but there's something greater that's supposed to happen. Let's go to Exodus 20. Okay, we know this.

One of the Ten Commandments, but I want to stress something here. Remember the Sabbath day, verse 8, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work, you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger, who is within your gates. So he said, we're not supposed to do our normal work this day.

For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it. It goes back to creation. This is the day he stopped and looked at what he had done, and he rested. Now, that's an interesting concept. He was pleased. He was joyful in what he had done, and he rested. He experienced whatever that means for God. I mean, God, He's not frustrated. He's not stressed. He's not unhappy. He's rested. There's no futility going on in his mind. God rested on this day.

So now let's go to Hebrews 4. So we're going to jump through these scriptures as we start to emphasize things, and then I want to make it practical as we go on. Hebrews 4 verse 4. I read this during the days of 11 bread when we're talking about Israel going through the desert to the promised land.

And I'm breaking into the middle here of what we talked about in that in that sermon. Verse 4, For he has spoken in a certain place of the seventh day in this way, and God rested on the seventh day from his works. So in the context of talking about ancient Israel going through the wilderness, coming up to the promised land, and not going in, he draws them back to the seventh day. And there's a reason for this. And again in this place, they shall not enter my rest. The promised land was supposed to be the rest for these people. They'd been slaves all their lives. They had to take a year crossing a hostile territory. They were supposed to go into a land where God says, now you will have rest. I will give you rain and dew season. No enemies will come against you. As long as you follow me, this will happen. You won't have the diseases that ancient, you know, that Egypt had. He said, your crops will grow. Every person will have their own house. There was all these promises made to these people. When you get to there, you can rest. You can finally have a life where you're not being pushed by other people, struggling to survive, and you could have a good life. But even after, but so they got there and he said, you should enter, you will enter into my rest. But they did not. Verse six, says, therefore, it remains that some must enter in, and those to whom it was first preached did not enter because of disobedience. He says, okay, there's still a rest. There's a still a promised land. And that's what I talked about in that sermon, that we're on the road to the true promised land. We're going through the wilderness to the real promised land, an eternal promised land. So here in Hebrews, these two ideas are mixed in back and forth together because he's talking to the church, but he's using this reference to ancient Israel. Verse seven says, again, he designates a certain day, saying in David, today, after such a long time as it has been said, today, if you will hear his voice, do not harden your heart. So he's telling the church there's an application from what David wrote. On our journey, we can't become hardened. And then in verse eight, so important here, for if Joshua had given them rest, then he would not afterward have spoken of another day.

If them going into the promised land actually gave them the true rest of God, then why does the, not just Joshua, why does the entire Old Testament keep telling of another day? Why does it keep telling of a time when God's kingdom will be on earth? Why does it keep telling of a time when there'll be true rest between human beings and God, because there has never been true rest between human beings and God? And the point he's making is that promised land is just a type of the greater promised land. But as I brought out in that sermon, that doesn't mean the descendants of Abraham, physical descendants of Abraham, won't receive that physical land. When Christ comes back, he gathers all the Israelites, wherever they are, scattered all over and takes them, puts them in the land. But that's not the ultimate promise. The ultimate promise is the true promised land. So he's mixing these things together. Verse nine, there remains therefore a rest for the people of God. The word rest there, sabbatismos, is the only place in the entire New Testament that is used. It literally means a Sabbath keeping. Now remember, he starts up here talking about the Sabbath, bringing the Sabbath in as a promised rest from God. And then says how Israel was promised a rest, but they never got it. They never truly received it because it kept revolting. They stayed in the land for hundreds of years, but never really had a true rest from God. And yet we are today still to keep a Sabbath rest for something that has not yet happened. The Sabbath is actually, we can give a whole sermon on the prophecy that's contained in the Sabbath about what God is doing. He says, verse 10, for he who has entered his rest has himself also ceased from his works as God did from his. In other words, when we finally enter into the complete rest, we'll have given up all of our wrong works. We'll have been given up all of our sin. We will be different, and we can actually experience a rest with God that's beyond our imagination. We can actually experience something that no one has ever experienced entirely in this life. Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone should fall according to the same example of disobedience.

There is a Sabbath keeping still for us today. This day is still to be honored and kept today, to picture the future rest. But the only way we really can keep going is to understand that in this day, we can experience some of God's rest. Oh, okay, isn't it great to go home or, well, this afternoon services? But in the morning, this morning, you didn't have to rush around. You could maybe sleep in a little bit. Maybe have a nice little breakfast, right? And you had some rest. Afternoon service, and when you're in morning services, you get to go home and take a nap. We say, oh, it's great to rest on this day. And physical rest is part of this day. But God rested on this day, not for a physical reason. And then he says, you come enter into my rest. This is about a relationship with God.

It is not just a command, because if we only keep this as a command, we're missing something. Now, it is a command. I'm not saying it's a commandment from God. We're to keep this day. But if we only do it as a commandment, we're missing the point. In this day, we have an opportunity to enter into something holy. This is a holy day. We are holy people. You're not just a normal person. If you have been called by God, you've received his Spirit, you are a holy person. The Bible says that you're the elect of God. And we're invited to enter into God's rest every Sabbath. Now, the more we participate in his rest, the more we experience it every day, but it's this day he sets apart to say, stop it. Come here. I invite you. God has invited you into a holy relationship and into a holy day. Understand that. You are invited into this. You don't keep the Sabbath day unless he invites you, or you'll do it just like the Jews. They keep the Sabbath day and have no rest from it. Spiritual rest, physical rest, but not spiritual rest. Okay? They can get physically rested. They can have some understanding of God from it. But the rest that God experienced when he did it is what he's sharing, what's to share with us on this day. A break from the turmoil, from the stress, from the battles of sin. He wants us to come into his rest on this day.

And he's invited you to do so.

You know, someone asked me one time, what would you find out if the Sabbath wasn't a command in the holy days? What would you do? I said, I don't know. I'd keep them anyways. What do you mean? You need a command to do this? This is God doing this. Now, it is a command.

But I want the rest. We only get little bits and pieces of rest in this life. And this day is part of God saying, I'm inviting you to come out of this and come here, not just here at services, but the whole day, the whole day, and be at rest with me. It is in this day that we are recentered to the peace and tranquility and the extra strength that God gives us in our daily battles. And it will carry us through, help us carry through the rest of the week. There's a reason this is once a week, because we would forget.

And he says, come back and have peace with me, child.

What's really understanding in this context is to begin to see the Sabbath in terms of it reflects the work of Jesus Christ. I just, when people say, well, Jesus came and said, we don't have to keep the Sabbath, it means that you don't even know who Jesus is, because this reflects everything He is doing. Let's go to Ephesians 3.

Ephesians 3.

I used this in a sermon a number of years ago. Some of you probably remember it.

I have a friend who's an elder in the worldwide Church of God, and they were invited as an organization to send somebody to a group of, a special group of theologians. There's like, I don't know, 10 of them or something, having a discussion about the Bible. Of course, nobody wanted to go, you know. So they sent this guy. He was our PR guy. And he told me, he says, can you imagine? I walk into a room. He said, you know DA Carson is? I said, yeah, I have one of his books at home. Yeah, this is filled with people that are famous as theologians. And I come and sit down with him. He said, and I didn't say much for a long, any of the first couple hours that they're talking about, they're speaking in Hebrew and Greek, and they're doing all this of discussions. And finally, one of them looked at me and said, why do you keep the Sabbath? It's a question I've always wanted to ask of Sabbath keepers. And this is where he took them. Ephesians 3.

And verse, verse, is this what I wanted? Let me see. No, this is it. Yeah, verse eight. To me, breaking the middle of a thought here, Paul saying, to me, who am less than the least of all the saints, this grace was given that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ. And to make all see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the ages has been hidden in God, who created all things through Jesus Christ. And he said, so in which Jesus Christ, who in Genesis two stopped and rested because God created all things through him.

I said, what happened? He said there was this long silence. And one of them said, he quoted Festus from the book of Acts. He says, you almost persuadus me. They didn't have an argument for them. I'm just following Jesus. Okay. I followed by Christ and he's the one who rested on that day. So I rested. And of course, God the Father did too, but he was making a point. If he made all things through Christ, then God the Father and Christ were resting.

He said, so I do it because that's what it was created. And that's for us. I always thought that was such an interesting thing. He said, after that, they just accepted me as one of them. He said, I didn't say much, but I would say something once in a while. Had a great talk and they thanked me for coming.

Like I said, these weren't just normal guys. These were famous theologians. That's just such a logical argument. This was created by God through Christ at the beginning of humanity.

And Christ's involvement in this is absolutely central to all the concepts of what it is to keep the Sabbath. There's something else that's involved. I won't take the time to go there, but you know that. You know, our teaching on the three days and three nights is so important. And it's not like there aren't others out there that see it, but it's so tied up in Good Friday and Easter that it's always rejected. Except by every once in a while, you'll get someone will write a book or in a commentary say, you know what? We got this wrong. He wasn't resurrected on Sunday morning. He was resurrected on Saturday evening, just like we say. The most important singular day in all Christianity, whether it's Protestantism or Catholicism or Orthodox, is Easter. It's the center of their religion, not Christmas. Most of them know Christmas isn't biblically defensible. Okay. But Easter is it. That's why they keep Sunday. The observance of Sunday is based entirely upon Jesus being resurrected Sunday morning. That's it. That's the entire argument. If he wasn't resurrected on Sunday morning, they have zero biblical argument, except two or three scriptures that now become a little bit fuzzy if you don't already have a presupposition. We know that Jesus was resurrected on the Sabbath just before the sun went down. This day was created by God through Jesus Christ. It's on this day that he was a resurrected. Do you think that's by accident?

God said, you know, three days and three nights, we'll just see when that fall. Well, hey, today just happens to be on the Sabbath. Isn't that amazing? This is not by accident. God designed this from the very beginning. This day is about the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It's about redemption. It's about forgiveness. It's about the new covenant. All these concepts are all tied into this day to teach us this day, to teach us the rest with God. Because without the resurrection of Jesus Christ, there is no rest with God. If he's still in the grave, there's no hope, there's no salvation, there's nothing. This is about our ability to have rest with God.

This day is so much more than don't mow your lawn.

It's so much more.

So Christ was resurrected on the Sabbath. Matthew 11. I had lots of scriptures I could go to about this, but I just want to choose one. So what is part of the gospel through Christ, through whom God created this day, who was resurrected from the dead on this day, which brings salvation to all humanity, who repents. What did he tell people? Well, this is one of the things he told people.

Matthew 11 verse, let's see, verse 28.

Come to me, this is Christ talking, come to me all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you what? Rest. See, this is become a cliche set of verses here. Oh yeah, come to Jesus and he'll give you rest. No, no, no, think about this. What happened in Genesis 2, an establishment of a day of rest? According to the commandment, we do it because God created it at creation. It's not because God needed rest, because this is part of his plan of salvation. This day is part of his plan of salvation, in which we are to enter into his rest, in this tiny little way we can now, and we're living and looking towards the time when we can be in his rest all the time. And Christ tells them, come to me and I'll give you rest. Verse 29, take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

Now, we read that all the time, but never think about, well, the Sabbath. Well, this is a relationship that he wants to have with us all the time. But we start putting the Sabbath together, this incredible invitation from God. This is part of that. Come find rest from all this. We're running around like we're crazy all the time. God says, I can't slow you down, except that I'll make you stop every once in a while. And it's built into creation itself. I will make you stop and come to me, take a deep breath, child, and rest. Rest in our hearts and in our minds. Rest in our spirit. That's what we're supposed to do.

Now, when we do that, we enter into this invitation, this command, and then we, it becomes more of a command. It's an invitation. It becomes an experience of rest. And we get it, not all the time, but when you get it, you get it.

But to do that, you and I have to do something. We have to stop working on the Sabbath, right? We can't just go out and work on the Sabbath. Can't do our jobs. Yeah, we don't mow the grass. We don't go to work. But there's something else we do, and that's in Isaiah 58.

We read this, and so much of the time, I've seen this read, or people come and say, I've read this. It seems so restrictive. Now, let's start thinking in terms of rest.

You know, you cannot work on the Sabbath and have a terrible day because your mind works a thousand miles a minute, right? It's just going all the time. You're thinking of this and that and the other. Oh, when sundown comes, I'll have to do this. Sometimes we're not living in the moment on the Sabbath. You know, you come to church, look over there and say, oh, that person doesn't like me. What are we doing here at church services together? I mean, we just think, oh, we do all these crazy stuff. Our brains work all over the place. They're not resting on the Sabbath. So we can keep the command not to work on the Sabbath and not be getting the blessings of the Sabbath at all, except maybe you're a little physically healthier. But this is more than that. So what's it say in verse 13? If you turn away your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasures on my holy day, does that mean this is supposed to be a just mournful, sad, restrictive, everybody just sitting there. You know, I've known of people that made their kids sit and fold their hands for hours on the Sabbath. That's not what this means.

We're trying to help them enter into the rest of God, which was joyful and happy. God was pleased. I mean, think about what God did when he rested.

If you turn away your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasures on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy day of the Lord, honorable, and shall honor him, where does the rest come from? I can't manufacture it. You can't manufacture it. It's got to come from God. Not doing your own ways, not finding your own pleasures, not even speaking your own words. In other words, change your mind on this day. Now, that doesn't mean you don't think about other things. And, you know, it doesn't mean that somehow you try to think nothing but biblical thoughts all day. But you know, if we are centering in on this, biblical thoughts will become your dominant thoughts of this day.

He says, then you shall delight yourself in the Lord. You shall what? Delight yourself in the Lord. Here's the rest. The rest comes from God.

The rest comes from Him. And I will cause you to ride on the high hills of the earth, and feed you with the heritage of Jacob, your father. The mouth of the Lord has spoken. And so it's a totally different mindset. And He knows it's only when we do this that we'll have rest. Otherwise, we're just working our brains to death. We're just driving ourselves all the time. We never slow down. We never stop. We're worrying. We're stressed. We never get rest from God. And He said, I want you to come to be rested on this day. This is hard enough, living in Satan's world. Come this day and be rejuvenated by me. See, it's from Him that that happens. And that should be our prayers on this day. Give me rest. Give me rest. Give my mind rest, my emotions rest. Give me spiritual rest. That's what we ask for. The physical rest will come. I'm just trying to explain. God wants something more out of your Sabbath because He has something He wants to give you. He doesn't just want you to not do physical things or just come to church. Now coming to church is part of it because we're actually commanded to do this. So that brings us to our next step. And that is, there are certain things that we do on this day, and one of them is a holy convocation. Let's go to Leviticus 23 verse 3. 6 days shall work be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, a holy convocation. You shall do no work on it. It is the Sabbath of the Lord in all your dwellings. It's the Sabbath of God. We rest with God, but it is a solemn rest. In other words, there is a reverence towards God on this day. He didn't say a depressing rest, but there is a reverence and is a holy convocation. Sabbath services, a convocation is a call to come together. Sabbath services as a call to come together from God.

It's a call to come together, but it doesn't come from me.

It comes from God. The people or God of God are called together. In the New Testament, it's called the assembly or the church. The church is called together now. Sometimes coming together for Sabbath services can make this a difficult day.

There's traffic, right? I couldn't take my normal way to come here today from from Tra... Murfreesboro because the Renaissance Festival is going on and it would take me two hours to get here. Anybody here go to the Renaissance Festival? A couple. If you're... if you have an inner nerd, it's sort of fun. It's expensive, though. I've only done it once. Oh, you've done it? Oh, it's sort of fun, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. Watching grown men pretend to joust. You know, it's sort of fun. Watching people dress up to look like Robin Hood. I mean, it's sort of goofy. Anyways, we couldn't get out and I'm cutting off on something here. That's not in my notes, by the way. So we're the assembly and it's a holy convocation, a holy gathering. Sometimes it's hard to come because you're tired. That's right. That's why we need this day of rest. You think, why is it a day of rest and I have to, you know, get up, take a shower? I'd rather just sleep all day, but this day of rest is more than physical. And sometimes we actually pay a sort of physical work to get here to do this. H. and Israel had to do the same thing.

We had to do a certain amount of work. Now, we should plan so that Friday nights and as much as we can on the Sabbath, we rest. But you know what it's like sometimes to get here and you're sort of grumpy. You didn't really sleep as good as you wanted. You know, your breakfast wasn't what you wanted. You've been thinking about work. And then you walk in here and something happens. And it's an hour after services and you're still talking to people. Okay, what is that? That's called the rest of God. God does something with us. Or you come away saying that message really meant something to me because part of the Holy Convocation is to have the Scriptures read and expounded. That's part of it. Part of it is singing. Part of it is prayer. Part of it is your relationships with each other. Our relationships are actually part of our holy rest. Do you understand that? This is supposed to be part of our holy rest. We're not like we are with everybody else sometimes throughout the week. We're with people and we say, I get these people. They all may be sort of weird, but so am I. Right? They're all quirky, but they're my quirky people because I'm quirky too. Right? Isn't that how we end up bonding with each other, which is part of the holy rest. To live in the fringe of a congregation, you're missing something. Do not be participatory in a congregation. You're missing something about the Sabbath because God doesn't call everybody to come before Him on the Sabbath. He calls His people to come before Him on the Sabbath.

It's not like people go to Sunday services. You know, my neighbors will talk, oh yeah, I've been to church in three weeks, but I'll be there because it's, you know, it's coming up on Easter and I got a need to go to the three Sundays before Easter. So they don't, you know, going to church is just sort of an emotional experience.

It's more than that. We come to hear by personal invitation to hear, well, if you come here to hear the ministers, sometimes we do okay and sometimes we don't. You come here to hear this. That's what you're here for. It's supposed to be read publicly and expounded the best we can.

We also come to worship God, and in the Bible study, I want to have some discussion on what that means. Unfortunately, what worship means in much of the Protestant world isn't what the Bible means by worship. It's actually a different meaning. And praise. We come to praise God. So we're going to talk about those two things. Worship and praise. How important is praise? Psalm 148.

Psalm 148. I'll tell you what, let's not do that. I'm going to wait and do that in the Bible study. Okay? We'll talk about worship and praise. 1 John 1. Let's go there.

That's why it's so important that every one of us... I have a friend in the ministry, every Sabbath service he goes to, he makes sure... I don't know how he does it. He makes sure he shakes everybody's hand. I tried to do that. The problem is I'll take three steps, start talking to somebody, and take three steps more, and start talking to somebody else pretty soon. It's 20 minutes after services, I've moved six feet. He gets around. I don't know how he does it, because he'll be talking to somebody and say, oh, gotta go, they're leaving, and he goes out and he says goodbye to them as they leave. And I just, I admire him for it. I've never been able to figure out how to do that. But every one of you should also be looking at other people and making sure you're connecting with people, especially those who don't seem to connect to a lot of people. You need to connect to them. You need to say hi. Now, some people are introverts, and you'll say hi, and they'll say hi. And that's okay. We don't have to change our personalities. We just have to know each other. We just have to be able to say hi to each other. We have to be able to accept each other, and sometimes know, at least I have somebody I can talk to about when I need some rest, because some of this rest God does to us with each other. Verse John 1 verse 5, John writes, this is the message which we have heard from him, and declare to you that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. So he's centering here. He's talking about God. If we say that we have fellowship with him and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. So if we say, oh, I have a good relationship with God, but I lie and steal and commit adultery, and he says, then you don't. You're lying. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, and this is real important, if we do this, if our relationship with God is developing properly, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin. In other words, we are drawn together. We don't always get along. And, you know, there's some people you're closer to than others. That's normal. But we are drawn together. The Holy Convocation, that's part of it. Now, remember, the Holy Convocation is centered about God because it's his rest, and about Christ because he's the one who's resurrected on this day and created this day, and is coming back to rule during the millennium. And the millennium is a type of the Promised Land. So this day also pictures the Millennial Rule of Jesus Christ.

So it looks backward. It looks now. It looks forward. The whole plan of God is played out in this day in one form or another.

Malachi 3. This interesting prophecy about the people of God.

And this takes work. And sometimes it's like, wow, this is a lot of work on the Sabbath to do this. Yes. That's because on this day we do the works of God, not ours. Verse 16, he's talking about what's going to happen. This prophecy goes all the way back to what's going to happen to ancient Israel, all the way up to the time of the end. And those who feared the Lord spoke to one another, and the Lord listened and heard them. And so a book of remembrance was written before him for those who fear the Lord and who meditate on His name. Those who feared the Lord spoke often to one another. Not just about, you know, how the Titans do, because that just oppresses you. I mean, yes, we do that too. You know, we talk about normal everyday stuff that happens. We share stories. We, you know, this happened to me this week, or this, we talk about those things. But our focus, we talk with one another about God and what He does. And we share this experience together.

This is a wonderful tool. Well, let me preface this. The Internet is a wonderful tool to do a lot of things. We have people watching. Sometimes we have 50 hookups. And we have usually 12 to 15, the best I can figure, people from here that are hooked up. Most of them are shut-ins. They can't get out. And so they're able to hook up and participate with us. Every once in a while, I know there's some groups that go camping, and I'll get a picture where there's 15 people in a tent and said, you know, and there'll be a little computer there. And I'll look and say, well, that's me. They said, yeah, we were watching you at Savus services this week.

And, you know, that gives us the ability to do some really nice things, especially connect to those who are shut-ins. But, you know, it also allows us to do something else. I'm tired today. I had a bad week. I don't really feel like going to services today. It's okay. I will participate in the Holy Convocation by watching it on my computer.

There's a difference between the necessity and the excuse, because the Holy Convocation is that we're called to come together. It's not just me and God and my computer. We are called to come together. And so that wonderful tool sometimes gives us sort of a, you know, an excuse. Now, like I said, there's distances involved for some people. I mean, I've talked to people that, you know, just can't get places. It's nice when there's snow or rainstorm. We can still connect to people. I mean, there's all kinds of good reasons for this. I'm saying when you don't do it, just because, yeah, it's easier to sit around in your pajamas and drink coffee and watch church. That's not what the Holy Convocation is.

Once again, I always have to give caveats. Sometime you're traveling and there's no place to go to services. So you stop and in your motel room and you watch a service someplace. Okay, that's not sin. What I'm saying is, though, what is our practice? What is our, what we want to do? And it's to be part of the Holy Convocation, which is an aspect of Sabbath-keeping.

So you've been summoned by God to be here. You've been invited by God to be here. You're commanded. He wants you to eventually not come because you're commanded, but because you want to. You want to be before Him. And when we talk about worship and praise, I want to really get into some discussions on how we can do that. And I don't mean just at church. Part of the Holy, the holiness is worship and praise. How do we do that at church and doing our, you know, private time during this, this day? Because that'll spill over in the rest of the week, what we do. But I want to conclude by putting something into perspective here. If this is a holy convocation that God invites us to, and it says His Spirit is here. I mean, the Spirit is in us and the Spirit is with us and the Spirit is here. God is here. But I want you to think a minute in this other reality that God lives in. I mean, you know, we talk about multiple dimensions and stuff. Whatever there is, God lives in all of it. God's greatness is beyond anything we can even talk about. So God has invited us, which means God is here. But He's not just here with His Spirit and His Spirit. God sees this.

So what have you been invited to? Revelation chapter 4. Revelation chapter 4.

I'm just going to read part of this.

John has a vision, and here's what he says. After these things, I look to behold a door standing open in heaven. And the first voice which I heard was like a trumpet speaking with me, saying, come, come up here and I will show you the things which must take place after this. So immediately John says, I was in the Spirit and behold, a throne set in heaven, and one set on the throne. So he gets a vision of this realm where God is. He's here.

David said, I go to the highest mountain. You're there. I go to the deepest ocean. You're there. This is too big for me. I don't know. How do you do that? I don't know. He's everywhere, but he's here. This is a reality.

He said on the throne, it was like Jasper, and he talks about a Sardis zone in appearance. I don't know what that means. I mean, I've looked at these things, but what does that mean? I don't know. And there was a rainbow around the throne in appearance like an emerald. And there's 24 thrones and 24 elders sitting there, clothed in white robes. Look at verse five. You can read all this because this is where we are. This is where we're invited to today.

From the throne proceeded lightnings and thunderings and voices. Seven lamps of fire were burning before the throne, which are the seven spirits of God. And before the throne was a sea of glass like crystal. And the midst of the throne, around the throne, were four living creatures full of eyes in front and back. I don't know. I remember years ago at a pre-teen camp, a kid, there's a, it's a Ezekiel where he talks about the seraphim, the wheels within real wheels. And a kid came up and said, I figured out what that looks like. And he had this being sitting on a, what is it called, gyroscope. And he thought, huh, that may be it. That's exactly what he's describing. And some kid said, I think that's what that means.

And it talks about these different angels. He just calls living creatures.

Verse eight, here's what there's beings crying out before God, Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come. He just has existed forever.

And he goes on and talks about this, what he's seeing.

And this is all created by God. And this is all created by God. And once a week he says, you know, all week long he's saying, hey, keep up with me here. Come on, come on, you know. And then once a week he says, stop and come and rest with me.

Come rest with me.

So we're here not just because we have a nice service, right? We're not here just because it's good to see each other. That all may be true, but that's not, that's just second degree blessings. The first degree blessing that we're here is because the creator of God invited us. And Jesus Christ invited us. So remember, I created this because God directed me to do it. I rested on this day with my father. I was resurrected on this day, and I'm coming back for you. And this day pictures that promised land. And when you really understand that, and we turn to God on this day, humbly asking for His help in His direction, you know what happens? You get some rest. Have a restful, restful Sabbath.