A World Without Peace

I'd like to welcome those that are visiting with us today who are subscribers to The Good News magazine. We try to have a Kingdom of God seminar a couple times a year just to connect with some of you. There's a thousand subscribers in the San Antonio area that get the good news, and this is our chance as the sponsors of that magazine to at least connect with you and let you know that we're here. I'd also like to welcome the group up in Kerrville. We have a satellite congregation up there that's hooked up on the Internet. And also, we have a couple score or a couple dozen, I guess. People are connected on the Internet that are watching the seminar here this morning, so welcome to you also. It's almost impossible to turn on the radio, turn on the television news, for the few of us who still may get a newspaper, you know, when you're almost out of style, pick up a newspaper, or like I do when I turn on my computer and all the headlines pop up of things that are going on all over the world. It's almost impossible to look at that and not get discouraged because of all the violence and controversy and conflict and lack of peace we see in the world. You know, over the last couple weeks, I started to write down headlines, just write down headlines that I see there popping up on my screen. And here's just a few, just of some of the headlines that have popped up.

Mass kidnapping from Mexico City Bar as 11 youths are abducted in broad daylight. And we do know that in Mexico, especially Mexico City, kidnappings has become an industry. They actually kidnap children and they sell them back for ransom. I thought this was interesting, that 11 youths are kidnapped in broad daylight. The other question I had was, what were they doing in a bar? But the article didn't seem to explain that. Cleveland, Ohio, eight arrested after a brawl at kindergarten graduation. There was pictures of people being arrested. A fight broke out among the parents at a kindergarten graduation. This one I thought was interesting. Head of Chicago Anti-Violence Group arrested for hitting his wife. I won't even make a comment on that. On a bigger scale, Russia had to sell at least 10 MiG fighters to Syria. This AP story went on to say that in the last two years, the Syrian Civil War has cost the lives of 70,000 people. That's a civil war going on. You and I don't think about that much. I mean, how much during the day do you even think about what's going on in Syria? And yet, here's a nation where 70,000 of their own citizens have died in a civil war just in the last two years. This one was a little closer to home. This happened up just outside of Waco, a former constable killed in road rage shooting. A man owns a record service. I guess another man got behind him and got angry because he couldn't pass him. And in his anger, he pulled over, took out a gun and shot him. He shot him about five or six times. Then realized what he did, called the police and stood there and waited for them to come arrested. Road rage, just absolute uncontrolled anger. Wouldn't you like a little more peace in your life?

When I ask that question, I don't mean, wouldn't you like more peace between Arabs and Jews? Wouldn't you like a little more peace between the Syrians who are fighting each other? Wouldn't you like a little more peace that people weren't afraid that the leader of Korea is going to send off a nuclear weapon and hit South Korea and start a world war? I mean, these are things we hear about all the time. But wouldn't you like some more peace in your life right now?

I mean, some more peace between you and your boss that's just hard to get along with or the people you work with. How about some more peace between you and your family members? How about more peace between you and your neighbors? How about just more peace that you feel peaceful?

It's amazing how many people you talk to. I don't care whether it's getting my haircut or just on the street or talking to people in my own congregation.

And I hear all the time, I just don't feel any peace anymore.

We just live in a conflicted society where people just don't feel peaceful.

Why can't we seem to find peace?

Why can't we seem to find more peace? I'm going to talk about some real solutions to having more peace in your life.

We're going to take about 45 minutes here. We're going to talk about a basic core problem. Then we're going to take a break. We have lots of snacks and things. Take a break and let you stretch your legs a little bit for about a half hour or so. Then we're going to come back and we're going to get into a solution.

We're going to talk about a problem and we're going to talk about a solution. Because there's a lot of solutions to this that we have to do, a lot of things we need to do.

But we're going to talk about a solution.

The problems between Arabs and Jews, the problems that are faced even in Eastern Europe today, as Russia begins to flex its muscles again, and people in Europe are afraid now that there's going to be maybe some kind of war between Eastern and Western Europe in the future. And of course we're all faced with the horrible terrorism that takes place as Islamic attack Christians.

And we look at those terrible things and yet the core issue, or the core problem, not the core issues, the issues are different, but the core problems in those conflicts are the same core problems you and I have when we have an argument with our husband or wife.

It's the same core problems we have when we can't get along with the person sitting next to us or we have conflict with people at work all the time.

So if we deal with these individual problems, that's the only way you'll deal with the larger problems.

This is why it's going to take Jesus Christ to come back to solve the bigger problems.

But you and I can, with God's help, begin to find peace within ourselves today.

I have a story that I've told many times because to me it's just an amazing story.

It was told by Dale Carnegie. Some of you are old enough to remember Dale Carnegie, who was a writer on how to make sales and how to do public speaking. And he always had great stories. And he told a story about a man. His name was Crowley, but he was known as Two-Gun Crowley.

Two-Gun Crowley was just a thug that lived in New York in the 1930s.

And in 1931, May 7, 1931, was one of the biggest shootouts in the history of the United States.

150 policemen surrounded an apartment complex and were shooting into the complex. Every once in a while there would be a gun fired from inside out, but they were all shooting in. They had some machine guns and rifles, and they were just firing away at this place.

They were coming down through the roof. And Crowley was in there. And they had him trapped. And what had happened was, it was just a few hours before, he and his girlfriend were necking in a car on Long Island. And a policeman pulled up behind them, walked over and said, may I see your license? He had pulled out a gun, emptied the gun into the policeman, then picked up the policeman's gun and shot him again.

And now he's surrounded, he's fighting off the police. They finally kicked the door down and came in, and they captured him. He had been wounded. And it's interesting that in those last few moments before he was captured, he started to write down on a piece of paper what he was thinking and what he was feeling. And he wrote down, and they had the blood-stained paper that he had written on, He's having a shootout with 150 police. He just killed a man. And then he said, basically, I'm a good person. Carnegie's reason we're telling this story was, all human beings, deep inside, sort of believe we're good people.

And so, if somebody else is a good people, I'm a good people, but you disagree with me, and since I know I'm a good people, guess what? You're not. You see, at the core of all conflict, I don't care what conflict we have, at the core of all conflict is the fact that human beings have a corrupted human nature. We are not what we were created to be.

At the core of every one of us is something that is wrong. Now, that's not a nice message. That's not a nice message. It's interesting, what we do beyond today, sometimes we'll actually watch other religious television programs, and we'll watch what they do. And we always have this discussion, but we can't do that.

We can't give a message that we're all okay, because the message of the Scripture is we're not. We're not all okay. So we realize that here we have a message that is going to be actually offensive to almost everybody who would ever see it. Because instead of telling them, look, you're okay, God loves you, and if you just pray, Jesus comes into your heart, and everything's okay. You'll get wealth, and have no problems, and it doesn't work that way.

The message is from God, I love you, and you're really messed up. That's the message from God. I love you, and you're all... And you say, yeah, I'm glad he's talking about somebody else here. I hope over there that guy gets this. No. We're all messed up.

I'm messed up. You're messed up.

We are not what God intended us to be.

The problem is, we're all like two-gun Crowley.

Oh, I might have done some wrong things, but deep inside, I'm a kind person who would do nobody any harm, except those who bother me.

Then I gun them down.

The peace that God wants is more than the absence of war.

It's an internal state of being, because of a relationship we have with Him.

Because when we get down to it, the reason you and I have conflict with each other is because we have internal conflict, and the reason we have internal conflict is because you and I are in conflict with God.

We're in conflict with our Creator.

That's why the Bible says that we are the enemies of God. Christ died for us while we were yet the enemies of God.

When Paul said that, he didn't mince any words, and you don't have to know, well, what did he really mean? He says it flat out.

He said, well, what's it mean in the Greek? Look it up in the Greek. It says the same thing. We were the enemies of God. It's a simple concept that without God turning to God, we are His enemy. He loves us, but we are His enemy.

Let's go back to the very beginning, Genesis 3.

Genesis 3.

You have a Bible. You can turn here. It's interesting how even in today's mainstream Christian religion, Genesis 1, 2, and 3 is looked upon more and more as a myth.

You know, when I was a child, almost all mainstream Protestant and Catholicism all believed that Genesis 1, 2, and 3 was real.

It was an actual explanation of how the world as we know it now was created.

Today, this is considered by most Christians, and a pretty good majority of people under the age of 40, this is considered to be a myth.

But this isn't really what had happened.

I like to watch the History Channel, and they recently had a program on ancient aliens showing how Genesis 1, 2, and 3 is actually explaining how aliens came from another planet and helped the evolution of human beings. And I thought, you talk about faith.

They used to put people in institutions for things like that, right?

And it wasn't just a program, it was a series of programs.

And the premise was Genesis 1, 2, and 3 is actually about aliens.

No, it's about God.

But you know when you're the enemy of God, you have to make up something to explain where we came from.

So you literally make it up.

This is where we are. This is the corrupted human nature we have.

Now the serpent, we believe that this was Satan.

We know in the New Testament it says the serpent is Satan.

Satan is a real being. He's an angel who rebelled against God, and he wants to destroy everything that God does.

So we can say Satan if we want to here.

This is an actual being. It's not just an animal.

The serpent was more cunning than any beast in the field, which the Lord God had made.

And he said to the woman, God indeed has said, you shall not eat of every tree of the gardener, has it not?

The woman said to the servant, we may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden, but the fruit of the tree which is in the midst, God has said, you shall not eat it.

You shall not touch it lest you die.

So while we all know this story, now let's go back and really look at this, because this is really important.

And this is why today, it's probably in some street in San Antonio, some teenager will shoot or knife another teenager.

Or this is why the divorce courts will be packed all this week long.

This is why parents and children will reach such a state that they will be estranged from each other for the rest of their lives.

This is why someone will quit their job in a rage or run someone off the road.

But they all come down to this. They all have the same problem. They're just different issues.

God told Adam and Eve, and Adam and Eve up to this point had never ever experienced anything bad.

They were in a good relationship with God and nothing bad had ever happened.

There was no envy, hatred, strife. There was nothing but good.

But they had been given free will, which means the ability to choose. You and I have the ability to choose. Today is as much about choice, your choice, as anything else.

They had the ability to choose. And he simply told them, here's a fruit. I'm going to make this simple for you.

Do what I say. You can eat everything but this.

Now, there doesn't seem to have been any... it wasn't a magical fruit. It doesn't seem to have been poisonous itself.

It just was. God said, don't eat this. I had no idea what the fruit was. You and I may eat it today all the time. I don't know.

Or God may have destroyed that tree. But the point was simple obedience, and everything is good.

Verse 4, the serpent said to the woman, You shall not surely die. For God knows that in the day that you eat it, your eyes will be opened. You will be like God, knowing good and evil. Now, that's a lie with a little bit of truth in it.

Most really good lies have some truth in it.

The lie was, ah, God doesn't mean that. God doesn't care. There's a problem here, and it's God's problem.

Because you will know good and evil. The truth is, they would now experience evil.

They would now experience evil.

So that when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit, and she ate. She gave it to her husband, and he ate.

Now, it's interesting. She saw it was good for food. She didn't look at it and say, Ooh, you know, that stuff will make me sick. It probably smelled good.

It seemed to be just like all the other fruit they could eat.

And it looked really nice, but it would make her wise.

She could now choose. She would know. She would be like God. You know, you think about it. Who's God? Right? Who is God to tell me I can't do this? Who is God to tell me I can do this? I should be able to choose myself, and that's the core of it. I should be able to choose. That's at the core of why there's conflict.

Or do I believe that God, do I love Him so much, and believe Him so much, and have so much faith that I will obey?

The idea that faith and obedience are two different things is a wrong concept.

Faith leads to obedience because I believe so I do.

She didn't believe. I should be able to choose.

And so she did, and immediately there was conflict.

Because what's interesting is immediately after this, if you read through the rest of chapter 3, Adam and Eve have conflict.

First of all, they have shame. They see each other's nakedness, not as something wonderful. They see it as something that must be hidden. They have a conflict with God. They actually hide from God. When God shows up and says, let's talk about this, what's Adam's first response? Now, my fault is the woman you gave me. It's her fault. You know, really, it's your fault because you gave her to me.

And the woman says, it's not my fault. It's Satan's fault. Satan doesn't even have a blame.

Conflict started, and they were kicked out of Eden. They didn't walk out of Eden. They were kicked out of Eden, and that conflict started just between them and between their children. What happened to two of the first human beings born out of Eden? One brother killed another one. The conflict had reached that level that murder was taking place. We've been doing that ever since. This is the core problem. If you want more peace in your life, you will not get it from watching the news.

You won't get it from a political party.

You're only going to get it because you turn back to your God.

And what you do, you're going to find there's a lot of things in your life you're going to have to change. We have bought into a way of thinking that creates nothing but conflict. You can't totally escape conflict in this life, but we're talking about peace. I wish you could escape conflict. We're going to tell you in a minute why you can't. God sent Jesus Christ to this earth to pay the penalty for our sins.

Because you and I are already guilty before God and we're worthy of death. That's not a nice message to give either. Who wants to hear that?

But you're never going to find peace until you accept that. Let's look at Colossians. Let's go to the New Testament now. Colossians 1.

Colossians 1. Sorry you get no health or wealth gospel today, but you do get the truth.

Speaking here of Jesus Christ, that's the context in which Paul's writing here.

Verse 19 says, For it pleased the Father that in him all the fulness should dwell, and by him to reconcile all things to himself. And others bring things back into a relationship. That's what reconcile means. To bring back into a relationship. To reconcile all things to himself by him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of his cross. And you, that's you, that's me, you'll put your name there. And Bob, put your name right there.

Who once were alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now he has reconciled.

Peace through the blood of Jesus Christ.

God would not accept us the way we were. He loved us, but he would not accept us the way we were.

You know, how many times have you heard Jesus? He brings you to God, he accepts you just the way you are. No, what God says is, I love you, but I want to change you. Because you're actually pretty messed up.

The real message from God is, I love you, but you're messed up. And I want to change you. And I want to forgive you.

Christ came and died for every one of us and was resurrected, not only so we can be forgiven, but it's that we can come into peace with God. We can come into relationship with God. God isn't an idea. God isn't just a song we sing about. God is real in our lives every day. Every day when we pray, every day when we do whatever we do, God is real. That's what Jesus Christ came to do. But you can't get there by staying the same.

That's reality. That's the core Christian message.

Now, that's a very positive message.

It's very positive because God loves us. It's very positive because Christ did come and die for us. It's very positive that He has the power to make us change.

The negative in it is, but I don't want to change.

The negative in it is, but I like myself because deep inside I have a kind heart, and I wouldn't hurt anybody.

Deep inside, there's really not a whole lot of difference between you and me and two-gun Crowley sometimes. We just don't pick up the gun and shoot somebody.

But we deal with the same inner corrupted nature.

So we look at our individual sins, and we look at those, and we add them up. God looks at us and says, all those sins are a symptom that deep inside you are my enemy. And I wish to make you my child.

That's the gospel. That's why Jesus Christ came.

And that's why experiencing the way of peace is more, and has to be more than just, some religious experience.

How do we find what is called in the Bible the way of peace? Well, there's the first thing we must do, and this is going to get us down the road. And like I said, after the break, we're going to come back to something specific. Let's start with something general, then we're going to get something specific. Isaiah 55.

Isaiah 55.

I just, I really like the way that King James translates this.

I've been writing a book on the 200 years process it took to translate the Bible into English. And it's a very fascinating process, how they created different translations, and then found there were problems with one and had... And so they kept trying to get closer and closer to the original Greek and Hebrew. King James was really a step forward in getting it close, and yet it was readable.

Now if you translate Greek word for word, it's not readable in English. Hebrew's better, but Greek's not. And so I really like the way King James translates this. Ho! Today we say, hey! It's a shout. Hey, hey, hey! Listen up, listen up. This is real important. Now this is God saying this. Everyone who thirsts comes to the waters, and you who have no money come buy and eat. Yes, come buy wine and milk without money, without price.

Why do you spend money for when it's not bread? Why are you... This is God talking here. Why are you spending your life, your resources, your time, your emotions on worthless things? Worthless relationships. Worthless material things. Sometimes we spend all our energy, all our effort in a job. I wish I had a dollar. We should work hard. Working hard is part of the Scripture. I wish I had a dollar for every man I've sat and talked to who's about 65 years old and says, I sacrificed my family, I sacrificed my health, I sacrificed my well-being, I sacrificed everything for my career, and now I get a gold watch, and I get enough money to live the rest of my life in my house.

But that's it. That's it. That's all I have for this. And here God says, why are you wasting your lives? And your wages, middle of verse 2, for what does not satisfy. Listen carefully to me, God says, and eat what is good, and let your soul delight itself in abundance. And climb your ear and come to me. Here, and your soul shall live. Your soul shall live. You want life? You want life where you're not caught up in turmoil?

People always think, well, if I had fame, or if I had money, or if I had things, or if I had the right boyfriend, or you know, you just add all this stuff up. But look at people who get those things that are absolutely miserable. Right? You could actually have all kinds of blessings and still be miserable. You can have all kinds of blessings and still be miserable. There's lots of people like that.

You and I live in a country like that. Because people confuse fun with happiness. Fun is very temporary. Very temporary. It's great. I like fun, too. This week, I was driving to work with a... We did some television programs this week, and I was driving to work with one of the television crew up in Ohio. We passed the big sign that said, Coney Island, which is like Six Flag. He looked at me and said, now let me tell you, he said, I want an honest answer. If you had your way, would we do television today, or let's take the whole crew and just go to Coney Island?

I said, Coney Island? Then I looked at him and said, I don't think God would be too happy. You know, eventually you have to come home. You have to leave Coney Island. He said, yeah, I know that. He says, for a moment there, I thought, wouldn't it be fun to go to Coney Island? Now there's a time to do that, right? There's a time to do that. But here, God says, come to me. This is the first point that's going to lead into our second point after the break.

You will never find peace, ever. Real inner peace, until you are no longer alienated to God. And that means you're going to have to do something very difficult. And it's not a one-time thing. I wish this was. I find in my life, I drift away, and I've got to go back to this on a regular basis. On a regular basis, I have to go back to God and say, I need to acknowledge my thirst and hunger for you.

I need to acknowledge my absolute spiritual poverty. I have nothing to bring to this relationship, except a willingness to try to love you and try to obey you. Our absolute need for God. At a core level, it's not just an intellectual understanding, but at the core of every emotion you have. You have to feel that need for God. Sometimes we feel a need for a church more than our feel a need for God. So a church can become a social club without God being involved. A church is supposed to be a very close-knit group of people.

But you can create that by creating a new political party. You can create a new political party, and you can have all kinds of unity for a while. Or let's just all go cheer. I'll tell you what, you want to get some great, great camaraderie? Let's all go to a Spurs game. The person you don't even know sitting beside you, you'll stand up and give a high five to when Tony Parker makes a basket.

You'll hug people you don't even know. Have you seen the commercial where these two men are hugging each other because they're watching a football game or something? And then the wife walks up and says, Who is that? I don't know. But for two minutes they were best friends. We're going to come together as a people because we have one common experience. We need God so much that we're willing to give our lives to Him and share it with other people who are doing the same thing. And you will never find peace until you start here. The absolute poverty every one of us have, spiritual poverty without God.

Once we start down that road, God can do amazing things. He'll do amazing things in our life. You can see the one thing He won't do is He won't take away your free will. So you have to choose to do that. You have to choose to acknowledge that poverty, that weakness, that nothingness without Him.

If Jesus Christ Himself, the Son of God, who lived forever in Heaven before He came and lives forever now after His resurrection, if He said, I can do nothing of myself, then how much more is that true of you and me? Then that's where we start. Jesus on the Sermon on the Mount said, Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be what? This is very interesting. What will you be to be a peacemaker? Someone who loves peace, tries to make peace. Sometimes you can't. Some people won't let you. But that's not what we're talking about today. We're talking about the inner peace. How do you... To be a peacemaker, what do you become?

What does God promise peacemakers? I promise you a big mansion. I promise you lots of cars. I promise you that you'll have a good job and make lots of money. I promise you that you'll never get sick. I promise you that your children will always be perfect. Is that the promise we get? The promise we get is, Jesus said, Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God.

We will have a relationship with God as a child has with a father. That is what He gives us. That's what He is offering us. That's what He's offering everyone in this room. Now, blessed are the peacemakers. And then Jesus makes this comment that seems to be an absolute contradiction of that statement.

Let's go to Matthew 10. Matthew 10. So this is the first thing we must do, and then we're going to talk about something specific you can do as a step in this. You have to go acknowledge this to God. You have to ask Him to let you see this. You have to actually go to God and say, Father, help me see that without You I am nothing.

But please do it in mercy. You don't want to end up like Job, okay? But you have to go ask it. Help me understand that before You what You want me to be and what I am not. Because God wants you to be His child. That's what He wants. See, I can tell you what God wants on certain things.

People ask me, what is it God wants? And a lot of times I say, I don't know. You have to ask Him. But I can tell you there are certain things He wants. So one of them is He wants you to be His child. He wants that. Because He says it. So He wants you to faithfully follow Him, to love Him, to respond to Him, and let Him do His work. Let Him do what He can do in you. Here in Matthew 10.34.

He sends His disciples out, and He gives them all these instructions of what they are going to do, what's going to happen to them. And in the middle of these instructions He makes this remarkable statement to a group of men that He had already told, Be peacemakers. So go be peacemakers.

We think, okay, I'll go be peacemakers and then I'll always have peace. If you go to be a peacemaker, you are still going to have conflict, and there's a reason why. Because you have to understand something. This is not God's world. We are still being kicked out of Eden. And if God calls people back to Him, the rest of the world has not come back yet.

They don't come back to Christ's returns. So that means you're going to try to have peace with God and be a peacemaker in a time of constant conflict. Because Satan loves conflict. He loves it. He thinks it's good. It brings out the best in everybody. You know, things like hate, greed, violence, the good things. That's how he sees life. Jesus tells these men, and He says, I'm going to send you out, you're going to preach the gospel.

I want you to go around, you're going to heal the sick, you're going to do miracles. These guys are going to be pumped up. And then He says to them, do not think that they came to bring peace on earth. Now, this is the Prince of Peace. They knew at this time He was the Messiah. The Prince of Peace, the Messiah is saying, no, I don't think I came to bring peace. No, He does the second time. He actually did the first time. He actually did the first time. We'll talk about that in the second half. But it's not global peace yet.

In other words, the United States does not have the power to stop terrorism.

The United States does not have the power to stop the global things. The United States does not have the power in our society to stop the violence that's going to keep getting worse and worse inside our own society. Our government can't do that. Holy Jesus Christ can do that.

We will fail. As a nation, we will fail. I don't like that any more than you do. But the problem is spiritual and a nice constitution, which is actually brilliant. It's a brilliant constitution. It can't solve the spiritual problem. Only God can do that. Having lots of money can't solve it. We're the wealthiest nation in the history of the world.

We're also one of the most violent countries on the face of the earth.

Because the money won't solve it. We think money will solve everything. No, it won't. Because the core is a spiritual problem. Look what Jesus says here in verse 35. For I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a man's enemies will be those of his own household.

Whoa! These guys are going to be thinking, boy, that's good news. We're supposed to preach the gospel of the good news, and you're telling us, well, I'm going to send you out here, but basically people are going to hate you, people are going to dislike what you do, people are not going to like what you teach or how you live, and they're even going to be some of your best friends and some of your own family.

Verse 37, Jesus says, He who loves his father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me, and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake will find it.

He is calling people today to his Father. God is calling people today to be reconciled to God and then live the way he intended human beings to live in the midst of a broken, corrupt society of people who are all messed up.

And we're still messed up, but we can be healed. We can be in the process of being healed. Christianity is about perfect people. For those that are visiting today, I'm going to give you a little secret today. We have a congregation here of about 160 people, and not one of us is perfect.

We'll just let you know ahead of time.

But we're being healed. But we're being healed. We're moving in a certain direction. Matthew 11, verse 28.

So we say, wow, my life doesn't work, the world around me doesn't work. But now I find out God's calling me to basically tell me, eh, it doesn't work. So I'm going to teach you how it works, and it's going to be tough. Because the more you learn to be a follower of Jesus Christ, a true Christian, the more you're going to find, oh, wait a minute, I'm in a world that doesn't work.

And now you're out of step with those who don't... You're out of step, you're in dysfunction with the dysfunction. You're out of step with everything that doesn't work.

Christianity is hard, but boy are the benefits good. And the retirement plan is fantastic.

Jesus says here, Matthew 11, 28. Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy-laid, and I will give you rest. 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. Today is about rest for your souls. Rest at the deep core of who you are. That's what it means there by soul, at the very core of who you are as a person. Not just what you think, but even how you feel. Rest. Do you want rest? God has called you to rest with him.

How do we find that rest?

Well, we first turn to God because we understand that we're not at rest. And then there's a whole lot of things he does in our lives, and in the second half we're going to talk about one of them. What we want to do now, let's take a break to about... We're going to probably need some time. There's a fellowship room over here. There looks to be about 150 to 170 people here. So, take a little while. There's a fellowship room over here, and there's lots of... people have made cakes and cookies and pies. A bunch of things aren't good for you. So, we... No. There's some good food, and there's some coffee, and there's some drinks and tea and juice and different things. So, we want to get... let you have a break, because we know it's a long time to sit for 45 minutes, and then another 45 minutes. So, we'll take the break. Let's take at least a half hour. So, let's come back. Let's give you a little extra time. Let's come back at noon. Okay? That'll give you a little... about a half hour. Come back at noon, and then we'll end up finished with the last 45 minutes. We'll discuss one of the ways in which you can find rest in this weary world.