Tony Evans - Entering God's Rest
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In Hebrews 4, amid spiritual weariness and cultural pressure, believers are urged to enter God's promised Sabbath rest—not mere physical cessation, but a deep, faith-filled confidence in Christ's finished work; by ceasing self-effort and trusting His provision, we experience soul-refreshment, inheritance realization, and victory over life's wilderness, avoiding Israel's failure through diligent obedience to His Word.
We’ve been talking about the names of the Holy Spirit, the names or the synonyms given to him in scripture. And today I wanna talk about the Holy Spirit as the rest-giver. You and I when we were born, picked up from our parents, not only our skin tone and type and racial identity, and hair texture, and the other things that are part of the physical DNA, but they also transferred to us a sin nature. A nature that is prone to rebel against the standard of God. It’s built in and it is known as indwelling sin, it is inside your human nature that has transferred it to your damaged soul that manifests itself by the activity of our bodies. So your body does what your soul says, your soul does what your human spirit has allowed and since the human spirit at birth is affected and infected by the virus of indwelling sin, the soul becomes distorted, and the body winds up doing stuff is not supposed to do. The question is, how do we address this infection that we all have?
The Need for Rest in Life's Journey
Now, most of the time we try to manage it. We try to do external reforming of it, but then most of us just try to hide it. We try to camouflage it with the way we look, the money we have, the car we drive, the place we live in. We try to hide the fact that we have been infected. But the infection just keeps showing up. It shows up in anger we can’t control. Language that we shouldn’t be using that spurts out all the time. Addictions that take over, that we keep hidden in secret, discouragement and that rules our lives because of this infection. You may think you’re okay, but your soul has been distorted, and it comes up with all kind of configurations.
Verse 18 says three words I don’t want you to miss. He says, «But we all,» so this applies to you and me where you are, how you are, to transform you from there, to where God wants you to be. He says over and over again in verse 17 and 18, «The Lord is the Spirit and the Spirit is the Lord». He says that over and over. So the name of the Spirit we want to focus on, is the name the Lord, because he says, «The Spirit is the Lord». Now the Lord refers to Jesus Christ. The problem is, as we said last time, Jesus Christ physically is in heaven, he’s not physically on earth. But he is spiritually in you if you become a Christian. So the Spirit is the Lord who is physically in heaven, but is spiritually in you. You have spiritual Jesus, and spiritual Jesus is in you by means of his agent, the Holy Spirit.
The Rest That Remains
So if you have the Holy Spirit, you have Jesus operating in you because the Lord is the Spirit. He says, «Where the Spirit is, there is liberty,» verse 17 says. Liberty means release from anything or anyone who’s holding you illegitimately hostage. So if you are being illegitimately bound by something or someone, by some habit or some circumstance, by some attitude or some action, the reason you have the Spirit who is Jesus inside of you, is to release you. So there is a release mechanism operating inside of you, «For where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty». How does this spirit begin to release you from the infection that we all have? How does it begin to set us free? «By transforming us,» verse 18 says. He says, «We are being transformed».
God’s goal is not external reformation or infection management, his goal is spiritual transformation. The only way you know that you are growing in your Christian life is that you are changing. If you are not changing, it means you are not growing, even though you might be shouting. Until there is change, what he calls transformation, spiritual development is not occurring because the infection is still operating 'cause you’re not changing. He says in 1 Thessalonians 5:23, «You are transformed from your spirit to your soul, to your body». Let’s review, the anointing the presence of the spirit, invades your human spirit. The Holy Spirit when you’re converted invades your human spirit. Your spirit was given to you to give you the capacity to communicate with God. When you accept Christ, the Holy Spirit, whom Jesus sent, infiltrates your human spirit. That is the Anointing, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in your human spirit. Your human spirit, that’s now been anointed by the Holy Spirit, is inside your soul. Your soul is your self-identity. It’s your personhood. The reason you know you exist is because you have a soul. You lose the soul, the body doesn’t function, because the body is dependent upon the soul to express life. The Holy Spirit enters the human spirit, making the human spirit alive to God. The human spirit exists in the soul so that the soul can get data from the human spirit that’s been anointed by the Holy Spirit, which feeds the human spirit information to distribute to the soul.
Transformation from the Inside Out
When the soul gets the information from the human spirit, that has been illuminated by the Holy Spirit, the soul feeds that data to the body. When the body gets the data from the soul that is received from the human spirit that has been anointed by the Holy Spirit, the body now functions differently, because it has new data that has been in it. The reason why we have problems with our bodies is we have infection in our soul. But the reason we have infection in our souls is because we have a human spirit that’s been contaminated by sin. But when the Anointing enters the human spirit, because the Anointing is perfect, the human spirit is now perfect, because it has been anointed. So, you’ve got a perfect resident in your human spirit that now wants to give information to your infected soul. And when the Holy Spirit, that now invades your human spirit, sends out data that is received, adopted in your soul, your soul begins to get healed.
When the soul is getting disinfected because of the infectedness, due to the expression of the human spirit that’s been invaded by the Anointing of the Holy Spirit, it then tells the body what to do. It tells the mind what to think. It tells the eyes what to see. It tells the ears what to hear. It tells the leg where to move, because it’s got new information about how to function. So, if you want to fix your body, you’ve got to clean up your soul; but if you want to clean up your soul, it’s gotta get information from your spirit; but to get information correctly from your spirit, it’s gotta be inhabited by the Anointing. So, that is how the Anointing flows. The Anointing is divine messaging that you have now been qualified to receive, because the Holy Spirit has now entered into your human spirit. So, that is the concept. It authorizes you. It authorizes you to receive information from heaven for living your life on earth. It is a divine authorization for that.
The Veil and Unveiled Faces
The passage I would love for you to read this week is 1 Corinthians chapter 2, verse 9 through chapter 3, verse 3. Okay? So, go all the way to chapter 3, verse 3. Read that once a day every day, but I want to go over it with you now. Here it is, verse 9. «But it is written, things which eyes have not seen and ear have not heard, and which have not entered into the heart of man, all that God has prepared for those who love him. For to us God revealed them through his Spirit». He’s not talking about heaven. He’s talking about earth, 'cause he says God has already revealed it. So, listen to this. When the Anointing is turned on and turned up, you get to see things eyes cannot see.
That’s what verse 9 says. When the Anointing is turned on and turned up, you get to hear things ears have not heard. When the Anointing is turned on and turned up, you get to think things that you would not normally think. In other words, the Anointing is taking you beyond the physical. It is showing you what your eyes can’t see. It is letting you hear what your ears don’t audibly pick up. It is letting you perceive what you didn’t normally think on your own. It is taking you out of your physical into a spiritual reality, so that the physical is now perceiving, experiencing, seeing, and hearing things that is outside of its normal physical realm. Or as I like to say, if all you see is what you see, you do not see all there is to be seen.
The Anointing Brings Divine Insight
If you are limited to your five senses, then you will not get divine messaging; because even though you are a Christian, the dimmer switch is off, or it’s so low, you can’t see the light shining. So, there must be the ability to see beyond the physical: the eye, the ear, and your own human mind. Look at what he goes on to say in 1 Corinthians 2. He says, «We receive them from the Spirit, for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God». Remember, the Anointing is the Spirit. The Spirit has a search engine. Google. The Spirit Googles God. It knows the deep things of God. In the next verse, he says, «No one knows the thoughts of a man, except the spirit of a man. No one knows the thoughts of God, except the Spirit, the Anointing, the Spirit of God».
So, the Spirit of God has a search engine. It says he searches the deep things of God. So, he can go deep like a deep-sea diver into the thinking of God, and his job is to transfer God’s thoughts to your life, just like when you Google something on Google, and you pull up stuff you didn’t know to transfer to your understanding. So, we have exposed to us the World Wide Web, but believers have exposed to them the knowledge of God, and he says, and it’s the job of the Spirit. So, let me clarify something before we go any deeper. The job of the Spirit is to reach into the mind of God and transfer to the thoughts, sights, and ears of the believer. His job is to take truth and make it your experience, to bring it, to make it your reality, not just for information, but for transformation.
The Natural, Spiritual, and Carnal Believer
Now notice what he goes on and says in 1 Corinthians chapter 2. Verse 12, «Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God». Here’s what I like about the Anointing. It doesn’t cost you anything. Once you accept Jesus Christ, it’s freely given to you. So, it’s available to every believer, and it’s available for free. You don’t have to buy the Anointing, okay? «Now, which things we speak, not in words taught by human wisdom». Keep that in your mind, because that’s gonna be key in a moment. You don’t get this by secular understanding. You don’t get this by popular viewpoint. Once you introduce human wisdom, you’ve turned down the dimmer switch, and the light will not shine, because you’ve compromised the data. You put a virus in the programming.
And so he says, «not taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words». So, the Spirit of God dips into the mind of God, since he is the third member of the Godhead, and he brings to the mind of man, or into the spirit of a man, that which he cannot see physically, cannot hear audibly, and would never think naturally, but he has revealed them unto us. That’s what the Anointing does. Now, here’s the issue. Verse 14, «The natural man receives not the Spirit of God». Let me put it another way. The non-Christian does not have the Anointing. Now he goes to another person. He says in verse 15, «But he who is spiritual appraises all things, yet he himself is appraised by no one. For who has known the mind of the Lord that he will instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ».
The natural man doesn’t have a receiver. The spiritual man not only has a receiver; he keeps his receiver on. The spiritual man can appraise or evaluate all things, because a spiritual person sends everything through a spiritual grid. You are only a spiritual Christian if you consistently send all data through a spiritual grid. So, that means you keep the dimmer up all the time, because everything is going through the grid of spiritual words, combined with spiritual thoughts. And guess what he says you have in verse 16? You have the mind of Christ. Do you know what it is to have the mind of Christ? It means Jesus is thinking his thoughts in your brain, by means of the Holy Spirit, who is the Anointing. And what thoughts is Jesus thinking in you? Thoughts that eyes have not seen, ears have not heard, and thoughts you wouldn’t have thought about thinking about, even if you would’ve thought to think it, because he’s bringing his thoughts to your brain, because you have the mind of Christ.
The Carnal Christian and Wasted Growth
Then there’s a third group. Chapter 3, verses 1 to 3, he says, «And I, brethren», brethren, you’re Christians, «could not speak to you as a spiritual man but as men of flesh, as infants in Christ. I gave you milk to drink and not solid food, for you were not able to receive it. Indeed, even now, you are not able, for you are still fleshly». And he concludes the verse by saying, «You walk like mere men». You walk like a natural man. Your life is not any different than the non-Christian. Paul went to Corinth in 50 AD. He wrote back to them, 1 Corinthians, in 55 AD. So, there was a 5-year gap between when he went there and led them to Christ, when they got the Anointing, and when he writes them 5 years later. He says, «After 5 years, you ought to be operating on the Anointing by now. After 5 years, you ought to be spiritual and consistent with keeping the dimmer switch up». But he says, «After 5 years, you still walking like you’ve never been saved in the first place».
So, if you’re here, and you’ve been saved for 5 years or more, and you’re still not walking in the Spirit, you’re still not living in the Anointing, but you’re still walking like mere men, you’ve wasted 5 years of spiritual growth. In fact, in the book of Hebrews, he condemns them, because they’ve been saved for 30 years and still don’t know how to walk in the Anointing. You can be in church for 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, you can spend your life in church and never get divine programming, because you were not walking in the Anointing. So, the Anointing is the role of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer to illuminate divine insight into your sight, your ears, and your thoughts. But he says you can’t do that if you are operating on human wisdom.
Abiding in the Anointing (1 John 2)
Now back to 1 John chapter 2. He says to them, «Here’s what I want you to do. If you want the Anointing to be turned on and turned up, here’s what I want you to do». He says in verse 24, «As for you, let that abide in you, which you’ve heard from the beginning». Verse 27, «As for you, the Anointing which you have received from him abides in you, and you have no need for anyone to teach you». But as his Anointing teaches you all things, and is true and not a lie, just as it has taught you, you abide in him. Do you see that word «abide,» the many times I read the word «abide»? We saw that last week, too. It means you have to hang out in the Anointing. You can’t visit it on Sunday. You must hang out. Abide means to hang out. You must hang out in the Anointing.
That is, you must hang out in a divinely-oriented perspective. When you begin to ask the questions, «What does God say, and what does God think? Holy Spirit, reveal it to me,» you have turned on the receiver, for it to bring down the programming, to illuminate the mind and the thoughts. Notice what he says. He says, «You have the anointing, and you do not have need for anyone to teach you». Now, that’s interesting. It’s interesting, number one, 'cause he’s teaching them right now. He’s writing to them, teaching them about the Anointing. It’s interesting, because the Bible says God gives teachers to the church. It’s interesting, because Bible tells you to come and to study the Word of God in the collective worship, which includes teaching. It’s interesting, because Paul says to Timothy to teach the Word and to preach the Word in season and out of season.
So, why would he say, «If you have the Anointing, you don’t need anyone to teach you, for the Anointing teaches you». Ah, okay. Well, remember who he’s dealing with. He’s dealing with the antichrists who are lying to them. So, let me tell you what he’s saying when he says, «You don’t have a need for anyone to teach you». He is saying, «You no longer need to be led by secular thinking, secular information, and secular instructors. You no longer need to use the world for your data. For your spiritual data, you don’t first go to the world. You don’t need them to teach you how to live, how to work, how to have a family, how to be single, how to have, you don’t need them. Start with me, because then the Anointing will teach you».
That’s why the psalmist prayed in Psalm 119:18, «Open my eyes that I might see». Many of us are being attacked physically, and we don’t know what to do, 'cause we don’t see anything spiritually. All we see is what we see. And if all you see is what you see, you’ll never see all that God is doing, because you don’t have the eyes to do it. But here’s how the Holy Spirit works. See, I said, when I preach, I give you national news. I’m giving you cable news, because what I’m giving you is something general, applies to everybody. But when you have the Anointing, the Holy Spirit gives you local news. He gives you news for your life, for your situation, for your problem, for your pain, for your needs.
Because you need one kind of program, you need another kind of program, you need another kind of program, you need another kind of program, you have a different job, you’ve got a different family, your kids are different, your finances are different. So, you need local programming for the general problem. I’m giving you cable news, but you have the Anointing, and I can’t answer all of your specific answers, but you have Somebody inside who’ll give you thoughts you didn’t think, let’s you see what you couldn’t see, bring ideas you didn’t have, and you already have them, because you all have them, he says. You already have the Anointing. Give the Anointing a chance. Put it first. Make it priority. Take the written Word, put it in the face of the Holy Spirit, do it on the front end, and let’s see what programming God brings up into your life.
The Anointing in the Rocky Mountains
In the midst of the beauty of the Rocky Mountains, I do have a problem. I’m surrounded by that which blocks me being able to receive an Internet or satellite signal. In other words, my surroundings are getting in the way of me being able to pick up something from out there. God never wants our surroundings on earth to get in the way of receiving messages from heaven. That’s why he’s given every believer what the Bible calls the Anointing.
The Anointing is that work of the Holy Spirit, where he delivers heavenly messages to our earthly environment. It is this connection, as we apply with the Spirit, that God can speak specifically into our earthly circumstances, situations, challenges, difficulties, and need for clarity and guidance to show us which way God wants us to move and how he wants us to take the next step in life. Don’t leave home without it. Yes, we’re surrounded by the rocks and boulders of earth, but don’t lose sight of heaven because you leave the Holy Spirit behind. The Holy Spirit, the Anointing is the key to keep the messages of heaven reaching you, no matter where you’re situated on earth.