Rest and Restitution | Giles Stevens | Jun 28, 2025

Hallelujah. I want to share with you tonight, going straight into my word about rest. I want to take you from a place of rest to restitution. I don't know if the guys have a few slides I gave them. Tyler is a bit late, but we're gonna be talking here. I want to show you that restitution is God's promise for each one of us.

He hasn't forgotten about you. Don't worry. Amen. But the key to get restitution is to enter the rest. So when we rest, we get restituted. Are you seeing my play on words here? And so we don't get restituted by trying, by, struggling by, um, you know, uh, using our own effort. We get restituted when we rest in the work of Christ, when we look to what he's done rather to what we've done.

And just to remind you, I'm giving you an introduction and then I'm gonna give you five quick signs to see if you are at rest. So you'll be able to see if you are in the right place tonight. Amen. But just to remind us to lay a foundation, there's three things we've been learning about restitution up until now.

First of all, we've learned that it is the heart of the gospel. Uh, God wants to rest his people, not because we deserve it, but because he's such a good and loving, and caring and wonderful God. Thank you for your amen. And there are so many stories in the Bible. Is everybody understanding my English? Give me a wave or a thumbs up, or, you know, have mercy.

No. So I think most people are understanding everybody else has got, uh, earphones. Is that right? Okay. So there are many stories in the scripture that show the principle of restitution. One of them that came to my mind earlier is the story of Naiman. Naman, as you remember, had leprosy a terrible disease that literally made his skin and his flesh grow old and become insensitive and even fall from his body.

Terrible thing. You remember the story. He was healed when he dipped seven times in. Jordan in Israel, who remembers that story. But what's interesting, the Bible doesn't say that he was just healed, but that when he came out of the water, his skin was like a baby child. So in other words, it was more than a healing.

It was a miracle because God rero the clock to give him skin as if he was just a baby boy. That's restitution. He got much more than what Healing said he got. Uh, 10 times more, seven times more. You understanding the principle? Think of Joseph now. A great story too. He started off in his father Jacob's house as the favorite son.

He went through all that trouble because his brothers betrayed him because Potiphar's wife falsely accused him and he passed through 13 years of suffering. In prisons and as a slave. But at the end of it, he wasn't restored to Jacob's house. He was restituted to Pharaoh's house. He didn't just become Jacob's favorite son.

He became the most powerful man on the face of the Earth's favorite son, Pharaoh, king of Egypt. Are you hearing what I'm saying? So you can see restitution is more than just being restored to your former place. We have all sinned and fallen from the glory or the standards of God. That's what scripture says, but in the salvation package in Christ Jesus, he doesn't just take us back to our former position in Adam before we fell.

He actually takes us to a much higher place and puts us now in Christ Jesus, not in the Garden of Eden, but in heavenly places far above principalities and powers. Adam. Remember he had the glory of God in him, but we, excuse me, upon him to cover him, but we have the glory of God in in us. Adam walked with God in the cool of the evening.

We walk with God 24 hours a day. Adam had God come and visit him. We now have God dwelling in us. Adam could always make a mistake and fall. We may fall, but we can never now be detached or thrown out of the presence of God because of the blood of Jesus Christ. Our position is far greater, far superior than Adam's.

That's restitution. So restitution means that your future is so much better than your past. I don't know what your past was, but I'm here to say God in his glory, in his goodness, wants to do wonderful things for you. I was just meditating during the worship time, as we do, as our minds are flooded with the high thoughts of heaven.

I. And it was as if I could see the father and the son and the spirit planning out mankind and, oh, remember, they can't be surprised by anything. Satan is far beneath their feet. I believe that they created us with this enormous heart to see us have the most glorious, glorious life. Because they are glorious, glorious beings.

Oh, with what joy they made us. Oh, with what joy they redeemed us. And now will ute us say amen. So some of the scriptures, we've based this message restitution on Joel chapter 2 25. Pastor Ralph spoke about it yesterday. I will repay you for the lo. The years the locusts have eaten. You will have plenty to eat until you are full.