“Wherefore (as the Holy Ghost saith, To day if ye will hear his voice, Harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness: When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my works forty years. Wherefore I was grieved with that generation, and said, They do alway err in their heart; and they have not known my ways. So I sware in my wrath, They shall not enter into my rest.” (Hebrews 3:7-11).
What does it mean to enter God’s rest. We read of the children of Israel failing to enter God’s rest because of unbelief, “So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief” (Hebrews 3:19). God had desired them to enter it and for this reason He rescued them out the land of bondage (Egypt) in order to take them to that rest. But they did not go in because they did not believe.
The story of Exodus is a type of our salvation in Christ. We too were rescued from bondage to sin and death, and God now tells us, as He told them then, to enter into His rest. But lots of Christians are doing anything but resting. In fact the majority of Christians I meet are quite restless. To quote one, “I believe I was more at rest as a lost person”.
What is the problem? The writer of Hebrews tells us that we do not enter God’s rest because we do not believe in what God says. Remember, God’s Word is true NO MATTER WHAT. “For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12).
The reason some people don’t believe there is a rest is because the cares of this world choke out our belief in God’s Word (Mat. 13:22). We say, “Rest! Who can rest?” “With my schedule, the kids, the job, the bills!! Who can rest with all of that happening? “Are you kidding me! Who can rest?”
Well, God would not offer his rest if it wasn’t possible to enter it would He? No, I don’t think so. So then how can we enter His rest? First of all let us understand that this rest is not from all those things we mentioned above. You may have a job, kids, bills, trouble, problems, and all those things which represent life here on earth. Entering God’s rest doesn’t mean a life free from these things, Jesus said we WILL have tribulation (John 16:33). NO, GOD’S PEACE IS NOT ESCAPE FROM TRIBULATION, BUT PEACE IN THE MIDST OF TRIBULATION.
It is the peace which is born of FAITH. Faith that takes God at His Word and declares it to be true not matter what!
If you look at the characters of the Bible you will see real people going through real problems. That’s why God had men write about what happened to them so that we could have encouragement in our own circumstances.
“For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope” (Romans 15:4).
We have hope and encouragement because we see that even though they had some very rough times, God brought them through it all. Even though at the time it might have looked bleak, and the long-range outlook wasn’t much better. But they believed that God would bring them through it all and He did.
Of course there were some who didn’t believe and God said, “So I sware in my wrath, They shall not enter into my rest” (Hebrews 3:11).
God was very stern with them, but that is because He was making an example of them to illustrate a very important fact. That being that faith is the necessary requirement to appropriate God’s rest because, “Without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him” (Hebrews 11:6).
We forget sometimes that God created man for HIS pleasure. “Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created” (Revelation 4:11). We tend to think sometimes that God is there for OUR pleasure. God lays on mankind the requirement to be pleasing to Him. The only way we can be pleasing to Him is by “the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20). His faith which becomes OURS when we have entered into relationship with Him.
This is where we discover where God’s rest is. It is appropriated by TRUE FAITH. Faith is not just “believing IN God”, even the demons believe that way. No, real faith is BELIEVING GOD. It is knowing what God has said, and considering it to be absolutely true no matter what the circumstances, no matter what the cost. Then just as important we yield over ourselves to God’s truth so that it might take fruit in our life.
You know the story of David, how God helped him when Saul tried to pin him to a wall, and subsequently chased him into the wilderness? Or Daniel in the lions den, how God shut their mouth? Or of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego, how God protected them in the fiery furnace? These examples as well as many others show us the faithfulness of God when someone has entered His rest and have placed their faith in Him.
All these people experienced God’s deliverance because they entered God’s rest. They ceased from all struggle and abandoned to Him completely. And it was not a conditional trust. You know that kind that says, “Oh yes I trust God absolutely!” Then under their breath they add, “So long as everything turns out all right!”
Remember Daniel’s response, “If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king” (Daniel 3:17). It was the response of trust, “If God wants to save us He will for He is able. but whether He does or doesn’t we still will not pay homage to your demons!” That’s real faith, which is an unconditional attitude of trust, which Job put as, “ Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him” (Job 13:15). To be sure God will do the very best thing appropriate to our circumstance. But the result is up to Him, we have only to trust and obey.
“For he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his” (Hebrews 4 10).
Jesus as our example followed this same pattern of dependence, “Who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared; Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered; And being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him” (Hebrews 5:7-9).
He trusted in His Father’s will and plan for his life, and this is exactly the key for us to enjoy the rest of God. That is a capitulation to God sovereignty. To know that God knows our circumstances, “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end” (Jeremiah 29:11). Whether we got where we are by choice or design, God know’s our circumstance and He is working for our ultimate good.
God had rescued Israel from bondage, gave them the Law, and then commanded them to go into and possess the Land (Lev. 20:24). The symbolism is striking. God rescued us from bondage to sin and death by Christ’s death, and by the new birth (the result of His resurrection from the dead), he created us anew whereby now His Laws are written on our hearts (Jer. 31:33), and now He tells us to enter His rest. To Israel their rest was a place (Canaan), but that was not the permanent rest God had planed for His people.“For if Joshua had given them rest, He would not concerning another day have spoken after these things; there doth remain, then, a sabbath rest to the people of God” (Hebrews 4:8-9).
Canaan was a picture of the rest that would one day be given under the New Covenant that Messiah would usher in. Therefore the SABBATH REST is NOT a place or a time, but it:
A STATE OF BEING, ALL DAY, ALL THE TIME.
So the question is not whether there IS a rest, but of whether we will enter it. To enter His rest means we must cease from OUR labors. We can’t have it both ways. The Christian life is not:
Jesus helping me to live HIS life
Not helping me be LIKE Jesus.
But the ceasing of living my life so He can LIVE HIS through me. This “death to the self life” is the secret of entering into rest. As long as we allow the old self, the adamic nature to live there will be NO rest. Adam cannot enter rest. God’s rest is meant for HIS people. Adam cannot enter, but CHRIST can, and of us who have been born again have exited the race of Adam and entered the NEW RACE humanity under the Lordship of Jesus Christ.
Again, rest is not the absence of trials and tribulations, but rest in the midst of them. We can rest because we have the promise of God that HE IS WORKING IN US TO DO AND TO WILL OF HIS GOOD PLEASURE (Php. 2:13).
All the time,
every time,
in every way,
everyday!
REMEMBER We stand in a victory ALREADY WON! Not fight in a battle already lost!
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