REST FROM OUR WORKS

And again in the passage above He says, ‘They shall never enter my rest.’

Therefore, since it still remains for some to enter that rest, and since those who formerly had the good news proclaimed to them did not go in because of their disobedience,

God again set a certain day, calling it “Today”. This He did when a long time later He spoke through David, as the passage already quoted: ‘Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts.’

For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken later about another day. There remains, then, a Sabbath rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from his works, just as God rested. (Heb. 4:6-10)

What is the rest about which this writer was speaking?

If we follow his rather intricate argument, he was using the Promised Land as a picture of the rest into which God invites us when we trust the work Jesus did for us on the cross to fully satisfy God’s justice so that we need not do anything more to be  accepted by Him.

For God’s people in the wilderness it required faith in His promise to go into a land full of giants and walled cities, and drive out the inhabitants. God’s intention was for them to take over the entire land with its buildings and its flourishing agriculture so that they would have to do nothing but possess it and settle down in it. If they trusted what He said, it would have been an almost effortless process because He would have gone before them and fought for them just as they experienced when they took the city of Jericho.

However, in spite of all their experiences during their forty-year migration through the wilderness when God supported them and supplied their needs all the way, they refused to obey Him. Twelve spies went in to check out the land. Twelve came back with a glowing report of the land’s bounty, but only two saw the obstacles as challenges which they could easily over come through God’s help. Ten saw them as impossibilities because they refused to view them through God’s promise.

For forty years, the people had tested God’s patience by murmuring, complaining and threatening every time they hit a snag. They just didn’t get it! They saw difficulties as the reason to get mad at God and at Moses, and to pack their bags and go back to Egypt. God was trying to get them to grow up in their confidence in Him, because a big task lay ahead for them, one that required absolute trust and implicit obedience.

They were not interested in learning to trust God. They wanted their comforts and they wanted them now! They had no idea what lay ahead and how important it was to have confidence in God and to obey His instructions. By doing that, they would have entered into both a land and a lifetime of plenty and blessing. As long as they did what God told them to do, the conquest of the land would have been easy. God would do the fighting and they would gather the spoils.

Just as it didn’t turn out like that for them because they refused to trust God, so the writer warned his readers that they would never gather the spoils of Jesus’s victory over the devil if they refused to trust God. The rest He invited them to share with Him was the rest of entering into a victory already won. They had to do nothing but enjoy it. God required nothing of them but to accept all the benefits of Christ’s sacrifice and live in them.

The time for entering into and enjoying this rest is “today”. That means that every day is “today” as long as the day of God’s grace is still “today”. There will come a “day” when the door of grace will be shut forever, and those who refuse to enter will be shut out. The bridegroom will come and the door to the wedding feast will be closed. “Today” will be gone as time will cease and eternity will be upon us.

‘Don’t miss it,’ he pleaded. ‘Today will not be here forever.’

This is not a message specifically for the ‘outsider’ although outsiders are included in the invitation. This is for the people of God – for those who think that they have to add something to what Jesus has already done. We cannot add anything to His completed work. ‘It is finished!’ No good work, no ritual, no keeping of rules, no anything can complete what Jesus has finished.

Only one thing is necessary for us to do – believe it and . . . rest!

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.