UNDERSTANDING AND LIVING IN GOD’S “REST” – II

Genesis 2:1-3; Hebrew 4:1-13
Bob Bonner
November 23, 2003

What is it that characterizes someone who really knows God and is presently walking with Him? What is characteristic of true belief in God? What is the mark of reality, that one is truly born again and Jesus Christ is living in and through him or her?

In His Sermon on the Mount, Jesus speaks of one obvious thing that does not characterize one who truly knows Him. He says, “I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.” One who deliberately disregards the Lord’s instructions or “practices lawlessness” does not know Christ.

On the other hand, the Apostle Paul tells us that someone who knows Jesus intimately and is walking in the power of His Holy Spirit, will produce spiritual fruit. Depending upon what passage you are looking at, sometimes that fruit refers to the personality character traits of Christ, such as “Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control...”

Elsewhere, Jesus tells us that fruit is the revealed good or beneficial works we do for others in His name.

Thirdly, Christ explains fruit to be the product of our introducing others to Christ.

However, none of those three kinds of fruit, character qualities, good works, or leading others to Christ are the real mark of the reality of Christ being lived out in and through you. You can be saved or not saved and in your own human natural abilities appear to some to be loving, joyful, patient, good, etc. You, in your own human power, whether saved or not can do “good” things for others and tell them that Jesus sent you. I’ve known people who have attended a great evangelical church, who consider themselves Christians, but later discover they never were, yet God used them to bring others to their church and subsequently to Christ. Therefore, these three kinds of fruit are not the real proof or mark that you are a Christian or that as a Christian you are depending upon Christ to live through you.

So, what then is the mark in my life or yours that we are indeed saved and have Christ living through us? Answer: it’s the personal experience of knowing God’s rest, as we live by faith in Him. What does that mean and how do we experience God’s rest? That’s what we want to continue looking at this morning.

First, let me remind you of what we learned last time about “God’s rest” - how it applied to Adam and Eve, in Genesis 2. Last week, I showed you that the term “rest” did not refer to the remedy for physical exhaustion from a hard day’s work. But rather, the simple meaning for “rest” is “to cease from a completed work.” As it refers to God’s resting after creating the world, it means that He ceased from His creative work of the world.

We also saw, that in the context of Genesis 1-2, this word “rested” takes on an additional emotional overtone or meaning. It is the intent of this word “rest”, as used in Genesis 2, to also describe God’s emotional joy and satisfaction that came from looking at His completed work. In a word, when “God rested” from His creative work, He also celebrated a job well done. Hence, “God rested” means “God’s emotional state of satisfaction and celebration at the completion of His creative work.” By the way, when it states that God rested, it does not mean that He ceased from all activity, just that which dealt with the original creation of the world.

In addition, we learned that because God created man to work with Him in maintaining the world God had created, God expected us to share in and experience something of God’s rest. For us, it is does not mean rest in the sense of being totally inactive or doing nothing, but rather to supernaturally experience God’s effortless power, His rest, as well as His satisfaction and celebration over work done with Him, just as Adam and Eve celebrated over the work they did with Him. God provides all of the energy needed for Adam and Eve to do the active work, and they were designed not to wear down. They worked for God effortlessly and celebrated with the God in the work He accomplished through them.

However, when the Fall comes, in Genesis 3, intimate fellowship with God is broken and with it effortless and joy-filled work. Ever since the Fall, there has been a hunger in the heart of every human to experience that kind of joy-filled partnership with God. Ever since the Fall, every human being has sought the acceptance, love, forgiveness and approval that can only come from God.

But in rebellion against God, all of us have been driven from within to find approval, acceptance and love elsewhere. We’ve looked for it from others; we want their affirmation, awards, degrees and possessions that somehow proclaim to us and others we have made it.

Many who have traveled down that road soon realize that human approval and the acquisition of possessions is shallow or fleeting at best. When they do realize that living for the approval of others is a trap or like being imprisoned, they begin looking to God, which is good. However, the way they try to gain God’s approval is through their own self-righteous attempts to prove to God that they are good enough to be accepted by Him. They become driven religious people, constantly afraid that they have not done enough to get saved or maybe that they may do something to lose their salvation. They have not discovered God’s secret to finding His rest, His acceptance and His empowerment.

Many of these people are Christians, who cling to Jesus as their only hope for salvation; but they also continue to strive for His ongoing approval or the approval of others. Rather than experiencing God’s rest, their lives are a constant motion of activity and drivenness to achieve, or total inactivity due to fear of failure, so they hunker down and do nothing. This is not only a problem many of us struggle with today, but it was the case with the Hebrews, the Jewish-Christians of the first century, to whom the book of Hebrews was written.

In the first three chapters of Hebrews, the writer’s goal is to prove the superiority of Jesus Christ over all of God’s creations. Whether those creations are beings like angels, or prophets like Moses, or leaders like Joshua, or the creation of God’s Law, Christ rules supreme. The point that the author of Hebrews is making in these chapters is that if we reject Jesus and His accomplished work on the cross on our behalf, it will lead to a catastrophe in our lives. We will not experience eternal approval of God nor His rest today.

As the author of Hebrews recounts Israel’s history with God, we come to Hebrews 4. In this chapter, we learn that the work of Jesus Christ on our behalf is supreme to that of Joshua and his leading of the Israelites into the Promised Land. The Promised Land, although real, also is a picture of what the Christian life was meant to be. However, just as many Israelites entered the Promised Land and few experienced the life that God intended for them there, so too many people are saved today, but don’t experience the life He intends for us, which is living in God’s rest. God desires and makes available to us His rest today, and how we can experience it is the subject of Hebrews 4.

Let’s quickly walk through the content of these first thirteen verses. Verse 1 reads, “Therefore, let us fear if, while a promise remains of entering His rest, any one of you may seem to have come short of it.” When he writes “a promise remains of entering His rest”, God is telling us that His rest is available to each of us. But being saved doesn’t guarantee we are experiencing it. We may “come short of it.” Hence, God warns us to examine our lives so that we don’t miss God’s intended blessing for us due to ignorance or unbelief.

In verse 2 we read of the reason for the Israelites and many Christians don’t experience God’s rest. It says, “For indeed we have had good news preached to us, just as they also; but the word they heard did not profit them, because it was not united by faith in those who heard.” When the Israelites stood at the border of the Promised Land, they had no doubt that the land existed, or that it was filled with opportunity. They knew it existed and that God had promised to empower them to get it, but they refused to trust in God’s rest or enablement to take the land. They believed, “that if it is going to be, it’s going to be up to we, ...and we are not up for it!” They disregarded God’s promised rest or enablement to take the land and in turn refused to take the land. As a result, what happened to that first doubting generation? They died in the wilderness!

God doesn’t want us to fall into a similar unbelief that we cannot experience or count upon His enablement. It is not just God’s goal for your life to experience His salvation and forgiveness. It is His goal for you to experience today His rest, the same rest that Adam and Eve enjoyed before the Fall. It is that “rest” in His supernatural empowerment to live life today, even in this Fallen world, that He wants us all to experience.

In verses 3-10, we learn more about what this “rest” is. As we read verse 3, notice that it is written in the present tense. He says, “For we who have believed enter that rest,...” This rest was something that the first century Christians were to enter into that day, and it is a rest that we are to enter into today. Look down at verse 7. It reads, “He again fixes a certain day, ‘Today,’ saying through David, after so long a time just as has been said before, ‘Today if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts.” “Today” is a word of hope. We can enjoy God’s rest today.

This promise of God requires a response from us. If we do not respond to God’s invitation to live in His rest, we won’t experience it. God says, at the end of verse 3, “As I swore in My wrath, ‘They shall not enter My rest’” although His works were finished from the foundation of the world. For He has thus said somewhere concerning the seventh day, ‘And God rested on the seventh day from all His works;’ and again in this passage, ‘They shall not enter My rest.’” Note: the “rest” of God has been available to all people ever since man first appeared on the earth. It is specifically the same rest, the “My rest” of Genesis 2 that both Adam and Eve entered into.

Again, the rest that God is calling us to is not inactivity. It is not sitting back and doing nothing. Adam and Even worked the garden, but it was work without strain. Today, all of work, your schooling, your studies, your play, your responsibilities at home or at the shop, are to be done in dependence upon God’s supernatural power in you, in submission to His will, not your agenda. We can either deliberately by faith enter His rest, or do it our way, which is exactly what the writer means by “disobedience” in verse 6. If we do it our way, we will continue to be driven and live incredibly stressed-filled lives. If we do it God’s way, we won’t be stressed out all the time.

In verses 8-10 we are given a picture of this rest. We read, “For if Joshua had given them rest, [meaning when they entered the Promised Land and that was all there was] He would not have spoken of another day after that. So there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For the one who has entered His rest [God’s rest] has himself also rested from his works [you, the individual’s works], as God did from His.”

Herein lies a revolutionary new principle of human behavior upon which God desires us to operate. It is from this principle of living in God’s rest that the human race fell, when Adam and Eve sinned and were kicked out of God’s garden. It was for the following purpose that Jesus Christ came: to restore us to the joy of living today in God’s rest.

I personally understand this principle of living in God’s rest, and operate by it sometimes. As more time passes, I learn to operate by this principle more and more. The more I do live in God’s rest, the less driven I become (not less active, or less achieving, just less driven), and the more others see the evidence of “God’s rest” in my life.

You and I have basically been taught to live by a lie all of our lives. Since birth, we have been brainwashed to believe that we have in ourselves what it takes to be what we want to be—to be a person who can achieve whatever we desire. We are told that if we work hard enough and plan well, in the end we will find the fulfillment and meaning in life we desire. If we haven’t arrived yet, we can educate ourselves, acquire information, develop new skills, and presto! We are told that we will arrive.

But believe me, I have not met one successful “self made” individual who honestly believes that he or she has found the “rest” that God designed for them in their pursuits. They may find awards, prestige and possessions, but not the answer to the deeper cry of their heart: that sense of ultimate fulfillment that comes in knowing one is approved of by God and being used for His eternal purposes. Instead, they still feel driven to achieve more, but they don’t know why. They have not experienced God’s rest.

In verse 10, God shows us that for me to experience God’s rest is to cease from trying to do things on my own and solely in my own effort and exchange that old practice for trusting in the working of God in my life. For instance: Ephesians 2:8-9 illustrates that we are saved only by resting in God’s work on our behalf, not our own. It says, “For by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works [we are to rest from our works] so that no one can boast.”

You were saved by faith in God’s redeeming work of Christ on your behalf. You did nothing to earn it. Likewise, if you are going to experience God’s power or enablement or His rest as you live your life with Him today, you must also walk by faith in His empowerment, daily. That’s what the point of Colossians 2:6, “As therefore, you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so live in Him.” You received Christ by faith and were saved, and you are to live by faith in order to experience His rest.

Notice the expression in verse 9, “the Sabbath rest”. This expression suggests that the weekly Sabbath given to and observed by the faithful Jew is only a shadow of the true rest of God. The Apostle Paul tells us in Colossians 2:16-17 that the Sabbath and other religious practices were only a shadow of the reality of things to come in Christ. We read, “Therefore, let no one act as our judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day—things which are a mere shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ.”

A shadow is never the real thing. It is the outline or distinction of a real thing. The apostle Paul is telling us that God’s implementation to the Jews concerning the Sabbath rest was a shadow of the “substance” that was to be fulfilled in Christ. It would be a unique way to experience refreshment, power, enablement to rule/serve God and to truly celebrate in God’s personal greatness and great works.

We do not experience God’s rest by observing the law or the practice of keeping the Sabbath day. The practice of keeping the Sabbath was only a picture of what was to be fulfilled in Christ. It is a rest that depicts the process by which we continue to depend upon Christ to live and work His life out through us as we submit to follow Him throughout our day.

This is what the Apostle Paul had in mind when he wrote, “It is God who works in you to will and to act according to His good purpose” (Phil 2:13). When you by faith, depend upon and trust upon Jesus to live in and through you, you discover God’s rest. You discover God working in you and energizing you to fulfill His will. This is why Paul later in the same letter can declare, “I can do everything through Him who gives me strength” (Phil. 4:13). Also, probably one of the most famous verses that deal with this subject, but few Christians either look closely at or understand, Gal. 2:20. The Apostle Paul once again makes it clear as to how one experiences the Sabbath rest or resting in God. He writes, “I no longer live [that is, I do not look for any achievement by my own efforts.] but Christ lives in me, and the life which I now live in the flesh [that is the every day things I do with my life] I live by faith in the Son of God.” In other words, I live and do things consciously by faith, depending upon Jesus to be working in and through me.

When I practice Christ’s presence in my life, by faith, when I consciously depend upon Jesus to live through me what a wonderful rest I experience in my day. True relief and release from fear and straining I experience, when I trust in the only adequate One to live His life through me. The irony of it all, is that I keep forgetting to walk with Him and fall back into the old ways of depending upon myself. But that is what true spiritual maturity is all about. It’s learning this basic lesson over and over again in different areas of one’s life.

Unless this be misunderstood, God does not turn me into a robot. That is not His purpose. He expects that as I consciously submit to and depend upon Him, I use my mind, my feelings and my will to follow through where He leads me. Once again, the apostle Paul is our authority on how this is to be practiced. He says in Colossians 3:17, “Whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.” What does it mean to do something in Christ’s name? It means the same thing that it does when an ambassador for a country does something in the name of his king or president. He does something by the authority and in submission to his boss, and in the ability or power of the boss. To do something in the name of Jesus Christ means that I recognize that I am not out there doing things on my own in my own authority under my own power. Rather, I do things by faith in submission to the Lord, engaging His power and authority.

But how does one know if one is living in the power of Christ and living in dependence upon Him? I have recognized three ways: first, when you find yourself responding to life’s situations with anger, bitterness, impatience, frustration, fear and with a sense of inferiority, you probably are not resting in Christ.

The second and third way one learns how to live in God’s rest and to counter the old way of living our lives on our own is explained in verses 11-12. We read, “Therefore let us be diligent to enter that rest, so that no one will fall, through following the same example of disobedience.” Notice: walking by faith, resting in God is not natural at first. It takes deliberate and diligent thought. It takes effort to resist old habits of depending solely upon oneself because you think alone, you have what it takes. For overachievers like myself, this is our constant stumbling block. If you try to do it solo, you will eventually fall and become agitated and restless.

When you determine to do or not to do something solely on the basis of your own ability, you follow the same example of disobedience that the Israelites stepped into when they feared that they did not have what it took to take the land that God had promised them, and ended up dying in the wilderness.

The final way the Lord shows us when we are not resting in Him, but depending upon ourselves is found in verse 12, “For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” God’s Word is given to us for instruction and correction in how to live and experience God’s rest in Christ. As you read God’s word, it strips off the old false ways of living life, and reveals the true - how we are to live in Christ.

Verse 13 concludes, “And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.” In other words, you can’t hide from the truth found in God’s Word. If you are seeking God, nothing about you can be deliberately or unconsciously hidden from Him. Because He loves us, He will reveal those areas we have failed to trust in His enablement and direction for our lives.

Before the Fall, Adam and Eve experienced God’s rest. They drew upon His strength, waited upon His instructions, enjoyed and rejoiced in their co-laboring with God. They were very active in God’s rest. This is the very kind of life He desires for us. Psalm 127:1 clearly teaches us, “Unless the LORD builds the house, those who labor, labor in vain. Unless the LORD watches over the city, the watchmen stand guard in vain.” You can build a house or sign up a police force for protection. But if that is your sole hope, you are in trouble. Human effort is still needed, but human effort alone or apart from resting in God is never enough. It proves futile and discouraging, which leads to anxieties, anger, frustration and broken relationships.

God’s goal for us in living in His rest is for us to meet every situation in life in dependence upon Him and not merely upon ourselves. To live, not in inactivity, but in freedom from strain, fear, anxiety and despair. To cease from living in the syndrome of “If it is going to be, it is up to me.” Instead, to do all in the rest that comes from doing it in Christ: Under His authority and power, and for His ultimate purposes. Which means allowing Him the right to say “No!” to your plans or the way you think things should be run, even if it doesn’t make sense to you or you have a better idea. It means remaining faithful, obedient and resting in Him whether He says “yes” or “no” to your wishes.

If we step out into a venture–a course of study, a business project, a marriage, a new work or ministry for the Lord, it is doing so in dependence upon Him, leaving the outcome to Him, knowing that He loves you, approves of you, fully accepts you. Therefore, there is no need to become defensive, or be political, or arrogant, bitter or fear failure. That’s joining in God’ rest. Not inactivity, but activity empowered and directed by Him for His purposes, knowing that your worth and value are secure in Him. Your purpose and value is not based in your successes or getting your way, but in Jesus Christ’s work accomplished on your behalf.

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