The Importance of Entering the Rest of God...

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I have not heard much preaching about the "rest" of God. Have you? And yet there is no question that the Book of Hebrews, with its admonitions about backsliding, is pointing toward the importance of this goal. The goal of the Christian salvation is not eternal residence in a mansion in Heaven. The true and scriptural goal of our salvation is the rest of God.

(10/16/2011). Therefore, since the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us be careful that none of you be found to have fallen short of it. (Hebrews 4:1)

Short of precisely what?

In the beginning God created all people, things, and circumstances from that time through to beyond the new heaven and earth reign of Christ and His saints. In the mind of God, all of this creation was finished. Then, His plan having been completed in vision, God rested. Now God watches over His Word to perform it.

The writer of the Book of Hebrews shows that Canaan, the land of promise, was not the rest of God, the fulfilment of God's vision. If Canaan were the promised rest, then God would not have spoken concerning a future day. For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken later about another day.

Now we who have believed enter that rest, just as God has said, "So I declared on oath in my anger, 'They shall never enter my rest.'" And yet his work has been finished since the creation of the world (Hebrews 4:3)

We see that belief, and the obedience that springs from that belief, are necessary if we are to enter God's rest. To sum up: God finished all His work in a timeless vision, from the installation of light all the way through to the ages that shall follow the coming down from through the new sky to rest for eternity upon the new earth. Having finished all this in vision, God is resting. God has held before us, in His Word, the prospect of entering the rest into which God Himself entered on the seventh day.

We are informed that going across the Jordan into Canaan does not mean we are entering God's rest. The fulfilment is yet in the future. There remains a rest for the people of God.

To enter the rest of God is to cease from our own works and seek to become and do what God has spoken concerning us as an individual. We know from Paul's writing that there are those who have been chosen from the beginning of time to be the brothers of Jesus Christ. These are God's elect.

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. (Romans 8:28,29)

The idea is that we are to cease from our own plans and ambitions and pray continually to know what Jesus is saying to us.

Such is the eternal Sabbath, of which the seventh-day Sabbath was a foreshadow. The Lord Jesus always lives, moves, and has His being in the eternal Sabbath. He thinks nothing, says nothing, does nothing, apart from the Father. Jesus lives by, from, and because of the Father. Absolutely nothing that Jesus is or does is not part of the Father.

This is the rest of God to which we are to aspire.

The Jews whom the writer of the Book of Hebrews was addressing were seasoned Christians. They had experienced persecution. They were beyond where most of us are today, in that the writer viewed the doctrine of eternal judgment as being elementary. Most of us of today have never even heard of the doctrine of eternal judgment. These believers had tasted the good Word of God and the powers of the age to come.

Therefore let us leave the elementary teachings about Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from acts that lead to death, and of faith in God, instruction about baptisms, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. (Hebrews 6:1,2)

However, having attained to such areas of salvation, they had ceased pressing into the Lord Jesus. They were not like the Apostle Paul, striving to attain to the early resurrection from among the dead.

It may be noted that those who do attain to the first resurrection have been "beheaded." This may signify that they have abandoned their own thinking and planning that they might enter the eternal rest in one which lives by the Life of Jesus.

I saw thrones on which were seated those who had been given authority to judge. And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of their testimony for Jesus and because of the word of God. They had not worshiped the beast or his image and had not received his mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ a thousand years. (Revelation 20:4)

Living by the Life of Jesus! This is our goal. This is the promised rest, in which we cease from our own works and do the Lord's will in every aspect of our life.

For anyone who enters God's rest also rests from his own work, just as God did from his. Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will fall by following their example of disobedience. (Hebrews 4:10,11)

The main issue of living by the Life of Jesus, which is the Life of God Himself, is obedience. We constantly must be listening to Jesus to find out what we are to think, say, and do. This is true of every aspect of our life. One of the members of our church said to me last Sunday, after I had preached on the hundredfold level of discipleship, "You are asking people to commit suicide."

That is half-true. Yes, we are to die to the old nature. But we also are to live in the resurrection Life of Jesus. The highway that leads to remorse and destruction is wide and scenic. There is a multitude of people driving on it toward what they suppose is something like Disneyland.

The way of the cross looks forbidding, with its thorns and narrow, twisted paths. But it leads to fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore.

There is chaos approaching our nation. The only people who will be able to stand and help others are those who have died in the Lord and are living by His Life every day and every night.

Then I heard a voice from heaven say, "Write: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on." "Yes," says the Spirit, "they will rest from their labour, for their deeds will follow them." (Revelation 14:13) I want to be one of those who live by listening to Jesus. How about you?

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