Promises of believers’ rest
Key Verses: 3, 11, 12, 15, 16
When we believe we start the Sabbath. So what is this Sabbath we start? Sabbath means rest from working, and came to mean seventh day. God made the world in six days and then rested on the seventh. In Egypt they worked every day, so when God instituted the Sabbath and told the Israelites not to do any regular work, they must have not known what to do with themselves.
Not working all the time required them to trust Him. They gave up one seventh of their productivity when they followed the Lord. How could they compete in a global marketplace if they didn’t maximize their earnings potential. Several stores, Hobby Lobby and Chick fil-A come quickly to mind, are open only six days a week. They could increase their market share if they opened that extra day, but they have other priorities.
But the writer isn’t really worried about market share. He is talking about the work of our spiritual walk. The Jews of his day were so focused on the ‘doing’ of their faith, the details of obeying what they thought God wanted them to do, that they missed the fact that Jesus had already secured their eternity. Their work was already done. Jesus had done it for them. They needed to rest in His completed work.
We can get caught up in this same cycle, thinking we must do one more thing in order to gain God’s approval. But we can also rest in God’s full acceptance and live our lives in that rest. Life is lived very differently when you know that someone accepts you totally and completely, knowing all your brokenness and fallibility. So many people don’t have that in any human relationship. We can have it in our relationship with God. We can breathe a bit sigh of relief: we are accepted.
What makes this an even more joyous experience is knowing that He knows it all and we are still accepted. And out of that acceptance we are free to live lives of surrender and productivity for Him. He invites us to live in His presence. We are loved. He offers mercy and grace.
And He knows what it is like to struggle with temptation. He was tempted and resisted. We can resist temptation and know that if we fall, we are still accepted and loved. This is not an excuse for sinning. He knows the thoughts and intents of the heart, so He knows genuine repentance when He sees it. But we can rest in His acceptance of us. And when we rest we can freely obey.
The Arnold Journey 