Key point #3: God’s Sabbath rest
God’s rest means that we cease to be subject to the anxiety we experience when we do not listen to His voice and obey. His rest means that whatever our circumstances we trust that He is not only in control but that He has our best intentions at heart because He has given us command and we have done what He said. That is His rest. His rest is based squarely on our obedience to what He says to us individually.
Each of us is at a different place of spiritual growth, so what is true for one may not be true for another. Note, I’m not saying we choose what truths we like and then adhere only to those. Not at all! Rather, listen to the Spirit and follow the specific guidance He provides to your heart regarding things that are written in the Bible. As Paul notes, one may find some food to be offensive. Others not. And the reality is both may be right before God. It depends very much on where you have been and where God’s Spirit is taking you right now. This is the problem with an over-emphasis on Orthodoxy – it ultimately seeks to replace the promptings of the Spirit in the name of ‘uniformity’. Not always a godly thing.
For those born of the Spirit (not those born of a church membership register, or those born of the approval of a priest) God’s rest is vested in clear, exact, timeous and specific obedience to the Holy Spirit as and when He speaks to our hearts individually. It is for this reason that the Bible says ‘work hard to enter His rest’ (Hebrews 4:11). In other words, work hard to listen to what He says to you and do it. Resist the human heart’s tendency to listen to your own wants. And, resist the temptation to not do what He says as and when He says it. Work hard at it. Even when our adverse circumstances are of our own doing we still can have that level of faith (trust, adherence, confidence) in Him which causes anxiety to go and causes us to experience His rest.
(I know there are multiple understandings of the book of Hebrews’ reference to the “Sabbath rest”. Nevertheless, consider the following:)
As humans we remain inhabitants of this earth. We breathe, we eat, we drink, we sleep. For us to enter His rest our hearts (our thinking, our feelings and our deepest inner be-ing) first has to retire to the heavenly realm in the same way in which God’s Spirit returned to the heavenlies after His work on earth was done following the creation narrative.
Allow me to explain: when God’s Spirit brooded over the waters of the earth at creation, He produced all that we see, smell, taste, hear and feel on this earth. But when His Spirit concluded the work of creation in this natural realm He did the very thing the writer of Hebrews calls entering “God’s Sabbath rest” – He retired His Spirit to the heavenly realm. Thus, God rested from all works performed in the natural realm until Jesus came to represent Him again in this physical form. Yet, that does not mean that God did nothing in the spiritual realm since then. What it means for you and me is that retiring our efforts from the natural realm in order to have confidence in His presence in the spiritual realm is what is called “the Sabbath rest” in Hebrews: There remains therefore a rest for the people of God (Hebrews 4:9). There is only one occurrence of the word translated “rest” here. It is the transliterated Greek word “sabbatismos” and means ‘a rest equal to or like the Sabbath rest’.
Can you see where God’s rest comes from? God’s rest comes when we – mere mortal human beings – enter His Sabbath by retiring our natural efforts into His hands through hearing what He says and then doing it. It is then that He becomes the ‘driver of the bus we are on’ while we rest in the assurance that He is taking us to a ‘good place’. His rest comes as and when we absolutely pursue hearing Him speak to us individually and then dilligently obeying what He says because we trust Him.
His rest comes by being His children through spiritual rebirth. His rest comes when we hear His voice like the Israelites did in the desert. When we do not harden our hearts but obey in faith every word He commands us individually. It is then that His ways bring peace to us: If Joshua had given them rest, then He would not afterward have spoken of another day. There remains therefore a rest for the people of God. For he who has entered His rest has himself also ceased from his works as God did from His. (Hebrews 4:8-10).
To those who are born of His Spirit, God is continually speaking to us individually and personally about the things He wants us as individuals to be addressing. As such, the Law of His Spirit is 100% custom-designed and personalised to our individual circumstances and to our own unique issues. It is for this reason that the writer of Hebrews says, None of them shall teach his neighbor, and none his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them (Hebrews 8:10-12).
Note, he is not saying there will be no need for teachers of truth – on the contrary (Hebrews 5:12-6:3). Only that there will be no need for teachers of God’s Law because, on account of the New Covenant, His Spirit is the Teacher of His Law.
Now, do you see the grave implication? If you or I do not receive spiritual rebirth and if we do not hear His Law in our hearts and if we do not obey them, we do not fall under the New Covenant. That is serious! No, it is not ‘over-the-top fear mongering’, it is exactly what the Bible says (Hebrews 8:7-12).
Having considered the above, God’s rest is a ‘must-have’, not a nice-to-have’. It comes through:
- having being reborn by the Spirit of God (John 3:3-8, Romans 8:9-11)
- having heard the Spirit speak to your heart individually and personally (1 John 2:27)
- having obeyed the Spirit when He speaks to your heart individually and personally (Hebrews 3:7-11, Hebrews 4:11)
Then comes the exhortation: ‘be diligent and work hard [at listening to Him and obeying Him] lest you miss out altogether in entering His rest!’