Enter My Rest – Belief and Faith

Dec 1

I don’t know why, but today the words ‘slimy pit’ crossed my mind, so to speak. I suppose I was dwelling, one more time, on how my life before Christ (and even after, although to a lesser degree) was not pleasing to God, to say the least. Are you like me? Every once in a while I have a flashback to something I did or said in the past that immediately launches a wave of shame or guilt. I guess I was having one of those moments (in church, no less) when God reminded me that He has lifted me out of the ‘slimy pit’ that I used to live in. Here is the passage from Psalm 40:

“I waited patiently for the Lord; He turned to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; He set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand. He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise for our God.”

That is me. He truly did put a new song in my mouth. Psalm 62 says the words of the new song better than I can. Here they are, in part:

“My soul finds rest in God alone; my salvation comes from Him. He alone is my rock and my salvation; He is my fortress, I will never be shaken . . . Find rest, O my soul, in God alone; my hope comes from Him. He alone is my rock and my salvation; He is my fortress, I will not be shaken.”

This is my new song. Well, relatively new. I don’t sing this song perfectly; far from it. But still, this is the song my heart sings, this is the song that gives me life. I know that sounds kind of corny. But there it is. These words remind me of one of my favorite passages in Scripture, Hebrews 12: 28:

“Therefore, since we are receiving a Kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.”

I think this passage from Hebrews and Psalm 62 are saying the same things. I find rest for my soul in His Kingdom. The Kingdom of God is my fortress and my salvation; it is only as I live in the Kingdom of God that I find healing and wholeness for my spirit, soul, and body. That is the meaning of salvation.

One of the words in Psalm 62 that touched my heart today is the word ‘rest’, as in “My soul finds rest in God alone.” This reminded me of Jesus’ words in Matthew 11: 28 – 29:

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me. For I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”

Jesus is inviting us to enter into His rest, as we come to Him confessing our fears, anxieties, failures, shame, guilt, and on and on. He is gentle, humble, and incredibly loving. He will give us rest for our souls. We will find freedom, protection, and a deep sense of the Father’s love for us in that place of rest, the Kingdom of God. That is a great message for us who are wondering what the heck is going on in the world today, where the power of darkness seems to be closing in all around us.

But, there is a flip side to this invitation. We see hints of it in Psalm 95:

“For forty years I was angry with that generation; I said, They are a people whose hearts go astray, and they have not known my ways. So I declared on oath in my anger, They shall never enter my rest.”

Uh Oh! But wait, that was Israel, wandering in the desert before God brought them into the promised land — the place of His rest. And we all know how idolatrous they were! Surely that does not apply to me or to the Church today. Well, the author of Hebrews picks up this idea of ‘never entering into His rest’ in chapter 3 and 4. It seems to me to be a good idea to discover what that author means and how it might apply to our lives. Here are the verses:

“See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness . . . Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion. Who were they who heard and rebelled? Were they not all those Moses led out of Egypt? . . . And to whom did God swear that they would never enter His rest, if not tho those who disobeyed? So we see that they were not able to enter, because of unbelief”

“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. For we also have had the gospel preached to us, just as they did; but the message they heard was of no value to them, because those who heard did not combine it with faith. Now we who have believed enter that rest.”

The author of Hebrews tells us that unbelief was the reason why God refused to let them enter His rest and warns us not to ‘fall short’ of the message we have heard; that is, beware of unbelief. We who believe, coupled with faith, can enter into His rest.

That got me thinking about what unbelief really is. I suppose there are several levels of unbelief. At the simplest level, unbelief is denying the existence of God. But there is another level of unbelief. “I believe God exists, but I don’t believe He is necessary in my life” or “I believe God exists, but I don’t think He is good enough or powerful enough to meet my everyday needs in this life, especially my needs for value and acceptance. Therefore, while I believe in God I will seek my value, acceptance, relevance, and protection in my own way and in my own power in the world around me.” Or “I believe in God, I go to church, volunteer in good causes, but I find my acceptance and value in who I am and the work that I do.”

This second level of unbelief reminds me of a man who says he believes that airplanes can fly — as in “I believe it is true that they can fly.” He has seen them on the ground, he has seen them in the sky; he has even watched them take off. But, he will not buy a ticket, sit in a seat, and fly in an airplane 10,000s of feet above the earth in an aluminum tube like a Boeing 737 that weighs about 155,000 pounds. He says “I don’t trust those things in the air.”

He believes in airplanes; he just has no faith in them. Faith is belief in action, guided by Scripture. I think many Christians, like the Israelites in the desert, believe in God in the same way the man believes that planes can fly. Or at least they have no reason not to believe in God. They can worship God, even praise Him. They can acknowledge that He is the Creator of the Universe. They can even assent to the virgin birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus, the Son of God. But just like the man who believes in airplanes but won’t fly in them, they cannot put their faith in God. He exists in one compartment of their mind and heart. In the other compartments are the ‘gods’ that they turn to in this world for comfort, value, acceptance, and security. Their belief has not been transformed into action, into a life style, into a way of thinking, doing, and speaking. There is knowledge, but there in no trust.

This is the type of unbelief that the writers of Psalm 95 and Hebrews are talking about. You don’t have to be an atheist to be an unbeliever. For sure atheists won’t enter God’s rest, but this other type of unbelief also prevents us from entering His rest.

Jesus speaks about this unbelief in John 12: 37 under the caption “The Jews Continue in Their Unbelief”. The verse reads “Even after Jesus had done all these miraculous signs in their presence, they still would not believe in Him.” This word ‘believe’ is not the type of belief I described above as in “I believe that airplanes can fly”. In John 12: 37 the word ‘believe’ means “to place their trust in God and Jesus, to rely on Them, to commit their life to Them, to cast themselves upon Them as stable and most worthy; with energy of faith to entrust one’s spiritual well-being to Christ. To commit, to trust” (from Souter Pocket Lexicon, Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance).

The Jews that Jesus were speaking to saw His signs and wonders. They had just seen Jesus raise Lazarus from the dead!!! How could they not know who He was — the Messiah, the Christ? Maybe they believed in the sense that we can accept something as true (airplanes can fly). But they could not believe in the deeper sense. They would not commit their lives to Him; they did not surrender to Him, trust Him or have faith in Him. That was the unbelief that John wrote about in John 12. Like the man and the airplane, they believed in the physical reality of a thing; and like him, they could not put their trust in it. And so, they continued to live outside of God’s Kingdom, apart from His rest.

But the offer of entering His rest still stands for those who have faith — those who trust God for every aspect of their lives; who surrender their lives to Him and submit to the authority of Jesus. To enter His rest is to enter His Kingdom today where we find rest for our souls and where God’s plan for our lives can be brought to fruition.

“God has a plan and a purpose for your life. He aspires that you ascend to the highest mountains of spirituality. God wants you to know the most glorious levels of victory in Christ Jesus. He wants to enable you to live, not as a spiritual weakling, forever tripping over your sins, but as giant in the land. Indeed, God aspires that you might indeed be like His own dear Son” (from ‘Repentance: The First Word of the Gospel’ by Richard Owen Roberts, pgs. 168, 169).

God’s heart is broken when we do not enter His rest. He desires to live intimately with His children. We find that intimacy in His Kingdom. He desires to provide for and protect His children. We find those things in His Kingdom. And His hope is that as we live Kingdom lives, lives marked by rest, joy, peace, and power we will be His witnesses to our families, our friends, our neighborhoods, cities, nations, and the world about the greatness and goodness of God. Unbelief prevents us from being the men and women God has called and created us to be. He wants more than belief; He wants faith. It is true that faith is His gift. It is also true that we are free to reject that gift. “Man is responsible for sin because he is both the author and actor of it. He is not responsible for holiness because he is only the actor and not the author . . . the sinner is free in accepting or rejecting the invitations of the gospel” (W.G.T. Shedd ‘Dogmatic Theology’ in ‘Chosen but Free by Norman Geisler, pg. 37). As Moses told the Israelites in Deuteronomy 30 “choose life”; or as Jesus would say “choose faith”.

There is one more reason why God’s heart is broken by unbelief or lack of faith. The unbeliever, like the men and women in John 12, places himself under the condemnation and judgement of God. The type of unbelief or unfaithfulness I am talking about rejects God’s goodness, power, or sufficiency and finds what his heart desires in the other ‘gods’ of the world. This is the definition of Sin – it violates the first two of the 10 Commandments and is what God means when He speaks about disobedience. It is pride — the worship of self.

God hates Sin. Because of His righteousness He must condemn and harshly judge all Sin — and the sinner. We say we should hate the sin and love the sinner. God hates the sin, loves the sinner, but in the face of Sin God must condemn both the Sin and the sinner. That is the message of most of Scripture. For example, in Deuteronomy 27 “Cursed is the man who carves an image or casts an idol — a thing detestable to the Lord”. The Sin, idol worship, is detestable to God, but the man is cursed also. As Richard Owen Roberts points out “God send sinners to hell, not sins.” That is why God sent Christ to be the atonement for our Sin (and sins). Those who repent and place their faith in Jesus and God the Father enter into His rest; those who do not place their faith in Jesus and the God who sent Him exist apart from His rest. Which means they exist apart from Him. This breaks God’s heart. He weeps over His lost children, many of whom believe that they are Christians.

Many will point to Romans 8: 1, 2: “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death”.

True. But the key phrase is “for those who are in Christ Jesus. ‘In Christ’ means to live and move and breathe in His sphere of activity, presence, and power. In other words, to live in the Kingdom of God. For those, there is no condemnation and no turning back.

Find rest for your soul, receive the Father’s love, joy, peace, and power. Tell Him today that you want to live in His Kingdom if you haven’t done so already. By grace, the door is open to all. Ask Him for and receive the gifts of repentance and faith, confess and repent of your pride (daily, if you are like me), and cry out for the holiness of Jesus. Then you will experience His grace, mercy, and goodness. You will enter and experience the sweetness of His rest.

December 2015

John Van Wagoner