Daily Meditations

Before we move on, we need to assemble our thoughts about God’s REST into some kind of order. This was a simple subject, prior to studying these verses in depth! It is now obvious that the term REST means many different things in the Scriptures and is used in many different contexts. That is why it is helpful to try to put them into order because there are links; of course there are!  The literal meaning of the Hebrew word “Shabbat” or “Sabbath” is “to cease”, “to stop” or to “desist from working and labour.” It implies that certain activities that demanded time and effort have ended, but it does not mean that we replace that busyness with nothing. God does not call us to laze around or to “do nothing!”  God came to REST when He ceased the labours of creation and had permanently completed the work of turning dark matter into a beautiful, productive world pumping with life, energy and productivity. He rested from the work of creating but not from activity. Adam and Eve were at ...

Hebrews 4:11 Make every effort to enter the rest So what do we learn from all of this? We have been treated to a series of allegories, and the author of Hebrews has been trying to get his Jewish readers to understand. They were new-born followers of Christ and they, more than anyone, should understand the lessons from their history. These lessons are for us too as part of the wider church of Jesus Christ. Firstly, when we rest in the Lord, we do not put our feet up, but we do recognise that everything necessary for our salvation and future peace has already been done. We cannot add to it any more than God could add to His perfect creation. Secondly, once we have been delivered from sin and bondage we must be prepared to move on, sometimes through wilderness experiences, because the Lord is preparing us for the Land of Promise, where we can be at rest. There are those that inherit His promises but many others who do not. The major obstacles to exclusion from the Land are disobedience an...

Hebrews 4:10a Israel and rest Continuing on from our previous musings, we have seen how Israel, under Joshua, learned to remove the pagan gods and their adherents from Canaan; this involved military conquests and a great deal of effort but, eventually, the land was at rest, and it fulfilled its description as the Land of Promise. However, it was not long before the tribes of Israel compromised themselves and their relationship with the Lord God and they turned to worship foreign gods. Whenever they did this, they lost their “rest”. It was not just that they built idols and sacrificed on the high places but in so doing they rejected the provision and protection of the Lord, they preferred to worship man-made gods. This idolatry led to 10 of the tribes being completely overcome by the Assyrians and they were lost to civilisation to this very day. The southern nation of Judah also indulged themselves in paganism and they were taken into captivity by the Babylonians; there was no rest for ...

Hebrews 4:10 Resting from our own works Perhaps the greatest lesson of these verses in Hebrews, has been staring us in the face for days! It began in chapter 3:7 and the writer has subsequently bombarded us with examples and twists on his main theme, that when we hear the voice of the Lord, we are required to obey and in so doing we enter God’s rest. It is a physical and mental rest as well as being a spiritual rest and it is so important that even God rested after the 6 days of creation. Three times we have been reminded that, “ Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts.”  We will now spend a few sessions unpacking what this really means. If we go back to the book of Genesis, the first scenario that unfolds is of the Creator speaking into the darkness and bringing light and life to barren and shapeless masses of rock! After 6 days of commanding astonishing energy and life into the cosmos, God’s steps back with satisfaction and rests!  All is good! Does this...

Hebrews 4:9 A Sabbath rest for the people of God The Lord Jesus was able to proclaim, from the cross just before He laid down His life, that “It is finished!” His suffering was over, His blood had been poured out, the taunts and mocking of His enemies was ended and now all that remained was for Him to submit, without restraint, to the entangling chords of death. What happened next was completely in His Father’s hands although He trusted the Word of God and that this was not the end. 3 days later He, of course, was raised up from the grave and revealed Himself to over 500 people who all saw the prints of the nails and the scars that He bore as a result of the Roman soldiers’ violence and abuse.  There was no question in the mind of the witnesses that Messiah was risen from the dead!  In 40 days, Jesus would bid farewell to His closest friends and leave them as He ascended, alone, to His Father’s side in the heavens. Was that it? Was that His place of eternal rest? Had Jesu...

Hebrews 4:8 Another day of rest This verse draws our attention to the efforts of Joshua to claim Canaan. He courageously led the Israelites across the Jordan River and in a very short space of time, found himself confronting the might of the city of Jericho and then AI, and so on. The armies of Israel spread out across the land taking control, step by step, moving south, west and north. The main military campaign took at least 7 years during which time it is believed that 31 Canaanite kings were defeated and, eventually, the land could be divided up between the tribal groups. This may have been all that Israel could have hoped for, but it is certainly not the complete fulfilment of Shabbat that the Lord God had in mind for His people. There is another “rest”, another deeper meaning to His plans for mankind.  It could be argued that God’s rest is the eternal fulfilment of His plans when heaven and earth are cleansed of all evil and the Satan and his powers are completely extinguishe...