THE REST THAT REMAINS FOR THE PEOPLE OF GOD
Heb. 4:9
Morning Meditation 3/31/16
I was introduced to the “faith rest” life several years ago through a little book that came into my possession. It is amazing how you can read over passages of Scripture and never get the point. It is like telling a joke you think is funny and nobody laughs but you. I always laugh at my own jokes. I think the Lord stands beside us as we read his Word ready to teach us. Jesus said, “I will not leave you comfortless: I will come unto you (John 16:18). The Comforter is the Paraclete which means one called along side or one who stands at your side ready to help. I do think he stands there ready to illuminate and teach us. But we are not always attentive nor dependent. And I think as we read on past a verse like our text he could be saying, “Wait a minute. I can see you didn’t get the point. I will be happy to explain what I meant when I inspired the writing of that verse.” The problem is we were not listening for him and when we do not understand, we depend on our language skills and commentators rather than him. Well, lets look at the verse:
“There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God.” The word “remaineth” (apoleipo) means “to leave, to leave behind.” It is present tense which means that we continue to have available right now the “rest” of which he speaks. It is left behind from the standpoint of the cross for him and our experience of salvation for us. Heb. 1:3 says, “Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high;” What did Jesus do when he went back to heaven? He sat down. He is resting in his finished work. Salvation is entering into his rest. Eph. 2:6 says, “And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus:” This is the true experience of salvation. It is entering into his rest.
But this rest goes further. Our text says, “There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God.” So this rest is for people who are already saved. Many have not entered into that rest. Heb. 4:10 says, “For he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his.” John Stott says, “Work and rest exclude one another.”
In order to rest there must be something to rest on. Christ is the foundation on which the Christian rests, then on his promises. The “faith rest” is faith that rests on Christ and his promises. Again John Stott says, “The real secret of faith’s power lies not in the faith itself but in its object, Jesus Christ.” We do not want to make the mistake of trying to rest on our faith. There will be no rest there. The rest of faith takes place when we rest on Christ and his promises.
There is a good illustration of this that comes out of the life of John Paton. He is said to have learned this when he was translating the Gospel of John. Born in 1824 into a humble Scottish home in Dumfriesshire, John Paton seems to have followed Jesus Christ from his early boyhood. Before studying theology and medicine at the university, he served for ten years as a Glasgow City Missionary. Then after graduating he was ordained, and set sail for the New Hebrides as a Presbyterian missionary. Within three months of his arrival on the island of Tanna his young wife died, followed by their five-week-old son. For three more years he laboured alone among the hostile Tannese, ignoring their threats and seeking to make Jesus Christ known to them, before escaping with his life and later spending fifteen years on the island of Aniwa. It is said that he was working one day in his home at the translation of John’s Gospel. He was puzzling over the evangelist’s favorite expression pisteuo eis, “to believe in” or “trust in” Jesus Christ, which occurs first in the Gospel’s twelfth verse. How could he translate it? The islanders were cannibals. Nobody trusted anybody else. There was no word for “trust” in their language. His native servant came in. “What am I doing?” he asked. The man replied that he was sitting at his desk. Paton then raised both his feet off the floor and sat back on his chair. “What am I doing now?” In reply the servant used a verb which means “to lean your whole weight upon,” and this is the expression that Paton used throughout the Gospel to translate “to believe in.”
If Christ is “resting” from his work, having finished it, we should be “resting in” or “on it,” depending on him alone for our acceptance with God.
I trusted in Christ when I was a nine-year-old boy. But I have found myself since then relying on my own works at times as a means to gain his approval. Every time I have done that I have gotten into trouble. We are not accepted on the basis of works before or after salvation. There are many who believe that you are saved by grace but you have to keep salvation by faithfully keeping his commandments. And they believe if you do not, you will be lost. If a person can never be good enough to be saved by keeping his commandments before salvation, why would one believe that he could do so after salvation. Salvation does not make you better. It gives you Christ’s righteousness so that you can stand before a holy God. First Corinthians 1:30-31 says, “But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption: That, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.”
Are you resting in Christ? If not, why not? The “rest” has been left behind for you. It is like getting on an airplane. Your ticket will get you on the plane but it won’t make you sit down. If you get on the plane and stand until you get to your destination, you will arrive with the rest. But you may need to go to bed and rest after you arrive! The trip would have been a lot more pleasant for you if you would have taken a seat. In fact, one has been especially saved for you!
One of my members once told me of a foot ball game he was in in high school. The coach told one of the boys on the bench to run up and down the sidelines and warm up that he was going to put him in the game. Well, the game got crucial and the coach forgot him. After the game settled down a little, the coach remembered the guy. He called him over and told him who to replace. The guy looked at the coach and said, “Coach, would you send someone else, I too pooped!” I think a lot of saved people will show up in the rapture and tell the Lord, “Lord, will you put this off a day or two, I’m pooped.” Of course I think the Lord will have some choice words for us in the process of explaining that we did not listen and we did not enter into the “rest” he had provided for the people of God. I think he will say, “you were not a good testimony. You were not happy. Your attitude of works did not allow me to work in your life. People were watching you and they could not see a difference in you from those who believed in works for salvation.”
