God’s Promised Rest
God’s Promised Rest
Tuesday, January 30, 2024
Among many others, God has two blessings for His children... His strength and His rest.
Even in His abundance, God is not wasteful.
We need everything God gives us. We may not see the purpose or the need for those blessings yet, but we must trust that if God offers it, we need it. God offers us strength, and He offers us rest.
By the end of this teaching, may we all learn how to receive and use the two blessings our Father has provided.
Few Christians know how to receive strength from the Lord. Fewer still, know how to enter into His rest.
The Strength of God
We all know that we need God’s strength.
We need God’s Strength to accomplish God’s assignment.
The things God asks of us, are God-sized requirements, for which we need God-sized strength.
Galatians 3:3 How foolish can you be? After starting your new life in the Spirit, why are you now trying to become perfect by your own human effort?
We need to know the difference between walking in Divine strength and walking in our own human strength.
1 Samuel 2:9 NKJVsays “By strength shall no man prevail.”
Yet the next verse in NLT says, “He gives power to His king, and increases the strength of His anointed One.”
In Isaiah 40:30-31, we see that “Even youths will become weak and tired, and young men will fall in exhaustion, but those who trust in the Lord will find new strength…
Be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might.
My grace is sufficient for you.
When we feel tired, when we are stressed, we need to discern whether we need God’s strength or God’s rest.
God gives both. We need both. There is a time when strength is needed to press on to accomplish the Divine purpose. And there are times when what we need is to come away and rest.
When we are weary, overwhelmed, weak and tired, we must first seek the Lord for wisdom.
His wisdom comes with His instructions. He may say to our weak selves like He said to Gideon, “Go in this thy might!”
At other times, He says to us, “Come away with Me to a quiet place and rest awhile.”
God is not the author of confusion. When He wants us to rest, He will not give us strength.
Isaiah 30:15 (NLT) This is what the Sovereign LORD, the Holy One of Israel, says: “Only in returning to me and resting in me will you be saved. In quietness and confidence is your strength. But you would have none of it.
We get easily confused when we try to take our cues both from the Lord and our circumstances. Peter walked in water for as long as he was looking at Jesus. He began to sink when he looked around.
Mark 6:30-32 (NLT) 30 The apostles returned to Jesus from their ministry tour and told him all they had done and taught. 31 Then Jesus said, “Let’s go off by ourselves to a quiet place and rest awhile.” He said this because there were so many people coming and going that Jesus and his apostles didn’t even have time to eat. 32 So they left by boat for a quiet place, where they could be alone.
There may still be a lot of work to be done, many matters yet unresolved and many battles to fight. We are crying to the Lord for strength, but the Lord sometimes does not give us strength because He is inviting us to rest.
2 Chronicles 20:15-17 (NLT) 15 He said, “Listen, all you people of Judah and Jerusalem! Listen, King Jehoshaphat! This is what the LORD says: Do not be afraid! Don’t be discouraged by this mighty army, for the battle is not yours, but God’s. 16 Tomorrow, march out against them. You will find them coming up through the ascent of Ziz at the end of the valley that opens into the wilderness of Jeruel. 17 But you will not even need to fight. Take your positions; then stand still and watch the LORD’s victory. He is with you, O people of Judah and Jerusalem. Do not be afraid or discouraged. Go out against them tomorrow, for the LORD is with you!”
GOD'S REST
God recommends two types of rest… Sabbath and Nûah
This is because there are two kinds of work. There is enjoyable creative work and there is troublesome toil.
One is a blessed joy, from which we need sabat and the other is a painful curse, which calls for nûah.
1. Sabat (sabbath) means to take a break, not out of fatigue, or from a need to recover. This is the type of rest God took after creating the heavens and the earth.
First mention: Genesis 2:2 (NKJV) And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done.
When God had His sabat on the seventh day, He did not rest from toil. He was not tired. He was not frustrated. He took a step back to enjoy His work.
Sabat is a break from routine. It is meant to allow us time to enjoy what has been worked on, to get a fresh perspective… Sabat is VACATION.
Sabat is covenantal.
God commanded the children of Israel to let their land rest for one year out of seven. He wanted them to trust Him for provision in the eighth year.
Exodus 31:16-17 (NLT) 16 The people of Israel must keep the Sabbath day by observing it from generation to generation. This is a covenant obligation for all time. 17 It is a permanent sign of my covenant with the people of Israel. For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, but on the seventh day he stopped working and was refreshed.’”
Sabbath for Christians is not the observance of the strict Jewish rituals of Sabat.
By the time Jesus was born, the Pharisees had made the observance of the Sabbath a torturous legalistic burden. They had created 39 categories of forbidden activities which are not found in the Torah. Those categories were the result of rabbinical opinions derived from their interpretation of the intents of God in giving the Sabbath. Not all rabbis even agreed with those categories.
Matthew 23:1-4
Then Jesus said to the crowd and to His disciples, 2 “The teachers of religious law are the official interpreters of the law of Moses. 3 So practice and obey whatever they tell you but don’t follow their example. For they don’t practice what they teach.
4 They crush people with unbearable religious demands and never lift a finger to ease the burden.
Mark 2:27-28 (NKJV) 27 And He said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. 28 “Therefore the Son of Man is also Lord of the Sabbath.”
Jesus teaches us that the Sabbath represents complete trust, rest and confidence in the Lord.
Matthew 11:28 (NLT) Then Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.
2. Nûah
When we are troubled by busy stressful labor and toil, or any kind of trouble like sickness, war or affliction, we need a nûah.
After one has experienced loss fatigue, exhaustion, stress, PTSD,. There is therefore a need for recuperation, recovery…. This is God’s promised rest… Nûah
Nûah is convalescence after sickness, peace after war, recovery after theft, restoration after loss.
R&R….. Rescue and Recovery
R&R….. Rest and Recuperation
First Mention: Genesis 5:29 (NLT) Lamech named his son Noah, for he said, “May he bring us relief from our work and the painful labor of farming this ground that the LORD has cursed.”
Sabat and nûah go hand in hand.
God commands sabat but He promises nùah.
Deuteronomy 5:14 (NKJV) but the seventh day [is] the Sabbath (sabat) of the LORD your God. [In it] you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your ox, nor your donkey, nor any of your cattle, nor your stranger who [is] within your gates, that your male servant and your female servant may rest (nûah) as well as you.
Exodus 23:12 (NLT) 12 “You have six days each week for your ordinary work, but on the seventh day you must stop working (sabat.) This gives your ox and your donkey a chance to rest (nûah.). It also allows your slaves and the foreigners living among you to be refreshed.
Sabbath is commanded rest. Nûah is promised rest.
We may get by without the sabat, but we won’t make it without nûah. We need nûah.
We need The way to enter into God’s nûah is by faith. Nûah is a reward for those who have put their trust in the Lord. Sabbath is a demonstration of faith.
Hebrews 11:6 And it is impossible to please God without faith. Anyone who wants to come to him must believe that God exists and that he rewards those who sincerely seek him.
Sabat is God’s commanded rest. It requires faith in God. There is always a lot to do. Yet God commands us to take a break and rest. There are bills to pay and work to do to make the money for those bills, yet God commands us to rest. There are all kinds of issues to worry about, but we can rest when we trust the Lord.
Psalms 3:5-6 (NLT) 5 I lay down and slept, yet I woke up in safety, for the LORD was watching over me. 6 I am not afraid of ten thousand enemies who surround me on every side.
Psalms 4:8 (NLT) In peace I will lie down and sleep, for you alone, O LORD, will keep me safe.
An inability to rest is sometimes an indication that we do not trust God.
1 Timothy 6:17 (NLT) Teach those who are rich in this world not to be proud and not to trust in their money, which is so unreliable. Their trust should be in God, who richly gives us all we need for our enjoyment.
Illustration: Chick-Fil-A shows trust in God.
Psalms 95:7-11 (NLT)
for He is our God.
We are the people He watches over,
And the flock under His care.
8 The Lord says, “Don’t harden your hearts
as Israel did at Meribah,
as they did at Massah
in the wilderness.
9 For there your ancestors tested and tried my patience,
even though they saw everything I did.
10 For forty years I was angry with them,
and I said,
“They re a people whose hearts turn away from Me,
They refuse to do what I tell them.”
11 So in My anger I took an oath:
“They will never enter the place of My rest (m’nûah).”
Rest here is me-nûah… literally, “My Rest.” Rest that is from God.
This suggests an end of trouble, war, affliction and painful labor. It is a reward God gives to those who please Him.
This psalm was quoted in Hebrews 3:7-11 and also in the fourth chapter which we will expound on.
Hebrews 4:1-11 (NLT) 1 God’s promise of entering his rest still stands, so we ought to tremble with fear that some of you might fail to experience it. 2 For this good news--that God has prepared this rest--has been announced to us just as it was to them. But it did them no good because they didn’t share the faith of those who listened to God. 3 For only we who believe can enter his rest. As for the others, God said, “In my anger I took an oath: ‘They will never enter my place of rest,’” even though this rest has been ready since he made the world. 4 We know it is ready because of the place in the Scriptures where it mentions the seventh day: “On the seventh day God rested from all his work.” 5 But in the other passage God said, “They will never enter my place of rest.” 6 So God’s rest is there for people to enter, but those who first heard this good news failed to enter because they disobeyed God. 7 So God set another time for entering his rest, and that time is today. God announced this through David much later in the words already quoted: “Today when you hear his voice, don’t harden your hearts.” 8 Now if Joshua had succeeded in giving them this rest, God would not have spoken about another day of rest still to come. 9 So there is a special rest still waiting for the people of God. 10 For all who have entered into God’s rest have rested from their labors, just as God did after creating the world. 11 So let us do our best to enter that rest. But if we disobey God, as the people of Israel did, we will fall.
