Thoughts on Hebrews: God's Rest, Part 2

I have not yet really answered the question yet: what is God’s rest? That answer will just have to be worked through. Where Part 1 was mostly introduction, let’s see how far we can get in Part 2.

Thinking on the verses from Numbers 14 at the end of Part 1, we can intuit that Caleb understood something about God, and acted upon that understanding. I say it that way because when we use well worn, ecclesiastically charged language—like “faith”—we have a tendency to loose a tight grip on what’s actually at stake. To be sure, we would be right to say Caleb had faith. That is positively true, in the truest sense of the word. But because that term, “faith,” has been stretch and pulled into an abstraction, I get as much out of thinking Caleb understood something about God, and he acted on it. In the end, that’s a decent working definition of faith towards God, I think: understanding something about him, and then acting on that understanding in a way that affirms God.

This God affirming faith is the very thing the rest of Israel lacked.

Let’s unpack this a little by looking at Romans Chapter 1. While covering the whole of humanity and the human origins of sin, we can glean something about the lack of faith that prevents someone from entering into His rest. Starting with verse 19 we learn:

[W]hat may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and his divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.

Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen. Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts.

(emphasis added)

Despite understanding something about God—here, his divine nature and power—man failed to acknowledge Him or give Him thanks. As a result, they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped not God but something else. God gave them over—a terrifying prospect if there ever was one. So, we see that sin walks on two legs: a lack of faith and an ungrateful heart and mind.

We should not be surprised that Israel fails in the same way. You all remember the golden calf. But take a look at Numbers 25:

While Israel was staying in Shittim, the men began to indulge in sexual immorality with Moabite women, who invited them to the sacrifices to their gods. The people ate the sacrificial meal and bowed down before these gods. So Israel yoked themselves to the Baal of Peor. And the Lord’s anger burned against them. The Lord said to Moses, “Take all the leaders of these people, kill them and expose them in broad daylight before the Lord, so that the Lord’s fierce anger may turn away from Israel.” So Moses said to Israel’s judges, “Each of you must put to death those of your people who have yoked themselves to the Baal of Peor.”

Then an Israelite man brought into the camp a Midianite woman right before the eyes of Moses and the whole assembly of Israel while they were weeping at the entrance to the tent of meeting. When Phinehas son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, the priest, saw this, he left the assembly, took a spear in his hand and followed the Israelite into the tent. He drove the spear into both of them, right through the Israelite man and into the woman’s stomach.

Man’s sin runs in the same streams apparently.

I bring this line of thinking together with Part 1 because we tend to have a small view of sin, and therefore a light opinion of God such that when He speaks as He does in Psalm 95 and again in Hebrews we tend to take Him too lightly. To be clear, there are sins plural inasmuch as there are apples on an apple tree, and figs on a fig tree. But entire agricultural system is sin, and must be treated as an entire economy of toil and labor, roots and soil, irrigation and pruning. The entire exercise and activity of a life outside of God is in a word, sin.

If you think about it, the depth of sin as a way of life demonstrates the futility of treating the Sabbath as a law to keep. We can’t keep laws anymore than a fig tree can grow almonds. What we are by nature must be changed by something greater than ourselves. John the Baptist recognized this. Carry on as he should and did about winnowing forks and fire and an ax laid to the tree roots, he nevertheless understood that he (namely, Jesus) must increase and he (namely, John) must decrease. And again John disclaim a superior position, he who comes after me is before me and I am not worthy to unhook the latch of his sandal.

We too must view our position before the Christ with great humility.

But the main point I want to make is sin permeates every fiber of our hearts and minds right down to the marrow. I am sure we don’t know the half of the cancer within us, but not a few of us know we are enslaved to this world and its ways, to sin and its desires, to our bodies and their demands, and truly we glory in it.

For some that slavery is backbreaking, hope stealing, and they take their own lives—not once hearing and recognizing His voice. What a profound tragedy!

I’ll leave you again with the verses in Numbers 14; but before I do, here’s where we are headed—tracing His rest through Scripture, and then examining what Israel did not enter into. And then finally, we can return to Hebrews 3 and 4 in order to examine our own hearts to see if we can hear His voice. How knows how many posts this will take? Bear with me; this is important. So, Numbers 14 again:

Not one will ever see the land that I swore to give their fathers. None of those who have treated Me with contempt will see it. But because My servant Caleb has a different spirit and has followed Me wholeheartedly, I will bring him into the land has entered, and his descendants will inherit it.

Image courtesy of Unsplash, Alex Igby