Prophets and the Rest of God: 1 the victory of Christ Gen 1:31-2:3, 8-17;Isa 57:15-21; Heb 4:1-11
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1B-9WGoR6pE
Introduction
In an evil age (Gal 1:4) subject to divine judgement human beings are chronically restless about the state of their lives and that of the world; things always seem to be getting “worse”. This general anxiety about life came across clearly to me when I was listening to a visiting speaker in Manila last January. He said we all sense things in the world aren’t the way they were intended to be, but that they can be better. In response, many people are constantly striving to “better themselves”, morally, religiously or economically. This emphasis on self-effort is a surprisingly widespread problem. David Wilkerson’s book, The Cross and the Switchblade, helped bring me to Christ, but in a biography written by his son we read how close to the end of his life Wilkerson said sorrowfully, “My days are done, ….I didn’t do enough.” Apparently this mighty man of God suffered from a perfectionism that plagues many pastors and often leads to disillusionment, burnout or anxiety. My experience teaches me that only a small minority of Christians are free from a need to perform up to what they think are God’s standards.
What then are the unsearchable riches of Jesus which issue his people into the supernatural rest spoken promised in scripture (Heb 4:1)? What we call “the finished work of Christ”, is an obvious answer. Bible believing Christians confess that Jesus’ death on the cross fully satisfies all the demands of the Father. This is true, but Jesus’ rest is much bigger than the few hours of his dying. He is after all, “the Lamb who was slain from the foundation of the world” (Rev 13:8). The rest of God into which we are invited is as eternal as God himself.
Whilst God is sovereign (Eph 1:11), the intense exhortations of Hebrews warn that entering into the rest of God is impeded by sins of disobedience and unbelief (3:1-4:17 cf. Deut 28:15). If faith is the highest form of obedience (John 6:29; Rom 1:5; 16:26), what do we have to believe about God’s accomplishments in Christ in order to enjoy the kingdom fruitfulness Jesus foretold (Mark 4:20)? Firstly, we need to believe some things about the divine nature.
Original rest
We need to trust that God’s wrath, unlike his love (1 John 4:8), is not an essential part of his nature. In eternity the Father never had a reason to be angry with his Son! Wrath is something that has to be provoked (Deut 9:8). The restless state of sinners, like that described in Isaiah, “the wicked are like the tossing sea; for it cannot be quiet, and its waters toss up mire and dirt. 21 There is no peace,” says my God, “for the wicked.”” (57:20-21), brings the Lord no pleasure (Ezek 18:32; 33:11). What thrills his heart, his dream if you like, is revealed in another prophetic passage in Isaiah (27:1-6) where in Eden-like language Israel is a pleasant/delightful /happy vineyard filling the world because the Lord can say “I have no wrath”. In this passage he is marvellously wrathless because he victoriously brought Israel into rest by conquering a hostile supernatural power here called Leviathan. Such a realistic vision of eternity involves the undoing of a fallen creation.
Creation, Marriage, Fall
At the end of Genesis 1 God saw all he had made was “very good” and “rested” in his “finished work” (Gen 1:31; 2:2-3). Being in the image of God the first couple enjoyed this rest and delighted in being complete in the Lord (cf. Prov 8:30-31). Obeying God’s prohibition to seek the “knowledge of good and evil” was one with the sense of goodness filling their souls as they abided in the service God had given them (Gen 2:15). They knew “good” from immediate experience but had no such direct understanding of evil.
Then Satan appears, who in the all-wise counsel of God (Eph 1:11) is ordained to tempt humanity to depart from the rest of innocence they already enjoyed by the grace of creation. God’s purposes were not that we fall into sin, but by resisting sin be elevated to a higher glory. The glory of finishing the work of filling the earth beyond Eden would have carried us into a rest beyond the limits of this present creation. When Adam sinned, he forfeited this greater rest and lost the rest he already was enjoying.
The architecture of the Lord (Heb 3:4; 11:10) is however far more creative than any plan of the devil. Satan incited a married couple to rebel (1 Tim 2:13-15), but through a marriage a seed of the woman would come who would crush the head of the serpent (Gen 3:15) and through a last Adam and perfect Husband (1 Cor 15:45) release a grace far more abounding than any impact of evil (Rom 5:14, 20). Embedded as a secret in the first creation was the prospect of a resurrection that would elevate all things to an indestructible rest (Rom 8:20-23; 1 Cor 15:44-46). The healing of the world would be enacted through the ecstatic marital love of Christ for the Church (Eph 5:31-32). This marriage which is the key for understanding how the Father will bring his final rest to the earth.
Types of Rest
Israel is chosen to be the wife of God (Isa 54:5; Jer 3:14 etc.), but the whole history of her Husband’s dealings with this rebellious wife (Jer 2:3ff.) is a struggle to bring them into a place of rest for covenant love. The conquest of the idolatrous nations and entry into the Promised Land was meant to be a provision of such an inheritance of such rest (Deut 12:9-10; 25:19; Josh 23:1). The covenant with David’s “son” includes a promise of rest from all enemies (2 Sam 7:11). In the first instance this “man of rest” (1 Chron 22:9) is Solomon, who when given rest from all his enemies (2 Sam 4:24; 5:4; 8:56) discharges the highest responsibility of an ancient middle eastern monarch, building a house of residence for his God. When the Temple is open Solomon invokes God’s presence with a prayer, “And now arise, O Lord God, and go to your resting place, you and the ark of your might.” (2 Chron 6:41). This is the high point of Old Testament history, when God’s name, eyes and heart (2 Chron 7:16) dwelt restfully in the midst of his people under a ruler who is globally famous for a wisdom (1 Ki 4:30, 34), “to discern between good and evil” (1 Ki 3:9). It looks like Solomon has restored all that was lost through Adam. Then comes a satanic master stroke. Solomon is corrupted, not by fame, power or wealth but by foreign wives (1 Ki 11:4-8) who lead him into the very idol worship which the Lord had already warned him would result in the destruction of the temple and the exile of the people among the nations (1 Ki 6:12; 9:6-9). Divine wrath (covenant) means no rest. Though all this looks so hopeless the Lord always has a word of hope through the prophets that foreshadows a new creation beyond anything then imaginable.
At the end of Isaiah we hear, “Thus says the Lord: “Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool; what is the house that you would build for me, and what is the place of my rest? 2 All these things my hand has made, and so all these things came to be, declares the Lord. But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.” (Isa 66:1-2 cf. Isa 57:15). God will find his rest amongst his people not in a physical construction but in a man who will superlatively exhibit in himself all the virtues that attract the presence of the Lord.
Content of the Rest in Christ
The New Testament revelation is that the rest of God is located not in earthly territory, nor in a material sanctuary made by human hands but in his Son. God’s own rest is his supreme Christ-centredness. Jesus is the prophesied Servant of the Lord exalted to the level of divinity “he shall be high and lifted up, and shall be exalted” (Isa 52:13; 6:1; 57:15 cf. Luke 14:11; 1 Pet 5:6) because he can say truthfully say, “Come to me, all who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”” (Matt 11:28-30). He is the place where the might of God will “rest” (cf. John 1:33) for he is that one contrite person fulfils Isaiah’s prophetic word, especially in Gethsemane, by trembling at God’s word of judgement (Isa 66:2; Mark 14:34; Luke 22:44). The depths of how Christ would reach his perfect rest for us as his beloved Bride presently is beyond human comprehension.
It is biblical (Rom 3:25; 8:3; 1 Cor 5:21; 1 Pet 2:24; 1 John 2:2) to teach Jesus bore the rest-destroying wrath of God on our behalf on the cross. But to restrict his substitutionary sacrifice to the last few hours of Christ’s life is inadequate. The sixteenth century Reformed teaching called the Heidelberg Catechism says this, (Q37) “Q. What do you understand by the word “suffered”? A. That during his whole life on earth, but especially at the end, Christ sustained in body and soul the anger/wrath of God against the sin of the whole human race.” What does this mean.
Jesus emptied himself of eternal glory (Phil 2:7) and took on “the likeness of sinful flesh” (Rom 8:3 cf. John 1:14; Heb 2:14; 5:17) in all its dimensions so that we might become all that he is. Paul speaks of a great exchange, “you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich” (2 Cor 8:9). For the salvation of his Bride Jesus took on bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh (cf. Gen 2:23) and was assailed from birth to death by every natural and supernatural force that robs us of peace and excludes us from entering the rest of God. To endure such conflicts Jesus needed the fulness of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit came to rest on Jesus at his baptism (John 1:33) precisely because it was by his power (Heb 9:14) that Christ’s body would become the risen temple of God where the Father could abide forever (John 8:35; Heb 7:38). It believe we vastly underestimate the stresses Jesus endured for his whole life on earth.
First Jesus’ own family say of his ministry, “He is out of his mind.” Then straight after such a dishonourable scandal the religious authorities were saying, “He is possessed by Beelzebul…the prince of demons” (Mark 3:21-22). They slander him as “‘A glutton and a drunkard’” (Matt 11:19) a false teacher “deceiving the people” (John 7:12) and finally condemn him as a blasphemer (Matt 9:3; 26:65). The denial of Peter, the cowardice of the disciples and the betrayal by Judas must have cut Jesus deeply. His weeping at the tomb of Lazarus and his lament over a doomed Jerusalem (John 11:35; Matt 23:37) reveal things of which the scriptures are often silent.
It is in becoming so human that God can take away the wrath of God. It has been rightly said, “Only God Himself could bear the wrath of God. Only God’s mercy was capable of bearing the pain to which the creature existing in opposition to Him is subject. Only God’s mercy could so feel this pain as to take it into the very heart of His being. And only God’s mercy was strong enough not to be annihilated by this pain.” (K. Barth CD II/2 400). As the suffering God Jesus has destroyed every element of pain, judgement and deprivation that robs humanity of the divine rest for which we were created. The depths of this exchange require more exposition.
As “the founder and perfecter of faith” (Heb 12:2), a preferable translation to “our faith”, Jesus believed that he would successfully take humanity into the eternal glory of God. This is why he so uniquely prays, “I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. 5 And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.” (John 17:4-5). As “the Lamb who was slain from the foundation of the world” (Rev 13:8) Christ will take saved humanity into the rest of God inside himself, but first he had to descend from this place of eternal rest to the hell of this world.
As Adam in Eden first enjoyed a sense of completion in his work for God, and then lost this rest, Jesus must first possess a sense of his finished work and then be deprived of this presence. He does not merely enter into our miseries but suffers far beyond them. The average sinner may feel misery, pain, anxiety, fear, distress etc. but in their spiritual deadness and dullness (Eph 2:1-3) they do not really know that God is angry with them. They are senseless about the wrath of God. Unregenerate people without the Spirit of God cannot know, in the intimate sense (John 17:3), such deeply spiritual things (John 3:3, 6; 1 Cor 2:14).
However, as a Spirit filled man Jesus possessed unlimited sensitivity to the Father (Heb 9:14). It is a total sense of the wrath of God against the sins of the whole human race which causes Christ to cry out in bitter anguish, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34). The scriptures testify abundantly to what Jesus was enduring; Psalm 22:2, which immediately follows the “My God” words quoted by the dying Jesus, says “O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest.”, he carries the “no peace” state “for the wicked.” (Isa 57:21 cf. Isa 53:9; 2 Cor 5:21). And if the cross is Jesus’ “descent into hell” (Acts 2:24; Heb 2:15; 5:7) then he bore the fate of the eternally eternal condemned who have “no rest day and night” (Rev 14:11).
I want to reinforce something about the deep and essential intimacy of Christ’s sufferings. When on the road to Damascus Saul is struck down by divine light from heaven he cries out, “Who are you, Lord?”, and in reply hears, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting” (Acts 9:5). This sensitivity to the sufferings of the Church is something taken on by the Son of God in becoming a Bridegroom whose life, earthly and heavenly, is one uninterrupted act of identification/intercession/interposition on behalf of a weak, struggling and often unfaithful Bride.
In his final cry from the cross, Jesus said, “‘It is finished” (John 19:28-30). A testimony that means through his limitless obedience the Son of God Jesus has brought to perfect achievement every work that every human being in the whole history was ever called to do for God. Resurrected, ascended and seated in heaven (Eph 4:10) our Betrothed has been translocated to a new creation (Heb 4:14) beyond subjection to all the futility and decay sin has brought into this fallen world (Rom 8:20). Inhabiting the “highest place” above all powers (Eph 1:21; 4:10; Phil 2:9; Heb 7:26) Jesus has re-entered the realm of the Trinitarian life as a glorified human being (Isa 6:1; 52:13; 57:15). What God planned from before the foundation of creation has been accomplished and our Lord and Saviour is at perfect REST.
Conclusion
Walking in bushland recently and praying about the rest of God (Malaga 26/9/20) I had a distinct sense that I was entering into an awareness of the eternal victories of Christ. I was in no hurry to leave that space but felt that I could abide there indefinitely. My/our time to go there permanently will come soon enough. With all complete in Christ, Father, Son and Spirit are in no rush to get to the End. Whilst we may long for the Return of Christ and entry into our eternal rest (Rev14:13) our longing must be conditioned by the fact that we are a Bride (Rev 22:17,20) whose wedding date has been settled in the fulness of time (cf. Gal 4:4; Eph 1:10). In the wisdom of God this precise date is hidden from us (Matt 24:36; Acts 1:7), in order that by faith we might in the midst of this present evil age (Gal 1:4) enter ever more deeply into the everlasting rest prepared for us in Christ. What might that involve at a personal and congregational level? Here a key text is Hebrew 4:11, “Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.” I will try to expound this next week.