The Faith-Rest Technique
RO117-02

This passage of scripture has indicated to us that God has provided all believers of the church age with a good future from salvation through victory over the sin nature here on earth to rewards in heaven. This fact has been expressed to us in the statement of Romans 8:28 which is provided as the Christian's resource in times of crises.

The application of Romans 8:28, all things working together toward these three stages of good in any life situation, requires the utilization of the faith-rest technique which God has provided. If you're going to make Romans 8:28 work in your life, you have to understand the doctrine of faith-rest in order to apply it. The practice of mixing the Biblical promises of God with one's personal faith produces rest in the soul which is promised, in effect, in Romans 8:28.

The Faith-Rest Technique

He says, "Let us [in view of what they did] fear." And the word "fear" is the Greek word "phobeo." The word here means to be concerned or to be careful about something at some point in time. It's something that should not possess the individual believer. It is an expression of an exhortation here of something that the Christian should be concerned about.

Generally, of course, Christians are told that they are not to fear. 2 Timothy 1:7 tells us that we have not been called to a spirit of fear. But here, it is not a fear of the world of Satan and of Satan's power which is what the Christian does not have to be afraid of, but here, it is something that we are to be on guard against doing. And therefore, something that we should be fearful or concerned that we be not guilty of this. It warns us, in short, about failing to use the faith-rest technique as the Exodus Jews failed to use it. No rest in one's soul or happiness and blessing can be experienced without practicing faith-rest.

We will translate this, "Therefore, let us be concerned, lest [this is a word indicating (lest) per chance] a promise being left us." The word "promise" is the word "epaggelia." This refers to the commitment to do something. Here, it refers to the commitment of God to save the sinner who will believe the Gospel and then to enable him to carry through victoriously in Satan's world. Here, it says, be careful, be concerned, "lest the promise has been left."

The word "left" is "kataleipo," and this word means "to leave behind." That something that is remaining. Something that after you have had a bowl of cherries and you've eaten half of them, half of them are "kataleipo." Half of them are left there. They're sitting there. They're remaining. They're leftover. Here, he says, there is something constantly that's available to us that's leftover. It has been made available by God, and the principle stated here is that there are many promises leftover for us to use here on this earth, promises that we may capitalize on or not.

In Luke 1:37 has one such promise, which says, "For with God nothing shall be impossible." Now, that's a tremendous promise. "For with God nothing shall be impossible." If God is in an enterprise, it's going to roll. Nothing is impossible with God, whether it's something in your personal life, whether it's in your church life, business, social, whatever, if God is for it, nothing is impossible, no matter how outrageously impossible it might seem on a human level. So, the Bible has these promises, and they remain. They're all there relative to life here on earth.

So, we translate, thus far, "Therefore, let us be concerned, lest per change while a promise still stands of entering into His rest." "Entering" is "eiserchomai." "Eiserchomai" here means "to avail yourself of something. Lest, there is left a stack of promises for you to avail yourself of in reference to God's rest and you fail to do so. You fail at some point where you need to avail yourself. You fail in personal application. This is in the infinitive mood. It is God's purpose that Christians use up these promises that are available.

"Let us, therefore, fear lest the promise being left us of entering into His rest." His rest, that is, God's rest. The word "rest" is "katapausis." "Katapausis" is a word that refers to a repose, a state of calmness. God offers the Christian a condition of repose for the soul no matter what your outward circumstances are. Death hits your family, there is repose of the soul if faith-rest is applied to the situation. You're facing a terminal illness; God provides repose and stability for the soul when you apply faith-rest to this situation. Your prosperity goes out the window; God provides stability through faith-rest. This is a terribly important doctrine. Some Christians who know it promptly ignore it to their great loss. This refers to a moment-by-moment Sabbath life rest in the soul.

This is described a little more in Hebrews 4:9, "There remains therefore a rest to the people of God." And the word "rest" here is not the same as this "katapausis" rest. That one is "sabbatismos." "Sabbatismos." And you can see that that gives us our English word "Sabbath." The word "Sabbath" refers to a condition of rest. It's a complete cessation from activity. It's just leaning back and relaxing. And here, he is saying that God has a Sabbath day-like rest for us to enter. As God entered a Sabbath rest at the end of His week of creation work, so the believer ceases from all of the self-efforts, and he rests in God's promise in salvation by grace and capacity to carry through in life.

It is a great way of living. A Sabbath-like rest in the soul. You're not always out there hustling. You're not always out there screaming and yelling and clawing and struggling and pushing and wanting something that always eludes you. You're never able to grasp it. It's just beyond your fingertips. You learn how to rest and walk with God, because you have a Sabbath condition in the soul. The rest which is in view in Hebrews 4:1 is specifically the rest in salvation, and he is saying, "Take care now as the Jews of the Old Testament missed going into the promised land, you could miss the eternal rest of heaven."

The thing we've been talking about that is important when a person dies is not the fact that he's left his life but whether he indeed has gone to an eternal rest or to an eternal agony. And this passage is directing these people to the fact that some of them were trying to go back to the Old Testament works system of the law to make it with God, and he says, "Don't do that. God has a rest for you. He has promised to give this to you on the basis of a grace salvation of. You better believe it. You better mix your faith with that promise, and you will have eternal rest. Otherwise, you will not." Sharing God's peace while on earth, sharing His eternal rest when in heaven.

"Therefore, let us be concerned, lest per chance, while a promise still stands of entering into His rest, any of you," referring to the Christians community, "Any among you Christians should seem." The word is "dokeo." The word "dokeo" means "to suppose," that is, to hold an opinion about something. And he is saying, "I want to warn you that some of you may have the wrong idea about something."

The Availability of Salvation Until the Point of Death

And that's exactly what this passage is saying. Don't make the mistake that you think the promises are no longer available and functioning. If you treat those promises in the right way, if you treat them with the faith that will activate them in your experience. So, the word "hustereo," means, "don't think that you're too late, that you have missed the boat." This is in the perfect tense in the Greek language. The perfect tense indicates that something happened back here and now the result has continued right here to the present, and it will go on forever. It says, "Don't think that you did something in the past and there's no hope for you, that you can no longer capture eternal life." It is God's purpose, indeed, that you should all enjoy level one good of eternal life.

So, the verse says, "Therefore, let us be concerned, lest per chance, while a promise still stands of entering his rest, any of you should think he is come too late to avail himself of that promise." The idea is that one has missed the opportunity for salvation rest which salvation is, in fact, available on God's basis.

So, I'm happy to tell you this morning if you are not in the family of God through the new birth, while you are breathing and kicking, the promise is still available. But once you stop breathing, and once you stop kicking, the promise then, indeed, will be lost to you. This side of death, the promise is still available, no matter what. God's grace plan of salvation is still in effect for those who choose to accept it while alive here on this earth.

So, he begins explaining the faith-rest technique by stressing that the basic promise of salvation is still available. And don't think that you have missed it. Then, wants to go from there and say, "As a matter of fact, the promises that God has for Christians are still available." Now, you do cut yourself off from those promises by sin in your life. But the minute you confess it, all those promises again become available to you. Don't ever think that you have come to a state in your life where you think that something is not available to you that God has for you.

It is true that people do some terrible things. They've entered terrible relationships in life. Some of them are permanent, like marriage relationships that you can't twist out. Some of them are relationships where you make a move in life, you shove off, you make a departure. You look back, and you say, "Oh, that was a terrible mistake. I was certainly not in the will of God. It seemed like a good thing to do at the time, and now, it's all fouled up." And at that point, you might think, "That's it. There's no use me trying to serve the Lord. There's no use me trying to walk the Christian life." But you're wrong. The promises of God will come to your rescue when you avail yourself of them.

Activating God's Promises With Faith

He is speaking to a group of people, in other words, who have been evangelized. The recipients of the book of Hebrews letter were Jewish people, and they were struggling with whether God indeed has cut loose from all the Judaism of the Old Testament, whether indeed they didn't need to keep all those rituals anymore. Whether they indeed didn't need to circumcise their boys, whether all they had to do now was simply to obey God under the grace of God in the Christian era. And the writer says, "You people have had the Gospel of the grace of God explained to you, and you know that that's a promise from God. You've had it put out to you very clearly. I'm talking to a group of people who are evangelized. You have the information necessary to be saved, and therefore, you have the information necessary to secure eternal rest in heaven for your souls."

Now, you are faced at this point with doing something with that information. You know the Gospel. You have heard it. It's been explained to you. Now, you can die and go out into eternity and find yourself screaming in agony and terror as you begin immediately the suffering that you will experience all the rest of eternity. You will begin it in hades. You will continue it when you're transferred into the lake of fire. Or, you can accept the promise of God and capitalize upon the information you have now by activating that promise.

How do you activate it? And he's going to go on to show that when you mix it with your faith (you believe it), that promise is activated. So, he's saying, "We, today, have had the Gospel preached to us," he says, "just as, as well as, unto them." And he's referring here to the people of the Exodus generation. He said they also referred to these Exodus Jews had the Gospel preached to them. The Jews of the Old Testament had the Gospel message which was necessary for salvation; they had it in visual form. They had it in the form of those ceremonies and rituals, and they certainly had it in the form of the Passover feast. They understood what those ceremonies, what that Passover feast was telling them: that someplace down the line, God was going to cover with a human Savior their sins.

So, they had the Gospel. We know that Abraham had the Gospel clearly explained to him. We are told that he believed it, and the result was that God declared him to be a righteous, a justified man. And so, Abraham entered a heavenly rest. So, Old Testament and New Testament eras both have been given a promise of eternal life.

And I stress to you again that people in the Old Testament were not saved by killing animals or going through some religious ritual. People in the Old Testament were saved, just as we are today, by grace, by believing the Gospel. They had to believe the Gospel message looking forward to the time when God would cover their sins. That's why we learn earlier in the book of Romans that God was saving all those people on credit. He was piling the I.O.U.'s, because while He was saying to Abraham, "You're a justified man; you're going to heaven," in fact, Abraham's sins had not been covered. But God says, "I'm giving this to you on credit." And when Christ died, all those I.O.U.'s were wiped, and all those past confidences in the promise of salvation were activated in reality, and the justification was put into effect in those who had believed. From then on, people looked back to that salvation and that to sacrifice of Christ. But, on both sides of the cross, you're saved by believing the Gospel; you're not saved by something that you did.

Now, many of the Jews did not follow Abraham's pattern in believing the Gospel, and they were lost. The Exodus Jews did not believe the promises of God, so they were a fearful, unstable people full of self-pity. They were critical, and they finally just died in the wilderness. They simply came to an end. He says, "But, unto us was the Gospel preached, as well as to them," but he says, here was the difference. There was a problem.

The Word: the "logos," referring to the promise from God relative to rest in salvation and rest in the promised land. The Word which was preached. It's this word "akoe." This is not a verb. This is a noun, and it means "a hearing." The Word, which was heard by them. The Word which came as a hearing to them. It refers to the Word of God which they heard. They listened to the promises. They heard them, and it said that Word did not do something. "Ou," the strong Greek negative, it didn't profit them.

The Greek word is "opheleo." "Opheleo" means "to benefit" or to be of value. It's in the aorist tense, so a lot of these Jews who had heard the promise of God, the promise of how to be saved. They did not follow Abraham's example. They did not believe it. The promise of how to get into the Promised Land. They didn't believe that. So, it was of no benefit to them to have the information. Active voice: they personally did the rejecting. It was a statement of fact. But the Word they heard did not profit them. The message of the Gospel was of no benefit, for some reason, to the Exodus Jews. The promises of rest after slavery. The promises of having the happiness of the land of milk and honey, for some reason, was of no value to the Jews. Why was all this of no value? For the simple reason that they did not do something with it. They did not mix it.

The word "sugkerannumi." "Sugkerannumi." Made of two Greek words. This word "sug" is "with." This word is the verb, and it means "to mix." And so what we have, "sugkerannumi," means, "to mix with." They did not mix the promise with something so the promise could be activated. Like certain chemicals, they can lie there dormant. They don't do a thing, but you mix that chemical, and it develops a sputtering, explosive characteristic. It becomes something that becomes actually dangerous. They didn't mix what they had. They didn't mingle it with something to form a new product. They heard the Gospel message. They heard the promises of the Lamb. These were given to them by God. They didn't participate in them because they did not mix it with - and what they didn't mix it with is faith.

"Pistis." This is the noun for believing the promises of God. It refers to a firm conviction of the truth of what they have heard. If Abraham had not believed God's promise to him, he would have received absolutely nothing. If Abraham had not mixed his faith with God's promise, that would have been the end of it. The Exodus Jews did not mix God's promises of rest with their personal faith, so they lost it all. The Jews, thus, had no rest for their bodies or their souls, and they were left to die in the wilderness, to wander around for the period of forty years. It says that this not mixed in with faith was done by those who had actually heard the information. "In them that heard it."

The word "akouo." The word means "hearing so that you know something." Hearing the promise of God. They had access to it. They could have benefited from it. They paid no attention to it. They had the information, but they never went positive to it, and so they never secured God's rest.

Some did. Joshua and Caleb, you'll remember, they did believe God. You remember when they finally got to the land? They were there at the port of entry at Kadesh Barnea, and they sent in the reconnaissance party. Tell us what's in there. Well, they found that there were some terribly large people. They were so large that these guys were all oversized. It was part of the world where a game called basketball originated, and they had nothing but tall people. Everybody was tall. I mean, if you were a six-footer, you were in trouble.

When the party got back, they said, "You know, we're like grasshoppers. They're going to squash us just by stepping on us! There's no way we're going to go in there and fight these guys and take it over." Joshua and Caleb said, "Of course we're going to take it from them because God has promised to do that for us! All we have to do is believe it." Well, ten said nothing to them. "We're not about to believe that." And they died in the wilderness. Joshua and Caleb lived through the forty years, and they went into the promised land.

So, the difference was whether you mixed the promise with your faith. Now, that is the faith-rest technique. Mixing one's faith with Gospel will secure for you eternal rest in heaven. The key to faith-rest is to know the promises of God and then to believe them. Through unbelief, people fail to utilize the blessings of the promises of God.

So, verse 2 says this, "For indeed, we have had the Gospel preached to us just as they also, in Old Testament Times. But the Word they heard did not profit them because it was not mixed with faith in those who had heard it." Now, that's a simple statement, and this applies to us today. The promises, when mixed with faith, are the promises that profit us.

Verse 3 then says, "For we who have believed do enter into rest." We Christians who have believed. The Greek word for "faith," "pisteuo," the word that expresses faith in what God has said. It's in the aorist tense. At any point that you trust the Gospel message. It's active voice; you have to do your own believing. Your parents can't believe for you. Your fellow Christians can't believe for you. We have a spiritual principle stated here that we who have believed this Gospel, we have mixed that promise with our faith.

The result is that we have, again, entered, that word we had before "eiserchomai." We have partaken of something. We do enter something, and what we enter, again, is that "katapausis," the rest - a state of repose in place of pressure. Mixing faith with the promises in scripture brings rest to the soul in the midst of a world which is under God's curse.

This is how we use faith-rest to utilize Romans 8:28 which was given to us to help us to make it in a world that God has had to curse. This is the faith-rest principle. It expects God to be true to His Word, and so, we treat Him accordingly. This is how we take our problems to the Lord and we leave them there. This is the practical application of Romans 8:28.

He says, "'For we who have believed do enter into rest,' as he said." And what he is doing here now, he is quoting Psalm 95:11. Let me just read that for you. Psalm 95:11, which says, "Unto whom I swore in my wrath [that is, to that Exodus, unbelieving generation] they should not enter into my rest." You are not going to go into the promised land. So, "as he said," refers to Psalm 95:11.

"I have sworn." And that is the word "omnumi," which is the word for taking an oath or making an affirmation about something. At a point of the rebellion of the Exodus generation at Kadesh, God made this statement. He personally made this declaration that they would not enter His rest because of God's wrath.

And the word "wrath" is the Greek word "orge." This is a condition of indignation which is expressed in some external action. This expresses God's response to man's negative volitions to God's promises. It's a historical reference to what God did to the Exodus generation. For we who have believed entered that rest just as he said as I swore in my wrath [and then our King James translation says] if they shall enter."

"If they shall enter" is an idiom in the Greek language, and so the words don't convey what it is saying. You have to add an expression before it. You have to say, "My name is not God if they shall enter." So that, what you are saying, in effect, we translate it as simply, "They shall not enter into my rest," which is what Psalm 95:11 says. So that, these people were told because of God's anger that they did not use His promise that they would not enter His rest.

"Although [he says], God's works were finished." The word "finished" is the word "ginomai." It means the works have come to pass. God's creation works were complete. God's plans were complete. God's provisions for us in eternity past were complete. At the end of that six days from the very foundation, these things are said to have been completed.

The "foundation" is the "katabole." The "katabole" means "laying down." We would say just from the laying down of something. What he's referring to here is from the point of the creation of the cosmos. The creation of the world. In the process of creation, God provided everything that we would need to enjoy rest in our souls in eternity and rest in our souls here on earth. God has been in a state of rest Himself since He completed his week of creation work.

That's what He means in this verse. God is finished. He's not trying to provide anymore. It's all there waiting for you, encapsulated in what He's provided in these promises. Now, you can take them, or you can ignore them. Verse 4 says, "For he spoke in a certain place of the seventh day on this way, And God did rest the seventh day from all his works." So, although sin entered the human race through Adam and mankind lost his rest with God, there has been provided a way today to enter God's status of rest, the faith-rest technique.

So, verse 3 is saying, "For we who have believed enter that rest just as He said, 'As I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter into my rest:' although His works were finished since the foundation of the world." The Exodus generation had the promise of rest, but they didn't believe it, and so they lost out. Christians are not to follow that terrible example of the Exodus Jews. There is a rest on earth for God's people today in spite of all the adverse things that may come into our lives, the things that they may suffer.

Verse 9 of Hebrews 4 says, "There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God." Here in this context, he's saying that the Jews of the Old Testament didn't enter into their rest, but God still has a rest for people to enter into. They missed that Sabbath-like rest because they ignored the provision that God gave them.

A Summary of Faith-Rest

He says, 'He that has entered in." The one who has chosen to get himself into the rest that God has provided as God entered His rest, he also has quit doing his own efforts, his own works. So, to enter God's rest of soul, we have to decide to quit following our human viewpoint opinions.

Now, this is the problem that is so evident with Christians: that there are difficulties in life, and we want to meet them with an emotional reaction. We want to meet them with some humanly-devised system of experiences. We want to cope with the situation in life in some way other than going to the Word of God and getting the basic directions and guidelines and capitalizing on the promises that God has. So that, we are struggling and losing. Struggling and not achieving, instead of turning around and saying, "What is the thing that you're doing with me, Lord? Where am I going? What is the direction that I should be pursuing?" And let me have the confidence in that.

Now, God did that. God did His work, and then He rested from those works. And we are to capitalize on the fact that before the foundation, from the creation of the world, all of our needs have been provided. So, what do you have as a need this morning? If it is a legitimate need, and not a want, God has provided for it. He did it when the world was put together. All He wants you to do now is lean back and permit Him to bring it to you as you develop the maturity to receive it.

God ceased from His own work. Why are you still pursuing your efforts instead of pursuing His capacities? Why are you still pursuing the hustling, the doing, the talking, the smiling, the hand-shaking, the emoting? Why are you putting the flesh in there to try to secure for you with some form of religious hypocrisy, some kind of a front of something that you put on that you're not? Why are you seeking something from the world that you should not even have a taste for?

We live in days of a lot of unrest and uncertainty. But the faith-rest technique gives the Christian who uses it peace in spite of that uncertainty. Our society needs Christians who can use faith-rest and who cannot fall apart in the crunch, people who can mix faith with the promises of God instead of hustling off to a psychiatrist when the difficulties arise. When the shuttle blew up, the psychiatrists and the psychologists all crawled out of the woodwork and kept hammering away on the public media that all of you have a great problem. You have a great grief you can't cope with. You have great difficulties. And pretty soon, you felt you were some kind of a weirdo if you didn't have some kind of problem. And so, a lot of people created problems for themselves because they were sure they should have problems over this.

Ah, but Christians have a perspective. Christians know the promises of God. Christians can look upon a tragedy like that, and they can look on it with perspective, and they can mix their faith with what God has promised. And they know exactly what has happened, and they know exactly what has not happened to those people. They know exactly what this is going to mean a hundred years from now and what it is not going to mean a hundred years from now. That's the difference between faith-rest and pressing in your own capacities. A very great difference.

Now, of course, I know that the world holds in contempt those of you who would practice faith-rest. The world would prefer to think that God helps those who help themselves. That's what the world tells you. The world does not like to think that God helps those who don't try to make it on their own but trust in Him to guide their efforts.

Faith-rest does not mean inactivity on the part of the believer in meeting his problems. We have come down very hard on trusting God and looking for Him to the promise. Now, we have to balance it by helping you to understand that faith-rest means that you have gone all the way in doing what you, in human capacity, in human intelligence, in spiritual discernment, are able to do with the particular issue that you are dealing with. You go all the ways that you can. But you're going to come to a place where you can't pull it off. You're going to come to a place where you can't bring about the results. You're going to come to the place where there's a change that's needed in somebody, or yourself, and you can't pull it off. Your circumstances that need to be adjusted in a desirable way, and you can't adjust them.

Now, you can go off in some little sweet Bible class and sit there sharing your ignorance with one another and emoting to each other, or you can go to the Word of God, take the promises of God, and you can now incorporate faith-rest at the point that you have gone as far as you can go.

So, don't come along here and tell me, "That's wonderful. I just love this doctrine. I am so sick and tired of going to college and having to study. I am so glad to hear now that all I have to do is go there and then I'm going to put my faith in God, and I'll get a good grade. Fact is, I don't even know if I need to go to class, if I can get away with it. What do I need? I'll just have faith in God." You're going to get a zero. But if you have done your best, you've put the effort in, and you have prepared yourself, and then you have entered that classroom, now indeed, you may trust the promise that with God, all things are possible, even an "A" for you.

And, I can testify, I have had experience in college and in seminary of studying, knocking my brains out, and walking out into a classroom, and they hand out that list of questions, and I look at that list of eight, nine, ten questions, and I don't know the answer to a one of them. Zilch, zero.

So, what do you do when you don't know the answer to questions on a college exam, or a seminary exam? You pick up your pen, and you start writing. Oh, you write. You fill that book. You fill the pages. You fill the book. You write. You say the same thing five different ways and reiterate it. First of all, you make a good impression when you hand the blue book in with all the test in it. And I can tell you that on several occasions, I came out with an "A" on the paper where literally I was stone-cold, struck with terror when I first read the questions. That's how much I knew about the subject.

But faith-rest came through, because suddenly, as you start writing, things start popping into your mind. "Oh yeah, that's a good idea. I forgot about that. Oh yeah, I remember that. Here, I'll answer that right here." And pretty soon, you're filling in, and before you know, God has brought back to the memory the things that you need. His promise is coming through.

But He's not going to bring back to your memory what you don't know any more than He's going to enable you to use the faith-rest technique if you don't know the promises of God to begin with. Faith-rest means counting on the Lord to do what He has promised to do, to be true to what He has told you He would do, which you cannot do for yourself. That's where faith-rest comes in, to take the step beyond yourself.

Dr. John E. Danish, 1977

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