The Technique of Faith Rest, No. 1

Techniques of the Christian Life

TL06-01

© Berean Memorial Church of Irving, Texas, Inc. (1974)

The Lord has called every one of us to live a certain kind of life which can only be described as supernatural. Consequently, it's a lifestyle which is entirely beyond anything that we, in our natural capacities, can enter into. Yet, one thing that we always have to remember is that God never asks us to do anything that he doesn't give us the provisions to enable us to do it. Therefore, if he says, "I want you to live a life which only God himself can live," which is what I mean by a supernatural life, it is obvious that he has also given us the provisions to enable us to do just exactly that. These provisions are summed up in what we have called the techniques of the Christian life. They are provisions to enable us to live this supernatural life. Therefore, it is very important for you to know these, and to be able to put them into practice. Any Christian who does not know these techniques will not be able to live the supernatural life. Consequently, he will waste his life as a believer, while God is constantly waiting for him to get with it so that God can begin blessing, and ultimately so that there can be reward for his service in heaven. I hope you are impressed with how important these techniques are. This is perhaps one of the most important series of studies that we have yet entered into.

The Faith Rest Technique

We now look at the second technique which is called the faith rest technique, and we'll show you why we call it that as we go along. Just to define it, the faith arrest technique is simply this: It is knowing, believing, and applying the promises and the doctrines of the Word of God. Faith rest is simply knowing what God has said, and believing Him to the extent that you are willing to trust Him and to act upon what He has said. You will cast yourself upon Him on the basis of something that He has said. You can immediately think of many things in the Bible, many situations, many examples, of where God had told a group of people or an individual to do something, and God had made promises as to what He would do. However, the individual could not enter into faith rest and lean upon God.

In our dispensational studies, we've been reminded of this concerning Abraham. Abraham obviously developed spiritually. In the Old Testament, the believers were not indwelt by God the Holy Spirit. Therefore their measure of spirituality was not as is ours today--how we are related to God the Holy Spirit. Their measure of spirituality, that is, to be spiritual, meant to be practicing faith rest in the Old Testament. We have these examples where God made a great promise to Abraham concerning a son, and Abraham wouldn't believe Him. He wouldn't just leave it with God. God made a promise, and since 25 years went by before the promise was fulfilled, he could not practice faith rest in those early years. This was a thing that he had to learn to develop, and he grew spiritually. Finally when God said, "I want you to kill Isaac, your only son, the one through whom all the promises are going to come, his faith rest quality was quite in evidence as he was quite willing to do it without asking any questions. Now that's what faith arrest is all about.

In other words, this is the application of that full knowledge that we have in our human spirits relative to our experiences in life. A Christian has to know how to operate on faith rest. Before you can do that, you must know how to operate on the previous principle, the previous technique, that is, the confession of sin. Without the confession of sin, you are not in a position to be able to exercise faith rest.

Here are some principles about the faith rest technique. First of all, it is provided by God to enable us to live the Christian life which is a supernatural lifestyle. Secondly, this life can only be lived by God the Holy Spirit for the believer. We are talking about this style of life which we call the Christian life. Therefore, the Christian has to learn that he can't make it on his own when it comes to pleasing the Lord and to living his life as unto the Lord. He has to cease from all these human good works, and he has to permit God the Holy Spirit to live through him. The question is: how is such a noble ideal achieved? This is where faith comes into the picture, and is tied to the promises of God, and the mixture is the faith rest life, or a life of peace.

Promises, Doctrines, and Prophecies

The object of faith in the faith rest technique then are the promises, the doctrines, and the prophecies--all that God has declared that He will do for us, that He's going to do in his program. Faith has to be mixed with these promises, with these doctrines, and with these prophecies if we are to secure a divine rest in our soul. You have had many experiences this week that have caused your soul to be in turmoil. You have evidenced that turmoil in various ways. Perhaps, you went around yelling at people. You went screaming at somebody. You went around unsmiling and grim. Or, maybe you did the other kind of pressure: you wouldn't talk to somebody that you had it in for (and perhaps they were grateful for that). In one way or another, you handled your problem, you handled the pressure, and you handled your turmoil. The question is: Did you handle it in a way that, at that moment, you were honoring the Lord, and that you were at peace, and happy with the way you handled it? Were you happy with the things that you said to those people? Were you happy with the attitudes that you projected, and so on?

When we have entered this technique of faith rest, we will be able to handle the problems, the turmoils, the conflicts, the disappointments, the heartaches, and the frustrations in our life in a way that does not take us out of fellowship. That's the problem. We don't know how to handle our problems without going out of fellowship. That's where faith rests comes in.

It is faith rest that brought you into salvation. It goes like this: Here is the Gospel. At some point, you were confronted with that gospel as a promise. That's what this is. It is a promise that God had given you. You acted upon that promise, and you projected your faith toward that gospel promise, and the result was a condition of rest which we call salvation. You came into a condition of peace in your soul with God. Now this is the first promise of God that everybody must act upon. There is no other promise that an unbeliever can act upon except this promise, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved."

Truth and Promises

Now, having come into that promise of salvation, we now enter this area of the Christian life. The area of the Christian life now, again, has promises--many of them. Someone has added them up and they come to 7,000 plus. I'm talking about promises that have to do relative to your life right now. Again, you are constantly faced all day long with picking up a promise and exercising faith toward it just as you did in salvation. And if you do, you come out with another condition of rest in your soul within your life here on Earth. You have peace within your being. It is the result of taking hold of this promise, this promise, this promise, or this promise, and mixing it with faith. The promises of the Word of God are nothing. Your faith, your confidence, in the veracity of God, in God's truthfulness, is nothing. However, when you mix your faith in God's truthfulness and His promises together, you enter the condition of rest. No matter what the tragedy is that hits you in life, and no matter what the worries that can creep up on you, as you pick out the promises and you believe God, you'll find that you're not worried. You'll find that you're not screaming. You'll find that you're not swearing. You'll find that you're not muscling people around. You find that you're not letting your ambitions get out of hand.

You find that you are just like little David who is standing out there looking at this giant and telling everybody around him, "It's all right. Don't worry. The battle is the Lord's." Those are fantastically marvelous words, and the reason David could say them is because he knew God, and he knew the promises of God, and he mixed faith and promises, and he stood on that field of battle in perfect rest and in perfect peace. The battle was indeed the Lord's.

So after believing the initial promise of salvation, the gospel, we're to continue on with all these other promises. There are three kinds of promises in the Bible. We have many verses like John 3:16, John 20:30, and 16:31--all of these are relative to salvation promises.

Then there are promises that have to do with your residence in eternity. We have many verses that give us that promise, like John 14:2, 2 Corinthians 5:8, 1 Peter 1:4-5, Revelation 21:4 (where we are promised no more tears, no more sorrow, and so on). All of these are promises relative to our residence out an eternity.

Number three has to do with promises that have to do with our stay on earth. These are in time. That's the thing that we're talking about in the faith rest technique. It is all of these promises, such as Romans 8:28 (that "all things work together for good for them who love God, who are called according to this purpose"), 1 Peter 5:7, and 1 Samuel 17:47 ("the battle is the Lord's" and so on). All of these promises are relative to right now. These are the ones that we're talking about that most Christians do not utilize. Yet they constitute a vast spiritual capital which we may claim by faith.

It is faith mixed with the promises of God while we are in temporal fellowship that equals spiritual growth and maturity, and a personal condition of peace, stability, and rest in the soul. A Christian who fails to practice faith rest is not too hard a Christian to spot. The Christian who does not practice the faith rest technique is worried sick. As a matter of fact, if he wakes up some morning and he can't think of anything to be worried about, that makes him the sickest of all. He wants to know what's wrong with himself that he can't get up and be happy. That makes him downright miserable. These people can be spotted by the fact they are problem-minded. They're a wearisome bunch to be with. Always they've got problems. Always they've got problems. Always they've got problems. They never have any resolving of the problem or any joy in the Lord. Most of the problems they are worried about are trivial or non-existent. They're irritable people. They are vocal with their gripes. They're in turmoil, but they are certainly not in rest.

Hebrews 4:1-9

Let's look at this teaching from the Word of God in Hebrews 4. We'll look at the teachings concerning the faith rest technique. It begins in verse 1 with a warning about failure to use faith rest: "Let us therefore fear, lest, a promise being left us of entering into His rest, any of you should seem to come short of it." You and I as Christians operate under many pressures as we've indicated. As a matter of fact, we as Christians operate under a lot more pressures than the unsaved do. Why? Because the unsaved are not disturb too much by Satan. But, the minute you become a believer, you have asked for all kinds of troubles, and your pressures mount fantastically. As a matter of fact, in the angelic warfare that you and I face, and of which we are the targets, the greater your spiritual capacities; the more involved you are in the Lord's work; and, the more dedicated you are to the plan of God for your life, then the greater are the pressures and the attacks upon you. If you're a carnal Christian who is just sort of floating along, playing church and playing Christianity, you will not have any more pressures on you likely than the unbeliever. But if you are a Christian with something really on the ball, and you are really making an investment for the Lord that is productive of divine good, I can tell you right now you are the person who needs this technique. You are the person who is going to come under maximum fire.

So God has provided us with the salvation we need, but he has not forgotten us there. After that, he has also provided us with the happiness that we need in our walk on earth, in time. We need temporal rest as well as eternal rest. The faith rest technique is God's provision so that you can have a moment-by-moment Sabbath in your soul. Remember what the word "Sabbath" means. The word "Sabbath" means "rest." This is what God has come to give you, not just a one-day-a-week rest, but an absolute moment-by-moment Sabbath day in your soul.

He then says, "Let us (referring to believers in the Lord Jesus Christ) therefore." The "therefore" indicates a conclusion which is based upon Chapter 3 where we have the description of the failure of the Jews who came out of slavery out of Egypt, that Exodus generation, and how they provoked the Lord in their failure to use this technique, their failure to mix their faith with the promises that God was making to them. On the basis of this chapter, he now turns to us as believers. He says, "Now" (in the case of we who live in the church age, in contrast to these people who were slaves for 400 years and then came out and could not obey and mix their faith with God's promises and were a sad failure), he said, "May we not be like that."

Therefore, he gives us one thing that Christians should fear. Christians generally are not to fear anything, and if they are oriented to the Word of God and they are filled with the Spirit, they will not be afraid. 2 Timothy 1:7 tells us that that is not what God has come to give us, a spirit of fear. However, here is one thing that we should fear. He says, "Let us therefore fear, lest, the promise be left us of entering into rest, any of you would seem to come short of it." What he is saying is to fear not knowing and using the faith rest technique as these Exodus Jews did. There can be no rest in our soul. There can be no happiness without it.

These promises that he refers to here are promises which have been left to us to use on earth. There are 7,000 plus promises, like Luke 1:37, 1 Thessalonians 5:18, Isaiah 41:10. There are many promises, all of which have been left to us. "Kataleipo" is the word for "left." "Kataleipo" means simply that--something that has been provided and has been left behind for us. It is present, it is passive, and it is a participle. It is present because it is constantly available to us. It is passive because if we use the promises, it will work. In other words, God is saying, "I guarantee you that if you will mix faith with my promises, you will find yourself at rest." That is, it is God's peace and God's rest that is being left to us--an emotional stability. The thing he warns us is that we do not come short of it; that is, that we fail to use it.

Learning

The promises of God's Word, of course, all written down in the Bible. That's why it is necessary to be taught the Word of God. It doesn't do any good for us to tell some Christian and to explain to some Christian how to use the faith rest technique because unless he knows the promises of the Word of God, unless he knows doctrine, he will not be able to use it. This is what makes it so sad when people have a problem in life, and they come to ask you for some advice. It is very difficult to give them advice because what you usually have to give them is a fistful of tapes that covers certain subjects. It's going to take time for them to get the information. That's why the average Christian is a yo-yo when it comes to spiritual stability and meeting the crises of his life. When it comes to meeting the trials, he's just not prepared to do it. He has not learned the promises. He has nothing to take hold of and nothing to mix with his faith and his trust in the Lord. God has written this down. We have to learn it. When we do the technique works passively upon us.

Israel was a failure in this. "Let us therefore fear, lest, the promise being left unto us of entering into His rest, any of you should seem to come short of it." For unto us is the gospel preached. "Unto us" is the Christians of today. Israel had the gospel. We have the gospel. We have the gospel in specific words like John 3:16 and Acts 16:31. They had it in the form of ceremonial symbols, primarily the Passover feast. That was the gospel story to them, and they understood what that signified. So both they and we had the gospel. We had this first promise. The gospel, as you know, begins in past time where God makes a plan. Then he provides and executes that plan of salvation. It has a present application which is our walk on earth within the consequences of that gospel. Then it has a future effect with a resurrection body and our eternity in heaven.

This plan of God we all enter at the point of salvation. The Jews were told that they entered the plan of salvation, the gospel that they had just as we had, but the failure was that they did not go on as believers. The people who died out in that 40 years of wandering in the wilderness were not unbelievers. These were believers who were dropping dead one-by-one over that period of 40 years--all of those (except for Joshua and Caleb) who were 20 years and up in age were believers who were dying. It was because they had not gone on beyond the promise of the gospel. Because they did not believe God's Word, they were faced with fear when they came to Kadeshbarnea. They were unstable. They were critical of their leadership. They were fantastically filled with self-pity which is another great sign of the believer who is unstable. For the believer who is not using faith rest, there will be a lot of self-pity.

Verse 2 tells us what the problem was. "For the gospel which was preached as well to them, but the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it." The word "being mixed" is perfect passive participle: "sugkerannumi." This meant that the promises of God to Israel were not mixed with faith, so they were not of any value, "to them that heard it." Notice that they did hear it. It came into that side of their minds where the mind is learning, the perceptive mind. The information came in there, but here was the human spirit and it did not go down there. Instead it stopped. Why? Because they were negative in the things that they learned, so they short-circuited this system and that was the end of it.

So they had heard--it was not that they were not informed--but they were negative to what God said he would do. At Kadeshbarnea, He said, "I'll take you in. I don't care if the inhabitants are giants and you look like grasshoppers, I'll take you in, and you will win." They refused to go. Then when they recognized the discipline that God was going to bring upon them, you remember what they did next. God said, "Now, I will not take you in, but you are going to go out there and die." And they said, "We were wrong. We will go in." And God said to Moses, "You had better warn them not to charge over that hill because I will not be with them." They would not listen again. This time God promised not to help them. They went negative again. They went over that hill and they got slaughtered by the Canaanites. Once they went negative to the promises, that was the end of it. They knew it. They heard it just like we know it. We hear it, but then we go negative. We do not accept it--no full knowledge (no "epignosis") to function.

Faith

I want you to notice in verse 2 that we have the first key word here from which we name this technique: "not being mixed with faith" in them that heard it. There is the first keyword--"mixed with faith." That's why it's called the faith rest technique, because it's faith in the promises of God. "Not being mixed," this is in the perfect tense which means it began in the past and then it continued. In other words, they got in the habit of doing this. They got in the habit of being negative to what God had said. This is very easy to do. As you get negative, your life slips away from the control of God the Holy Spirit, and you become less sensitive that the old sin nature is running it. Pretty soon they found as a way of life that it was no, no, no, and doubt, doubt, doubt to whatever God had to say.

So the promises must be acted upon by a positive volition for them to function. Please remember that the faith rest technique is not designed for an emergency situation. This is not something for you to turn to when you've come to some kind of a crisis in your life. It is something that you are to stay with especially in prosperity as well as in adversity. It's not something to switch on. It is a way of life. The word faith here simply means believing, trusting God. Faith before salvation has Jesus Christ as its object. After salvation, faith has the promises and the doctrines of the Word of God.

Rest

Verse 3 shows us the success of faith: "For we who had believed do enter into rest." "We who (referring to Christians today) had believed (the word "pisteuo")." "Pisteuo" is aorist active participle. Aorist means at some point, when the situation required, we believed the Word. Active means the Christian chose to act upon a promise of God. The aorist participle grammatically means that it comes before the main action of the sentence. The main action of the sentence is "enter into rest." In other words, first they believed, and then they entered into rest. "We who had believed"--believe comes first in the order of the grammar. First, believe, and that's faith. Then it says, the main part, "enter into rest." There they are tied together and you get the concept "faith rest." The word "rest" in verse 3 is what we enter into. The grammar tells us that first we believe, and the result of that is entering into rest. It does not say that those of you who hustle harder will come into peace with God. It does not say that those of you who have a great wonderful emotional experience will start loving the Lord more, praying more, and giving more. You may have a great wonderful emotional jag and do those things, but it is the old sin nature that is cranking that out, and not the Lord.

No More Worries

He says, "We who have believed do enter into rest." The "enter into" is the word "eiserchomai." This is present tense. It's the regular result. Any time you mix faith and promises you will enter into rest. It is middle voice. Present but middle, and middle means that the subject benefits. You benefit by this action on your part. Present means it's a regular result. Middle means that you personally benefit. How do you benefit personally by the faith rest technique? It means that you never worry about anything, in time or eternity. That's staggering, isn't it? I never worry about anything?

Just look how that's going to spoil your life. Most of you are going to have so much time for thinking on your hands that you won't know what to do with yourself if you believe this. You have a regular list of things you worry about. You wake up in the morning and you begin going through these worry lists: worry, worry, worry, worry, worry. Then you get sidetracked and you have to go about your day. You come home to lunch and you say, "OK, now Lord, here we go again." Worry, worry, worry. "Boy, that's a bad one. Oh, there's a good worry. I've got to work on that one." Then you get home for supper and you worry a little bit, but then you look forward to going to bed. That's a wonderful time. There you are--quiet, and nobody bothering you. You can just worry yourself half the night. You wake up the next morning and you're half blurry-eyed and you're trying to get back to work because you've exhausted yourself with worrying. That's why the Bible says, "Are you going to add hair to your head, or change the color or height of yourself, or anything else by worrying? That's the idiocy of this.

If you use the faith based technique, you're never going to worry about anything. You're never going to be concerned or shaken up about any problems that you face. That's easy to say, but unless you've gotten into this technique and you know how to live with it, and you know how to grab hold of the promises, that is going to be hard to do--not to be shaken up when you get to the crises. You'll never fall apart because you happen to be the victim of somebody else's slander and gossip and tongue attack of some kind. You'll never be upset because you're excluded.

I was in a record shop yesterday and I overheard two of the clerks (girls) talking. The conversation was that one friend had called her and had given her an evasive answer about what they planned to do tonight. She had been invited to go someplace with her, and they didn't think they were going to go. And she said, "And I know she was going. She just did want me to go. Oh, that hurt. Ooh, that hurt." She just kept repeating it. The fact is that the more she said it, the worse I got to feeling about it. "It really hurt me. I knew they were just trying to get rid of me. They just didn't want me to go with them. Oh, that hurt. If they would have just said, 'We don't want you to come with us.' But they were trying to sneak around. Oh, that hurt." Well, I knew she didn't know anything about faith rest, or it wouldn't have made a hill of beans to her whether they excluded her or not.

You will never be crushed when you are viewed or when you are called a failure, and you were compared to someone else who is a so-called success. This is a nice jab. When you want to really jab somebody, call him a failure, especially if it's something maybe he can't do anything about. If his hair is thin on top, you tell him, "You sure do have a lousy haircut. If you had a better haircut, you wouldn't be such a failure in life, or something like that. There's no person, no thing, or no circumstance which will get you down if you're operating on this faith rest technique. Have faith in promises, and the result is rest.

It will keep your body in good health, and it'll keep your mind very stable and very relaxed. Faith rest makes all the problems the Lord's problems. That's what it amounts to. If you will enter into this, you will practice faith rest, and you will discover that you do not worry. You will move along in kind of a relaxed way. Everything is taken in stride. However, I should remind you and warn you that when somebody comes storming up to you creating a crisis, you may just yawn and say, "Now, what did you say, now? Tell me about it again." You just kind of squelch everything down, the high-powered approach.

What will happen to you is that the spiritually immature and the carnal folks will start calling you names. I'm talking about Christians. They will call you insensitive. They will call you elephant hide. They will call you oblivious. They will say you are harsh and that you're unfeeling. By all of which they mean, "It really makes me mad that you can be so relaxed while I'm such an idiot and up in a turmoil, and I really hate you for it." When they use those words, just understand that you're dealing with somebody who has not elected to go along in faith rest in the Lord. That's why they're trying to belittle and to degrade you and to get you to believing that there's something wrong with you because you think the battle is the Lord's. You don't think there's any human being that amounts to anything in all the world. Only the Lord is the one that counts. All things will be taken in stride, providing your conscience and your mind is clear and right before Him. Then what anybody else thinks is totally immaterial.

Other people have their hangups. They have their distortions. They have their twists. You are forever being encroached upon by these twists and these distortions. It's like some great big monstrous mole that's beginning to creep out, and you're trying to fight this thing from crawling all over you, and you're brushing it off, and you can't get away from this thing that's trying to devour you. You have to learn by faith rest to detach yourself from the problems and the hangups of all of the people who will not use this technique and who do not mind abusing other believers by imposing their restlessness of soul upon others. In other words, faith rest enables you to go on in peace even when it does hurt. Faith rest works for all believers who use it. Don't come up with the excuse that you're weak and other people are so strong and that's why they can take things in stride but you can't because you have these weaknesses. If you will enter into His rest, it's the result of using the key--faith mixed with promises that equals rest.

Verse 3 says, "For we who have believed do enter into rest as he said, 'As I have sworn in my wrath.'" This is in Psalm 95:11. "As he said"--this is perfect case, so that it stands written and forever true. "As I have sworn in my wrath," that is, God's response to negative volition to his promises. "If they shall enter into my rest now." This is not a conditional sentence. This "if" is not one of those first, second, third, or fourth class conditions. This is what is called an idiom, a Greek idiom. It's what is grammatically called an ellipsis. It indicates that something has been left out that is to be understood. The thing to be understood here is something like this: "(My name is not God) if they shall enter into my rest." You have to understand that before the "if." In other words, what he is saying is "they shall not enter my rest," and you can translate it that way. The Greek literally does have the word "if" in there, but it's not a conditional case. It's something that has been skipped over. It's something left out. It's elliptical, and therefore you have to understand what comes in there and what comes out is a positive statement, "They shall not enter my rest."

Therefore, God says that we who have believed do enter His rest. God has sworn in his wrath against negative volition toward his promises, that those who act that way shall not enter His rest. This is in spite of the fact that the works were finished from the foundation of the world. This means that all of the blessings that we need for our happiness on earth, God has already provided. When? Before creation. Everything you needed to make you happy, He's already provided. Now if you are not happy, don't blame God. And if you're not happy, don't blame somebody else. Just get yourself to the Lord and find out why you're not happy. What is it that you're bucking in your life? What is it that you are not accepting by faith so that you can enter His rest? If you do not have God's rest, you will end up yelling; screaming; whining; and, full of self-pity. You will end up endlessly reviewing your grievances. You will endlessly be brooding about something that has happened to you in the past or something you did. That is not faith rest. You are going to pay forever and ever and ever and ever for that. This technique is a close second in importance to that of confessing sins.

Because it is so important, our Heavenly Father is constantly putting pressures on us trying to get us to move into His rest. So you had some heartaches. You had some problems. You've got some depressions. You've got some concerns this week. How did you handle them? You can try your own notions. You can come up with psychological sublimations and compensations, but they will be to no avail. The answer are God's promises. The faith rest technique is our answer for a moment-by-moment condition of peace.

It takes this also for prosperity, and when people praise you. If there was ever a time you need faith rest, it's when people come up and compliment you; when they praise you; when they commend you; and, when they thank you. That's when you are going to be most tempted to think that the battle is not the Lord's, but that the Lord has suddenly come into a very wonderful helper--you. You are happy to see that other people recognize it too, because you've known it for quite a while. God's promises are the answer to all these things that come upon us.

It is God who kicks out the props from under us in order to force us to start using this technique. He just keeps putting misery, misery, misery, until we say, "Lord, I've had enough. I'm going to claim Romans 8:28, "All things are working together for good." Therefore, what in the world am I worried about? This problem I have, it's a battle, but all the battles are yours. So what am I fighting? You give me direction. I'm going to use the best spiritual judgment I have. I'm going to make the best moves I can make at this moment. Then I leave the results with You.

Sooner or later you're going to come where God does kick the props out from under you, especially if you've been trusting in people, or especially if you've been looking with great esteem upon certain individuals. God will let you go so far, and then He will belt you good and hard, and then you will learn, as you have never learned before, to keep your eyes on the Lord where they belong. Now that's faith rest.

What he says then is that these works were finished: "ginomai." This is aorist. At a point in the past, when God made His decree, providing all that is necessary for our happiness. Passive--these works were completed before man was created. Faith rests makes them yours. All you have to do is enter into them.

The Sabbath

Now let's close this out with a history of the faith rest technique. Verse 4 says, "For He spoke in a certain place of the seventh day in this way, and God did rest the seventh day from his works." "He spoke" is perfect tense again. It's the Word of God standing forever. "A certain place" is Genesis 2:2-3, "that He did rest." That is, on the seventh day God used the seventh day of creation as an historical example of ceasing from activity. That's what faith rest is all about--knocking off your human effort solutions and turning to the Lord and claiming what He has promised to do, and then leaning upon him to do it. God created in great activity for six days, and then, in order to demonstrate the concept of rest, on the seventh day he ceased from all activity. So, we too are to have a constant Sabbath in our souls through the faith rest technique. We are to relax just as God relaxed. All of our problems are to be met with His word and our faith in him, not with our hustle and bustle. Many churches approach Christians with this squeeze method. Yet David defeated Goliath because he went out there knowing that the Lord was going to do it. In 1 Samuel 17:47, he could say, "The battle is the Lord's."

In verse 7: "Again he limited a certain day, saying in David, today, after so long a time, as it is said, today if you will hear his voice, hardened not your heart." The faith rest technique did not stop functioning just because the Exodus generation failed to use it, even when David wrote, in his day, and that's what this means. This is a saying of David, which is Psalm 95:7-8. David, writing in his day, says, "Today (after so a long time, hundreds of years after the Exodus people failed), if you will hear his voice and harden not your heart," the faith rest technique will still work, and it is still true of us in this age today. The past failures do not mean that the system has been terminated. It is just warning to us not to do the same.

Verse 8 says, "For if Joshua had given them rest, then would he not afterward have spoken of another day." This "if" is second class condition which you know means it is not true. If Joshua had given them rest, and he did not, he didn't give the people in his day rest after they crossed the Jordan River and went into the land. Part of the reason was that they didn't conquer all of the land. They refused to exterminate all of the people that they were supposed to remove. Consequently, they failed as well.

Verse 9 tells us, "There remains therefore a rest to the people of God." The exodus people didn't enter into it. Joshua in his day did not enter into it--all of them. To this very day this technique is functioning and operating for us to enter into it. It still remains. It's a marvelous teaching. It is a rest which will be applied to those who respond to it. The word "rest" here is referring to now, not your rest in eternity. When you die and they give you one of those goofy circular flower things and somebody writes across it, "Rest in peace," that's not what it's talking about here. God is talking about you resting in peace now. If you're going to go around hanging a sign across yourself, "Rest in peace," that's a good thing to do. Just go down to the mortician and let him give you one of those little ribbons that he puts those letters on, and just put it across yourself, like Miss America. Walk around. You'll make a big hit. "Rest in peace." Understand that this is what God is telling you. He's trying to put this on you. Just faith rest. That's what he's saying. Now--not in eternity. The promises of the Old Testament are of God's dealings with believers as per His character. Therefore, those promises still apply to us today. Even though these were given in the Old Testament, these are promises that are built upon how God is. Therefore, He still acts that way.

Some of the promises were specifically to the Jewish people as covenant people. However, even they reflect general principles about God's dealing, so many of those have a spiritual application to us. In verse 9, he says, "There remains therefore a rest to the people of God." These, of course, are believers here in the church age.

So, this is our introduction to the faith rest technique, the system where we simply believe what God has to offer and what God has to say.

Dr. John E. Danish, 1973

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