Your Right Standing With God – 2

Your Right Standing With God – 2

By Apostle Felix

4  for it says in the Scriptures, And on the seventh day God rested from all his works. 
5  And again, as stated before, They will never enter into my calming place of rest. 
6  Those who first heard the good news of deliverance failed to enter into that realm of faith’s-rest because of their unbelieving hearts. Yet the fact remains that we still have the opportunity to enter into the faith-rest life and experience the fulfillment of the promise! 
7  For God still has ordained a day for us to enter into called “Today.” For it was long afterwards that God repeated it in David’s words, “If only today you would listen to his voice and do not harden your hearts!” 
8  Now if this promise of “rest” was fulfilled when Joshua brought the people into the land, God wouldn’t have spoken later of another “rest” yet to come. 
9  So we conclude that there is still a full and complete “rest” waiting for believers to experience. 
10  As we enter into God’s faith-rest life we cease from our own works, just as God celebrates his finished works and rests in them. 
11  So then we must give our all and be eager to experience this faith-rest life, so that no one falls short by following the same pattern of doubt and unbelief. 

Hebrews 4: 4 – 11

Rest has been designed by God as a place of abode for man. The day man lost the place of rest, it was the day man became disillusioned. All human troubles and problems can be traced to the loss of rest. As already alluded to in yesterday’s devotional, Adam was in the rest of God before the fall. God had put Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, which simply means, ‘The land of pleasure, delight.’ Rest is the only place where man can flourish and be fruitful.

Rest is associated with grace. God rested on the seventh day not because He was tired. But because He had completed with creation. And He did not bless and sanctify the seventh day for Himself, but He did it all for man. He first completed with all creation and then created man and then ushered man into that day, rest. That day was supposed to be man’s abode but He chose to leave the place of rest. God had a plan to bring back man into that day of rest in Christ. The Bible tells us that Christ was crucified before the foundation of the world. The plan of salvation was already in place before man sinned. This was grace at work. Way before man fell from the grace of God, God had already figured out the plan of bringing man into right standing with Himself. The work of salvation is absolutely God’s and man is the beneficiary. It’s God who initiated and completed it. It is the work of grace.

1  What shall we say then that Abraham our father, as pertaining to the flesh, hath found?
2  For if Abraham were justified by works, he hath whereof to glory; but not before God.
3  For what saith the scripture? Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness.
4  Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt. 

Romans 4: 1 – 4

Abraham heard the gospel, believed and righteousness  was credited to him. He did not earn it by works. It was all the grace of God. Israel heard the gospel too, but instead of believing in the gospel of deliverance they had received, Israel doubted. Their unbelief and doubt denied them the opportunity to enter the rest. It was their unbelief that hindered them from entering the rest.

2  For we have heard the good news of deliverance just as they did, yet they didn’t join their faith with the Word. Instead, what they heard didn’t affect them deeply, for they doubted. 
3  For those of us who believe, faith activates the promise and we experience the realm of confident rest! For he has said, “I was grieved with them and made a solemn oath, ‘They will never enter into the calming rest of my Spirit.’ ” God’s works have all been completed from the foundation of the world, 

Hebrews 4: 2, 3

Believing in the gospel brings you into the rest of God. The gospel is the good news of what Christ has done for man. The gospel has a bias, and the bias is Christ and His finished work. The gospel without Christ is a just like any good news yet lacking the power to save. What makes the gospel to be the gospel is Christ’s death, burial and His resurrection.