15 Minutes
We will be ever finding different ways of describing the superiority of the Lord Jesus Christ in that he gives the rest that both Moses and Joshua sought for the people of God.
Joshua 22:4 I Kings 8:56
But there is a sabbath rest that remains for the people of God. Hebrews 4:9
And this rest remaining is a rest of grace, and comfort, and holiness. A rest in glory, the everlasting sabbatism of heaven, which is the repose and perfection of nature and grace too, where the people of God shall enjoy the end of their faith and the object of all their desires. There are two who have actually taken possession of this rest: God and Christ. It is certain that God, after the creating of the world in six days, entered into His rest; and it is certain that Christ, when he had finished the work of our redemption, entered into his rest; and these were not only examples, but earnests, that believers shall enter into their rest.
Please see that the “all things new” mean we cease from works of righteousness, and from the works of the law, as God and Christ have ceased from their works of creation and redemption. There is no works in the new creation. As we are still, silent, present, and allow God to work in us on earth, we rest in every spiritual provision, we rest in the increase of our being with God, we rest in the deepening of our relationship with every being in creation, we rest in the love, the hand and the heart and the mind of God. In the new earth the sabbath is more than the day. It is Jesus. In him is the promised rest in eternity. Remember, the “rest” was in the sabbath, before the sabbath was in the law. Jesus is Lord of the rest. He is God in creation. It is our rest in Christ that frees us from the works of the law, allowing us to rest in the finished work of Christ to forgive sin. When the heavens and the earth were finished, God did not start His work again on the eighth day...He was finished. Our entering into the sabbath in all its truth means we no longer “work”. We “rest” in all that Christ does. The rest found in Christ is much better than the one day of rest found in the cycle of seven days. It is Jesus Christ that makes us right with God. It is here that our worship will be as it ought to be. God is a Spirit. Jesus is the truth. We will be the answered prayer...God in him and he in us...that’s worshipping in spirit and in truth, attributing worth, reverent honor, and homage to God the Father and God the Son.
Heaven will be where God is...on the new earth. The shrouding of our new clothes will not be material...but a fabric of light. They won’t be cotton, but compassion. Not linen, but love. No silks, but service. We will adorn spiritual garments of holiness, of anointing, of grace, of gloriousness. But we are fitted for our finest covering while here on earth...
Romans 13:14
The seventh day sabbath on earth was given to teach us how to spiritually use our two primary sources of experience to discern God’s will; choice and time. The choice to be obedient and the time designated by God to set apart for remembering the sabbath day. Neither of these sources will be required in the “all things new” realm. In this life we sacrifice time to gain space. But man’s ignorance, thinking to have more, means to be more, terminates at the borderline of time...life will end! God has given the time of sabbath where the goal is not to have but to be, not to own but to give, not to control but to share, not to subdue but to be in accord. There is happiness in the love of labor, there is misery in the love of gain. Man attempts to make God a god. He has much enthusiasm for the idea that God is present in the universe, but that idea is taken to mean God’s presence in space rather than in time, in nature rather than in history; as if God were a thing, not a Spirit. When we fail to reason every revealed attribute of God, saying what God cannot do, we are literally fashioning God...might as well use wood or stone and determine God to be but a shadow of man. Most people resist the sabbath principle because they have a deeply rooted dread of time. They see it like a furnace incinerating every moment of their lives. The higher goal of spiritual living is not to build up a wealth of information or materialism, but to look toward sacred moments. These experienced moments are not a thing that imposes themselves on man but are a spiritual presence to reason with God to come to truth. What is retained in the soul is the moment of insight when the time opportunity to just reason was abandoned rather than the space where the act came to pass. A moment of insight is a fortune, transporting us beyond the confines of measured time and space. Spiritual life begins to decay when we fail to sense the grandeur of what is eternal. And what is eternal is truth. Time and space are interrelated. They are components of creation. Remember, God spoke to us in moments of time showing the things that occupy space. We must not forget that it is not a thing that lends significance to a moment; it is the moment that lends significance to things. The time that Light was brought forth outweighs the sun’s coming on day
four. The timing was God’s order, the thing was spaced in its time. The sabbath on earth is a special time. God set the world in a dimension of time to complete His plan. Events over countries, history over geography.
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