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Bern
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« Reply #3 on: December 24, 2004, 10:03:44 AM » |
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I apologise in advance for the large quotation here.. but I think its necessary.
I would like first of all to make something clear.... God didn't rest because he was tired... he didn't stop his work because it wasn't good enough either... unlike us... we must cease our works because....
Isaiah 64:6 But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.
That rest of God, is at least in part the ceasing of our fleshly works, and attempts at righteousness. Allowing Jesus to be our all. Letting the Holy Spirit do His work in us. That means daily keeping ourselves in that rest by not trying to be righteous in our own strength.
Gal 3:2 This only would I learn of you, Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?
3 Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?
Like Abraham we must believe God for our righteousness.... what more rest is there than to cease our fleshly striving to be better than others... to be accepted as a child of God by faith in Christ? Knowing that "all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose".
I believe Gods rest can and does include manifestations of God's Holy Spirit.. and perhaps can include some of the stuff that Gary mentioned, like Stephens state at his stoning...but I do believe it is a place of spiritual rest. Not necessarily physical comfort... I'd love to believe that Stephen felt nothing when being stoned, but my guess is that he felt the pain like everyone else would. The Holy Spirit's mission with us on earth is to present us as a spotless bride to Christ... to enamour us with Him.. to glorify Christ and cause us to love Him more and more for who He is. The more we know Jesus personally the more rest we have. I cannot give a scripture for that last statement, but I do believe it is true from personal experience. The first thing that happens when we get out of touch with/ out of communion with God is that we get restless and lose our peace. I've said enough..
I think Hebrews explains the rest issue well....
Heb 3:7 ¶ Wherefore (as the Holy Ghost saith, To day if ye will hear his voice,
8 Harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness:
9 When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my works forty years.
10 Wherefore I was grieved with that generation, and said, They do alway err in their heart; and they have not known my ways.
11 So I sware in my wrath, They shall not enter into my rest.)
12 Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God.13 But exhort one another daily, while it is called To day; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.
14 For we are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence stedfast unto the end;
15 While it is said, To day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation.
16 For some, when they had heard, did provoke: howbeit not all that came out of Egypt by Moses.
17 But with whom was he grieved forty years? was it not with them that had sinned, whose carcases fell in the wilderness?
18 And to whom sware he that they should not enter into his rest, but to them that believed not?
19 So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief.
Heb 4:1 ¶ 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.
2 For unto us was the gospel preached, as well as unto them: but the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it.
3 For we which have believed do enter into rest, as he said, As I have sworn in my wrath, if they shall enter into my rest: although the works were finished from the foundation of the world.
4 For he spake in a certain place of the seventh day on this wise, And God did rest the seventh day from all his works.
5 And in this place again, If they shall enter into my rest.
6 Seeing therefore it remaineth that some must enter therein, and they to whom it was first preached entered not in because of unbelief:
7 Again, he limiteth a certain day, saying in David, To day, after so long a time; as it is said, To day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts.
8 For if Jesus had given them rest, then would he not afterward have spoken of another day.
9 There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God.
10 For he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his.
11 ¶ Let us labour therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief.
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