God called all of Israel to cease their murmuring and enter into a life of victory. Their response indicated it was too high and too hard a calling. They disagreed with Caleb who said they could possess the land.
It is the carnal person who comes out of Egypt but remains in the wilderness, full of uncertainty. God does not use the wanderer. Notice Hebrews 4:1-3 in the Phillips translation:
“Now since the same promise of rest is offered to us today, let us be continually on our guard that none of us even looks like failing to attain it. For we too have had a gospel preached to us, as those men had. Yet the message proclaimed to them did them no good, because they only heard and did not believe as well. It is only as a result of our faith and trust that we experience that rest.”
The rest that God speaks of is not inactivity. Some have mistaken passivity for rest. Rest is aggressive faith in God’s Word; the confidence that He will bring it to pass. In verses 9-11, he says,
“There still exists, therefore, a full and complete rest for the people of God. And he who experiences his rest is resting from his own work as fully as God from his. Let us then be eager to know this rest for ourselves, and let us beware that no one misses it through falling into the same kind of unbelief as those we have mentioned.”
Rest is setting the spiritual forces of God’s Word in motion, not relying on our own cunning to solve situations. We must keep our guard up so we do not become complacent and tolerate subtle deviations from what we know to be God’s will. Those around us may miss it, but we are eager to know His rest. Others may settle for less, but we remain stable and diligent until we stand in the promise land.
We each have the free will to decide the level of spiritual height we will attain. Some continue in the wilderness of divided loyalties until they die. They become content with only a distant view of their inheritance in Christ. Instead, we must choose to rise up with courage and faith to enter fully into the victory and rest that Jesus had already attained for us. This redemption was too costly and our liberty too precious to relinquish.
At times, the pressure of our present position can look discouraging. The enemy will launch an attack to try to beat us down. He will attack our minds with the fear of failure. Jesus warned Peter that Satan would come. He said, “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat” (Luke 22:31). To sift means “to break down, to pulverize, to separate, or to examine closely by testing.” Satan wants to pulverize you and separate you from the strength and power of God.
Jesus then said to Peter, “But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not” (v. 32). The only way true faith could possibly fail is by becoming inactive. If our faith remains active, the powers of the enemy cannot pulverize us. Our faith is not in the tangible things we can see, but in the invisible power of the Holy Spirit.
“Since we consider and look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen; for the things that are visible are temporal (brief and fleeting), but the things that are invisible are deathless and everlasting” (2 Corinthians 4:18 AMP).
We can rest when we know God’s power is activated on our behalf. Look with confidence at the invisible power of His Word and with the anticipation that what He said, He will fulfill.
