May you be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy. – Colossians 1:11

Strengthened with how much power? All power.

According to whose might? God’s might.

What kind of might? Glorious might.

For how much endurance? All endurance.

Just meditating on this text makes me feel strong.

They did not enter God’s rest because they did not know God’s ways. They were disobedient. They did not believe. Later in the chapter we read, “And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient? So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief” (Hebrews 3:18-19).

God, then says, in his Word:

4:1 Therefore, while the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it. 2 For good news came to us just as to them, but the message they heard did not benefit them, because they were not united by faith with those who listened. 3 For we who have believed enter that rest, as he has said, “As I swore in my wrath, ‘They shall not enter my rest,’” although his works were finished from the foundation of the world. 4 For he has somewhere spoken of the seventh day in this way: “And God rested on the seventh day from all his works.” 5 And again in this passage he said, “They shall not enter my rest.” 6 Since therefore it remains for some to enter it, and those who formerly received the good news failed to enter because of disobedience, 7 again he appoints a certain day, “Today,” saying through David so long afterward, in the words already quoted, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.” 8 For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on. 9 So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, 10 for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his. 11 Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. (Hebrews 4:1-11)

The key to this rest is that it is a rest from work. It is human nature to try and work our way to God. We seek to do good things so that God will love us and accept us. But the Word of God tells us that it is not by works that we enter God’s rest it is by faith. The message we hear must be united by faith. We strive to enter this rest by faith not by working harder.

These are the things I pray for our son Noah. We pray that he will enter God’s rest and that he will rely on God through the Messiah, for it is God who gives rest not us.

Related Posts:
The Prophet Noah
Rest: The Meaning of Noah – Part 1
Rest: The Meaning of Noah – Part 2

Saydna Isa makes a remarkable promise:

Come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy and my burden is light (Matthew 11:28-30).

When the Injil was revealed by God there were no chapter division or verse numbers. They were added later to help us reference particular sentences in the Injil. Because of this, we at times fail to see that chapters are linked together. This is a good example of this, for the Messiah makes these comments at the end of chapter 11, but we cannot fully understand them without what he also says (and does) in chapter 12 about the Sabbath (a holy day of rest).

In chapter 12 the disciples were picking grain on the Sabbath, which the religious leaders of the day believed was disobeying the command to not work on the Sabbath. Our master Jesus shows that this is not true because God has always meant for the Sabbath to be a day when people’s needs are met. The disciples were hungry and in need and God never intended the Sabbath to be a burden when people’s needs were not met. Therefore, since the Sabbath was created for man and for man’s good, it was not wrong to meet an immediate need on the Sabbath. Jesus Christ follows this by saying, “The Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath” (Matthew 12:8).

In the very next story we see our master Jesus healing a man with a withered hand on the Sabbath. It is good, right and “lawful to do good on the Sabbath” (Matthew 12:12). Even though the religious leaders thought Jesus Christ should not heal on the Sabbath, Jesus did it because it is God’s desire that people’s needs are met every day, even (especially!) on the holy day of rest.

God wants us to have rest. He wants us to rest on the Sabbath day and every day. He wants us to trust that he will do us good. Jesus Christ is the lord of the Sabbath and thus he is the lord of rest. This is why he is able to offer rest to all who come to him. Everyday we seek to make ourselves clean and acceptable to God through our own works. It is hard and laborious (and impossible) to try and be good enough. Jesus Christ offers a different way. He invites us to come to him, all who labor and heavy laden (who doesn’t labor and isn’t heavy laden?!). He will give us rest, for he is the lord of the Sabbath

Related Posts:
The Prophet Noah
Rest: The Meaning of Noah – Part 1
Rest: The Meaning of Noah – Part 3

Rest is a rich biblical theme throughout the Bible. In this post we will see what the Tawrat says about this rest. In another post we will look at what the Injil says.

In Exodus 20 the prophet Moses wrote the 10 commandments. One of them was to keep the Sabbath holy, that is, to not work on the Sabbath. The reason for this command is given in verse 11, Moses wrote, “For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.” The story of creation is told in Genesis 1-2. It is clear that God created and ordered the world in six days and then rested on the seventh day, the Sabbath.

Obviously God’s rest on the seventh day is not owing to any deficiency in him. He has all strength and he never grows tired or weary (“Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is  the everlasting God,the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable” [Isaiah 40:28].) God did not rest on the seventh day because he was tired. God rested because he was finished. He did not rest in order to recuperate. He rested because his work of creation was complete.

Several times the Bible speaks of God giving his people rest from their enemies. God made this promise to the prophet David who was king over his people, “I will give you rest from all your enemies” (2 Samuel 7:11). This is exactly what we see. By the end of David’s life he had rest from all his enemies so that there was peace in the land.

Shortly before David died he encouraged his son Solomon and the people by saying, “Is not the Lord your God with you? And has he not given you peace on every side? For he has delivered the inhabitants of the land into my hand, and the land is subdued before the Lord and his people. Now set your mind and heart to seek the Lord your God. Arise and build the sanctuary of the Lord God, so that the ark of the covenant of the Lord and the holy vessels of God may be brought into a house built for the name of the Lord” (2 Chronicles 22:18-19).

The rest he describes is a rest of peace. It is a rest that includes safety from those who would destroy them. God had given the people peaceful rest so that they would seek him. He had given them rest so that they could focus all of their attention on worshipping him.

This is the rest he offers us. A freedom from fear. A freedom from working to secure our own safety. A freedom to worship. A freedom to enjoy God. A freedom to be at peace.

Related Posts:
The Prophet Noah
Rest: The Meaning of Noah – Part 2
Rest: The Meaning of Noah – Part 3

Everyday Muslims pray that Allah would guide them on the straight path. Verse 6 of the opening Surah of the Qur’an says:

“Guide us to the straight path”

This is a good prayer. I was thinking about it today when I read Isaiah 35:

8 And a highway shall be there, and it shall be called the Way of Holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it. It shall belong to those who walk on the way; even if they are fools, they shall not go astray. 9 No lion shall be there, nor shall any ravenous beast come up on it; they shall not be found there, but the redeemed shall walk there (verses 8-9).

The highway is a highway of holiness. There are two key things about it: 1) You must be clean in order to be on it and 2) It is really safe, for even fools will not stray from it and nothing dangerous will be found on it.

Yes, God, guide me to the straight path.

1. Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD

Noah lived during days of great wickedness. The Bible says, “The LORD saw the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Genesis 6:5). God determined to judge the people of the earth for their wickedness, but he would save Noah, for “Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD” (Genesis 6:8).

2. Noah did all that God commanded him

God gave Noah the crazy command to build a giant boat in the middle of the desert. I cannot imagine the kind of ridicule he must have faced as he built that boat far from any water. It was not a small act of obedience and it was not a simple act that Noah could accomplish in a day and then go on being “normal.” It would have required lots of resources, lots of enduring of ridicule, and lots of faith. What was his response? “Noah did this; he did all that God commanded him” (Genesis 6:22).

3. God remembered Noah

After the ark was completed God told Noah to get on with his family and all of the animals. Then the Lord shut him in and it began to rain and rain and rain. It rained so much that the entire world was flooded and all living things, animals and people, were destroyed. It was catastrophic. And there was Noah and his family floating on a truly endless sea. God did not forget him. “But God remembered Noah” (Genesis 8:1). He caused a wind to blow over the earth so that the waters subsided, the ark settled on dry ground and Noah and his family were able to come safely out.

4. God blessed Noah

After Noah came out of the ark, his first act was to build an altar and worship the Lord. God promised that he would never again curse the ground because of man. “And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth’” (Genesis 9:1).

5. God established his covenant with Noah

The covenant God made was to never again destroy every living creature. It was a covenant of life. It was a promise of life. I am still amazed that God would come to our level and actually make covenants with us, that he would bind himself to promises made to creatures.

So I am praying:

1. My Noah will find favor in the eyes of the LORD, that God will be pleased with him.
2. My Noah will obey all that God commands even when others might thing he is crazy.
3. God will remember Noah, that in the midst of all he encounters in his life the Lord will remember him and then act to bring salvation, deliverance and good into his life.
4. God will bless Noah (see my posts on God’s blessing for what I mean by this [Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4]).
5. God will establish his covenant with Noah and specifically that it would give him the new covenant promises so that Noah will be among his people and God will be his God, that Noah will experience the full blessing of all of God’s promises that are yes in Christ Jesus (see 2 Corinthians 1:20).

A judge in Johannesburg, South Africa, has blocked a plan by a Muslim to burn Bibles on the anniversary of Sept. 11.

An Islamic intellectual organization, Scholars of the Truth, had sought the order. It bans the burning of any holy books. “I’m very pleased the judge came to this decision. Not only did he ban this protest but he also banned other people from burning the Bible,” The Christian Scientist Monitor quoted plaintiff’s lawyer Yasmin Omar as saying.

The order also covers the burning of other holy books, including the Koran. Mohammed Vawda planned to burn the Bibles in response to a plan to burn hundreds of copies of the Koran in Gainesville, Florida. The preacher pushing the Florida book burning has backed down.

“What Mr. Vawda wanted to do is not just morally wrong but is an affront to Islam. We regard Jesus as a prophet who is part of the Koran so if he burns the Bible, he is burning part of the Koran,” said Omar.

There are an estimated 1 million Muslims in South Africa and 30 million Christians. Judge Sita Kolbe issued his ruling after a four-minute hearing.

HT: Islamicate

Yet, there can be something good about taking a Bible chapter a day and being forced to summarize its point in 140 characters or less. This is what Chris Juby will do over the next 3 1/2 years. He tweeted Genesis 11 today. Regarding the difficulty of summarizing the text he says this:

Will I really be able to do justice to all 176 verses of Psalm 119 in 140 characters? Probably not. But the challenge of being so brief will force me to engage with the text and understand the key themes. And that’s partly the point in the first place – I want to be an active rather than a passive reader of Scripture!

Amen to that!

You can follow him on Twitter or at his site.

HT: CNN Religion Blog