Lesson 4
Book D
Rest and Faith
The Abrahamic Covenant
The entire Bible is the story of God coming to the rescue of man; it was God who decided on the plan, initiated the plan, performed the plan, and it will be God who will bring the plan to completion. Man’s part is either to accept the plan and so be blessed, or reject the plan and so remain cursed. Apart from man’s response, the whole of salvation is dependant on God.
Following the fall…..
Immediately following the entrance of sin and the curse, God appeared and swore an oath that he would provide a redeemer through the seed of the woman (Gen 3:15).
Now to whom was the promise made? The answer is simple…God made a promise, not to a select group of people, but to the whole of mankind, for in Adam and his wife were the whole of mankind. What ability did the whole of mankind have to cause the promise to come to pass? The answer is simple – none whatsoever! From this we surmise that if a Redeemer is going to come forth from the Almighty, then it is going to have to be the Almighty who brings it to pass. He is going to be the One who will watch over his word to perform it (Jer 1:12)! Mankind’s part will consist of looking on at the amazing grace of God at work on its behalf, largely helpless, but eternally grateful.
Background to Abram
From the line of Shem , Abram was eventually born in the Chaldean city of Ur (now the region known as Iraq). As with all who lived in Ur, Abram was a worshipper of the god and goddess of the moon, and it is quite probable ;that he had never so much as heard of Jehovah and the promised redeemer. And so it would have been quite a surprise for Abram when the God of Glory appeared to him and commanded him saying:
"Get out of your country and from your kindred and from your fathers house, to a land that I will show you. I will make you a great nation, I will bless you and make your name great….and in you, all the families of the Earth shall be blessed (Gen 12:1-2)".
In obeying the invisible and previously unknown God, Abram displayed great faith. He left the security of the city along with all its culture and religion and became a pilgrim, following the invisible and omnipresent God to the promised land.
Abram’s problem
God had told Abram that he would father a great nation, through which all the nations of the earth would be blessed. But to be father of a multitude he had to begin by being the father of at least one! And the problem was, both Abram and Sarai were senior citizens, she was barren, and they were childless. Abram must have wondered how the promise could come to pass.
It is here that Abram a man of sincere belief began to mix faith with human effort and initiative. He began to practice a form of religion which aimed at helping God Achieve the impossible.
Twice he tried to help God out via Adoption
God makes Covenant with Abram – Genesis 15
Following the failure of these two attempts by Abram to help bring the promise to pass, God began to make covenant with Abram in order to add his own life and ability to the man’s. Abraham set up the covenant, fetching the animals, splitting them down the backbone and laying the blood halves out as per covenant tradition.
In this covenant, God did not offer Abram a robe; He simply said "Abram I am your exceedingly great reward", or "All that I am I give to you".
Neither did God give Abram a physical weapon belt, he instead said "Abram, I am your shield". "Your enemies and I will fight for you".
God teaches Abram to rest – Genesis 15:12-18
Following the cutting of the animals, Abram and God should have walked through the blood halves together, making their mutual oaths. But right at the critical moment at the high point of covenant making, God told Abram "Your greatest contribution to this covenant is to lie down and go to sleep". (Gen 15:12)
Why did God do this? It was to show Abram that he had nothing to give, that his help was not needed and that he was unable to make promises to God with even the slightest chance of being able to keep them. He had to lie back and watch as the son (represented as the "burning torch") made covenant with the father (represented as the "smoking oven") on his behalf.
Covenant ritual suspended
The covenant was started in Genesis 15, but it was not completed there…the seal was not made, neither was there a name change or the eating of a covenant meal. The reason for this is that God knew Abram; he knew that even through Abram had been taught the lesson of rest, he had not understood it properly. The Blood covenant would only be completed once Abram had truly understood rest.
Ishmael – Genesis 16 & 17
The cutting of the covenant evidently had impressed Abram; he was now able to believe that he was still capable of procreation, despite the fact that he was an octogenarian! The problem now as with Sarai. She was still barren and so Abram resorted to human initiative to help God out! As per the custom of the day Sarai offered her servant Hagar as the live womb through which Abram could plan his seed and so bring forth the heir of promise. Abram went along with the plan and Hagar became pregnant with his seed, a child was born. All were convinced that this was the child of promise and so they named him Ishmael, meaning God has heard.
In Genesis 17, prior to Ishmael’s coming of age, God again came down to speak with Abram. He let him know that Ishmael was not the son of promise, but that one born of both his loins and Sarai’s womb would be his heir. Abram was 99 years old and Sarai was almost 90. Abram’s objections are dismissed and so in a fit of desperate laughter, Abram came to the end of himself, he had no more schemes to help God out, he knew that if the promise was going to come to pass, then God would have to do without help from him – all Abram planned to do was rest.
Covenant completed – Genesis 17 & 18
Now that Abram was in a position of rest, abandoning himself entirely to The Almighty, (The El Shaddai, The all sufficient one), God brought to completion the Covenant.
He was circumcised in the foreskin (v10), which was the seal of the covenant. There was an exchange of names between the parties. Abram became Abraham and Sarai became Sarah, both took within their own names the central sound of the name of God (Jehovah). And from that point on, God took Abraham’s name and became known as "The God of Abraham".
In Genesis 18, the Lord came to the tent of Abraham and ate a covenant meal with him, thus declaring that the covenant was complete.
Circumcision – the sign of faith
According to Genesis 17:10-14, the single command of this covenant was that Abraham and all males born or bought into his household must undergo the act of circumcision. Without the circumcision, the covenant was broken and the individual was cut off from his people.
Why did God insist on this simple but deeply significant act? Romans 4:11 speaks of circumcision as a "sign" and the "seal" of "faith". God understood that to partake of this covenant of grace, the one thing man needed was utter faith in God. The fact that Abraham obeyed God in this matter showed him as a man of faith who believed God was good to his word. After all, would you circumcise yourself if you had any doubts that God was going to keep his side of the bargain?
Abraham had learnt that a promise has little to do with the receiver, and everything to do with the promiser.
Moses – Rest and Faith
When it came time for the children of Abraham to be delivered out of the hands of their Egyptian taskmasters, God again needed a man through who He could work. Just as God required Abraham to learn rest and faith to bring the nation into being, now God needed a Moses to learn both rest and faith to bring about the deliverance of that nation.
God had not been able to work through Abraham whilst he looked to the arm of the flesh, now with Moses, God had the same problem. His reaction upon hearing God ass "How can I make all that come to pass?"
Exodus 3-4 shows Moses was not a man who understood rest. "Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and that I should bring the children of Israel out of Egypt? What shall I say? Suppose they will not believe me or listen to my voice. I am not eloquent. I am slow of speech".
Moses was not a covenant minded man. Even his own circumcision was a token of culture rather a statement of covenant faith. It caused him to identify with the Hebrew people but not with the Hebrew God. And so, as a young man, his attempt to bring about deliverance for his people ended in miserable failure.
Why so, when he had the right aim? His attempts were based on self ability and not faith in the covenant. Without the element of rest and reliance on the covenant keeping God, there is no basis for faith.
The Importance of Faith
Eventually, after two chapters of debate with God, Moses came to a position of rest, where he recognised that it would be God doing the work. Having learnt the principle of rest, he had to learn about covenant faith, as symbolised through circumcision. Such was Moses’ ignorance, he had failed to apply the single command of the covenant to even his own family, failing to circumcise his own son.
God knew that unless Moses applied the covenant to his family, He would never instil it into the nation. Therefore the Lord sought to kill Moses (Exodus 4:24). Why? God had to shock Moses into a personal revival of blood covenant faith, born from a position of rest, in order to make him a suitable vessel to bring about national revival.
In the life of Abraham and Moses, along with every old and new testament hero, the principle was the same. Passive rest had to be understood, and from that position active faith was required.
The Foundation of the Church
Hebrews 6:1 – "Let us go on to perfection, not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God…."
The life of every believer is based on an exchange. We have exchanged something which was dead for something that is alive. Notice that it does not say "repentance from bad works". Of course the believer should have exchanged bad works for good ones, but this is not the foundation of faith. The foundational principle of the Christian faith is that we have exchanged our dead works (good or bad) for the living life giving works of Jesus Christ!
Just as Abraham and Moses had to lay aside their dead works in order to allow the living works of God to flow to and through them, so the believer has to do the same. It is only the person who has learnt to put aside his own dead works and rest in the workings of God, who can go on to be a successful, active faith man or woman.
Repentance from dead works always precedes active, living faith towards God.
God is Seated
Hebrews 10:12 – "This (Jesus) after he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God…."
It was Christ who worked for us and once his work was complete, He "sat down" – or took up a place of rest.
Ephesians 1:20 – shows us that Christ is "seated" in heavenly places, but then Paul says in Ephesians 2:6 that we too have been made to "sit together" with Christ in the same heavenly place. In other words, we are trusting in his workmanship and now operate from our position in Him, which is a position of rest.
It is only from the place of rest that we can hope to move on to a place of effective and active faith.
Man Created to Operate out of Rest.
Man was originally designed to operate from a position of rest. His first full day on earth, having been created on the sixth day was to operate out of the Sabbath Day – the Day of Rest. The devil has conned us into thinking that Sunday is a reward for 5-6 days hard work. But this is a lie. Sunday is not the end of the week, but the beginning of the week. We are created to launch into active Monday having had a restful Sunday; activity comes after passivity; works of faith follow rest in God. The ability to once more work from a position of rest is a benefit of our salvation, and one that we must never lose sight of.
QUESTIONS FOR THIS SECTION
Lesson 4
Book D
Rest and Faith
