When your back is against the wall

Have you ever felt a situation was so desperate that it was crushing you? That you had your back to the wall? That everything was closing in on you?

There is a narrow pass in the mountains of present-day Turkey near Paul’s home town of Tarsus. It is so narrow that, travelling by foot, there are places you can barely squeeze through. This is thought by Bible scholars to be the source of Paul’s statement to the Corinthians, “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed.” The last word refers to being caught in a place so narrow you can barely get through. It’s a place Paul would have had to traverse many times as he made his way in and out of Tarsus.

There are massive crevasses in the rock of the Niagara Escarpment not far from our house. I don’t look down them when I jump over them, because I am somewhat claustrophobic (and I don’t like heights either). But with many of them, if you did fall down, you’d just get stuck.

Have you ever been in such a place?

Last week there was a social media opportunity in Canada for people to publicize their issues with mental illness or stress. I noticed a number of comments from pastors’ wives concerning the struggles their husbands have as pastors.

Whether it’s because I’m a Christian leader or not, I can certainly and openly testify to many battles I have fought with fear, stress and feelings of giving up. In fact, a recent survey noted that at any given time, 75% of pastors in the United States are considering doing just that.

Part of the reason for this is that pastors are dealing all the time with people in their churches from every walk of life who are themselves in the same boat, and at some point it all gets too much.

Someone once said to me, “When you’re at the end of your rope, tie a knot and hold on.” It’s funny, but also very descriptive of where we occasionally find ourselves.

Can I suggest there’s no shame in that?

I am quitting a perfectly good job and losing my lifeline to financial security to step out in faith (again). As of yet, we have nowhere definite to relocate to, and by no means are our finances in place. Many mornings I wake up with anxiety. My cure is to do 100 push-ups and follow that up with chin-ups and sit-ups and generally exert myself to the point my anxiety gets knocked out of my head. Until the next morning when it comes back…

Yes, I am stupid. Yes, Jesus keeps yelling in my ears, as he did this morning: “Your father knows what you need before you ask him.” That’s Matthew 6:8, by the way, not some prophetic pronouncement. And there’s lots more in that chapter about money, fear and God’s provision. You should read it regularly.

I was sitting in my car by the bay a while ago watching the seagulls, when I felt the Lord spoke to me to read out loud to myself the last half of Matthew 6. It’s all about the birds and the grass and the stupidity of being anxious, and how our mandate is actually very simple. It’s to seek his kingdom and let him do the rest.

It’s a good word for those days when I feel my back is against the wall.

When I was 19 and had no money to go to university, I asked God to help me. He gave me an all-expenses paid scholarship to one of the finest universities in the world.

When I started my first church, I had no money and no backers. I asked God to help me and he did.

When we went to Canada as newly-weds with no money, no job and nothing but a word from God, I asked God to help me. And he did.

When I started my second church, I had no money and no backers. I asked God to help me and he did.

Twice, when it looked like our church would fall apart and we would be left with nothing, I asked him to help me and he did.

When your back is against the wall, ask God to help you.

And he will.

The surprising results of God's rest

In the last two posts, we highlighted two things. First, we enter God's rest by faith. Second, God's rest is actually his rule and reign. Please take a moment to read these two posts first if you haven't yet and then come back to this one! You'll get a lot more out of it that way.

But how do we fit into this picture? Well, to begin with, we saw that to rest means to reign and rule. A significant truth is revealed about this by understanding something you may not have known about the tabernacle of Moses. God deliberately designed the whole camp, centering upon the tabernacle, to mimic the pattern of Egyptian military encampments of that same period of time. Egyptians camps had the same three-part structure, the same measurements, were oriented toward the east, and in the innermost chamber had an image of Pharaoh, which rested with two winged creatures on either side. The Egyptians believed that the soul or spirit of Pharaoh resided in the idol, so that Pharaoh was with them, whether he was physically present or not. Their camps were surrounded by troops divided into four units.

What was the point God was making? He was sending a message to the Egyptians as well as trying to give a revelation to his people of who he was and what he was going to do for them. Even as the idolatrous Pharaoh led his troops from his innermost chamber, so the God of Israel led his troops from the Most Holy place, which contained no Egyptian idol but the majesty presence of Almighty God himself. Israel’s tabernacle was a travelling war headquarters from which God, in his place of rest, directed his troops until they achieved total victory. This shows us that God’s people are meant to exercise his authority on earth.

God’s rest reveals his sovereign power. God’s rest is not his retirement -- it is his reign! It is the place of rulership where all his enemies have been defeated. Why does Scripture say repeatedly of God that he is “enthroned above the cherubim” (2 Samuel 6:2; 2 Kings 19:15; 1 Chronicles 13:6; Psalm 80:1, 99:1)? God did not go into the tabernacle or the temple to sit down and retire. He went in to sit down on his throne and reign!

So if the Israelites were meant to rule and reign, what about the church? Because of what Christ did, what is true of Israel is even more true of the church! In Ephesians 2:5-6, Paul makes three amazing statements. We may have read them so many times they no longer seem amazing to us, but they should. He uses three compound verbs, all beginning with the Greek preposition sun, meaning “together with,” to describe what God has done for us. He made us alive together with Christ, he raised us up together with Christ, and he seated us in heavenly places together with Christ.

These three verbs express an astonishing truth which, if we comprehend it not just in our mind but in our spirit, will change the way we look at everything. And this is the life-changing truth: what God accomplished in and for Christ he accomplished also for us. God made Christ alive. He has done the same for us. He raised Christ from the dead. He has done the same for us. He seated Christ in heavenly places. He has done the same for us.

You and I, who just an instant ago were lost sinners enslaved to the world, the flesh and the devil, now share in the destiny of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. We are taken up out of our despair, our darkness and our depression into his life, his glory, his power and his authority. We are taken into his very throne room to sit beside him, to reign and rule. What God gave to Christ, he has given to us. What God purposes for Christ, he purposes for us. The authority God gives to Christ, he gives to us.

Where the devil seeks to blind us to our authority, Jesus gives his truth to set us free (John 8:32). Take your place of rest, and begin to share his rule!

The unexpected truth about God's rest

Hebrews 4:1-11 teaches us about entering God’s rest. Two questions are significant: what is the rest, and how do we enter it? The second question is answered easily: we enter it by faith, by receiving forgiveness of sins through Jesus Christ, and by becoming part of God’s people. Where Israel failed in its own efforts, we succeed through Christ’s.

The first question-- what is the rest? -- requires more explanation, and to answer it we must go back to the garden. Our mistaken concept is that rest equates to inactivity, to leisure, to doing nothing because God has done everything. But even as that is a misunderstanding of grace, so also is it a misunderstanding of rest. Rest is what God did when he finished his work of creation. Did God retire once his creative work was finished? By no means. That was the very point he began to exercise authority over what he had just created. That gives us an initial clue of what God’s rest is. Not only that, the verb used to describe how God “put” Adam into the garden (Genesis 2:15) is the word usually translated as “rest,” so that the best translation would be “God put Adam into the Garden to rest”. Yet Genesis clearly also says that God put Adam into the garden to work it and keep it (Genesis 2:15). That brings us to this unexpected conclusion: Adam exercised the government of God over the garden, yet this activity of ruling and reigning, of working and keeping, is described as rest! Then of course came the sad end to the story. Adam lost this place of government and authority when he disobeyed God, and he was ejected from his place of rest.

Here is another interesting fact. There are some astounding links between the garden, the tabernacle and the temple. When we examine Scripture, we find that the building of the tabernacle under Moses, and later the building of the temple under Solomon, were both patterned on God’s creation of the universe. Seven times from Genesis 1:3 through 1:26, the phrase “And God said” occurs, each of which marks a stage of the creation process. At the end of the sixth day, it says that “God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good” (Genesis 1:31). After this, God rested (Genesis 2:1).

The building of the tabernacle was likewise fashioned around seven creative words of God, “And the Lord said” (Exodus 25:1, 30:11, 17, 22, 34; 31:1, 12). At the end of the tabernacle creation process, it says, “Moses saw all the work” the people had done according to the command of the Lord, and he blessed them for it. Then when the tabernacle was finished, God’s presence entered into it and his glory filled it so that Moses was not able to enter (Exodus 40:34-35). What was happening in this process? God was taking up his rest.

The same parallel is present when we look to the building of the temple. Here we find -- and it cannot be a coincidence -- that Solomon took seven years to build it (1 Kings 6:38), he dedicated it on the seventh month during the feast of booths, which lasted seven days (1 Kings 8), and his speech of dedication was built around seven prayers (1 Kings 8:31-55)? And then -- and this is the critical point -- just as God rested on the seventh day from his work of creation, so when the temple was finished, God took up a resting place. How do we know this? The psalmist tells us: “Arise, O Lord, to your resting place, you and the ark of your strength... For the Lord has chosen Zion; he has desired it for his habitation. This is my resting place forever; here I will dwell, for I have desired it” (Psalm 132:8, 13-14).

So now we understand that the resting place of God is the very place where God begins his rule. In each case -- creation, tabernacle and temple -- God first subdued disorder, then began to rule over what he had created. At the beginning of creation, the earth was “without form and void” (Genesis 1:2). Once he had brought order from chaos and nothingness, and thus finished his creative work, he began to rule over what he had created. Not only that, he shared his place of rulership and rest with Adam, who then tragically lost it.

Now look how the pattern repeats itself. God subdued the chaos the Egyptians had created by bringing Israel out of Egypt and destroying the armies of Pharaoh. Then he established his presence in the tabernacle, took up his place of rest and began to rule over the people he had brought out of chaos into freedom. And again much later, after he subdued Israel’s enemies through King David and had the temple built by Solomon, he took up his place of rest in the temple and began to rule over the people he had once again restored. In each case, first God acts in power to establish order out of chaos,then he takes up his rest and begins to rule over what he has brought order to.  But each time -- whether with Adam, Moses or Solomon -- he shares his authority with the people he has given rest to.

The bottom line in all this? We are to enter his rest and begin to reign with him!

Entering God's rest

Hebrews 4:3: "For we who have believed enter that rest." God's rest is not what you may have thought it to be, and that is something we will look at in the next couple of posts. But there is no doubt it is the place you want to be. It is the place of being right in the middle of God's plan and God's will for your life. The word of God had come to previous generations, verse 2 has told us, but because it was not received with faith it did them no good. But for us it is different: we are to enter God's rest. The sin of the Israelites was their refusal to believe the unproven word of God. They were looking for physical evidence to back up what God was telling them to do, but God was requiring them to obey his Word without such evidence -- obey it, in fact, even if the evidence was to the contrary. But an attitude of faith obeys the Word of God even when it has not been outwardly verified by circumstances.

Why? Because the Word of God itself is the only evidence that faith requires. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the proof of things not seen (Heb. 11:1). The heroes of faith whose stories are unfolded in chapter 11 are men and women who defied everything in the natural world around them, all the evidence of their senses, and came to a place of simply believing what God had said to them and told them to do. That is why faith and obedience cannot be separated. Faith is an action. It is a lifestyle. You cannot truly believe God without doing what He tells you to do.

This becomes clear in this statement: “And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient?” (Heb. 3:18). The next sentence continues, “And so we see that they were unable to enter because of...” -- and here we expect the word “disobedience,” but instead we get the word “unbelief”. They were disobedient, but they could not enter because of unbelief. In other words, “disobedience” and “unbelief” are one and the same thing. Unbelief leads inevitably to disobedience as much as faith results unswervingly in obedience.

God's rest is presented here as something very desirable to take hold of.  It can be entered only one way: by faith. The verb "enter" in verse 3 is in the present tense. It is something in front of us right now. We know that what we have now is only a foretaste of our future inheritance in heaven. Yet this verse tells us we can enter God’s rest, and enter it right away.

Recently I went swimming in the freezing waters of the North Sea off the coast of north-eastern England. The friend I was with was braver than me. He just shouted to me, "Don't think about it - just run in." That's faith!  You know where you want to go and you know there's only way to get there.  You can't stand around rationalizing it or waiting until the circumstances improve.  If God has called you to something, just do it. Through God's grace, you faith will impel you to a place of obedience. You'll begin to do things you never thought you could do.

I did survive the freezing swim, even though I couldn't feel my toes for half an hour after. But I'd done it. And so can you.