an eternal sabbath rest… the celebration of perfection.

You are living in an eternal, perpetual sabbath rest!

Genesis 1:31 – 2:3
“God looked at everything he had made, and he was very pleased. Evening passed and morning came – that was the sixth day. And so the whole universe was completed. By the seventh day God finished what he had been doing and stopped working. He blessed the seventh day and set it apart as a special day, because by that day he had completed his creation and stopped working.”

The Sabbath is not the result of a tired God needing to take a break from the business of creating. The Sabbath is a celebration! It is the result of God’s evaluation of what He’s made: that it is very good, and that, in it, He is well pleased. This estimation is cause for great celebration! God not only began creation, but He saw it through to it’s completion! [Phil. 1:6] Not only did the Creator author a masterpiece, but He finished it! [Heb. 12:2; Eph. 2:10]

The Sabbath is God’s celebration of the perfection and beauty of what He’s made! It is the Rest that facilitates His enjoyment of all He’s done – because in it He is well pleased!

And this Sabbath goes well beyond the pages of Genesis 1 & 2. What God had done in Adam, He has superseded in what He’s done in Christ [Rom. 5:15]. For in His Son, He was re-creating the world, and reconciling it back to Himself [2 Cor. 5:19].

The sacrifice of Christ restored mankind to it’s original design: beautiful perfection. It was enough. God declared once again, over all of humanity, through His Son, “It is finished.” This is the Creator’s estimation of His creation once again; that it is very good, and that, in it, He is well pleased! What God declared in the beginning, He has declared again, once and for all time, through the life of His Son.

Through the Incarnation of Christ, all of mankind is identified and defined by their inclusion in Christ. And God is at rest, fully pleased and eternally satisfied, with what His Son has done! And so is He at rest with you and me!

God is in an Eternal Sabbath rest! And so are we!!

Hebrews 4:10
“For whoever receives [by faith] that rest which God has promised will rest from his own work, just as God rested from His.”

We don’t enter into a Sabbath rest because now God is doing all the work for us. No, it’s shocking but, God isn’t tirelessly laboring to perfect you. He isn’t meticulously working behind the scenes to secure your salvation. He isn’t striving over you, laboring over you.
No, we don’t rest because God has now taken over all of the work. We stop working because God has stopped working!! We rest because God just went ahead and did it all on our behalf, He has already perfected us in His Son, and now He has ceased from His labors!

God is living in an eternal, perpetual Sabbath! He is perfectly satisfied in His Son and His creation has been perfectly saved and perfectly reconciled back to Him – and now He is resting from His labors, from His efforts – because there’s nothing left for Him to do. His Son did it all – it was ENOUGH! All that’s left is to ENJOY what has already been perfected. And we too have ceased from our own efforts – what could we possibly add to what Christ has already done? What could there possibly be left to do except REST and ENJOY? God has ceased from His effort – and so have we!!

Mark 16:19
“So then, when the Lord Jesus had spoken to them, He was received up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God.”

Jesus did it all, and then He rose in the newness of humanity’s perfection and HE SAT DOWN. What?! He sat down!! Right there at Papa’s right hand. Just went ahead and pulled up a blanket next to Papa on the beach of perfection and sabbath rest. And He has pulled us, not only into His perfection, but into His sheer pleasure and enjoyment of that perfection! We get to Sabbath – to celebrate – with God forever the beauty and innocence of His completed work in humanity!

Oh friends, it’s such glorious, outrageous, scandalous news! But it’s the best news out there!! Pull up a blanket today, tip back your head and open wide your heart, and join your Papa in drinking in the beautiful view that is YOU!

opening thoughts on Hell, Grace, and the journey into other taboo waters…

This is the first of what could become a few posts, but I need to at least put something out there. So much has been transpiring in my mind and, whether I like it or not, I’m going there.

Yes, there.

You know, those places we aren’t supposed to go.
Where I ask the hard questions that I’m not supposed to ask.
And I take the liberty to think freely that I’m not supposed to take.

And this journey is happening whether I like it or not! The more of the Gospel I drink down, the more Holy Spirit brings me to this place… this exciting, invigorating, beautiful place… where I get to ask questions that I’ve been told not to ask, and I get to discover invaluable treasures that I’ve been told didn’t exist!

…………………………………..

Having said all that, there is still so much being worked out in my heart and I certainly have yet to arrive at all of the conclusions. But that, to me, is the beauty of the whole thing. My life is a sentence, and I am nowhere near the end! I am not looking high and low for a period – I am simply enjoying the comas, apostrophes, and semi-colons along the way.

So, to get this party started, I felt the need to at least define what it is I AM convinced of. There are so many things that I don’t know, and I am perfectly comfortable with that.

But there are many things that I have come to a resolved persuasion concerning. So here they are… the launching pad, and the homing beacon, for my journey into the great unknown place of “there.”

Bon Voyage!

 …………………………………..

August 17, 2011

 I have been persuaded that…

A)     The love and grace of God are far greater, and more effective, motivators of the human heart towards God, than fear and consequence (namely, Hell as an eternal punishment) could ever hope to be.

1. Focusing on the ‘problem’ will never present a solution. Christ’s salvation and His free gift of Grace are the solution to the ‘problem’ of sin.
   
2. “His grace is out of all proportions to the fall of man…” [Rom. 5:15 AMP]
   
3. The focus should never, ever, leave the free gift of Grace made available through the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, and the effortless salvation from sin that He has provided once and for all mankind.
   

                             i.      Grace, and not Law (religion, God-pleasing, obligation, performance), lead men to God. “His kindness leads us to repentance.” [Rom. 2:4]

                             ii.      The promise of eternal and abundant life, not the fear of eternal punishment and damnation, lead men to God. “The enemy comes to steal, kill, and destroy. But I’ve come to give you life, and to give it to you in abundance.” [John 10:10]

 

B)      Few men, if any, having seen an accurate portrayal of Christ, His nature and His unrelenting passionate pursuit of mankind, would deny Him.

1. Their embrace and experience of Christ might differ from the person next to them, based on the degree or nature of their understanding (as well as their life experience, the cultural context of their environment, the ‘language’ available to them for articulation, etc).
   
2. But a difference of experience or expression does not confirm or deny a man’s fellowship with Christ.
   
3. It is, instead, the fruit of the experience that gives testimony to its source.

 

C)      There is more to the Grace of God than we have yet to understand. It has far-reaching consequences that we cannot conceive. And it, being expressed and revealed in a Person (Jesus Christ), and finding its origin in the Triune Being of God, is relational in nature and in operation.

1. God’s Grace cannot be defined. You cannot set boundaries on it, give it perimeters within which it must operate, or create rules that determine its reach.
   
2. Grace if gray. It is not black and white. It is rebellious, offensive, and outrageous – it is the very essence of the scandalous Good News of the Gospel. Being that it is relational, it operates individually within the unique expression of every man’s life, and we cannot know its beginning and end in the heart of any man.

 

And just because we all forget what He looks like sometimes…