Angelic Conflict part 159: Human history (Sabbath) – Heb 4:9-12; Joh 6:63; Lev 25:8-12; 1Ti 4:1-5; 1Co 10:14-22; Num 16:22: 27:15-16.

Title: Angelic Conflict part 159: Human history (Sabbath) - HEB 4:9-12; JOH 6:63; LEV 25:8-12; 1TI 4:1-5; 1CO 10:14-22; NUM 16:22: 27:15-16 .  

 

 

LEV 26:34

'Then the land will enjoy its sabbaths all the days of the desolation, while you are in your enemies' land; then the land will rest and enjoy its sabbaths.

 

They were too absorbed with earthly profit to do God's will in resting the land and releasing the slaves. Hence, they missed the true profit in life.

 

JOH 6:63

"It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.

 

Jubilee Year - the year after 7 Sabbatical years (50th year) was another year of no planting, all slaves were released, and all property was remitted back to their original owners.

 

So the year of Jubilee was a second Sabbath year. The land would rest for two years. All slaves, including non-Jews were released, and if a person sold his property it was returned to him or his heir if he was not alive.

 

LEV 25:8 'You are also to count off seven sabbaths of years for yourself, seven times seven years, so that you have the time of the seven sabbaths of years, namely, forty-nine years.

 

LEV 25:9 'You shall then sound a ram's horn abroad on the tenth day of the seventh month; on the day of atonement you shall sound a horn all through your land.

 

LEV 25:10 'You shall thus consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim a release through the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you, and each of you shall return to his own property, and each of you shall return to his family.

 

LEV 25:11 'You shall have the fiftieth year as a jubilee; you shall not sow, nor reap its aftergrowth, nor gather in from its untrimmed vines.

 

LEV 25:12 'For it is a jubilee; it shall be holy to you. You shall eat its crops out of the field.

 

The Jubilee Year revealed that God owned the land and everything on it.

 

It also regulated price and made sure that families would not lose all. The different tribes would retain their land so that one tribe or family would not conquer the entire land.

 

This restores liberty and possession and destroys permanent indentured slave population within the nation.

 

God owns all things, including men, and all have been given the possibility of liberty through faith in God's covenant promises. This strikes right at the heart of anxiety over things and circumstances.

 

This was not observed all the time as was the case with the Sabbath and the Sabbath year.

 

ISA 5:8

Woe to those who add house to house and join field to field,,

Until there is no more room,,

So that you have to live alone in the midst of the land!

 

MIC 2:2

They covet fields and then seize them,

And houses, and take them away.

They rob a man and his house,

A man and his inheritance.

 

In both of these passages God warns of the calamity that will come upon those who operate in this greed and fail to obey God's law.

 

Sabbath rest meant a gracious attitude while Sabbath rest violation revealed a greedy, covetous, cheap, stingy attitude.

 

HEB 4:9 There remains [left behind] therefore a Sabbath rest for the people of God.

 

"Sabbath rest" - sabbatismo,j[sabbatismos] = an uninterrupted sabbath rest for God's people who live in communion with God the Father, Son, and HS.

 

It is the context that gives this word the meaning of being uninterrupted since today we must hear His voice and not harden our hearts. This is not just a Saturday or Sunday observance for there are no rituals for the Church outside of the Lord's Supper.

 

HEB 4:10 For the one who has entered His rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from His.

 

If the mature believer has rested from his works and God also has, then who's working? No one; for it was finished before the foundation of the world!

 

This is a truth and not just an empty euphemism. God has rested from His works and He asks us to do the same. This means that what God has accomplished is unfolding in human history. This is not deism, which states that a supreme being set the universe in motion like a clock and is uninvolved in its unwinding. God is very involved and all present and all powerful as the Father planned and the Lord Jesus Christ intervenes, and the Holy Spirit convicts, but all of this was already done a very long time ago, before the foundation of the earth. The hard thing for us is our entrapment in time and God's absolute freedom from time. He created time and therefore is not subject to it. He sees the end from the beginning. To Him, a billion years is but a snapshot, and even that's too long. Our finite minds must comprehend the fact that it is finished and was finished before the earth was made and all those infinite number of footsteps that we cannot see (unfathomable) must be believed by faith.

 

2PE 3:8

 But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

 

ECC 3:11

He has made everything appropriate in its time. He has also set eternity in their heart, yet so that man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end.

 

ISA 46:10

Declaring the end from the beginning

And from ancient times things which have not been done,

Saying,'My purpose will be established,

And I will accomplish all My good pleasure';

 

REV 22:13

"I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end."

 

Divine good works have already been worked out by God in eternity past. We enter into them. We don't create them, EPH 2:10.

 

EPH 2:10

For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

 

Even in sin the believer claims the finished work of Christ. Grace covers the consequences (curse turned to blessing) and grace makes corrections through love in the form of divine discipline.

 

HEB 4:11 Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall through following the same example of disobedience.

 

The example is the Exodus generation who would not mix the word they heard with faith because of their hard hearts.

 

The process of hardening a heart begins when the emotions take over the soul.

 

This is a failure to control oneself through choosing the new spirit and its influencer, God the Holy Spirit. When the flesh rules too often then the emotions become the aggressor.

 

Emotions are to respond to the thoughts from the heart. Therefore the heart is the right man and the emotions the right woman. The man is to initiate and the woman is to respond.

 

Just like a husband will eventually become bitter if he allows his wife to assume authority over him in the marriage so the heart becomes hardened when the emotions assume authority over the soul.

 

While the believer is commanded to persist, or to be diligent to enter God's rest, there are certain attitudes, moods, status of soul, that hinder persistence or become antagonistic toward persistence.

 

"Let us be diligent" - spouda,zw[spoudazo; aorist active subjunctive] = hasten to do a thing, labor, endeavor, to do something with intense effort, and to make haste.

 

The aorist tense points to that time when you recognize that you are outside of God's rest and you realize that you must do whatever it takes to get your head [soul, spirit, heart, mind] to enter it. Listen to doctrine, go to God in prayer, take some time out to examine yourself. This takes mental strength: hence the verse:

 

MAR 12:29-30

"The foremost is, 'Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is one Lord;  and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.

 

That's not muscle but a strength of will that desires to enter God's rest.

 

The antagonists against diligence are disillusion, boredom, discouragement, self-pity, loneliness, frustration, bitterness, jealousy.

 

These antagonists rob the soul of the rest that God has left behind and then the believer finds himself frantically searching for a happiness and contentment that is outside God's plan of doctrine and the filling, or influencing of the Spirit.

 

It is not at all unusual nor abnormal to suddenly discover in your life these enemies of positive volition, yet to cater to them is abnormal.