Eleven days. That is how long the journey from Mt. Sinai to the Promised Land should have taken. Forty years. That is how long the journey actually lasted. Why the difference? The people of ancient Israel hardened their hearts and refused to believe God’s promises. As a result, an entire generation perished in the wilderness, never fulfilling its God-given destiny. Not good.
Of the exodus generation of Israel, only two men—Joshua and Caleb—were permitted to enter into the Promised Land and receive their destined inheritance. What great sacrificial act did they perform to merit such favor? They trusted God in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds (see Numbers 13-14).
Evidently, Joshua and Caleb had learned a powerful lesson from their forefather, Abraham. In the midst of his own daunting situation, “Abram believed the Lord, and He credited it to him as righteousness” (Genesis 15:6). Trust, it seems, means everything to our Creator.
The Importance of Faith
Herein lies the huge oversight of many who profess faith in Christ: we simply do not realize how important the development of our faith is to our Lord and Savior. The importance of faith characterizes, and even transcends, every covenant mentioned in the Bible.
Think about the Old Testament Sabbaths for a minute. In an economy that depended upon planting and harvesting crops, obeying the Lord’s Sabbath commands required faith. This was certainly true of ceasing work one day each week to draw nearer to God and family, but it was even more true of giving the ground a Sabbath rest every seven years. The Lord promised that He would meet their every need, but the people of Israel never observed this latter command, and their time in Babylonian exile reflected this sad reality (2 Chronicles 36:20-21).
As much as observing the old covenant Sabbaths required faith, so too, our new covenant Sabbath rest cannot be observed apart from a deep and abiding trust in God.
Why Faith Matters
Why does faith matter so much? In every way, the Christian life is rooted in a relationship with God. And while we can have “relationships” without trust, they can never be intimate. To know God and to enter His rest, we must trust Him. Rest begins with God, and to enter His rest, we must trust that He will do what He says He will do.
Think back to the garden of Eden for a minute. How did the evil one begin the temptation that led to our planet’s unrest? He called God’s trustworthiness into question.
Now the serpent was the most cunning of all the wild animals that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You can’t eat from any tree in the garden’?” Genesis 3:1 (HCSB)
“Did god really say that? You don’t actually believe him, do you? Surely, you will not die.” The purpose of these cunning words was to instill doubt about God’s goodness into human minds, and humanity has been doubting Him ever since. Those who wish to reach the promised land of spiritual rest can do so only by returning to a lifestyle of faith.
“Behold, as for the proud one,
His soul is not right within him;
But the righteous will live by his faith.”
Habakkuk 2:4 (NASB)
Living by Faith
Faith and spiritual rest cannot be extracted from one another. Rest begins with God, and those who seek to experience true rest can do so only through faith in Him. It is not enough to “possess” a bit of faith as a mental assertion. We must learn, as declared through the prophet Habakkuk, to live by faith.
When the Bible calls us to repent of our sins, exercising faith is not to be considered as a separate action. Repentance involves turning from both self-sufficiency and idolatry to live by faith in the one true God.
Living with a deep, abiding trust in God seems simple enough, but such a lifestyle goes against our natural grain. From the earliest age, we have have been conditioned to live by what we see. Putting our trust in material wealth and human institutions makes much more sense—at least until those entities begin to falter. It is then, when our natural sources of confidence begin to crumble, that the true focus of our trust is revealed.
God, for His part, will meet us where we are, if only we will turn to Him in good times and in bad. He alone is worthy of our trust, and an integral aspect of exercising faith involves learning to see the Lord for who He is. You see, that is what the serpent did with his cunning words, he clouded humanity’s vision its Creator.
Sabbath Faith
The journey to the promised land of rest is a journey of discovery through which the vague, distant idea of a good, faithful, and loving God becomes an ever-present reality. Our vision of our Creator’s true character is unclouded as we turn to His written Word and cry out for wisdom to understand His ways.
Because of the Lord’s unseen nature, this approach to finding rest might feel nebulous and elusive, but nothing could be further from the truth. Rest begins with God, and those who seek that rest must learn to see Him for who He is, learning to walk by faith and not by sight (1 Corinthians 5:7).
Please, do not make the same mistake as the Exodus generation of Israel. Instead of realizing that the Lord was seeking to perfect their faith, they wrongly interpreted their difficulties as a sign of abandonment. Our God is faithful, through and through. But will we see Him for who He is and get on board with His plans and purposes?
*Bob Santos has authored several books, and this post is drawn from an upcoming work titled The Search for Rest.
