Jesus Christ is the "I Am" of the Old Testament. He is not I was, He is I Am. Salvation is always today. One of the great errors of the current preaching is that you can be "saved yesterday" and now you are holding your ticket to Heaven.

Do you remember what happened to yesterday's manna? If your relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ is not current, then the forces of spiritual decay and death already are at work in your personality.

The incidents and institutions of Israel, such as the Altar, the Lampstand, and the Booth, are symbols of the reality that is in Christ. Today we have the spiritual fulfillment of the incidents and institutions, but we are still Israel, still the family of God, still the olive tree with its roots in Abraham and Sarah.

That which was preached to the Jews was the Life and power of God Almighty. But they did not mix faith with what was spoken. The same is true now. It is very simple to make Christianity an idle form, such as the "four steps of salvation," a form demanding no real repentance, no real moral transformation of the convert.

The righteous have lived by faith since the time of Abel. Salvation through faith is nothing new, it is just that today greater demands are made on us than on earlier members of God's Israel, and we have been given much more grace with which to conform to these new demands.

But God's goal never changes. The goal is that His people, His elect, live in iron righteousness, fiery holiness, and stern obedience to God.

Now we who have believed enter that rest, just as God has said, "So I declared on oath in my anger, ‘They shall never enter my rest.'" And yet his work has been finished since the creation of the world. (Hebrews 4:3—NIV)

The rest of God is that place in the center of God's will where all He has spoken concerning us as an individual is being performed. We have ceased from our own works and are trusting in God to will and to perform that which pleases Him.

The rest of God is portrayed in three dimensions:

The fact that God finished His work of creation in six days and rested on the seventh. The work of creation extends through the new heaven and earth reign of Christ. All has been finished, including our role in the Kingdom. We are to cease from our own works and enter God's rest.

The Sabbath rest of God.

The land of promise.

If we would enter God's rest we must understand that all was finished thousands of years ago. This does not mean we are to adopt a spirit of inevitability, to do nothing, waiting fatalistically for the inevitable to take place. The rest of God does not work that way.

It does mean we are to look to God to discover His will for our life. While we pray that God will make a way for us and our loved ones, and grant us the desires of our heart, our primary prayer is that we will find out what it is we are supposed to be and do at any given moment. We do not have to create another heaven and earth or even plan our own life.

To be continued.