Joshua 1:10-18 Daily Study Unit 8, Session 1, Day 2
We love rest, although most of us don’t get nearly enough of it. Instead, we tend to wear ourselves out, always going and always adding to our bloated schedules. Yet the hope of rest—the potential of a weekend of rest or retirement at some point—continues to lure us. Maybe one day we will finally find the rest we want and need.
As the children of Israel prepared to enter the land, don’t miss God’s promise of the rest they would find there (v. 13). Think about it: This was a people who had never had rest. Those who were children forty years before had left slavery in Egypt, where there had been no rest. Then for the next forty years, they and all who were born were always on the move. Now, at the border of the promised land, they were about to go to war.
But God was not just going to give them the land, He was going to give them rest. We know from the Book of Hebrews that the rest in the promised land was a shadow of the greater rest we find in our salvation in Christ. In Christ, we are able, for the first time ever, to cast aside our labor—our numerous attempts to be right with God—and instead rest in Christ as recipients of God’s forgiveness and righteousness in Him. This is the rest our souls need. This is the rest the gospel gives.
Question
What are some ways you need to stop working and rest in Christ?