Rest-Filled Action

            Refreshed by their watery experience in Rephidim, God’s people come face to face with life “in the real world.” The desert-dwelling Amalekites are looking for a fight. It shouldn’t surprise us that Moses’ battle strategy is not a typical one (Exodus 17:8-16). He instructs Joshua, one of his right-hand men, to “choose us some men and go out, fight with Amalek. Tomorrow I will stand on the top of the hill with the rod of God in my hand.” We are told that Joshua did as Moses instructed. Moses, Aaron, and Hur went up to the top of the hill.
            “And so it was, when Moses held up his hand, that Israel prevailed; and when he let down his hand, Amalek prevailed. But Moses’ hands became heavy; so they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it. And Aaron and Hur supported his hands, one on one side, and the other on the other side; and his hands were steady until the going down of the sun. So Joshua defeated Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword.”
            The Chronos Lesson: Ironically, Rephidim means “resting place.” While rest eventually come to the Jews, it didn’t come automatically. Under the New Covenant, our Savior and Lord calls us to a new resting place. “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28). It, too, involves a strange situation. Verses 29-30 fill in the details. “Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”
            For you non-farming people, a yoke means work. More specifically, it is a tool that aligns two oxen together to work a field. So Jesus is calling us to a place of rest that involves a manual labor gadget! What was He thinking?
            He recognized that because of our fallen nature, we automatically approach the difficulties of life by trying to figure out what we have to do to fix it. Instead, He invites us to hook up with Him and follow His lead as we walk through the problem together. You see, biblical rest doesn’t mean there is no activity on our part. We don’t get to float a lazy current of life on some sort of spiritual inner tube. No, biblical rest involves Spirit-led activity, and because we are linked with Christ, that labor is light because it is based on He who is the Light.
            Our Lord also knew the practicality of this hook-up, because He knows our enemy. A common tactic and agenda of the Devil is to disrupt our rest of faith in Christ. He loves to stir up our emotions into a self-defeating eddy that pulls us down. He wants us stressed out, tossing and turning at night, and preoccupied with imagining the worse and how on earth we are going to deal with it. Ironically, the root word for Amalekites in Hebrew means painful toil.
            When Jesus was revealing their near future to His disciples, He gave them this same principle. They were still grappling with the idea of Jesus going away, let alone by way of a gruesome cross. “Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me” (John 14:1). Chances are, at that stage, they probably weren’t especially comforted by the fact that He was going away to prepare their heavenly abodes and that He would send the Holy Spirit to finish His teaching lessons. They had finally accepted the idea of the second Person of the Godhead—Jesus as the Son of God. And now they had to deal with this third Person, God’s Spirit, who doesn’t even have a body and inhabits their own instead!
            Jesus closes out the mini-lesson on faith with these comforting words: “Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. You have heard Me say to you, ‘I am going away and coming back to you.’ If you loved Me, you would rejoice because I said, ‘I am going to the Father,’ for My Father is greater than I.”
            If we listen carefully, we can hear His words echoing into our own time. As the circumstances of life are getting more difficult to deal with because of the mystery of lawlessness—which should no longer be a mystery to us—He reminds us that He is coming back. Therefore, don’t be afraid and don’t be troubled. How is that possible? Because we know the end from the beginning. We see the Day approaching and understanding the chronos times and the kairos signs.
            In these trying times, our fearless Leader is seated at the right hand of the Father, having already secured the victory, and now interceding for us. Yoked with Him, we can rest in Him and take comfort.