Week 2 Sunday Sept.13th, 2015 Topic: The Labour that brings rest part 1. – Faith, hope and Love.

Week 2 Sunday Sept.13th, 2015

Topic: The Labour that brings rest part 1. – Faith, hope and Love.

1Cor.13:13 (The Amplified Bible)

“And so faith, hope, love abide [faith – conviction and belief respecting man’s relation to God and divine things; hope – joyful and confident expectation of eternal salvation; love – true affection for God and man, growing out of God’s love for and in us], these three; but the greatest of these is love.”

From our text scripture here, whether or not we are laboring to enter into God’s rest shows in our lives in three qualities namely; our faith, our hope and our love life.

Faith and hope: Last month, we looked extensively at faith in relation to rest and refreshing. We saw what faith means and we also looked at some elements of faith and showed how faith can be a major player if we are going to enter into our rest and refreshing as intended by God. 

In Heb.11:1 we are told that faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. Also, in Gal.5:6, we are told that faith works by love. When we put these scriptures together with our text scripture today, it becomes clear that the labour required to enter the rest of God would happen as we walk in faith and demonstrate the hope of our eternal salvation and the love of God towards God and men. 

How does this work? First, we need to walk in faith; a lifestyle ordered by the word of God or Godly values. However, for faith to be truly the faith of God, it hinges on the hope of our eternal salvation as shown us in the text above. As long as we stay joyfully expectant of our eternal salvation, our faith would have a resting place. Then for our faith to truly work to the point of leaving behind us an eternal legacy, we must demonstrate the third quality of walking in love. 

Since we have seen the quality of faith for rest extensively last month, we shall just look at the connection between hope and faith and how to release faith today. 

Faith and hope as exemplified by Abraham

Heb.11:8, Rom.4:1, 17-24 - From our texts here, God called Abraham to go to a place He would show him even though he did not know the place, he went ahead and trusted God to fulfill His promise. 

He hoped to get there and he demonstrated faith by taking steps to get there by actually obeying God to go. If he merely believed God without taking any action, his faith would have been questionable and there is no way he would have entered the Promised Land. 

Lessons:

1. When we first hear a promise of God, our hope is stirred up; we receive the word with joy like the person in the parable of the sower who could not bear fruit to perfection in Luke 8:13-14. This group of people hears the word and receives it in the hope of getting the goodies promised. However, they are not willing to pay the price of getting to the end of the journey of fulfilment. These kinds of people are easy prey to persecution and they become victims to the cares of this life and over time; they would lose the patience required to get to the end of the journey that would bring them the rest of fruitfulness which is the end of the promise. In 2Cor.4:13-14, Apostle Paul refers to those who would follow through to the end as people having another spirit; not the regular one like others. In verse 13, we see that apostle Paul and his company believed and therefore spoke in accordance with what they believed. The reason for this is seen in their hope of eternal salvation as shown in verse 14. 

For example, in Numbers 13-14, the popular opinion demonstrated by the evil report of ten spies and the unpopular opinion demonstrated by the “another spirit” of Joshua and Caleb. All of them hoped to get to the Promised Land from the beginning but only two of them paid the price of faith to get there. This takes us to the next way faith and hope works.

2. Faith speaks what is hoped for with full persuasion that what is believed must come to pass. In the case of Abraham in Romans 4:17-24, he kept giving glory to God by consistently saying what he hoped to see in the end and the result was that he entered his promised land of the father of many nations. This was his rest and he is still there until today.

3. Faith keeps moving on even when the hope of what is expected seem to be shaken by circumstances. No one ever enters rest who allows contrary circumstances to deter them from the direction of God. This is why Abraham believed in hope against hope. See Romans 4:18. Even when his body spoke against his hope of bearing a son with his old barren wife, he refused to stagger at the promise of God. He never allowed unbelief to rob him of the fulfilment of God’s promise. 

4. Even when hope seems taken away, faith will keep you going until the fulfilment of God’s promise. See Acts 27:20-25; in this account, all the people in the imminent shipwreck had lost hope until Paul received a word from the Lord that none of them would be lost in the shipwreck. This goes to tell you that faith keeps working even when all hope is lost. Therefore even though faith and hope work together, faith is stronger than hope because even when hope is taken away, faith can still help you take the journey to the end.  

5. Finally, whereas hope is the trigger for faith to start to grow, faith is what sustains hope even if hope is lost. The loss of hope would not necessarily result in the loss of the promised fulfilment as long as one maintains their faith in God’s word and act accordingly until the end. When you maintain your faith in God’s word, you are indeed operating in the rest of God because the means by which we enter our rest is mixing the word of God with faith or commensurate action based on the promise. See Heb.4:1-3, Rom.4:1-25.