No Rest Stop Here

“Arise ye, and depart; for this is not your rest: because it is polluted, it shall destroy you, even with a sore destruction.” (Mic 2:10 AV)

Micah is used of the LORD to warn the people of Israel and Judah to not get too comfortable in their present situation.  The Rest of which he speaks is the rest promised to Israel through the Messiah, Jesus Christ.  In their present situation, they have rejected the law.  They have gone after idols.  They have abandoned the Sabbath.  This nation, whom God made covenants with and whom He rescued from bondage to Egypt, now sits backslidden from the very God who brought them out.  They treated their arrival in Canaan as the Rest when it wasn’t the Rest.  Because they tried to have the Rest without the Redeemer, their Rest became a source of destruction.  Trying to have heaven on earth only leads to compromise of conviction and eventual decay of the very thing one is trying to attain.

I learned some very valuable lessons through our recent adventure of renovations and remodeling.  Prior to moving to our current ministry, the church and I had decided that we needed to live in the parsonage.  The problem was, it was in really bad shape.  The church was close to tearing it all down and making a lawn out of it.  It wasn’t even a safe house to live in.  The process began with major changes.  The house had to be leveled.  It was badly out of square.  This caused the foundation to need some serious repair as well.  Then came the inside.  Walls were removed and added.  The downstairs was completely redone.  A new kitchen, dining room and living room.  It was quite an adventure.  The wood floors were stripped and sanded by hand.  But the colors and design were all my wife and I.  It turned out beautiful.  That is, until you look really closely.  A misaligned piece of trim here, and insufficiently sanded patch of drywall there, a mismatched patch of floor everywhere.  We also discovered that once one starts the process, there is never enough money or time to make it perfect.  We had a saying whenever a new idea or higher standard was desired.  We were putting lipstick on a pig.  Eventually, one has to realize it will never be perfect.  There will always be things we wish were different or better.  This is life.  In trying to make it perfect, we will only make it more of a mess.

This is the admonition above.  Israel believed their kingdom had arrived.  When Solomon solidified the kingdom and prosperity began, compromise was not too far away.  They believed the rest had come and therefor, were impervious to the temptations a nation might face.  They were above it.  They were unmovable.  They could co-exist with the world and have no worries because God was with them.  The problem was, they were still fallen creatures and they lived in a fallen world.  Unless they chose to live by faith and obedience to the Word, the were headed for destruction.  They treated their situation like the rest they were promised.  What they failed to see is that rest can only be had in Christ.  The same is true for us.  We cannot have heaven on earth.  Only where Christ resides will we find our rest. We will suffer in this flesh.  But there is coming a day when our rest will come.  Look for that day!