Grace is Resting in the Cross

As I sat down to study today, I was amazed at what the Lord began to show me. My original intent was to study some things on covenants, because I have been meditating on "covenant" lately. I was actually surprised and intrigued as I began to search out the first one that came up on my internet search.

The first covenant that God made with man was with Noah. (Gen 6:18)

If we back up to Genesis 6:8-9 and read, God says, "But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God."

Let's analyze this scripture:

Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. Why and How? He tells us in the next verse when he mentions the "generations of Noah." The majority of Genesis chapter 5 is dedicated to tracing the generations of Noah, why would God go to all of the trouble to have Moses record all of these names? If we go backwards through chapter 5 we can trace Noah back to Seth, who was the third son of Adam and Eve. What does Seth have to do with the Grace of God being given to Noah?

"Seth" means "Compensation." Some synonyms for compensate are: atonement, reward, settlement, profit, recompense, benefit, and reckon.

Because Noah was a man who had his faith in the blood sacrifice and was looking for the One to come that would bring atonement for sin, He found Grace in the eyes of the Lord. Since he had found Grace in God's sight, he was seen as a "just man and perfect."

Are we perfect? Certainly not, while on our own! But once a person receives Christ into their heart, they are then seen in the eyes of God as though they have the Righteousness of God "in Christ," and since God can only except perfection, which Christ was, then we are seen the same. We are justified by the blood of Christ (His sacrifice that He made for us on Calvary), and we are seen in His eyes as perfect. God's Grace is Him overlooking our many faults, while still seeing us as "in Christ," and not by our own worthless merit.

Often times we think that we have to work for our salvation or work in order to be in "right standing" with God, but the truth is, Jesus did all of that for us! The Word of God says that His people perish because of a lack of knowledge. We often times feel like we have to work, work, work and then we can enter into His "rest" as the scripture states in Hebrews. Heb 4:11 "Let us labour therefore to enter into that rest..." the word, "labour" does not mean what we might think that it means. It means to hasten or give diligence, not to "work."

If we read Genesis 5:29, we can replace Noah's name with the word, "Rest" and it would allow us to see how we are to handle our "working" for the Lord: "And he called his name "Rest," saying, this same shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands, because of the ground which the Lord has cursed."

This curse was pronounced after the fall of man, but God also gave us a blessing to counteract this curse, His name is Jesus Christ.

In Genesis 3:19 God gives Adam his punishment for sinning against Him when He says, "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground.." So everything that man works for under the curse is going to come by the sweat of his brow.

Let's look forward towards Calvary where Jesus did the work for us, so that we don't have to: Lk 22:44, remember where Jesus is in the garden praying before He is offered up? The Word says that He prayed and "His sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground." Here the Lord is showing us that through the Blood of His Cross would come redemption from the curse we received. Through what Christ did at the Cross, we are restored back to the perfect, just, and state of rest that we were once in before the fall in the garden ever occurred.

God didn't mean for this walk to be as difficult as we make it. If you have received Christ into your heart, don't try to work for what He gave you freely, just rest in what He has done on your behalf. Through Christ, we not longer owe God a debt, His Son already paid it for us.