· Sometimes this life can feel like “It's been one of those days, when we find it hard to believe in God”. At times, we really can feel like we’ve forgotten how to pray and it is hard to believe the truth.
· You may even feel at times like you are slipping away or drowning in a crisis of faith or like you are all alone.
· But we must not forget in darkness, in times of doubt, in times of trial, pain or suffering and difficulty the greatest hope-giving message of all time, which we have been given in the person of Jesus Christ. Although we may feel alone, we are never alone if we have Christ.
· Last week we looked at Hebrews 3:16-19 and it told of how the very people who heard God’s voice, saw His miraculous deliverance and were led out of bondage in Egypt, so that they could go to God’s promised place of rest, were the very ones who rebelled and fell in the wilderness.
· They sinned against God through their unbelief and because of their unbelief, they were not able to enter into God’s rest. Instead, the entire generation who left Egypt died and their bodies fell in the wilderness. Instead of rest, they found death in the wilderness.
· The author of Hebrews gave us a very direct warning that we must hear the voice of the Holy Spirit and not allow our hearts to be hardened in unbelief. And we saw that the way we do this is to guard against unbelief and to encourage each other while it is still called today.
· It is with this context in mind that the author of Hebrews, the Holy Spirit urges us to be diligent; to make every effort to enter God’s rest.
Main Idea:
Let us make every effort to enter God’s Rest
·
This is ultimately meant to be an encouraging
passage and a hope-giving passage because it reminds us that there is a place
of rest that God has prepared for His people and that we can enter into God’s
rest.· This scripture is meant to remind us that our efforts don’t involve resting in our works or trusting in our own ability. In the end, we are encouraged to strive to not trust our own works and to make every effort to trust in God’s work through Jesus Christ alone and so enter His rest.
· Before the author encourages us though, the passage begins with a warning.
· Although the ESV puts the word order differently to make it easier to read, in the New American Standard Bible, it captures the more literal emphasis of the original Greek, when it says in verse 1,
“Therefore, let us fear if, while a promise
remains of entering His rest, any one of you may seem to have come short of it.”
·
These verses are closely tied to the previous
chapter and the author of Hebrews repeats his warning to be on guard against
unbelief by exhorting us to fear, so that we may not fail to enter God’s rest.· The first point that the author is making in the first two verses is that we should fear failing to reach God’s place of rest.
1. We should
fear failing to reach God’s place of rest (1-2)
·
You might be thinking hang on for a minute –
you’re telling us the Bible says to fear? I thought we were supposed to have
faith? · Hebrews is indeed a call to have faith in Jesus Christ, the great prophet, priest and king. And we are indeed called to have faith in the message of the good news that has come to us in Jesus.
· But we need to fear unbelief because without faith in God, without trusting in God, we won’t enter into His place of rest.
· The conclusion of the author of Hebrews is that since a whole generation of the people of Israel didn’t enter into God’s place of rest because of unbelief, then we should fear
· God presents to us the same opportunity they had to enter into His resting place.
· There is a promise that still stands – that is still available.
· There is a promise that God continues to hold out to all mankind, to come and enter into His rest.
· And that is good news for us indeed, because if we are honest, we all must admit that we want to find a place of true rest.
· But there is a danger of missing the opportunity that God offers to us.
· We are not called to live a life of fear but we are being encouraged to have a fear of faithlessness, a fear of unbelief that is meant to send us back to trusting in God’s promises and enjoying resting in Him, so that we can fearlessly have faith and rest in Him.
· So, what is His place of rest? It is not the idea of not doing anything and sleeping all of the time. That is instead a misplaced desire that some of us want at times, even though what is really behind even this desire is to find a place of true rest.
· The reality is that everyone tries to find rest in some way. Whether one is rich, poor, strong, weak, wise, foolish or clueless. No matter the color of our skin, our education or lack thereof. We all want to find rest.
· And everyone looks for rest in their own way. Somewhere, at sometime, in something or someone.
· Some try to find rest through entertainment, or through sports, through games or playing – all potentially good endeavors, but we won’t find true rest in any of them.
· At times, I can want to find true rest in vacations and time off and getting away. All of these things can be helpful and good for us to recharge our batteries. If we are ultimately looking for time off to satisfy us though, we will be frustrated if it doesn’t go our way.
· I can recall so many times I’ve made time off or a vacation an idol – expecting it to leave me satisfied and feeling rested and then getting frustrated when it didn’t pay off like I thought it would.
· I don’t want to paint some false dichotomy here though, as if it isn’t good to have time off. Time off from work can actually be a means that God provides for us to recover, but our time off is only truly restful if we are trusting in God
· Some people try to find a place of rest through work, from a desire to get away from life’s problems or a bad home life, or a bad relationship, through focusing solely on work and the satisfaction that achievement brings. But this too is fleeting and no real rest is found. The bad relationship doesn’t fix itself and problems don’t go away – no matter how much we ignore them.
· Some try to find rest through riches or the pursuit of riches. I’ve been tempted this way before. Maybe if we can make or win lots of money, we won’t have any worries or cares and we can rest then.
· Or perhaps you look for rest in relationships, in marriage, in having children, in deep friendships or even through meaningful fellowship. But we are never promised rest in relationships with other people.
· Some look for rest in position or influence or power – thinking that if only I could have this or that position or role, then life would be good.
· While others look for rest through sex, physical gratification, food – using lusts of various kinds to try to find fulfillment and rest
· You can try to escape through drugs or alcohol or some other means to ignore the pain, dull the pain or just pretend you’re happy in yourself.
· But few find true rest. And until we enter His rest, we will find no rest for our weary souls
· Life is full of trouble and burdens too hard for us to bear on our own.
· Apart from believing in God by faith, the struggles, worries, hardships, pain and suffering of life will be too much for us and weigh us down.
· Verse one tells us that it is a fearful thing if we don’t enter into His rest. Entering into God’s rest is fulfilled completely on the final day, for those who have heard the warning and respond with trust in the life and sacrificial death of Jesus on our behalf.
· It is a fearful thing to not enter God’s rest, because the alternative is to enter into His wrath when we die.
· Even though believers in Christ finally enter into God’s rest when we die, we can enter into His rest here and now as well.
· We need to fear unbelief, fear not trusting in God alone.
· Verse two reiterates this by comparing the Israelites to the believers of that day. We have the same good news of God’s rest that the Israelites had, but the message didn’t benefit them because they didn’t have faith. So, we must strive to enter into His rest, so that we don’t fall into unbelief.
2 For good news came to us just as
to them, but the message they heard did not benefit them, because they were not
united by faith with those who listened.
·
the author explains that the people of Israel received the same
good news that God has prepared a place of His rest for them to enter into.· The problem is, the people didn’t have the kind of belief that relied on God that trusted in His word alone despite the challenges, despite the doubts and despite the circumstances. They failed to trust in God who had demonstrated so many reasons for them to trust Him.
· They heard the message and they may have believed it was true, but it was not the kind of belief that was united with faith – a trusting in, an active reliance on God’s Word.
· So let us hear the warning and fear unbelief. But let’s also be encouraged by these verses because they tell us something else very clearly, verses 4 through 8 tells us that God has prepared a place of rest for His people.
2. God has prepared a place of rest for His people (verses 4-8)
· Notice the logic that he walks through in these verses. He is saying
· God has a rest that began at creation
· Canaan wasn’t the final place of rest
· Then since God spoke through David of entering into God’s rest “today” – hundreds of years after the Sabbath command and the Israelites entered into the promised land, there is a Sabbath rest that remains for God’s people today
· The author is paying attention to the whole storyline of the Bible and reading Psalm 95 very closely, unpacking each word. What He is saying is that we can look all the way back in the Bible and see that God has always had a place of rest for His people.
· So, he takes us all the way back to the first place where we read of the idea of God’s rest in the Bible and he takes us on a trip back to Genesis.
Genesis 2:2-3 And on the seventh
day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day
from all his work that he had done. 3
So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from
all his work that he had done in creation.
· What the author of Hebrews is saying, is that when God rested from His works, He invited man to enter into His on-going rest way back then.
· The very fact that God is not said to have completed His rest and then resumed His work again implies that God began His rest on the seventh day and it still continues
· So not only does Genesis 2 bear witness to the on-going nature of God’s rest, so does Psalm 95 and now Hebrews 4.
5 And again in this passage he
said, "They shall not enter my rest."
·
Verse 5 is emphasizing that hundreds of years after the days of
Moses, after Joshua led some people into the promised land of rest, that God
still speaks today of entering “my” rest
in Psalm 95.
6 Since therefore it remains for some to enter
it, and those who formerly received the good news failed to enter because of
disobedience,
·
In verse six, it is clear that although a whole generation died in
the wilderness, some did enter into God’s rest and it remains for some to enter
it still.
7 again he appoints a certain day,
"Today," saying through David so long afterward, in the words already
quoted, "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts."
·
In verse 7, he shows that since God appointed a certain day as
“today”, way back when David wrote, there must have been something more God was
talking about when He spoke of His rest in creation and entering into His rest
in the promised land as well.
8
For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another
day later on.
·
This has to be true, because if Joshua had given them rest in the
promised land, then God wouldn’t have spoken of entering “my” rest “today”,
so much later on in Psalm 95.· So, it is clear from the context of all of scripture that God has prepared a place of rest for His people.
· Even though some of the Israelites didn’t enter into God’s rest and even though it may feel like we won’t enter into God’s rest because of seemingly overwhelming circumstances in life, we actually can enter into God’s rest.
3. We can enter
into God’s rest. (verses 1, 3, 9-11)
·
Even in his exhortation to fear unbelief in
verse 1, there is a promise given.· It says, “the promise of entering his rest still stands” Then in verse 3, he explains that we who have believed enter into God’s rest.
· The author of Hebrews uses the warning of Psalm 95 to show that God’s rest still remains. Then, in the following verses, the author of Hebrews unfolds the nature and content of the promise of rest.
· Genesis and Psalm 95 are not the only places it talks about God’s rest.
· In Deuteronomy 12, the promise given to the Israelites was that God would give them the land of Canaan as an inheritance and that He would give “you rest from all of your enemies around, so that you live in safety”.
· Then, after Solomon ushered in a time of peace and rest from their enemies, he built a great temple where the ark of the covenant, found its resting place.
· After the Mosaic law, resting on the Sabbath was a commandment for the people of Israel to honor. And this Sabbath command to rest was linked with creation, with their deliverance from slavery and with atonement- all things that Hebrews chapter 2 connects with the work of Jesus Christ.
· This Greek word that we have translated as “rest” here is also used 12 times in Hebrews and normally its use in the Septuagint translation, that our author used, indicates a “resting place”.
· So what is God’s resting place? Finally, it is Heaven of course, but here and now, we enter into a place of rest, as we come place our faith in the finished work of Jesus on our behalf.
· The author of Hebrews has already drawn his attention to exegeting the word “today” from psalm 95 – saying that God continued to say “today” to the people whom Psalm 95 is addressed to, many centuries after the people of Israel entered into the land of Canaan. So God continues to say “today” to us as well when He calls us to hear His voice and not harden our hearts in unbelief.
· Now, the author isn’t belaboring the point of showing God swearing in His wrath that they shall not enter my rest. Instead, the author is unpacking and explaining what is meant by the word “my” when God says “my rest”.
· Then, in verse nine and ten, he explains that we enter God’s rest by resting from our works and trusting in His work.
9 So then, there remains a Sabbath
rest for the people of God,
·
The author wants us to see that we can enter into God’s rest, so
he is picking up on a type or a trajectory in scripture that he sees in the
Sabbath.· He points to a rest that God mentions in Genesis, but that isn’t fulfilled then, because later, God’s people are given the commandment to keep the Sabbath holy and God’s rest still wasn’t completed even when the people entered the promised land.
· In fact, God still called His people to enter into His rest in the days of David, so God must have been talking about a different rest; one that still remains to this day.
10 for whoever has entered God's
rest has also rested from his works as God did from his.
·
This rest that remains, this seventh day kind of rest that God has
prepared for His people, looks like resting from our works, just as God did
from His.· We can have this Sabbath rest now, (today), achieved in part as we receive by faith and persevere in the grace of the gospel. But finally entering into God’s rest will be fulfilled in a new heaven and a new earth.
· In the meanwhile, we must not look to our own works but strive to keep holding onto His works as the basis of our faith as verse 11 tells us.
11 Let us therefore strive to
enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.
·
Today, we are called to strive to enter that
rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience in unbelief.· There were many times where rest was mentioned in the Old Testament: in Genesis and again in the giving of the Sabbath commandment, then later, when it mentions Joshua, (or “Yeshua” in Hebrew), taking them into the promised land and yet none of these occasions saw God’s people really entering into rest fully.
· Later David, God’s “anointed one”, brought a type of rest as his military might grew and he conquered the people in the land of Canaan and brought a time of rest through military security. But that didn’t last did it?
· In the exile periods of Israel’s history, the people were taken out of the place of rest for a time.
· But much later, (a man whose name in Hebrew was also Yeshua), Jesus of Nazareth, who was the Son of God, He came as God’s true Anointed One and Jesus said to all those who would listen,
Matthew 11:28-30 "Come to Me, all who are weary
and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.
29 "Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am
gentle and humble in heart, and YOU WILL FIND REST FOR YOUR SOULS. 30 "For My yoke is easy and
My burden is light."
·
Jesus calls to each of us
today to come to Him. All of us who are weary with life. All who are weary from
looking to other things and other place and other people for rest. All of us
who are weary with trying to be good enough on our own.· Jesus calls to all who are heavy-laden. All who are weighed down by the burdens of life. All who are weighed down by their sin and guilt. All who are weighed down by the evil in the world. All who are heavy laden, trying to atone for our own sins.
· Jesus doesn’t call us to a lot of duty to find rest. He calls us to come to Him and He says He will give you rest. This rest we are called to isn’t the ceasing of activity or quitting in the Christian walk but it is a complete trusting in Jesus’ works alone.
· It is a trusting in the fact that what Jesus has done is completely sufficient and we cannot add to or take away from what Jesus has done in any way. It is finding rest in the fact that Jesus has taken away all of God’s wrath completely, so that we don’t have to bear it anymore.
· Jesus has taken the burden of our sins and guilt. He has taken all of our cares and promised to be with us every step of the way. And we can rest in God even when circumstances tempt us not to and our faith is tested
· Our faith is not in circumstances and that is a good thing, because our circumstances will change. Our faith is in God the Father, through Jesus Christ His Son and enabled and empowered by God the Holy Spirit.
· We enter God’s rest by trusting in Jesus and His righteousness alone. We trust that because of the righteousness of Christ, God is now for us and not against us. And no matter what may come and no matter what storms rage, we can rest in God
· Striving to enter His rest, looks like no longer relying on our efforts or what we can do and instead completely relying on what Jesus has already done
“If your faith is focused on what’s around
you, just like Peter, you sink. If your faith is focused on the Lord, you stay
afloat even among those circumstances" - J. Ligon Duncan
·
Let us together strive; take
pains to stand firm in our faith, so that we will one day enter into His
Sabbath rest and so not fall by the same sort of disobedience the children of
Israel did.· As we strive, let us do so knowing that it is God who is at work in us both to will and to do for His good pleasure. And one day, He will bring us into the eternal, joyful Sabbath celebration – the “resting place” that He Himself enjoys in heaven
Potential Application
Questions:
1.
The scripture begins with a warning to fear not
entering God’s rest. Why do we need to be told to fear failing to reach God’s place
of rest?2. Where are you personally tempted to look for fulfillment or rest in something other than God? (work, money, position, relationships, sex, drugs, alcohol, food, fulfilling your duty, vacations, etc.).
3. How is a fear of not entering God’s rest meant to function as a good thing in our lives?
4. What circumstances, situations or relationships are tempting you to not rest in God?
5. How does it specifically encourage you to know that God has prepared a place of rest for His people that is not dependent on us?
6. How were you encouraged to see the pattern of God’s rest throughout scripture that is still extended to us today?
7. Sometimes we feel like we can’t enter into God’s rest. What does the Bible have to say about why we feel this way?
8. Read Matthew 11:28-30. Where are you weary or heavy-laden. Why are you weary and heavy laden? What would it look like for you to come to Jesus and find rest for your souls?
9. What are some specific ways that you can encourage one another daily to combat unbelief and rest in God?
10. What would this look like for you personally and how will you personally respond to God’s command to encourage one another while it is still called today?
11. How does encouraging one another relate to our church's mission to "Be Disciples of Jesus Christ, who are Growing and Making Disciples of Christ"?
12. How is God calling you to grow as a disciple of Jesus and how is God calling you to make disciples in response?
13. Take some time to pray for each other. Pray that God would help you grow in trusting His finished work and help you encourage each other to keep the faith and rest in Him.
