Enter the Rest

Turn with me to Hebrews 4. Clint covered chapter 3 for us last week. Chapter 4 flows from chapter 3 where the author of Hebrews encouraged us to continue to trust in God and to encourage each other. He gave the example of the Israelites who rebelled against God and would not trust God even after God delivered them for Egypt. Because of the lack of faith, they were not allowed to enter into the Promised Land. He continues this train of thought in chapter 4 and says:

1 Therefore, since the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us be careful that none of you be found to have fallen short of it. 2 For we also have had the good news proclaimed to us, just as they did; but the message they heard was of no value to them, because they did not share the faith of those who obeyed. 3 Now we who have believed enter that rest, just as God has said, “So I declared on oath in my anger, ‘They shall never enter my rest.’”

And yet his works have been finished since the creation of the world. 4 For somewhere he has spoken about the seventh day in these words: “On the seventh day God rested from all his works.” 5 And again in the passage above he says, “They shall never enter my rest.”

6 Therefore since it still remains for some to enter that rest, and since those who formerly had the good news proclaimed to them did not go in because of their disobedience, 7 God again set a certain day, calling it “Today.” This he did when a long time later he spoke through David, as in the passage already quoted: “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.”

8 For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken later about another day. 9 There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; 10 for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from their works, just as God did from his. 11 Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will perish by following their example of disobedience.

12 For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. 13 Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account. (Hebrews 4:1-13)

Does anyone feel tired? You may feel a little drowsy after listening to me read those thirteen verses. Maybe you stayed up late so you feel a little tired this morning. Or maybe you went to bed at a good time, but you didn’t sleep well so you feel a little tired. Whatever the reason, sometimes we just need a little rest. According to research, the average American wakes up feeling well-rested only three mornings out of the week. And on average, Americans only get six hours of sleep on any given night. We probably all need a little rest.

Several years ago, I started the habit of taking a nap on Sunday afternoon. It’s not that I was so tired from preaching on Sunday morning that I needed a nap in order to have strength to preach again on Sunday evening. What I found was that if I take a nap on Sunday, I am more productive on Monday. If I get some rest on Sunday, I have more energy to work on Monday. Rest is important.

Did you notice how many times the author of Hebrews mentioned the word rest in these verses? It was eleven times. And he mentioned rest twice in chapter 3. I know I graduated from a Bible college, but I’m pretty sure that’s thirteen times. Rest is an important topic for the author of Hebrews. He talked about entering into God’s rest. But what is God’s rest? Even if we aren’t completely sure what that rest is, I think we would want it since it is from God. The problem we have is he uses the word “rest” in several different ways. I see three kinds of rest that God gives us: physical rest, mental rest, and spiritual rest. The author uses these three kinds of rest interchangeably and mixed all throughout this passage to stress the importance of faith.

The first rest is physical.

A father was playing cops and robbers with his three active sons in the back yard after dinner. Pointing his finger at his dad, one of the boys “shot” his dad and yelled, "Bang! You’re dead!" The dad dramatically fell to the ground. But then, he didn’t pop back up. He just lay there without moving. A watching neighbor ran over to see if he had been hurt in the fall. When the neighbor bent over him, the overworked father opened one eye and said, "SHHH. Don’t give me away. This is the only chance I’ve had to rest all day.”

The basic meaning of the word rest is to stop working in order to regain strength. The first time we find the word rest in the Bible is in Genesis 2. Genesis 1 ends with the completion of the sixth day.

God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning – the sixth day. (Genesis 1:31)

Genesis 2 then begins on day 7.

1 Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array. 2 By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. 3 Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done. (Genesis 2:1-3)

Why did God rest? Was he tired? We would have been tired. God did more in those six days than we can get done in a lifetime. We’d be worn out. So, is that why God rested? No, of course not. God wasn’t tired. God rested not because he was tired but because he was finished.

As many of you know, I started my college years at Georgia Tech where I studied architecture. I enjoyed my architecture classes, but there was one aspect I didn’t enjoy. Our designs were never finished until they were turned in. Typically, we’d have a month to complete a design project. If I tried to finish my design early, the professor would critique it and he would always find something I needed to change or work on. Because it was never perfect, it was never finished. The result was we would stay up all night the night before it was due, building our models and making our drawings look good. So, I was never finished with my design until the moment I turned it in.

But that’s not true of God’s creation. Do you remember how God described creation at the end of the sixth day?

God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. (Genesis 1:31a)

It was perfect. When God finished creating, he rested. Later, God used his rest on the seventh day as an example for his people to rest on the seventh day.

8 Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. 11 For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. (Exodus 20:8-11)

The word “sabbath” means rest. It is a day of rest. God commanded that his people take one day a week to rest. Remember, the Israelites had just come out of four hundred years of slavery in Egypt. As slaves, they didn’t have time off. There were no vacations to the beach, no national holidays to spend cooking out with family and friends, much less two-day weekends. They worked seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year without a day off. Now, God was not only giving them a day of rest each week, but commanded that they take it.

A preacher once lamented:

I remember I used to say that the devil never takes a vacation, so why should I? I never stopped to think that the devil wasn’t supposed to be my example.

If God rested, how much more do we need a day of rest?

Second, there is a mental rest.

I think we need to realize what a big deal it was and still is to stop working one day a week. Not only were they used to working every day, but they thought their lives depended on working every day in order to have enough to survive. When you don’t have a pantry or cabinets with extra food, but live hand to mouth, you only eat what you worked for that day. Therefore, you have to work every day. To stop working one day not only gave the Israelites a day of rest, it tested their trust in God. Did they trust God to provide for them on the day they obeyed him and didn’t work?

To teach the Israelites to trust him, God provided food for them in the wilderness, but he only provided it six days a week. God provided the food they needed on the seventh day on the sixth day. On Friday, they were to collect food for Friday and Saturday. God was showing them that he would provide for them.

Truett Cathy, the founder of Chick-fil-A learned the lesson of rest. Most restaurants and businesses believe they need to be open seven days a week so they can make enough money. Cathy believed he could obey God, close on Sundays, and still be profitable. Think about a company or individual losing a seventh of their profits and income. I think it’s safe to say Cathy was right. Chick-fil-A has done very well. Since most of us don’t work seven days a week, it’s not as big an issue for us, but for the Israelite farmers, taking a day off meant trusting God to provide for them what they would have gotten done on that seventh day. So, taking a day off was a matter of resting but also of trusting God. And knowing that God would provide gave them rest, rest from worrying about where their next meal would come. If you’re worrying about your next meal or paying a bill, there is no mental or emotional rest. Rest comes from trusting God.

And the third, there is a spiritual rest. As God resting was a picture for the Israelites for how they were to take a day off, the Israelites entering into the Promised Land is a picture for us of the blessings that come from a right relationship with God. However, the author of Hebrews tells us that some were not allowed to enter into God’s rest. They were not allowed to enter because of their lack of faith.

Do you remember how God described the Promised Land? It was a land flowing with milk and honey. Did it really have streams of milk or honey? No. The phrase simply meant that it was a land of abundance. We’re told that when the twelve spies brought back a sample of the produce that it required two men to carry a single cluster of grapes. That is a land of abundance. It didn’t mean that once they entered it that they no longer had to work, but that God would bless it. They had physical rest because they were no longer slaves and they would only be working six days a week. They had the mental rest of not having to worry about where the necessities of life would come from. But there was a spiritual rest when they were in a right relationship with God.

However, the majority of those who were delivered from Egypt never experienced that rest. All but two of those who were over twenty when they left Egypt were not allowed to enter in the rest provided by God in the Promised Land. Why? God would not allow them to enter because of their unbelief. The author of Hebrews said that they heard the good news of God even as we have, but they didn’t believe it. Because they didn’t believe, the good news was of no value.

What was the good news that they heard? It was the promise of rest in a land flowing with milk and honey. It was the promise of blessing that comes from a right relationship with God. The problem was when those twelve spies returned with that huge cluster of grapes, ten of the spies also returned with news of giants who lived in the land. The ten said that there was no way they would be able to defeat them. Therefore, they advised the people not to enter into the land. Despite seeing the same giants, two spies – Joshua and Caleb – said that with God’s help they could defeat the giants who lived there. Joshua and Caleb were the only two who heard the good news and believed they could take it with God’s help. The rest of the Israelites did not. As a result, only Joshua and Caleb were allowed to enter into God’s rest. Everyone else died while wandering in the wilderness.

What is the good news that we have heard? It is the promise that our sins have been forgiven because of the death of Jesus and resurrection of Jesus. Those who trust that good news have peace and rest because they are in a right relationship with God. But the author of Hebrews warns us that not everyone who hears the good news receives the rest because not everyone who hears the good news believes or trusts it just like the Israelites who did not have faith.

I want you to understand what the Bible means by faith. The Bible does not use the word faith like I culture does. For our culture, faith or belief is simply a mental assent. For the Bible, faith means an active trust. It is trust that God will forgive our sins. It is trust that God will provide. It is trust that God will bless us.

Jesus told us that we are to have faith like children. What kind of faith do children have? They trust. There were many times when I was growing up that we didn’t have much food in the cabinet or refrigerator, but I never worried that I wouldn’t eat. I trusted that there would be another meal. We have to trust God that he will keep his promises and always do what is best. We may not understand his ways, but I know that we can trust him.

Look at verse 1 of Hebrews 4. The NIV does not do a good job of translating it. It changes the word order, which is fine, but it softens what our reaction should be. The NIV says:

. . . let us be careful that none of you be found to have fallen short of it. (Hebrews 4:1)

Most translations don’t say “be careful” but “fear.” For example, the NASB says:

Therefore, we must fear if, while a promise remains of entering His rest, any one of you may seem to have come short of it. (Hebrews 4:1, NASB)

We need to seriously think about the kind of faith we have in God. God’s rest, his blessings, can be missed if we don’t believe. Do we really trust him or are we trusting in ourselves?

I heard a preacher talk about seeking the blessings of God in the early years of his ministry. On Wednesdays, he would go out into woods where he could be alone with God. He would spend the day fasting and praying. Then, when he got to church that evening, he believed that God would surely bless that service because he’d been fasting and praying all day. In essence he was telling God, “Look at what I have done for you. Look at how spiritual I have been. Now, bless me and bless this service because of what I have done.” Then, when God didn’t bless the service like he thought God should, he began to wonder why he was even bothering to fast and pray.

Have you ever thought that way? Have you ever thought that God will bless you because of all the good things you’ve done? Or perhaps you thought wouldn’t bless you because of your sins. “God can’t bless me today; he knows what I’ve done. He knows that I. . . .” Fill in the blank: lost my temper, shared that gossip, looked at that picture, drove twenty miles over the speed limit. Just kidding, God probably doesn’t care about that. Too many base God’s willingness to bless us on what we have done. I have to admit that I’ve thought that too. I would say most of us have. However, is that a trust in God or is it an effort to earn God’s favor? God does not bless us because of our goodness or because of our good works. He blesses us because of his grace despite the fact that we don’t deserve his blessings. Once we realize that we don’t have to earn God’s grace but start trusting that God loves us and will do what’s best for us because of that love, we will have a peace and rest the world can never know. Jesus said:

28 Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, 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. (Matthew 11:28-30)

Have you experienced that rest? Are you experiencing the spiritual rest that comes from a right relationship with God?