Striving for Rest

Introduction

You can open up to the book of Hebrews, we will be in chapter 4 covering verses 6-13. Last week I mentioned that it is unbelief that closes the door for some to enter into the rest that is offered to us. I want to continue to return to that thought today to implore you enter through the open door into the eternal rest that is offer to us by faith. This may be particularly difficult depending on your present circumstance but I will more than once remind you of the precious words spoken to us through Christ.

Matthew 11:28–30 “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

Wherever you are this morning, this rest is available to you. Lasting comfort remains open to you if you would only give yourself to Jesus Christ, your salvation and the Prince of Peace. I pray that it would please the Lord to show us his rest this morning. Please stand with me once more as we read from our text. Hebrews, chapter 4, starting in verse 6.

Hebrews 4:6–13 (ESV)

Since therefore it remains for some to enter it, and those who formerly received the good news failed to enter because of disobedience, 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.”

For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on. So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his.

Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.

Pleading for Response

Since this is the second part of what we began last week, this may feel a little like the gospel of Mark in that we are immediately jumping right into the action. As a very quick side note, I was reading through Mark a couple weeks ago and underlining every time he used the word immediately in the first chapter. Nine times he says immediately in chapter one, which accounts for 1/6th of the entire new testament use of the word in just that first chapter of Mark. So there is an urgency that is established in Mark’s gospel. A pace at which we see things unfold from our perspective that feels like we need to put our hands up and say, “hold on, slow down a little.”

I will try my best not to talk quicker than normal but I do need to establish, in obedience to text, not necessarily a hurriedness but an urgency with which the word of God comes to us. As I mentioned if it is unbelief that shuts the door to God’s rest for some, it is then faith alone that opens the door for others to enter his rest. The good news that comes to us this morning is that the way to enter into this rest remains open to enter it. “Since therefore it remains for some to enter it.” God has appointed a certain day and on that day he has issued an invitation to not harden your hearts against him but in faith to come to him and enjoy his rest. Let me check my bible one more time to confirm what that day was. Yes, that day is today!

Let me plead with you this morning that the promise to enter into his rest both now and for all eternity stands for us today but is dependent upon a response of faith. It is a response that rests in and trusts in God and his goodness and his salvation and his promises no matter what is happening around you. Wherever you are this morning, or in whatever state you find yourself presently in there is rest for you if you would trust in the promise and provision of Christ. Matthew 11:28–30 “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

It is the meme of the dog sitting at his kitchen table and his kitchen is on fire but says, “everything is fine.” More biblically it is Job having lost his family, his possessions, and is reduced to itching his boils with broken pieces of pottery but declares, “Though He slay me, yet I will trust in Him.”

This is the comfort that Paul talks about in 2 Corinthians 1 when he says in verse 6 that affliction is for our universal comfort. How can affliction and trial serve as comfort? Because it will always produce one of two outcomes. It will harden your heart and cause anger and resentment as we have so clearly been shown with Israel and as many of us have seen in our lives and the lives of others. Or it will melt your heart and deepen your faith and dependence upon God to a degree you could have never thought possible.

Imagine what these people in the early church went through. Some of us talked about all that Paul mentioned he went through in 2 Corinthians or even what so many Christians have endured throughout church history. The church needs to be continually pleaded with to not allow our circumstances to harden us but rather that the melt us into a deeper dependence upon the person of Christ. Today, if you hear his voice do not harden your hearts. Respond today in faith. This is particularly important when we focus in on this idea of rest.

Pointing to Perfect Rest

One of the big debates then when it comes to this idea of rest that is mentioned so many times in this section is does the writer intend for us to experience this rest now or is it pointing exclusively to that time in the future when you die or when Christ returns and the final rest begins. I think I have already established the case, at least to some degree, that this rest, more specifically the comfort that comes from our faith in Christ, is to be enjoyed and entered into as soon as today.

However, the text also points to a future reality. “For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on.” If it was God’s intent for Israels rest to be fully consummated upon their entrance into the promise land then why did he give us something else to look forward to hundreds of years later through David in the Psalms. If the pinnacle of “rest” is the temporal enjoyment of God through a still fallen creation then we really miss the bigger picture. You might say that if our goal is to grab hold of our “best life now” or “our best rest now” then we are grossly underestimating the infinite value of eternity.

I love appetizers. What is the point of an appetizer in a practical sense? Just considering the etymology of the word from its Latin roots an appetizer is taken for the purpose of whetting the appetite. It serves to stimulate one’s palate not as an end in itself but as a foretaste of the main course. Can we and should we enjoy the appetizer? Yes, of course but in its context as this condensed foretaste of what you hope will be a life changing kind of meal. Depending on where you are eating that hope may or may not come to fruition but I think you see my point.

So yes, Joshua did bring his people into the promise land and they certainly did experience an incredible rest but at the same time their rest was only a tiny foretaste of what is to come. Their rest and our rest, however real it is now, and I pray you do enjoy the appetizer, it is only a morsel of the courses to come.

The rest that is to come, the comfort that awaits us, the joy and peace that have been prepared for us is so grand, so lavish, so glorious that it will be hardly worth comparing to our present foretastes of glory. By the grace of God through, he does give us these wonderful appetizers.

So to give clarity to the debate on whether the rest mentioned in the text is meant to convey rest now or to point us to our future rest, my answer to that question is yes. It is absolutely pointing us to a future reality because that’s one of the main themes that run through this entire letter. We don’t fall back to law or to anything other than the person of Christ because he has prepared a feast for us in glory, that is an eternal inheritance, a salvation, a paradise with himself in glory. We must also say that God demonstrates, as with Israel, that he graciously gives us an oasis in the dessert and foretastes of his peace and rest.

Our goal is to immensely enjoy the appetizers in so far as they point us to or serve to whet our appetites for the grand meal that is to come.

Persevering with Faith

So consider again the first point we pulled from out text, that all things that happen to us whether trial or rest are for the purpose of cultivating, deepening and calling us to faith and that there is an urgent call to trust in Christ today. Couple that with our second point that this notion of rest, while primarily eternity focused carries with it a call to experience foretastes of it today. With those two together we arrive at the command from our text and that is to strive to enter that rest.

Quite a paradoxical thing to say right? Strive to enter that rest. What does that mean? I think it means that resting in Christ, trusting and depending on him, clinging solely to our faith in him, and truly enjoying his temporal and promised rest are things we don’t naturally do. Such things are perhaps some of the most difficult tasks we are given. Who knew it would be so much work to rest.

Sinclair Ferguson used the example of Newton’s First law of motion to demonstrate this thought. Newton’s first law of motion states that objects in motion tend to stay in motion and objects at rest tend to stay at rest unless acted upon by some other outside force. Since the fall, man, acted upon by sin is generally bent towards a state of constant motion. To look back again to Israel’s exodus as an example, they couldn’t just stop for a while and wait on God through Moses but they had to keep moving. “What’s taking so long, build us an idol to worship, we are tired of waiting.” This notion of perpetual motion has infiltrated our lives, our cultures, and even our churches. Everything is a hustle, everyone's hair is on fire and as objects in motion we tend to always stay in motion.

I feel it often when it seems as though if I stop long enough to read my bible I am letting all the other things I have pile up. We also feel like we aren’t doing enough, aren’t being enough, aren’t making enough, don’t have enough. Our churches aren’t growing fast enough, our spiritual lives aren’t progressing quickly enough, nothing is ever enough enough. I may have mentioned this before at one time but this is so clearly evident, especially among men where the number one canned question we always ask is, “Are you staying busy?” Everything around us pushes us and shapes unto into people who pin perpetual hecticism (yes that is a made up word) on us like a badge of honor.

Ultimately what this does is create a state of spiritual unrest. A state of leaning into the curse of the fall as opposed to the promise of the gospel. But there is another side to Newton’s Law. Objects at rest tend to stay at rest. When one strives to enter into the rest that is provided to us by faith and trust in Christ they find themselves more apt to stay in a state of spiritual peace. You will find far greater contentment in life when you move through life from that place of rest. This is by far the greater challenge. It is for that reason why so many fall back into a works based salvation because we are much more prone to relate to the idea of working for validation. We are much more comfortable with working for validation or working for rest as opposed to living from validation, living from rest.

This might also be why the reformed doctrines of grace are so contrary to carnal mind. It doesn’t seem right to us that I can call you into a salvation that has been secured for you and one that actually requires nothing of you. In fact, the only willing or running or striving that the word of God requires of us for salvation is to strive to rest in the work of Christ alone. The good news and the sabbath rest that remains for the people of God is the reality that God in Christ finished the work. He stopped and sat down. We need rest and need to strive to enter that rest and experience that rest as a constant reminder that it’s done, it’s finished, we don’t have anything to earn or merit. Take a deep breath and trust in Christ alone for the forgiveness of your sins, for the righteousness that is required to see God, for the merit needed for God’s favor, for the transformation into his image, and for the promise of resurrection into eternal paradise.

If you believe that church, if that glorious theology has found its way deep into your soul and if you find everlasting comfort in that truth then such theology needs to be coming out of your finger tips. Meaning you need to live from that state of rest. We all must live from that state of peace and contentment that only comes through persevering with faith. So my question is not “are you staying busy?” but “are you resting? I think all of us like the idea of rest but perhaps few of us take the time to make it a reality.

Let me also say that this is not a call to sluggishness and apathy either in our spiritual or physical lives. Though Christ has sat down at the right hand of the father having completed his work surely we don’t think that means he is idle or lazy, right? Not all it. It simply means that since creation until Christ and then from Christ to eternity, God is working from a place of rest. So yes we work, and yes often we will still be “busy” both spiritually and physically but to persevere by faith means that everything we do must be done by and through the assurance or rest that comes to us by way of the gospel. Because you are a whole person, spiritual and physical, you must strive to rest both spiritually and physically. The one compliments the other and each facilitate the other.

Conclusion

It is interesting maybe on first reading why at the end of this section the author puts in this note about the power of the word of God. It seems a little out of place in this exhortation about rest and warnings about unbelief to tag here at the end these words about the piercing nature of the word. I tend to think what’s going on here is a contrast of our rest against the words activity. We just spent a lot of time talking about rest but here the focus shifts to a living activity but it is not our activity but rather the word’s activity. This is again reinforcing the previous thoughts that so often we err when we take the activity into our own hands instead of trusting in the word of God.

This word given to us is enough because it alone has the power to expose us. It is the word of God that pierces to the division of soul and of spirit. This word gets into our joints and our marrow and discerns the thoughts and the intentions of our hearts. If you feel exposed this morning that is perhaps because the word has done the very thing it has been sent to do.

If you are not striving to rest spiritually I exhort you to repent of your dead works and your useless running. The good news is clear, run to Christ and to his finished work and in him you will find rest for your soul. Come to him with empty hands and in full trust that he will save you if you call upon his name and he will save you today and for all eternity. This and only this is how we loose the heavy burden from our backs and find our rest in him.

If you are not striving to rest physically, I exhort you to repent of failing to grasp hold of such an obvious grace that our God has given us. You need rest. Not only because you aren’t a machine but because physical rest is the weekly reminder that Christ has a better rest prepared for you. We don’t take this in a legalistic way as though we are hard line Pharisetic sabbatarians but nevertheless if you think you will rest when you are dead or that rest is for the weak, you aren’t reading your bible and you are missing out on such an incredible grace and foretaste of glory that our God has given us.

In summary of our test this morning I leave you with a threefold plea. Trust in Christ, strive for rest, and order the appetizer. Amen.