Don't Wait

Therefore, since it remains for some to enter it, and those who formerly received the good news did not enter because of disobedience, he again specifies a certain day—today. He specified this speaking through David after such a long time:

Today, if you hear his voice,do not harden your hearts.

For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken later about another day. Therefore, a Sabbath rest remains for God’s people. For the person who has entered his rest has rested from his own works, just as God did from his. Let us, then, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will fall into the same pattern of disobedience.

This is the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God.

Last week we looked at how God’s promised rest is available to us today. We saw how we can experience the fruits of God’s rest in this life when we submit to him. We talked about having peace in chaos, joy in sorrow, and patience in testing because of the Holy Spirit’s work in our hearts and minds.

Today we are continuing along those same lines as the writer of Hebrews works through more of his explanation of the Lord’s rest to his readers. However, the author now begins to push a little bit, showing that there is an urgency to taking hold of God’s rest. We see him talk about making an effort to enter the Lord’s rest, emphasizing the word “today”.

Big Idea: Don’t wait to experience the Lord’s rest.

Hebrews 4:6-7

Today, if you hear his voice,do not harden your hearts.

The author continues to discuss the rest that God gives to those who believe in him. The offer of rest still remains for those who trust in the Lord, even through “those who formerly received the good news” (the first generation of Israelites that came out of slavery in Egypt) did not enter God’s rest because they disobeyed him.

The term “good news” here is the same word we use for the gospel. The Greek word is “euangelion,” which means “good message” or “good news.” One of the passages that helps us to understand the original meaning behind this word is Romans 10:15.

Romans 10:15

How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news.

I heard a theologian named Michael Horton explain this verse in this way:

In the ancient world, there were no cell phones or even walkie-talkies to communicate with people over long distances. When a country won a war or a major battle, the commanding officer would send a runner back to the homeland to inform the people back home that they were victorious.

This is actually where the origin of the marathon race comes from. In 490 BC, the Athenians defeated the Persians at the Battle of Marathon. A man named Pheidippides ran the 25+ miles from the battlefield at Marathon back to Athens to let the people know that they had won the battle. According to legend, Pheidippides delivered his message, “Rejoice, we conquer!” and fell down dead. And to commemorate this legend, people train for months or even years to run in these races that started in memory of a man who fell down dead after running that far.

This verse in Romans 10, where it says, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news,” this is referring to the joyous, excited feet of those messengers who are thrilled to bring good news to their home city or country. The watchmen in the tower could see this messenger running, with dust flying up behind him, and would be prepared for an exciting report. It was considered a blessing, beautiful even, to see a messenger coming to bring good news.

Thinking about this great message that these runners would have delivered, they would come home to tell the civilians, the people back home, that someone had won the war for them. The people were free, or victorious, not because of anything they had done, but because of what the army had done for them.

This is the same good news that we are to bring to the world. We get to tell people that the battle is already over. Victory is won! And we can share in that victory if we simply submit our lives to the King of that victory. The gospel is that Jesus Christ has conquered sin and death and is reigning victorious at the right hand of God. We can be free from the guilt and shame of our sin by declaring our allegiance to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, submitting our lives to him, and living in the love, peace, joy, and mercy that can be found nowhere else but Him!

But as I said last week, if you do not receive the message in faith, it means nothing for you. This book (hold up Bible) does nothing for you if you don’t believe what it says. You may obey some of God’s commands in your life, but that obedience is not based on a love for the God who saved you from your sins.

The gospel means nothing to you if you don’t believe it.

If you don’t believe you are a sinner, if you don’t believe that your sins deserve the punishment of death, if you don’t believe that Jesus willingly stepped in and paid that price for you and me, if you don’t believe that the only way to God is through accepting Jesus’ perfect sacrifice for our sins, submitting to his rule and authority, then this book (hold up the Bible again) the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ is not actually good news to you.

Two weeks ago, we saw how the author of Hebrews equated the disobedience of the Israelites with unbelief. They were constantly disobeying God, which meant they had no faith in God. Our passage today states that those who had previously heard the message did not enter God’s rest because of their disobedience. We must continually examine our hearts, asking God to reveal our standing before him, gathering with other believers who will encourage us and point us to Christ, keeping us from falling into patterns of sin that will harden us to the things of God.

Next Step: I will ask God to examine my heart.

One of the best ways you can do that is through praying Scripture.

Psalm 139:23-24

Search me, God, and know my heart;test me and know my concerns.See if there is any offensive way in me;lead me in the everlasting way.

Next Step: Memorize Psalm 139:23-24

God specifies the day “Today” as the day to enter his rest. There is an urgency throughout this passage. The author is telling his readers that they should not wait to submit their lives to Christ. He keeps pointing them back to the fact that David, in Psalm 95, kept saying “today.” Because if you are not going to do it today, when are you going to do it? Will you ever submit your life to Christ?

The gospel demands urgency

One of the most famous sports quotes comes from the legendary basketball coach of the UCLA Bruins, John Wooden. He was the man who helped shape the basketball futures of NBA HoF players Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Bill Walton. He stressed doing things the right way the first time.

“If you don’t have time to do it right the first time, when will you have time to do it again?”

John Wooden

As someone who deals with chronic ADHD and procrastination, this quote hits me hard. How often do I do “just good enough” or “good enough for government work” and not actually complete the task that is set before us?

The author of Hebrews is warning us not to delay in submitting in obedience to the Lord, but to submit today! Do it now! Do it completely, because if you haven’t submitted completely, you haven’t really submitted at all. This is a theme throughout Scripture, especially in the New Testament.

1 Thessalonians 5:2-3

For you yourselves know very well that the day of the Lord will come just like a thief in the night. When they say, “Peace and security,” then sudden destruction will come upon them, like labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.

Paul’s words to the Thessalonian church state just how Christ will come, like a thief in the night. The best thieves can get in and out without anyone knowing they were there. They are quiet, stealthy, calculated, and quick. That is how fast Christ will return when he comes in glory. We are not going to be able to see his second coming from a mile away and then be able to say, “Oh man! Jesus is coming! I'd better get myself right and submit to him now!” At that point, it will be too late.

This was the trouble that the false prophets got themselves into in the book of Jeremiah. Jeremiah was sent by God to give a message to the King to surrender the city of Jerusalem to Babylon. If they were to refuse, it would mean war and bloodshed and destruction. The priests and false prophets contradicted his message from God, saying that Jerusalem was prospering and that there was peace in the land.

The website GotQuestions.org puts it this way:

Jeremiah was like a doctor delivering bad news to his patient. His diagnosis was that, unless drastic measures were taken, the patient would die. However, the false prophets gave a “second opinion.” “Don’t listen to Jeremiah,” they said; “you are going to be just fine.” Instead of radical surgery and a drastic change of lifestyle, the priests and false prophets said a light bandage was all that was needed.

Our sinful state is a terminal condition that needs radical surgery by the greatest physician of all time as soon as possible.

John 4:35

“Don’t you say, ‘There are still four more months, and then comes the harvest’? Listen to what I’m telling you: Open your eyes and look at the fields, because they are ready for harvest.

In this passage from the Gospel of John, Jesus is telling his followers not to wait to harvest. And while Jesus is using an example from the agricultural society of his time, about waiting until harvest time to pick the grains or fruits in the fields, he is actually pointing to the harvest of people that were to be brought into the kingdom of God through the preaching of the gospel. We should not be waiting to preach the gospel to our friends, neighbors, and family members. We should be workers entering the harvest fields now to help bring in the harvest now!

As we look at the direction of where God is leading Living Word Community Church, one of the big things, other than prayer, that we want to emphasize is evangelism. I want a church that hears Jesus say, “Send me into the harvest field. Here am I, Lord, send me!” And from there we begin to bring in the harvest.

Remember, Christ will build his church. We plant seeds. We water those seeds. God is the one who makes them grow and produce a harvest. We plant seeds by having conversations with those around us about faith, about the Bible, about God. We water those seeds by continuing those conversations, getting into deeper subjects, encouraging them to pray and read their Bibles, and giving them a Bible if they don’t have one.

Then, when God makes those seeds grow, producing faith, we gather them into the family to encourage them and help them grow in the knowledge and grace of Christ.

Luke 12:40

You also be ready, because the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.

Again, Jesus is saying here that his return will not be when everyone expects it to happen. I cannot tell you how many people have tried to predict when Jesus would return. There were a few different predictions of Jesus' return that were supposed to have happened in the last few weeks. Guess what. Jesus still hasn’t come back yet. But he could in two minutes. And so we must be ready, knowing that it could be any time.

Hebrews 4:8

For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken later about another day.

Joshua led Israel into the Promised Land. However, the “rest” that Israel received in Canaan was filled with laboring over the land and attacks from enemies. Part of the reason for this is that they didn’t actually obey God and weed out all of the ungodly people in the land.

How many here do some gardening? How many know that if you don’t pull up all of the weeds, roots and all, killing off what may remain of those plants, they will just come back? That is what the Canaanite peoples were for Israel. The Israelites left cities in Canaan unconquered. Because of this, they were fighting against bands and city-states of Canaanites for many years after the death of Joshua.

If Canaan had been the ultimate rest that God had intended, we would not see the Holy Spirit speaking through David, encouraging people to enter into the Lord’s rest still. Canaan was a shadow of the ultimate rest we will find in heaven after we leave this life, if we have submitted our lives to God.

One thing that is crucial to understand though, is that this is not a physical rest, but a spiritual one.

God’s rest is spiritual, not physical.

This does not mean that God does not provide a physical rest for us. That was part of the reason for the Sabbath, as we talked about last week. There will be rest for our bodies in heaven when we receive our glorified bodies, but that is not the point.

Our battles in this world are not physical; that’s why thinking too much about not having aching joints when we get to heaven is a little misplaced. The battles that we face in this world are actually spiritual.

Ephesians 6:12

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this darkness, against evil, spiritual forces in the heavens.

The physical rest that we experience in observing the Sabbath points to the spiritual rest that we will have with Christ in heaven. We get to see a little bit of that spiritual rest here in this life. I think back to a man named Horatio Spafford, who wrote the old hymn, It Is Well With My Soul. He lost all of his real estate wealth in the Great Chicago fire. Two years later, he sends his wife and 4 young daughters to England for vacation, planning to meet them later. On the way, their boat collides with another boat, sinking and killing over 200 people, including Spafford’s 4 daughters. He leaves for England to meet his wife, who had survived the crash, and when his boat passed over the spot where his 4 daughters perished, he went into the captain's quarters and wrote the words to that beautiful hymn:

When peace like a river attendeth my wayWhen sorrows like sea billows rollWhatever my lot, thou hast taught me to sayIt is well, it is well with my soul.

While he and his wife faced physical anguish with the loss of their daughters, I will bet that the enemy did his best to torment Spafford, trying to tell him that it was his fault his daughters were dead. I will bet that the enemy tried to get Spafford to blame himself, cloud his mind with guilt, and tell him to let the grief take over his entire life.

But when you have the peace of God, flowing like a river into your heart and soul, calming the waves of sorrow, you can say, “It is well with my soul.” When you have submitted to Christ, you don’t stop feeling pain and suffering, but you have access to a peace that passes all understanding.

I cannot tell you how many posts I have seen this week of Charlie Kirk’s wife, Erika. People are saying that there is something wrong with her because she is still doing Charlie’s podcast, still working with Turning Point, and she has a smile on her face. And all they can say is, “That’s not normal!” No, it's not earthly. Erika has the peace of God overflowing her right now, giving her the strength to continue her husband’s work, to raise her two kids on her own, and to understand that she will see her husband again in glory.

This world cannot process that kind of peace, because it surpasses all understanding. Our human intellect is completely incapable of grasping how wide and long and high and deep God’s love for his people is. It is only God’s love and God’s peace that can help us in the struggle against the spiritual dark forces of this world.

Hebrews 4:9-10

Therefore, a Sabbath rest remains for God’s people. For the person who has entered his rest has rested from his own works, just as God did from his.

Because God is continuing to encourage people to enter his rest, a Sabbath remains for God’s people. When we enter into God’s rest, we rest from our works just as God rested on the seventh day after creation. I do not believe that this rest refers to our salvation.

Last week, I mentioned that there are elements of God’s rest that we can experience in this life. When we submit our lives to Christ, we realize that we do not depend on our works to save us. We can set aside our “good deeds”, or as we saw St Augustine refer to them last week, as “splendid vices”, that cannot actually bring about our salvation anyway, and we can rest in the works of Christ, the one who perfectly obeyed the Law and offered himself as the sacrifice for the sins of God’s people.

Part of that rest from the Lord can be seen in observing the Sabbath. Again, the Sabbath is a foretaste of the spiritual rest we will experience in heaven. This is why I think it is important to make an effort to observe a Sabbath in some way.

When the Sabbath was established in the Old Testament, the people were told to work hard 6 days a week so they could rest the 7th. If you are not working hard the rest of the week, you cannot rest on the 7th day because there are still things that need to be done. I already told you that I struggle with putting things off and forgetting about them. This is a battle for me too! I have had to put a lot of focus lately into maxing out my time and energy during the week so that I can actually rest on the weekend.

On the flip side, some people feel the need to keep working, even on the Sabbath, out of a scarcity mindset, that if they stop they wont have enough. They are lacking in the trust that God will take care of them.

But when the author speaks of us resting from our works in this passage, we must see that he is talking about our final deliverance from suffering, testing, and efforts when we leave this world and enter eternity.

Revelation 14:13

Then I heard a voice from heaven saying, “Write: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.”

“Yes,” says the Spirit, “so they will rest from their labors, since their works follow them.”

We do not really rest from our labors until we are in the arms of Jesus. There is work for us to do here in this life. Sam and Craig and I are praying, asking God where he is leading this church. We want to see what work he has in store for us in pointing others to the God of hope. And this takes us into the last verse of our passage today.

Hebrews 4:11

Let us, then, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will fall into the same pattern of disobedience.

The author again exhorts his readers to make every effort to enter the Lord’s rest. This command points us back to what we saw in Philippians 2:12

Philippians 2:12

…work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.

We must do something with the message of hope that we have received. By “making an effort” and “working out our salvation,” we are purposefully seeking God, asking him for the strength to serve him, glorify him, and obey him.

This obedience is not out of compulsion but instead out of love for the Creator. And this is where many people, even Christians, get it wrong.

Faith + Good Works ≠ Salvation

This is what the Roman Catholic church, Mormonism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and the like try to teach: that having faith, along with good works, leads to salvation. This is how a misunderstanding of “working out your salvation” or “making every effort” leads to a misunderstanding of the gospel. It makes your works the “root” of your salvation.

Remember the quote I have shared from Voddie Baucham where he says that the gospel does not require obedience:

(Obedience) is not what the gospel requires. That’s what the gospel produces. If the gospel were to require obedience from us, then that would mean we could be obedient apart from the person and work of Christ, and Jesus died for nothing.

Voddie Baucham

When we fall into the trap of thinking we need to add to Christ’s work in order to secure our salvation, we are saying that the all-powerful creator of the universe did not do enough.

We need to actually understand that:

Faith + Salvation = Good Works

We must see our works as the fruit of our salvation, not the root cause.

Another thing that we need to understand is that this effort and working out our salvation are the purposeful good works that point others to the Lord. Working out our salvation means putting safeguards around us to keep us out of sinful practices.

If you find you are wasting your time throughout the day by being on social media, always streaming movies or bingeing shows, maybe even looking for objectionable materials to peruse, perhaps it is time to start deleting apps off your phone. Maybe you need to put a parental control on your phone that simply has timers for how long you can use certain apps. Some of you may need to take the drastic measure of getting rid of your smart phone and getting a dumb phone like a flip phone. Jesus said it is better to cut off your hand than to allow it to lead you into sin.

Another way to make the effort of entering God’s rest is finding people who will love you enough to hold you accountable and tell you when you need to repent of sin. I said this a few weeks ago, disagreement is not hate. The person who tells me that my actions are hurting myself or others loves me a whole lot more than the person who encourages me in my sin. If you are married, your top accountability partner is going to be your spouse. They are going to love you enough to point out your sin, hopefully in a loving and grace-filled way, and pray with you through the storms.

But we should have others holding us accountable as well! This is why we are getting these men’s and women’s events going. We want to see relationships developing in this church where men are holding other men accountable in a Biblical, grace-filled way that calls out sin, but also builds up the faith of each person. Next year, we will be starting a monthly men’s group and discussing what it means to be a disciplined, Godly man. If we really want to see this church grow, that is where it is going to start.

I want the same thing for the women in this church. I want women coming around each other, pointing out sin in love and truth so that they can build each other up in the faith! I am so glad that Myra has been doing the women’s Bible study here on Wednesday nights. On October 29th, they will be starting a new book. Ladies, I encourage you to come to this Bible study. Make time if you need to.

Christians need each other as we make this journey of faith through this evil age. We cannot do it alone.

Solo Christians are targets, not weapons.

Peter says in one of his letters to the church that Satan prowls around like a lion, looking for someone to devour. Lions eat by picking off the stragglers, those who are weaker, alone, isolated from the group. We must work together, encouraging each other, lifting each other up in prayer, and pointing each other to Christ.

Next Step: I will find an accountability partner.

This is how we keep from falling into patterns of sin and disobedience. When we see pastors fall, disqualifying themselves from ministry because of their sin, you can usually bet that they did not have a solid group of people keeping them accountable.

If you have never submitted your life to Christ, today is the day. As we have seen in our passage today, there is an urgency to the gospel. We do not know when our time will be up. We do not know when the Lord Jesus will return.

I implore you. Do not wait. If you want to know the rest and peace that can be found in Jesus, call out to him. Only Christ can rescue you from your sin. Only Christ and give you peace in the midst of the trouble and chaos of this life. Find your purpose, your strength, and your rest in Jesus Christ today.

Next Step: I will repent and submit my life to Christ.

Let us pray

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