Hebrews 4:1-13 A Better Rest
Notes
Transcript
Imagine a family winning an all-expense paid trip to Disney World.
But when they arrive, the children, beholding the glory and wonder of all that lies before them, simply sit down on the ground. They say, ‘we don’t want to go. It looks too busy, and it sounds too noisy, and we’re not really that bothered. We’d rather go home.’
So because they’re not interested the family get on the first flight back home.
It’s a fairly unlikely story, but it’s actually based on a true story in the life of the nation of Israel. God had set them free from Egypt. He had made them his people and promised to be their God. He established his covenant with them.
He led them to through the desert to the edge of the Promised Land. They sent spies to see what the land and its people were like. They told of a land rich with produce, but infested with what they described as giants (Numbers 13).
And so based on this report the people decided that it would be better for them to ignore God’s promise of entry into and settlement into Canaan, the land of promise, and instead remain in the desert or even go back to Egypt, the land of slavery.
The people of Israel failed to enter God’s rest. They failed to take God at his word, to trust his promises, and so instead of enjoying all that the Lord was offering them, they remained stuck in the wilderness for 40 years and none of that generation made it into the promised land. Warning from last week…
As has just been said: ‘Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion.’ Who were they who heard and rebelled? Were they not all those Moses led out of Egypt? And with whom was he angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies perished in the wilderness? And to whom did God swear that they would never enter his rest if not to those who disobeyed? So we see that they were not able to enter, because of their unbelief.
And Hebrews 4 picks up this theme of failing to enter God’s promised rest as a warning for those who similarly hear God’s word of promise, his invitation to enter his rest, but fail to trust and believe. The writer starts with this warning…
Don’t fall short!
Don’t fall short!
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.
The danger of falling short was just as real for them as it was their ancestors.
‘Let us be careful’ doesn’t give the full force of this warning –it’s more like ‘let us fear’. The Greek word used is where we get our word ‘phobia’ from.
We all have phobias. One of my biggest phobias is – arachnophobia.
We naturally think of fear as a bad thing. But fear can be a good thing. A positive thing, if it’s used in the right way.
My fear of spiders means that I’m never going to risk getting too close to one that might hurt me (not much of a chance of that in MK!) It’s this reverence for spiders that stops me doing something that would put me in danger.
And I think this is what the writer is getting at. Fear can be a good thing if it means we avoid the danger that could result in us falling short of God’s rest.
What is this danger? For true believers, the danger is not that we will lose our salvation, because the Bible makes clear that won’t happen.
No, the danger is not being a true believer in the first place. That’s what we find out about those Israelites who failed to enter God’s rest…
They did not receive the good news of God’s promise in faith (v2)
They disobeyed (v6, 11)
They hardened their hearts (v7)
These people had seen the glory of the Lord. They had seen his miraculous signs in Egypt. But they didn’t believe that God could deliver on his promise of giving them the land. So they disobeyed and failed to enter.
Why? Because they were more sure of their circumstances and their own inadequacies than they were about God’s promise. They were focussed on the giants living in the land, and not on the great and awesome LORD whose glory they had witnessed. Instead of trusting in God’s almighty power, which they had experienced, they worried about their own weakness.
Just like those Israelites, we too have come to know something of God’s saving power. They were given the promise of entering the land – a physical, earthly ‘rest’; we are given the promise of entering a spiritual, eternal rest with God.
This passage doesn’t spell out exactly what God’s promised rest is today. Is it something we gain in the future? Can we experience it now? The writer uses two OT texts to describe God’s rest. Firstly, Gen 2:2…
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. For somewhere he has spoken about the seventh day in these words: ‘On the seventh day God rested from all his works.’
And then Psalm 95:11…
And again in the passage above he says, ‘They shall never enter my rest.’
Gen 2:2 speaks of God resting from his creative work on the seventh day. The first six days all came to an end (and there was evening and there was morning…) but the seventh day is open-ended. Suggests that God’s rest is still ongoing.
Psalm 95:11 confirms this when it speaks of the people not entering God’s rest, as though the seventh day of rest still continues.
And so we are to understand that God continues in his rest even today, and it is still possible to enter that rest with him. Just like the Israelites on the brink of entering their land of rest, we are all called to hear God’s promise and invitation to enter his rest. The means of entering that rest today, as it was then, is by faith…
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.
And the danger is exactly the same too: we can fail to enter his rest if we fail to trust and obey his promises. The Israelites faltered in faith because of their circumstances and their own inadequacies. It’s no different for us.
Are the circumstances you find yourself in right now making you question God’s good promises, even his very existence?
I think we’re even more tempted to look within and get consumed with worry about our own inadequacies. My faith is so weak; my knowledge is so limited; my efforts for God feel so futile; my sin is so great.
It’s easy to get to focussed on our circumstances and weaknesses, and lose the right perspective that faith in God gives us. It’s easy to lose a sense of the awe of God’s majesty and greatness, his power and might.
But this is dangerous, because it leads to unbelief. If we always judge what God is able to do by our circumstances or our inadequacies, we don’t have true faith.
Faith believes beyond what we can see or know; it trusts in God’s promise when our circumstances and inadequacies are screaming at us not to.
And so the warning: Let us fear falling short, let us stand in awe of God – his power and promises – and let us…
Strive to enter!
Strive to enter!
Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will perish by following their example of disobedience.
They didn’t enter God’s rest, but we still can...
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, 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.’ For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken later about another day.
Even though the Israelites did eventually enter the land of rest there was still more to come; there was another Day coming which would make it possible to enter God’s rest more fully and completely.
There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from their works, just as God did from his.
Tucked away in these two verses (and slightly hidden from us in English) is an important OT allusion.
Up to this point, the writer has used a common Greek word for rest (καταπαύω), but now he introduces a new word, translated here as Sabbath-rest (σαββατισμὸς). Describes those entering God’s rest as ceasing to work like God on the seventh day. Which points us to Leviticus 16…
‘This is to be a lasting ordinance for you: on the tenth day of the seventh month you must deny yourselves and not do any work—whether native-born or a foreigner residing among you—because on this day atonement will be made for you, to cleanse you. Then, before the Lord, you will be clean from all your sins. It is a day of sabbath rest, and you must deny yourselves; it is a lasting ordinance.
When the writer speaks of a Sabbath-rest he is pointing us to the kind of rest that leads to forgiveness and cleansing from sin. That can only come through sacrifice, and we know that the only sacrifice that is able to cleanse us from sin is the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross. The writer is speaking about the New Covenant way to rest: it comes through faith in Jesus Christ.
But we can still fail to enter that rest. So how do we avoid falling short of entering God’s rest? By making every effort to enter it; to ‘strive’ (ESV).
Now that doesn’t quite sound right, does it? We know that we can’t enter God’s rest by our own efforts. We are saved by God’s grace not by earning it ourselves.
This is what v10 seems to be saying, “for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from his own work, just as God did from his.” God’s rest on the seventh day was based on the fact that all his work of creation had been finished. Nothing was left to be done.
And Christians enter his rest based on the fact that Christ’s work of redeeming us from sin has been finished. Nothing is left to be done. So why are we being told to ‘make every effort’ or to ‘strive’ to enter his rest?
I can get my family as far as the gates of Disney World. I can walk them right up to the front door and present them with the opportunity of a lifetime. And while it is their responsibility to then accept this amazing gift, it is also my responsibility to help them to enjoy it. I would be an appalling father (and a colossal money-waster!) if I simply accepted their claim to not really want to go in. Instead, I would do everything in my power to convince them that beyond those doors was a wonderland of excitement and fun.
Entering God’s rest is both our responsibility and God’s. It is in God’s interest that we enter his rest and enjoy eternity with him; that’s the purpose for which he bought us by the blood of his Son.
And yet we also need to take hold of it ourselves. We must strive to trust the promises of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We must fight to hear his commanding voice over the cacophony of other voices telling us to abandon faith and live for self.
If you’ve been a Christian for any length of time, you’ll have discovered that living in faithful obedience doesn’t come naturally. We have to work at it.
It requires discipline, determination and sacrifice as we press on toward the goal of God’s heavenly rest. We need to make sure it’s our priority, the most prized thing in our life, not just a passing interest we only think about on a Sunday.
The question is: how do we know if our efforts in striving to enter God’s rest are genuine?
Are we doing these things out of genuine faith, or are we depending on ourselves… prone at any moment to turn our backs on the promised rest when circumstances get too tough or our own weakness overcomes us?
What if we don’t find out until it’s too late? Well, that’s the purpose of v12-13…
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. 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.
The Word of God is living and active, sharper than any double-edged sword. And what does this razor sharp weapon do? It judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.
You see, the heart is the battleground in the war between faith and unbelief. Notice back in Heb 3:10 that it was the Israelites’ hearts that were always going astray. And in Heb 3:15 it was their hearts that were hardened in unbelief.
So the Word of God is crucial in our fight for faith to enter God’s promised rest. It is a vital weapon of attack – destroying unbelief by clinging to his promises; and it is a necessary weapon of defence, so that we allow God’s Word to continually dissect our hearts and expose what is there, and not be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.
It will pull us up when we’re tempted to believe the lie that what we had before is better than what we are experiencing now. It will convict us when we start judging the reliability of God’s promise by the difficulty of our circumstances or the weakness of our own efforts.
And if we were to peek into the next passage we’d discover that we have a great high priest who sympathises with our weaknesses and offers us mercy and grace in our time of need.
Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess.
Jesus has gone before us, through the heavens and into God’s rest. He is the one who succeeded where Israel failed. His faith proved to be genuine as he obediently went to the cross in order to receive the glory which was promised him by his Father. And he will ensure that we don’t fall short, but that we enter our heavenly rest with him.
So with such a great promise before us, let’s hold firmly to our faith until the day he brings us home to enjoy his rest forever.
