Finding Rest (2)
Notes
Transcript
These are the inheritances that the people of Israel received in the land of Canaan, which Eleazar the priest and Joshua the son of Nun and the heads of the fathers’ houses of the tribes of the people of Israel gave them to inherit. Their inheritance was by lot, just as the Lord had commanded by the hand of Moses for the nine and one-half tribes. For Moses had given an inheritance to the two and one-half tribes beyond the Jordan, but to the Levites he gave no inheritance among them. For the people of Joseph were two tribes, Manasseh and Ephraim. And no portion was given to the Levites in the land, but only cities to dwell in, with their pasturelands for their livestock and their substance. The people of Israel did as the Lord commanded Moses; they allotted the land.
Then the people of Judah came to Joshua at Gilgal. And Caleb the son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite said to him, “You know what the Lord said to Moses the man of God in Kadesh-barnea concerning you and me. I was forty years old when Moses the servant of the Lord sent me from Kadesh-barnea to spy out the land, and I brought him word again as it was in my heart. But my brothers who went up with me made the heart of the people melt; yet I wholly followed the Lord my God. And Moses swore on that day, saying, ‘Surely the land on which your foot has trodden shall be an inheritance for you and your children forever, because you have wholly followed the Lord my God.’ And now, behold, the Lord has kept me alive, just as he said, these forty-five years since the time that the Lord spoke this word to Moses, while Israel walked in the wilderness. And now, behold, I am this day eighty-five years old. I am still as strong today as I was in the day that Moses sent me; my strength now is as my strength was then, for war and for going and coming. So now give me this hill country of which the Lord spoke on that day, for you heard on that day how the Anakim were there, with great fortified cities. It may be that the Lord will be with me, and I shall drive them out just as the Lord said.”
Then Joshua blessed him, and he gave Hebron to Caleb the son of Jephunneh for an inheritance. Therefore Hebron became the inheritance of Caleb the son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite to this day, because he wholly followed the Lord, the God of Israel. Now the name of Hebron formerly was Kiriath-arba. (Arba was the greatest man among the Anakim.) And the land had rest from war.
Thus the Lord gave to Israel all the land that he swore to give to their fathers. And they took possession of it, and they settled there. And the Lord gave them rest on every side just as he had sworn to their fathers. Not one of all their enemies had withstood them, for the Lord had given all their enemies into their hands. Not one word of all the good promises that the Lord had made to the house of Israel had failed; all came to pass.
Scripture: Joshua 14:1-15, 21:43-45
Sermon Title: Finding Rest
This morning we are going to be looking at when God’s people finally received their inheritance in the Promised Land. If you need a refresher on how we get here, the story really begins with Abraham back in Genesis. Over 500 years before our passage, God had promised Abraham that his descendants would have this land. God redeemed his people from slavery in Egypt, and began to lead them to Canaan under Moses. They went to Mt. Sinai, and received the 10 Commandments and many other instructions. They built the tabernacle to worship God. They had come to the border of the land of Canaan. But when Moses sent spies into the land, only two returned believing they should continue in, trusting God, but the others did not and swayed the people’s confidence. So God punished the people with forty years in the wilderness.
Forty years had gone by, and now God led a new generation, with Joshua at the helm, across the Jordan River. Those people who lived in the land when the spies came were still there, and so there were battles to be waged. God guided his people on this offensive, conquering the kings and people, because he knew how easily his people would fall in their devotion to him if they settled with these neighbors. When they had reached a certain point, under the direction of the Lord, they settled into the land. Chapters 15 through most of 21 give the specifics, and you are more than welcome to read them on your own. Our passages hopefully cover the big picture.
What is Rest?
Brothers and sisters in Christ, what comes to mind when you think about rest? Maybe for some it is a short nap or sleeping through the night. Parents tell their children when they know they are going to have a busy day to “get their rest.” Sometimes adults need that too. I think of a television show that portrays a dad or more frequently a mom who has been run down by all the errands, childrearing, housekeeping, and other responsibilities—we look at someone like that and say they need rest, a break, a time for themselves. Rest hopefully allows us to awake with renewed energy. For others, especially on Sunday and also a holiday weekend, rest is time off from and a break from our normal routines of work. My wife and our daughter are using this weekend as a time of rest by going out to the Custer area. I’m quite sure it will be busy in terms of the number of people there, but it is a short time to do something different than we normally do.
In a society like ours that is busy, true rest is something that a lot of people are searching for. We are likely to blame for most of our own busyness—packing our schedules with work, activities for our children, ever-growing expectations of what hard work entails. To rest does not we should be lazy; God in his Word commands us to be workers. Work should be understood as a way of life, and part of what we have been created to do in a variety of fields and abilities. But we must intentionally make room for rest.
Finding Rest in the Text
We draw our focus to what rest is, because it is something important in the story of God’s people. Twice in these passages we read, we heard that word. In the last verse of the first passage, Joshua tells us, “Then the land had rest from war.” Then following the section laying out all of the details, we read that not only did the land have rest, but chapter 21 verse 44 said, “The Lord gave them,” his people, “rest on every side…Not one of all the Lord’s good promises to the house of Israel failed; every one was fulfilled.”
Comparison
We begin there, what did rest mean for the people of Israel? When we look at the original Hebrew, the language of the Old Testament, there are actually two different words being used for rest in these chapters. I am not all that good at pronouncing Hebrew so I’ll just stick to their definitions. The first time, applied to the land, is a type of rest that can be described as quiet and undisturbed. The land that had been marched on, fought on, used for ambushes and assaults, dust stirred up as soldiers ran into battle, hills used as look outs. Not a very quiet picture.
For those of you that like to hike on trails whether in the woods or in a park, you know there is a difference between a well-traveled, well-used trail and one that has visitors much less frequently. On the one the dirt will be pressed by hikers’ shoes or hardened to a bare spot where gravel has been pushed away from. Grass will be laid down or have the dirt beneath showing through. So it was in the Promised Land, the dust could settle, the grass could stand up, the vegetation could now be refreshed. All of it could finally be still and rest.
The second occurrence is a little bit different though. In chapter 21, we found that the people could have rest. This word refers more to them being able to settle down and remain. What the Lord had brought the Israelites to was not just a time for them to refill on energy, to get prepared for the next offensive, the next big move. No, what God had given them was the opportunity to settle permanently into their new home. For the foreseeable future, they could stop fearing that their enemies might attack and stop worrying about moving again. That land that was resting, could now return to a place for people to call home, to work with, and for its new inhabitants to travel through.
This would have been a drastic change for Israel’s fighting men compared to what they had endured for the past few years. But it would have been a big change for all of the people too—the women and children and those who were unable to fight. No longer would they as a nation have to adapt day after day to whatever circumstances came about while wandering in the desert or remaining in camp while their men were away. The new homeland was prepared.
God gave them rest that allowed them to settle into a place that they could call their own. But there is also a deeper sense to all this. By giving his people rest at this point, he was also providing them an opportunity to see that he had brought them through to the fulfillment of his promises. God had brought them all the way from being slaves without any property or status to this land he had promised to their ancestors. Arriving here, he did not just tell them to go and figure life out by yourself. No, he was good to them. His goodness was on display by giving them a new home, a new identity, he helped them to divide out the land and get started. God was faithful, and because the people of Israel trusted him, they could now experience the blessings and the security of the Lord. They had found rest.
Finding Rest Today
As I mentioned earlier, finding rest is one of the most important things that any of us as God’s people can do. Our rest is going to look different from Israel’s, because it is not about a geographic location that we have to get to or that we are living in. Modern-day Israel is not the Promised Land that we have to move to nor is the United States of America to be seen as a new Promised Land that God has ordained above any other nation. To be Christians is to be part of the body of Christ that seeks for there to be disciples of all nations. For there to be people confessing Jesus as Lord from every land under heaven. Our primary allegiance is to the kingdom of God. We must remember this because we are seeking rest that is only found in the person of Jesus Christ.
This rest goes beyond the quiet and stillness that the earth, the soil of the Promised Land was able to experience. It goes beyond having property and security and the luxuries that we enjoy. I’m not talking about sleep either. The better or greater rest that we as believers have is the opportunity to find rest for our weary and sinful souls.
We live in world, every one of us, where the devil seeks to get us to love things, to be devoted to things, to worship things other than God. To fill ourselves and satisfy ourselves with anything but the Savior. If we can fight against the devil, we are not guaranteed to be free from pain and suffering, free from sorrows or grief, but we can know that we are holding onto the only way for salvation, the only hope and light in this dark world. What God holds out to all who turn to him is a rest that signals eternal fulfillment, the end of our need to search.
Hebrews 4:1-3, 9-11
There is a section in the book of Hebrews in chapters 3 and 4 that illuminates how we can experience this—how it can be entered. Two short parts of Hebrews 4 are up on the screen if you want to read. But in the whole section, the author writes that it is by simply believing in God and holding firm that we enter the rest of Jesus. We seek him that our hearts would not turn away, and also that we would encourage one another daily to not be hardened by sin. It was disobedience and hardness of heart that prohibited the first generation of Israelites from being able to enter into the Promised Land, to not find rest, but now God has made the way through his Son that we can experience his perfect rest. By faith, we can have confidence to live in his mercy.
True rest must be a part of our faith, a part of our lives. It means that we find our security, our identity, our strength in the one who has already won the battle. He is the one who holds our eternal home. In finding our rest in Jesus Christ and what he accomplished in his life, death, resurrection, and ascension, there is no reason to look anywhere or to anything other than him.
Finding Rest for Veterans
This is the truth that I hope each of us can take hold of as we are gathered here today, and the hope that we have as a number of us probably have plans for Memorial Day tomorrow. On this holiday in particular we have the opportunity to remember family members, friends, and maybe for some of you even fellow soldiers who have lost their lives in war. We want to take time to remember them, to give thanks for their courage, and to bear in mind that our freedoms and comforts are in place because people were willing to die protecting them. As we remember their sacrifices, we know that they helped to provide peace in our communities and our land.
Sometimes we find those words “rest in peace” on tombstones. For Christians, it is our hope that those people have found the rest of being united with Christ. When they came to the end of their earthly life, panic was not necessary because they had found him. They knew what exists on the other side of their existence here on earth.
But I think it is appropriate today to spend some time thinking also about rest for veterans who continue to live on. From what I have seen and learned from those who have served in the military—rest is absent from war. I have heard that sometimes in some places, there may be an occasional sense of boredom, a lull in the operations that a soldier is involved in, but real rest with security and quiet, and with the ability to not think about what your next obligation is—that is not something a soldier is likely to find while they are on the battlefield.
Yet we often hear today about soldiers who return home and continue to be without rest. The sights they have seen, the tasks they have had to carry out, what they have experienced does not allow them to return to the peace that they once had. I am sure the struggle with anxiety, depression, and PTSD is not new to soldiers—they have always faced extreme circumstances. But it may be made all the more difficult to understand when we consider our country to be a land of freedom, a home safely away from tyranny and widespread bloodshed. We would like imagine that it should not take much to get back to normal, yet that often does not seem to be the case.
As the body of Christ, we have the opportunity to speak into the lives of those who are searching for rest. I am not saying that preaching or simply telling someone of the rest that can be experienced in Christ should replace counseling or therapy, that it will immediately alleviate their distress. But we do have the most incredible love, the most incredible sense of security, the greatest peace to share because of our Savior Jesus Christ. We as believers have the chance to be compassionate with those who have experienced great hardship and pain. Whether we have that opportunity by simply being present or through offering a ministry of words—this is a wonderful treasure. As we find in Romans 8, nothing, “in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Romans 8:39
That is one of the Lord’s good promises that we find in his Word—we can be sure that he will not fail to fulfill it. His love is solely a gift, and it is given to us for our whole lives if we will turn to Jesus. There is no crisis, there is no trauma, and there is no memory that can sever the eternal peace and rest that our Lord extends to us.
Brothers and sisters, as we remember in this weekend, let us remember even greater that the Lord fulfills his promises. We, with the Israelites of old, worship the God who has blessed so many of us with health, with property, with prosperity, and with freedom. The Lord gave to Israel their land for settling, and he gave them rest in order that they would flourish. The faith that we have and the true rest we can live in are the blessings of God, given by his Son. Whether in freedom or in persecution, may we always be sure that he is faithful. Knowing that in life and in death, we belong to Jesus. As we celebrate, as we remember, and as we grieve, may this be the truth that provides us with comfort, strength, and rest. Amen.
