Learning to Rest Today

INTRODUCTION

In verses 1-6 the writer discloses that His people are the very “House of God,” built by God and ruled over by Christ. This is, of course, an exalted doctrine of the Church, but the rub comes for the writers congregation in truly believing that this is true. To truly believe this week in and week out, given the realities of Church life. Here we are knee deep in the muck and mire of human struggle, this “house of God,” or at least the version of it that exists on the corner of every street in the Bible Belt of America does not appear very attractive, or very Holy.

Even in most active Churches, people fall away; legs falter and hands droop; worship often seems stale and lifeless; conflicts emerge with maddening regularity; and the mission work is constantly in crisis mode. In truth, the church, the vaunted “House of God,” looks to be like a pup tent in the desert - frail, temporary, vulnerable, always at risk of having its stakes uprooted and being blown away.

The Anatomy of Deconversion

(John Marriott)

More people today than ever before are sharing their de-conversion stories. In 2009 Pew Research people are leaving Christianity at 5 to 6 times the historic rate, for every 1 person that becomes a Christian 4 are leaving the faith. The Pine Top organization (Christian organization concerned about evangelizing our country) , did an aggregate of a number of studies say’s that the next 30 years will represent the largest mission opportunity in the History of America. The largest and fastest numerical shift in religious affiliation in the history of the country.

Even in the most optimistic scenario’s, Christian affiliation in the U.S. shrinks dramatically and our base case of over 1 mission youth nominally in the Church today will choose to leave each year for the next 3 decades, 35 million youth raised in Christian families and call themselves Christians will say that they are no longer Christians by 2050.

We believe that our best case may drastically underestimate the problem and while it is hard to find clear data as far as we can tell this is the single largest generational loss of souls in the history of people who are at least nominally raised in a Christian Church and no longer call themselves a follower of Christ.

FACTORS FOR PEOPLE DECONVERTING

Why do people convert: Because they are convinced it is true.

Why people leave the faith: We just do not find that it is true anymore.

1) Intellectual reasons: problems with the bible, contradictions with the bible and science, morality of the bible and God in parts of the bible, no good arguments for the existence in God.

2) Emotionally Hurt: People in the Church that hurt them, or God did not live up to their expectations of Him. If you live for God and serve God then their should be positive things that come out of that.

C.S. Lewis (screw tape Letters)

Articulately gives an imaginary devil, Screwtape, who advises his apprentice to tempt his human victim by playing on the inevitable disappointment that comes when the real and flawed church is compared to the pure and perfect church of the imagination.

NOTE: It’s like our marriages today, why do so many marriages fail? Many times it is an unrealistic expectation going into marriage and our mind cannot reason it’s way away from the flawed and failed image that they have in their minds.

Hebrews 3:7–15 ESV

7 Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, “Today, if you hear his voice, 8 do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, on the day of testing in the wilderness, 9 where your fathers put me to the test and saw my works for forty years. 10 Therefore I was provoked with that generation, and said, ‘They always go astray in their heart; they have not known my ways.’ 11 As I swore in my wrath, ‘They shall not enter my rest.’ ” 12 Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. 13 But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. 14 For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. 15 As it is said, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.”

The Holy Spirit Say’s

IMPERATIVE STATEMENT

Question: “Today if you hear His voice do not harden your heart.”

When did humanity start to have a restless heart? When did humanity start to harden their heart?

Genesis 2 From the very beginning Adam and Eve were not worried about their future, they were not worried about how they were going to provide, all of creation was perfect.

When sin entered the garden guilt and shame also entered creation. The root of all restlessness in this world is guilt.

Who Will not enter His rest? Those who harden their hearts against God.

Note: Those who don’t obey the word of God don’t believe the word of God.

HISTORY LESSON: The nation of Israel that left Egypt in the Exodus. How many of them entered the promised Land.

All of these people say they believe in God, all of these people have made some kind of profession of belief. Does that mean all of the people in this Church are true believers.

Was this true of Israel. Jesus spoke of the tares or weeds that grew up with the wheat.

So, here you have members who are not true believers, out here you have those who have no claim to being believers. The warning here now is to those who are hearing the word of God and who claim to believe but have forgotten their purpose.

The author is still saying that there is a rest, that is promised to the people of God. We still look forward to our future rest.

Examples given:

The Children of Israel in the wilderness.

3:1-6

The preacher shows the dangers of wandering and unfaithfulness that we discussed last week in 2:1-4.

Big Idea: When you brush of the dust of your trust you will find the best when you rest.

Note: The bigger issue of experiencing the kind of rest that the writer is talking about in Hebrews three happens when we learn to trust God in all three phases of our lives, the beginning, the middle, and the end. The best rest we have this side of heaven is when we are working to fulfill God’s will and purpose for our lives. The problem many of us have is that we are settling for far less that the best that God has planned for our lives. I believe that this is where all of the De-Conversions are taking place. Then we start to worry about our future, how are we going to provide, along with all of the other worries of Life. (Matthew 6:28-33 “Oh you of little faith? you are more concerned with the clothes you wear, and the food you put into your stomach, then seeking after the kingdom of God. “But if you seek His kingdom first, rest in his purpose and will for your life, all of these things will be added to you.)

WHEN WE FAIL TO TRUST IN GOD’S REST WE START TO HARDEN OUR HEARTS TOWARDS GOD. WE SAY THINGS LIKE, “WELL MAYBE GOD ISN’T REALLY THAT GOOD, OR MAYBE GOD IS NOT EVEN REAL AFTER ALL.”

When do we harden our hearts against God?

1. When we are in a battle between the eye and the ear.

The idea is the difference between those things that are felt to be true and the word that has been reported to them by faithful witnesses.

The great privilege is for those who have heard the gospel and believed what they have heard. We hear the word of God but our eyes deceive us. It is like in the screwtape letters we see the flawed Church and it’s flawed people, and the image of what we see cannot be squared in our minds with what we have heard to be true.

The battle between the eye and the ear begins with two words, “Today,” and “Peace”

“Today” 3:7 - Today is not just the date on the calendar, but the present reality of experience. Everyday is today, which means everyday hold the urgency of listening and not hardening your heart. The critical moment of faith where one decides the eternal now.

REST: Rest is a restorative break from labor and worldly striving. In the Bible it is an essential feature of the Sabbath - a day of rest on which no work was to be done. As a time of peace and calm, free from work, rest comes to symbolized salvation itself.

verb - to be in a state of rest from conflict.

NOTE: Most people today are in a state of restlessness. We feel anxious, uneasy, not settled or at peace. Why?

The restlessness of Life

Many people are running around taking care of a hundred different things and feel like nothing get’s accomplished. There was an article I read a while back with the title , “The tiredest Night of the week.” The writer of the story describes his exhausting Saturdays. Saturday was hi catch up day. It was his day to mow the yard, repair the leaky faucets, wash the car, plant the flower beds, and do a dozen other duties on his plan. He was constantly reorganizing his day. At the end of the day, he had to live with a series of jobs half done, felt like a man who had worked three unbroken eight-hour shifts, and could not wait to get to bed, having endured “The tiredest day of the week.” Perhaps this man could have sat down and prioritized the things that had to get done and those that were not a priority to finish today.

When we think of “Rest” it typically is a break or escape from life and the crazy reality around us. The rest that the writer of Hebrews is talking about comes at the end of doing God’s will. How do we put first things first in our lives? We give top attention to God’s work. We seek to follow the will of Jesus in all we do. We focus on those tasks which we must do for Jesus and put off those things that do not fit with his will.

“Rest” 3:11 - Rest is a bit more complex to simplify into a term. Three significant themes come out of rest.

* Rest speaks of the beginning of time.

Genesis 2:1-3, it is the rest that happened on the 7th day when he rested from all of His creation work.

Hebrews 4:9 ESV

9 So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God,

* Rest points to the end of time.

This is the finished work of redemption when Christ is revealed, pain and toil are ended, death is defeated and all that would destroy the will of God for human creation has been destroyed.

*Rest describes faithfulness in the middle of time.

All of those Sabath days when God’s children stop to rest from their labors, remember the finished work of Christ in thanksgiving and anticipated hope. When the people of God enter the place of worship with singing confidently about the victory of God. They are confident that God’s victory over sin and darkness are true.

Matthew 11:28 ESV

28 Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

These three dimensions of “rest” are gathered up in the familiar hymn “The Church’s One Foundation” (Samuel J. Stone, 1866).

The first stanza alludes to creation and describes explicitly the new creation in Christ.

The Church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord;

She is his new creation by water and the word:

From heaven he came and sought her to be his holy bride;

With his own blood he bought her, and for her life he died.

In the middle stanzas, the hymn sings of the “rest” hoped for at the end of time:

’Mid toil and tribulation, and tumult of her war,

She waits the consummation of peace forevermore;

Till with the vision glorious, her longing eyes are blest,

And the great church victorious shall be the church at rest.

The final stanza describes the “rest” available as a Sabbath in the middle of time:

Yet she on earth hath union with God the Three in One,

And mystic sweet communion with those whose rest is won:

O happy ones and holy! Lord, give us grace that we,

Like them, the meek and lowly, on high may dwell with Thee

When do we harden our hearts against God?

2. When we attempt to make up a story that seems better than God’s.

How often do we try to ad-lib the ending of the story? In a moment of crisis we think that we have a script that is better than God’s for our lives? This is what we do when we think that God is dead or absent or we loose confidence in the trustworthiness of God. We want to rush past all of the suffering, and struggles and get to the end of our story. However, it is in the middle of those difficulties that we are being shaped and formed to be like Christ.

James 1:2–4 ESV

2 Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, 3 for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. 4 And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

It is what we do in those seasons of life when we feel like we need to add to the scripture or change the narrative to make it easier to follow or more believable.

NOTE: We then trade God’s story for one that is happier, easier, safer, less demanding, or at least one that is more tangible, one that we can touch, taste, or feel.

Some who have grown up in the Church may all of the sudden come to a realization that the Bible is not the final authority for His life. We may not like what the bible has to say, or we start to doubt whether we can trust scripture as true and trustworthy.

When Moses was delayed in returning from the mountain, the people became restless and began to create their own narrative, they began to write their own ending to the story. They were waiting for a word that never came, for a leader that was absent.

So, they coaxed Aaron to change their story, to make for them a tangible God that they could worship.

When Jesus told the disciples that the road they were on to Jerusalem led to certain suffering and death, Peter called for a re-write of the script. Jesus would have nothing of the kind.

When Paul preached the gospel to the Church at Galatia, he was hardly out of town before they began tinkering with the story.

Galatians 1:6 ESV

6 I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—

Note: The preacher here knows the human tendency is to abandon the gospel message for a more attractive story.

Exchanging God’s story for another is a Chronic Problem as Old as time: Remember the first sin in the garden started with a different story, a different narrative.

The shift from God’s story to our story started with a question? “Did God really say that?”

Think of the narrative of our human existence as one long running story. The writer of Hebrews see’s everything as God’s story of Creation and redemption moving and sweeping through numerous players.

Human beings are morally free, and we can improvise lines and scenes, but the overarching plot is shaped by the design of God. What it means to be faithful is to harmonize all of our actions to God’s essential plot. On the 7th day, God the playwright, rested, and the basic outlines of the plot were finished, complete, perfect.

You and me as the actors are told the plot and know where the play is surely headed in God’s providential plan, but we have been given the freedom to work our way towards this final chapter.

The problem is that the play is so long, and the plot so complicated, so full of twists and unexpected turns, so ironic, and so rich in tragic painful moments, that it is easy to get lost and caught up in one of the scenes that the outcome of the whole play is now forgotten.

Some of the actors become so weighed down in a tragic episode that they can’t go on. When we lose track of the basic plot, we become disheartened and abandon the script right in the middle of the play. The cast then becomes restless in disarray, and the only way to keep us faithful is to keep reminding us of the basic plot. That is why the writer of Hebrews is continually coming back to this theme of hardening our hearts, taking our Salvation for granted, turning away from the Gospel.

Hebrews 3:12–14 ESV

12 Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. 13 But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. 14 For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end.

The preacher now spins out three points from Psalm 95

Psalm 95 ESV

1 Oh come, let us sing to the Lord; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation! 2 Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise! 3 For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods. 4 In his hand are the depths of the earth; the heights of the mountains are his also. 5 The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land. 6 Oh come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker! 7 For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. Today, if you hear his voice, 8 do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness, 9 when your fathers put me to the test and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work. 10 For forty years I loathed that generation and said, “They are a people who go astray in their heart, and they have not known my ways.” 11 Therefore I swore in my wrath, “They shall not enter my rest.”

When do we harden our hearts against God?

3. When we forget the quality of the Christian life in the middle of time.

The rest concept is not just at the beginning and end of our stories. It is also about the quality of the Christian life in the middle. There is a calm assurance in the will of god. Even now as Christians we struggle to be faithful in the middle of the ambiguity and turmoil, the promise is that all of this counts, that their faithful actions are being gathered into God’s everlasting purpose.

We must remember that God uses the ordinary deeds of ordinary people of faith to redeem the whole creation. When all is said and done, the goodness of God will prevail and not evil. God’s rest is a gift of peace, a gift Jesus gave his disciples not on a cloudless day but in the dark night of betrayal; “Peace I give to you. I do not give you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. (John 14:27)”

1)The evil unbelieving heart turns away from God, much the same way that our ancestors did.

Hebrews 3:16–19 ESV

16 For who were those who heard and yet rebelled? Was it not all those who left Egypt led by Moses? 17 And with whom was he provoked for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? 18 And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient? 19 So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief.

We must be reminded not to repeat the sin’s of the past.

NOTE: Sin is a liar, whispering in the ears of the Church: “This play is going nowhere fast. God’s drama is the theater of the absurd, without purpose or meaning.” Don’t kid yourself all of the pain and sacrifice and suffering is a waste. You can do better than this sad narrative. They were being faithful with the script when they followed Moses out Egypt, but out in the wilderness they lost confidence in the plot of the divine play and in God, and they rebelled. Therefore, they failed to make it to the final scene, to the place of God’s ultimate rest.

2)The Evil unbelieving heart finds God’s rest out of their reach.

Hebrews 4:1 ESV

1 Therefore, while the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it.

We must be reminded that God’s promise of rest is “still open.”

Note: Even though we get tired and weary, the writer cautions us to not fail to reach the goal of God’s complete rest. “Rest” is a theological term expressing the will of God brought to completion. “Rest” points back to God’s Sabbath rest” when the good work of creation was finished and completed, it also points forward to the completed work of redemption, “when every should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

Philippians 2:10–11 ESV

10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

3) The Evil unbelieving heart stops working in the middle of their story.

We must be reminded that God uses the ordinary deeds of His people to redeem the whole creation.

Note: To “rest” is not to stop working (that will come later in your story) but to have the calm joy that your work is not in vain, it is by the grace of God that you have the great privilege to participate in God fulfilling His promises through you. Remember what Jesus said to his disciples on the forefront of a cloud of betrayal.

John 14:27 ESV

27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.

Many of us remember Ephesians 2:8-9 but how much attention do we give to verse 10. Verse 8-9 describe the incredible gift of Salvation that is devoid and apart from anything you could do to earn your Salvation. However, the second part almost seems contradictory as Paul now affirms that created to do Good works and to walk in them.

Ephesians 2:10 ESV

10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

How work to fulfill God’s kingdom purpose here on earth directly reflect how you feel about the gift of God’s rest we have been given.

CONCLUSION

Hebrews & James IV. Life Application: Why Did We Do This Anyway?

Ninety years ago fishermen placed goats on Navy-owned San Clemente Island off the coast at San Diego. They wanted to maintain a ready supply of fresh meat. The goats consumed everything in sight and threatened three endangered species sharing the island with them. In 1976, the Navy hired private contractors to remove seventeen thousand goats.

One thousand of the goats defied all efforts at capture and removal. In three years this herd had increased to thirty-five hundred, was doubling every eighteen months, and posed an environmental threat to the island. Experts advised the Navy to shoot the animals from helicopters.

An organization called GOAT (Give Our Animals Time) formed to prevent the Navy from harming a single animal. One observer, feeling that the members of GOAT had become involved in a secondary campaign, said, “The goat people would be better off spending their time saving boat people” (a reference to people from deprived countries who try to escape hardship by putting out to sea in inadequate vessels and who often perish in the attempt).

It is easy to lose perspective in doing life’s work. We can get involved in doing good things instead of the very best things. We can maintain a routine just because we like following routines. We can let second-rate goals consume most of our energy. We can put our own ease and security ahead of venture for the sake of Christ. We can let the business of living, doing the necessary chores of life, and making a reputation for ourselves become our goals. We must put “first things first” and make our chief business that of following Jesus and doing his will.

Ask yourself these questions? (maybe write them down)

What does Jesus really want me to do?

Then follow up with the answer to this question:

How can I focus on those things which are God’s will for me?

Responding to the answer of these questions will involve much prayer, reflection, and an openness to God’s will. Putting them into practice will cause a new arrangement of your schedules, a change in your daily priorities, and the addition and subtraction of some things currently on your schedule.

It is eternally important to put Jesus first. Do anything necessary to make that your goal this Week.

Note: Perhaps the reason “rest” has not invaded your life, is because you are not seeking to do God’s will with the grace he has given you. Remember Paul’s desire in the 1st Chapter of Philippians was to depart this world and enter God’s eternal rest. However, he saw the great benefit of remaining on earth a while longer with the soul purpose of fulfilling the will of God. You were not put here for yourself or your own purpose, you were put here and called to Salvation to complete the mission and experience His rest.