Rest AM

00:01 Well, we do greet you each one in the name of Jesus this morning and invite you to turn in your copies of the Scriptures to the book of Hebrews, the fourth chapter. We'll be looking at verses 1 through 13 this morning. "Therefore, since a promise remains of entering His rest, let us fear lest any of you seem to come short of it. 00:22 For indeed, the gospel was preached to us as well as to them, but the word which they heard did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in those who heard it. For we who have believed do enter that rest, as He said, 'So I swore in My wrath, they shall not enter My rest,' although the works were finished from the foundation of the world. 00:43 For He has spoken in a certain place of the seventh day in this way, and God rested on the seventh day from all His works. And again, in this place, 'They shall not enter My rest.' Since therefore it remains that some must enter it, and those to whom it was first preached did not enter because of disobedience, 01:04 again He designates a certain day, saying in David, 'Today.' After such a long time as it has been said, 'Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts.' For if Joshua had given them rest, then he would not afterward have spoken of another day. There remains therefore a rest for the people of God. 01:26 For he who has entered His rest has himself also ceased from his works as God did from his. Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall according to the same example of disobedience. 01:43 For the word of God is living and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit and of joints and morrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. 01:56 And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account." There's an African proverb that goes like this: "Lord, make my heart sit down." Kind of like that. 02:16 "Lord, make my heart sit down." Contrast that and this passage that we just read this morning with a country music icon's testimony, Merle Haggard, who lived from 1937 to 2016. He had 38 of his albums appear on Billboard's country music top 10 charts. 02:36 More than a dozen made it to number one. He also had 38 number one singles. In addition to that, he had five wives, spent time in San Quentin prison. Haggard said this: "There is a restlessness in my soul that I've never conquered, not with motion, 02:57 marriages, or meaning. It is still there to a degree, and it will be till the day I die." Contrast that with our passage this morning which says, "There remains therefore a rest for the people of God." We have a rest before us this morning. 03:18 There is a place of perfect rest near to the heart of God, a place where sin cannot molest, near to the heart of God. O Jesus, blessed Redeemer sent from the heart of God, hold us who wait before Thee near to the heart of God. 03:33 There is a place of peace where we cease striving to earn God's acceptance and rest in the finished work of Jesus Christ. There is a place where the heavy burden of sin is unloaded and conscience is clear. 03:50 There is a place where worry and stress and trouble are cast at the feet of Jesus and cast upon the cares cast upon Him who cares for us. This place is entered by faith. Anything you receive from God is received by faith. It's the place of faith where we repent of a hardened heart. 04:12 It's the place of faith where we repent of our doubts and fears and unbelief. It's a place where we repent of our disobedience. 04:21 It's a place where, unlike Israel that perished in the wilderness, we place full confidence in the word of God and the provision of God, where we lay ourselves bare before the consuming eyes and gaze and insight of a 04:39 holy God and come to Him with nothing to fear, nothing to lose, and nothing to hide. Only when you go through those requirements can you really enter into the place of perfect rest. 04:57 I want to share with you this morning four kinds of rest that I see here in this passage of Scripture. Number one, it talks about creation rest. And then it talks about Canaan rest. And then we'll talk about salvation rest and finally eternal rest. In our text here this morning in verses 1 through 4, 05:19 we can see creation rest. Now, He says here in verse 4, chapter 4, verse 1, "Therefore," which connects this passage with the previous passage which Brother Trevor preached from last week, "that they were not able to enter into Canaan rest, the children of Israel, ancient Israel, because of their unbelief which led to disobedience." And so therefore, 05:42 since they could not enter into the rest because of unbelief, the promise remains of entering rest. The reason that they didn't go in back then does not negate the promise. There's still a promise of rest. But that promise of rest must be activated and it must be entered into, 06:02 "Let us fear, lest any of you seem to come short of that rest." The word fear means to scare away. Let us be frightened into action. Let us be concerned into action to actively embrace this rest, lest we come short of it. 06:21 The word short there, short of it, is the same Greek term that is found in Romans chapter 3, verse 23, "For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God." So we want to make sure that we don't come short of God's glory and fall short of the rest. 06:38 And we fall short by disobedient unbelief or unbelief that produces disobedience. So He says we don't want to lack or fail or be late or be inferior or be behind the rest and the glory that gives us rest. For indeed, the gospel was preached to us as well as to them, 07:00 the good news. The good news was preached to Israel in the wilderness and to us. Their good news was that there is a coming Redeemer. And in the meantime, while we wait for Him, we are the people of God and may enter into the land of Canaan, which was the picture of God's rest for God's people. 07:17 Our good news is that Christ has come and He offers to us a rest that is beyond our own ability to enter into. We must enter into it by His grace through faith. But because this message was not mixed with faith in the hearts of those who heard it back there in the ancient Israel time of the wilderness, 07:39 they did not enter in. They had the message. We have the message. They had the rest opportunity. We have the rest opportunity or the opportunity for rest. But the word that they heard didn't get mixed with faith in the heart. And so He says, "Let us make sure that that same thing doesn't happen again to us. 07:57 Let us be of great concern and yes, even fear, lest we would fall short of that rest and fail to enter into that rest. Because just like their word was not mixed with faith, the word God has given to us would not be mixed with faith." So when we hear the word of God, we must ask God to give us faith to receive the word of God. 08:19 And that will help us with our tendency in life towards a hardened heart. Because this message was not mixed with faith, it didn't produce the fruit of obedience. 08:31 Make sure that this message of the gospel is mixed with faith and produces the fruit of obedient belief or belief that produces obedience. 4:3, "We who have believed do not or do enter into that rest, as He has said, 08:49 'So I swore in My wrath, they shall not enter My rest.'" Now, what's going on there? He's talking about entering into a rest, but they were told they shall not enter into the rest. Well, they were told that because they had unbelief and disobedience. 09:04 And we are now given the opportunity to enter into the rest of God, although the works were finished from the foundation of the world. What is this rest that our writer here and Scripture is talking to us about this morning? It is simply a ceasing from labor. It is simply to cease from labor. 09:26 And He uses the creation rest as an example in verse 4, "For He has spoken in a certain place of the seventh day in this way, and God rested on the seventh day from all His works." God didn't rest, brothers and sisters. He didn't rest because He was tired. He rested because He was finished. 09:46 He didn't rest because He was tired. He rested because He was finished. His work in creation was completed. And sometimes we get this idea that God had to take a break because He was just so tired after having made all the worlds and everything in it. 10:02 No, He made it all without losing any of His ability or His functionality or His power. He wasn't tired. And that's an important distinction. Because we don't come into God's rest because we're necessarily tired. 10:19 We're coming into God's rest because Christ's work is finished. And that's what we'll see as we go on through this passage this morning. The word rest here means a dwelling place or a fixed abode where the work has been completed and one enjoys a Sabbath rest from the toils and troubles, 10:39 not because we're weary, but because we're done. We're done. We're done and ceased striving. Nothing more could be done or needed to be done in God's creative week than what had been done. 10:54 And this, after all, is now woven into the very fabric and fiber of life and is woven into the very fabric and fiber of the believer's life and becomes the basis of our rest. 11:07 So He uses creation rest, God's creation rest, the one day in seven as an illustration of Sabbath rest for us. Then He enters into a discussion about Canaan rest, verse 5. 11:24 And again, in this place, "They shall not enter My rest," and that is consistent with what we've been saying and what the previous verses have been expressing. The fullness of what God had for them, they could not enter into. Their experience was not full. 11:44 It was not finished. It was not completed because they had no faith to enter into it. And then they even doubted God even more when God said, "You're not going into it." And they said, "Oh yes, now we're ready. Yeah, we're ready. We'll go into it." And He said, "No, no, no, no. No, you had your opportunity. You had your opportunity today," the Bible says, 12:05 "today." And then tomorrow may not work. And it didn't for them. But we live with a God who is the God of today, today. And so we can have this today. That's what He's saying here in our passage in verse 7. He designates a certain day saying in David, 12:25 "Today," after such a long time where He's been saying today, today, today, today, it is today. But tomorrow the ship may have sailed and the opportunity may be over. Canaan rest. Turn with me to Psalm 95. 12:45 Psalm 95 is what this whole passage is built on. 12:49 And He enters into a kind of a sequence here of events in Psalm 95, verses 7 through 11, "For He is our God and we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand. Today, if you will hear His voice, 13:08 do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, as in the day of trial in the wilderness. When your fathers tested Me, they tried Me, though they saw My work. For 40 years I was grieved with that generation and said, 'It is a people who go astray in their hearts and they do not know My works.' So I swore in My wrath, 13:29 'They shall not enter My rest.'" And yet He says, and this is hundreds of years after Moses and after Joshua led them into the promised land then, hundreds of years later, He's still saying today, verse 7, "If you will hear His voice, 13:49 do not harden your heart." And so then the writer of Hebrews says, this is an indication that the day of rest is still available for us today. "They did not enter." But verse 6 says, "Since therefore it remains that some must enter it and those to whom it was first preached did not enter because of disobedience." Again, 14:09 He designates a certain day saying in David, "Today," after such a long time, that was such a long time between Joshua and Moses and David, and such a long time between David and us today, it's still today. Enter, enter into rest. 14:31 Now here we have an interesting development because Joshua is referred to in verse 8, "For if Joshua had given them rest, 14:41 then he would not afterward have spoken of another day." And so we've been looking at how that Jesus is better than the angels. He's better than the prophets and He's better than Moses. And now we find out He's better than Joshua. Because what Joshua led them into still was not rest. 15:03 They still could not rest in the land because of their disobedient unbelief. Time after time after time after time after time, throughout the age of the Old Testament, they were in turmoil. They were not at rest. There were wars and fightings and rumors of wars and more wars and fightings. 15:22 And so Joshua did not lead them into this perfect rest. But Jesus, who's better than Joshua and better than Moses and better than the prophets and better than all, will allow us and take us into that rest. 15:39 Now, I want you to see something here because if you have an Old King James version, you'll notice that there's some different words that are being used here this morning. And this is consistent with the nuances and the different words used in the Greek. 15:58 If you look in chapter 3, verse 12, it refers to unbelief. I'm going to use the Old King. Unbelief in verse 12, verse 18, "They did not believe." Verse 19, "They did not enter because of unbelief." Verse 6 of chapter 4, "It was first preached, did not enter because of unbelief." And verse 11, 16:20 "Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall according to the same example of unbelief." Now, if you have a newer translation or a New King James and you're following along, you'll notice that in some places it's called unbelief and other places it's called disobedience. There's two different words going on here. 16:38 And they are so closely related that the King James just uses the blanket term unbelief. But the term in the New King James that is translated unbelief is actually a word that means to disbelieve. It means unfaithfulness and faithlessness. But if you look at the... 16:59 and that word is found in chapter 3, verse 12 and chapter 3, verse 19. But then there's another word that is translated unbelief. But in the New King James, it's translated disobedience. 17:13 And it's more accurately translated disobedience because it has the idea of disobedience and obstinate rebellion and rejecting the will of God. And so what we have here is a dual thing happening. It's the two sides of the same coin. Why did they not enter in? 17:33 They entered not in because of unbelief. And that unbelief produced disobedience. That's why I'm calling it a disobedient unbelief or an unbelief that created disobedience. And He's saying to us this morning, "Do not disobey the Lord in whom you believe. 17:50 Because if you truly believe, you will walk in faithful obedience." And so here is the progression. A hard heart, we've seen that here in previous chapters, a hard heart produces unbelief that produces disobedience. 18:13 But today He said, "Don't do that. Keep your heart soft and your faith alive and your obedience active. And you will enter into rest." So we see here in verses 9 through 11 now, 18:33 salvation rest, salvation rest. "There remains therefore a rest for the people of God." Isn't that wonderful? Isn't that wonderful? There is a rest. There's a place where we can just let our heart settle into God, let our heart settle into Christ. "There remains a rest for the people of God. 18:53 For He who has entered His rest has Himself also ceased from His works as God did from His. 19:00 Let us therefore be diligent to enter into or to enter that rest, lest anyone fall according to the same example of disobedience." This salvation rest is referred to in the Old Testament, Isaiah 28:12, 19:19 "This is the rest with which you may cause the weary to rest. And this is the refreshing." But you know what that verse also says? But you would not. You would not enter into it. Isaiah 30:15, "For thus says the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, 19:38 in returning and rest, you shall be saved; in quietness and confidence shall be your strength. But you would not." And so that's the message of the Old Testament. It's here, but you're not getting it. You're not entering it. You're not taking it seriously. You're falling short of it. 19:58 And so today this rest remains for us. For Jesus said in Matthew 11, "Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Rest. Take My yoke upon Me and learn of Me. For I am meek and lowly in heart. 20:17 And ye shall find rest unto your souls." We rest in Christ because the work of redemption is done. It's done. It's finished. Now we can look at this passage of Scripture and say, 20:37 is He talking about the victorious Christian life or is He talking about heaven, eternal rest? I think He's hinting at both. There is a rest of eternal rest and there is a rest of having ceased from our labors to try to earn God's favor. 20:59 I am here to tell you today that you cannot add one thing to your salvation. It is a gift of God through faith. Not of yourselves. You're not smart enough, fast enough, beautiful enough, handsome enough, wise enough, good enough. 21:20 You can't do it. Not even obeying the rules of the church will get it done. Your good works will not do it. 21:33 And so if we're going to be saved and rest in Christ, it's going to be to cease from our attempts to be good enough and to let Jesus Christ and what He has done fill our souls and produce obedience 21:52 rather than assuming that obedience is going to produce a changed life. Are you with me? This is key, brothers and sisters. This is key. And I want to say this, I want to say this kindly, but we have a church covenant. But if you are relying on the church covenant to make you holy, 22:14 you're going to fail miserably. I believe in it. But I believe in it as an agreement that we make to practice our faith, not to earn Me points with God other than the fact that because the church has done it, I submit to it and God is pleased with our submission. 22:34 But if I'm looking to the church covenant or the church rules or whatever to to to justify Me in the sight of God, I'm barking up the wrong tree. 22:46 Now having said that, we do believe in works. We believe in good works. But not all good works are a result of faith. So what we look for is, are we producing the good works of faith? I had an illustration of something like this. 23:06 You know, all cars have four wheels, I guess. Not seen otherwise. All cars have four wheels. But not everything that has four wheels is a car. And all banks are a place where you put money. But not every place you put money is a bank. 23:28 You see, there's two things happening here. All works, the works of faith are good works. But not all good works are the works of faith. 23:40 There are dead works that also look good to us, but not to the God who sees the heart and pierces with His piercing eyes and knows motive, attitude, action, and spirit. 24:00 So we enter into this rest by faith, taking what God has said about the finished work of Christ on the cross and the resurrection and the fullness of the Spirit to produce a life-transforming change that brings forth living works. 24:20 We trust God and we rest. We rest in that. Can you rest in that? 24:29 Brothers and sisters tonight or this morning, there's... I look in my own heart sometimes and there's much, there's too much unrest in my spirit at times. There remains a rest that I can enter into. To know that my sins are forgiven. 24:49 To know that my name is written down in the book of life. To know that I have a sovereign God who loves me and who will not allow me to go through anything without His presence and protective power. To rest in Jesus and what Jesus has done for me. That's the place I want to be. 25:10 That's the place we must find ourselves or we will continue to churn and churn and churn inside until we find our rest in Christ, in Christ alone. 25:26 Now we have eternal rest. There is debate whether or not this is eternal rest or Canaan or salvation rest. But the Bible does talk about eternal rest. Revelation 14, "Then I heard a voice from heaven saying to Me, 'Write, Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on. 25:45 Yes, says the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors.'" And get this, "and their works follow them." So works, yes. Living works produced by faith. Obedient living works that are a result of my faith in Jesus Christ. 26:07 Important. Job says, "Then the wicked cease from troubling and there the weary are at rest. There the prisoners rest together. They do not hear the voice of the oppressor. The small and the great are there and the servant is free from his master. Daniel was told by God, 'But you go your way till the end. 26:27 For you shall rest and will arise to your inheritance at the end of days.'" There is therefore a rest that remains, that while we enter into salvation rest that produces obedience, that we will enter into heavenly rest and our works shall follow us. That's the progression. 26:49 Our works don't get us there. Not every four-wheeled thing is a car. Not every good work merits. But every car has four wheels and every living faith has works. 27:05 2 Thessalonians says, "And to give you who are troubled rest with us when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven." So the question this morning is, what is the condition of our hearts? The promise of rest is not in question. Faith is. 27:20 Do we have a hardened heart that is a living heart that is or a living heart that produces works? 27:30 I want to give you several things here this morning that contribute to a hard heart. Number one, a lack of obedient faith. Chapter 4:2. They did not enter in because the word they heard was not mixed with faith. Does your faith move you? 27:50 Hearing is not enough. It must be matched with obedient faith. "The deceitfulness of sin will harden our hearts." Chapter 3:13, "But exhort one another daily while it is called today, lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin." The deceitfulness of sin. 28:12 Sin promising something that it can never deliver has a hardening effect upon the soul. Number three, resistance to the Word of God, resistance to the Word of God. Chapter 4:12, here we have it, "The Word of God is quick and powerful. It is living and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, 28:32 piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit and the joints and marrow and to the discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." It is a sword. It is living. It is that by which God uses to expose what He sees as He looks at our heart's condition. He uses His Word to judge it and to expose it. 28:55 And this is the fourth thing that contributes to a hard heart is to refuse to, of refusal to bring all things to account. If we let our account get deeper and deeper and deeper and higher and pile higher and higher and higher, it has a dawling effect upon our hearts. 29:13 So we take our account and we bring it to Him because we know that we are naked before Him already. So don't try to hide it from God. Bring it to the light. We need to walk in the light. We need to walk in accountability. 29:32 Accountability to God and accountability to one another as a body. So therefore we do have expectations that we have of each other to hold one another accountable in our walk with God. We hold each other accountable for our media usage, 29:52 our viewing habits, our spending habits, our thought patterns, our life patterns, our relationship patterns. We bring things to the light. Let us bring things to the light, brothers and sisters. 30:08 We need to be accountable that we not be walking in the works of the flesh such as gossip and slander and pride and a judgmental critical spirit as well as doctrine. We need to have a proper doctrine holding everything up to the light. Do what I believe, does what I believe, does it hold up to the light? 30:29 Does what I do, does it hold up to the light? Does it where I go, does it hold up to the light? All of my attitudes, do they, what does the light show about those things? Search Me, O God, and know my heart. 30:45 Try Me and know my thoughts and my anxious thoughts and see if there be any wicked way in Me and lead Me in the way everlasting. That's bringing it to the light. There's at least four kinds of things that cut. There's the sword to ward off the enemy. There's the dagger for close hand-to-hand combat. 31:06 There's the scalpel for surgery and there's the laser for microsurgery and the Word of God is all four. I love the fact that God's Word can go down into our hearts and expose. You know how closely related a joint and marrow is? They're very closely related. You know how closely related the soul and spirit is? 31:26 And yet the Spirit of God with the Word of God can cut right down through the middle of those things with extreme precision. Do you know how close it is between a thought and an intent? But the Spirit of God using the Word of God can cut right down through the thoughts and intents. 31:47 By the way, I think that's where where where temptation becomes sin is when a thought becomes an intention. And where is that? The Spirit of God knows. The Word of God knows and is able to do laser surgery. 32:07 Now they didn't know anything about laser surgery back when this was written. 32:13 But the Spirit of God uses the Word of God to cut and to lay out. And in verse 13, "There is no creature hidden from His sight." No creature, no creation hidden from His sight. "But all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him to whom we must give an account." Everything is open. Your life is an open book to God. 32:33 My life is an open book to God. So we may as well just open it up and say, "God, here it is. Deal with it. Help me to give it to You. I confess it. I repent." And only when you do that will you find rest and peace. There is nothing hidden, no creature, no thought, no intention that is not intimately known to God. 32:59 In fact, I understand and I think the King James Version has this right when it says, "There is no creature that is not manifest in His sight." It's a double negative. It's a double negative which in Greek intensifies the message. Not only is there nothing hidden, 33:20 but there is no creature that is not manifest in His sight. That means it's emphatic. And He uses every term possible here, both negative and positive, plural and singular to get His point across. 33:37 God the Judge in His Word has nothing about His creation that is not manifest, not a created thing that is not manifest before Him. But all things are naked and open to His eyes. And we think about that as a physical nakedness. That physical nakedness is only a picture of a spiritual nakedness of a heart which is just laid open, 34:01 just laid open. We hide behind clothes. We hide behind words. We can hide behind anger and offense. We can deflect. We can justify. We can excuse. 34:12 But nothing is sufficient to defend us from God who sees everything, knows everything, and is all-powerful and has one way to enter into rest and that is by faith in Jesus Christ. 34:25 Face to face with God's all-seeing eye. 34:28 One commentator said it like this, "The penetrating criticism which the divine Word exercises upon their entire being to the inmost parts illustrates to them the piercing sharpness of the divine vision and warns them not 34:47 to subject themselves by indifference and disobedience to the judgment of God whose verdict is proof against every bribe and unaffected by anything that would cloud or deceive it." If I had time, I'd read it again. 35:08 Close with this illustration this morning. I was reading about war crimes in Ukraine, about the war crimes in Ukraine that are being committed by Russia. 35:20 Terrible things happening. Terrible atrocities, rapes, murders, targeting civilians, mass graves, just civilians and children and people just laying gunned down in the streets of the cities in Ukraine. What does the world do with that? 35:40 And so they have instituted what's been called the International Criminal Court, which no matter what you think about that, it's a way for the crimes of war crimes and so on to be tried by the world, exposed and said, "This is wrong and somebody must pay." It's a dismal failure, the World International Criminal Court, because they can't process everything. 36:03 And so one writer in an article that I read said, "War processing and prosecuting these war crimes all is beyond the International Criminal Court's capabilities. The ICC will select several cases and will work only on those cases." So the question is, 36:23 who will provide justice for the thousands of crimes which will not be selected? Interesting. Humans can only see just a small part and they can only judge a small part and they can only act on a small part. 36:39 But God lays us out like an open book and says, "I know it all." So what do we do? We just come to God and say, "Search Me, O God. Know my heart. Try Me. Know my thoughts. 36:59 You know my anxious thoughts. You know my place of unsettledness and of restlessness and of of of of turmoil, inner turmoil. Lord, I bring my problems. I bring my sins. I bring myself, my heart. 37:13 I bring it to Jesus." Augustine said it like this, "Thou hast made us for Thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in Thee." Lord, 37:35 thank You so much for the rest that we are offered in Christ. What a wonderful thing to know that as You rested and as You promised rest to the Israelites in the ancient times, You still have a rest for us today, a salvation rest and an eternal rest. And we rest in that, Lord. 37:55 We bring You our sins today. 37:56 We bring You our excuses, our justification, our personal cover-ups and everything that we do, Lord, to try to hide. Instead, we want to come to the light and let You expose, expose us, Lord, expose us. 38:18 So then we have nothing to fear, nothing to lose, nothing to hide because it's all taken care of and it's all under the blood. 38:31 So Lord, as we enter into this time this morning of mutual accountability, we pray that You will guide us and direct us. Let nothing be said or done or even thought that would be a disappointment to You or a discouragement to others. In Jesus' name, Amen.