Hebrews 4:1-11 

The author of Hebrews has been playing off of this comparison between the Israelites in the wilderness and you and I in our current wilderness of life.  

• Just like they had the opportunity to enter into the Promised Land of Canaan, we too have the opportunity to enter into the Heavenly Promised Land––eternity with the Lord.

• Just like their unbelief prevented them from entering their promised land, our unbelief can prevent us from entering our promised land.

Last week we talked about our need for continual inward examination, and for outward exhortation.  

• Hebrews 3:12–13 (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.

So… ‘take care’ (that’s inward)... and ‘exhort one another’ (that’s outward).  These two actions are how we safeguard ourselves and each other from falling into unbelief like the wilderness generation and failing to enter what the author calls, “God’s rest”. 

Today, as we continue in chapter 4, the author zooms in on this idea of God’s rest, and what it means to enter into God’s rest.  We are going to do a deep dive into what God’s rest is, and look at it from different angles.  Or, maybe it would be more accurate to say, we will look at it from different focal lengths.

We’re going to see that God’s rest is not only a future hope, it is also a present reality that is rooted in past fulfillment.   

The future hope of God’s rest is eternity with the Lord where we will experience fullness of joy forever. 

• In your presence is fullness of joy (psalm 16:11) 

• Revelation 21:4 (ESV): 4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

The present experience of God’s rest is: the ability to live free from striving, free from fear, free from worry, free from religious burdens and legalism, free from the bondage of sin that separates us from God… 

• Matthew 11:28 (ESV): 28 Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

• The Puritan John Owen defines this present rest for the believer in five ways: 

• Rest means peace with God and a satisfied soul and conscience

• Rest means freedom from a slave-like, bondage-like spirit in the worship of God

• Rest means deliverance from the burden of Mosaic observance

• Rest means the freedom of worship according to the gospel

• Rest means the rest that God Himself enjoys

Past fulfillment of God’s rest is the fact that God Himself rested after His work in creating the world. 

• Genesis 2:2 (ESV): 2 And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done.

• This is also the basis for the biblical concept of Sabbath, which is a God-ordained day of rest.  

So, future hope, present reality, past fulfillment. 

Honestly, there is nothing in me that feels like I need to sell you this idea of resting in God.  Who doesn’t want this?!? We all have a deep, innate desire to arrive in that state of peace, to stop our striving, to experience the fullness of joy that God alone can give. 

And here’s the good news… 

As we go through, keep these two truths in mind: 

God wants you to experience this glorious rest in Him today and forever.  

And…

The way to rest in God is to trust in Christ. 

And because the author of Hebrews is dealing with folks who were showing signs of wanting to stop trusting in Christ, he provides this warning… 

Hebrews 4:1–11 (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. 

So, he’s again pointing back at that wilderness generation who chose not to believe God and failed to reach the Promised Land.  And He’s saying, ‘don’t be like them’.  

He’s saying, ‘you guys still have the opportunity to believe and obey God.  Your time isn’t up yet!  

• In fact, the terminology of ‘fail to reach it’ is an allusion to ancient Greek games.  It’s an athletic metaphor. 

• He’s saying, in effect, ‘you’re still in the race; don’t fail to cross the finish line’.  

If you are here today and you’re still breathing, take this as a message directly from God (because it is): you can still enter into a restful, peaceful relationship with God through Jesus Christ.  It is available to you right now, today.  So don’t miss it. 

And he’s saying not only is it beneficial to enter that rest; it’s actually scary to think of not entering!  He says, “let us FEAR lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach [God’s rest]”.  

• Just to be clear… if you’re a believer, this is not a paralyzing fear… God doesn’t want believers to live in crippling fear… It is a motivating fear.  

  • As Thomas Schreiner put it, “The fear commanded here is a stimulus to action, like the fear that motivates mountain climbers to ensure all their equipment is working properly.”

If you’re not resting in God… if you look at your life and examine your heart (like we talked about last week), and you find evidence that you may not in fact be experiencing this rest… you have reason to be concerned. 

WHY is that?  WHY is it fearful to seem to have failed to reach this place of rest with God?

Because this rest is in many ways synonymous with salvation.  

If we are not experiencing the rest of God in our lives, it should unsettle us because it could be indicative of not belonging to Christ.  If you belong to Christ, you have the ‘rest’.

The good news is, it’s still available… but it won’t always be.  The offer will expire either when we die or when Christ comes back; whichever comes first. 

• Hebrews 9:27 (ESV): 27 And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment  

And let’s be clear: Just because we’ve heard the message of God’s rest doesn’t mean we automatically enter into God’s rest.  

Look at verse 2… 

2 For good news came to us just as to them, but the message they heard did not benefit them, because they were not united by faith with those who listened. 

So, he’s comparing us to the wilderness generation again.  And he’s saying, the ‘good news’ came to both of us.  

• In their case, the ‘good news’ was that God’s rest was available to them by trusting in God.  

• In our case, the ‘good news’ is also that God’s rest is available to us by trusting in God, but we have more clarity than they did because we are on the other side of the death and resurrection of Jesus.  

  • Unlike them, we don’t place our faith in a future event; we place our faith in a finished event.  Jesus has died for sin, once and for all. 

• Nevertheless, the author’s point is that both groups (us and the wilderness generation) had the opportunity to hear the good news.   

But hearing is not enough… 

The Israelites HEARD the good news that God was giving them the Promised Land.  But they didn’t benefit from that message. Why?  Because they didn’t truly embrace it.  

This is such an IMPORTANT principle to grasp: 

When the Bible talks about belief, it is talking about more than intellectual agreement. It is talking about trust.  

If all we do is hear the good news… if all we do is intellectually believe the good news… it is not enough.  

• Yes, it must include intellectual agreement that Jesus is the Son of God, that He died for sin and rose from the dead… But James tells us that even the demons believe that––and nobody wants to be in their position!  

• The wilderness generation knew God existed. They saw his mighty works. But they failed to place their trust in Him. 

If we want to enter into the glorious rest that God has for us, which is found in an eternal relationship with Him, we must do more than just hear and agree… we must hear, believe and trust. 

The way to rest in God is to trust in Christ. 

Can I just be real with you? Some of you here today think you are headed for God’s eternal rest simply because you intellectually agree with the ideas of Christianity.  But you don’t have a relationship with God in which you are trusting Jesus as your Savior from the penalty of your sins.  The author of Hebrews is PLEADING with you to trust in Christ while the offer still stands. 

The question is not, ‘do you believe in who Jesus is’, the question is always, ‘do you trust Him as your Savior’. 

3 For we who have believed enter that rest, as he has said, 

…speaking of those who did not believe…

  “As I swore in my wrath, ‘They shall not enter my rest,’ ” 

But then the author does something profound, and frankly pretty confusing.  He shifts, mid sentence, from talking about the wilderness generation and the physical rest of the promised land, and he pivots to talking about a more transcendent ‘rest’ that God Himself experiences, and which goes all the way back to the creation account in Genesis… 

This is where we see the ‘past fulfillment’ aspect of ‘rest’.... 

although his works were finished from the foundation of the world. 4 For he has somewhere spoken of the seventh day (that is, the seventh day of creation) in this way: “And God rested on the seventh day from all his works.” 

So this ‘rest’ has been available since the creation of the world.  A relationship with God where true rest is found has been accessible since the beginning, as evidenced by the fact that God Himself finished His work of creation and is at ‘rest’, not because He’s tired or because He’s not still doing things in the world, but because His work in creating the world is ‘pau’. 

But then the author contrasts the availability of that rest with the reality that the wilderness generation failed to enter it: 

5 And again in this passage he said, 

      “They shall not enter my rest.” 

By the way, this is the default position of all of humanity.  People do not automatically experience God’s rest either now or when they die.  

• Romans 3:23 all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…

So we have this tension, this juxtaposition, between the fact that rest is available but that those who do not trust God’s promises do not experience it. 

So the verdict is: 

6 Since therefore it remains for some to enter it, and those who formerly received the good news failed to enter because of disobedience, 7 again he appoints a certain day, “Today,” saying through David so long afterward, in the words already quoted, 

      “Today, if you hear his voice, 

      do not harden your hearts.” 

The offer of experiencing God’s rest has not expired. And we know that because of the argument of verse 8…

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

After that original generation of wilderness wanderers died off, Joshua was the one who ended up leading God’s people into the Promised Land. 

And the point is… 

If the physical promised land was the final rest that God had in mind for His people, scripture wouldn’t continue to talk about a future rest long after Joshua had led them into that land; David wouldn’t have written about a future rest hundreds of years later.  

…So we know that there is a spiritual reality, and an eschatological reality to this ‘rest’, not just a physical, geographical reality.  The land was just a shadow of the true rest for God’s people who belong to Him by faith. 

Here’s where it gets profound… 

Not only is the promised land a shadow of the real salvation rest God gives; the one who lead them into the land (Joshua) is a type or a foreshadow of the One who leads God’s people into eternal salvation rest. 

In fact, the name Joshua in Hebrew is the same as the name Jesus in Greek.  Jesus is just the Greek spelling of Joshua.  

And that’s not a coincidence.  

Jesus is our greater Joshua.  

Jesus leads God’s people into the full and final rest of God, and Jesus gives us peace and rest in Himself today.  

• In Jesus we have freedom from our need to perform and strive. We have freedom from trying to earn God’s love. 

• We have freedom from the bondage of living under the weight of the law. 

• We can rest in Jesus. 

• Our rest in Jesus is the ultimate, ongoing experience of the Sabbath. The Sabbath was designed as a day of rest.  But in Jesus, even in the busyness of our working lives, we have a pervasive peaceful rest.  

• Our souls are at ease with Him.  

• And of course, we are headed towards ultimate, final rest in the heavenly Jerusalem; the true, eternal Promised Land.   

9 So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, 10 for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his. 

When we enter into God’s rest, we cease from needing to perform in order to gain righteousness. 

Perhaps the single greatest misconception about Christianity is that it is all about doing religious works in order to gain God’s favor.  False.  

Good works are not a prerequisite for salvation, they are a product of salvation. 

It’s not that we stop doing good works; it’s that we stop doing works as a means of self-justification! 

We don’t work for rest in God; we work from rest in God, through Jesus Christ.  

• Ephesians 2:8–10 (ESV): 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus FOR good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. 

• 2 Corinthians 5:15 (ESV): 15 and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.

The beauty of resting in Jesus is that He has done all the work for us!! 

He has lived in perfect righteousness. He has died to pay for sin. 

All power and authority has been given to Him. 

We can rest in Christ. 

And while this rest is profound and spiritual, it also has real life implications. 

• Think about it: if you are resting in Christ and trusting in Him, how worried are you going to be about the future? 

• How frantic are you going to be, trying to earn God’s favor? 

• How restless are you going to be when things don’t go according to your plans? 

See, God’s rest is much more than just a sense of peace in life… but it is NOT LESS than that! 

Paul talks about having peace that surpasses understanding!  Even when we find ourselves in situations where peace makes no sense, God can give us peace because we are at rest in Him. 

That is the present-tense reality of this rest. 

I think it’s safe to say that the ‘rest’ spoken of here in Hebrews is primarily a future reality; but it is also a present one. 

We get a foretaste of heavenly rest and peace today. 

11 Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. 

God’s Rest is: 

A future hope 

A present reality

A past fulfillment 

Have you entered into God’s rest?  Are you resting in Christ today? Are you headed for God’s eternal rest?  

In what areas of your life are you struggling to trust Christ? 

• Finances 

• Family

• Future

The way to rest in God is to trust in Christ. 

And the way to trust in Christ is to admit that your sins have separated you from God, that Jesus came as the Rescuer, the Greater Joshua, to live and die and rise for us, to redeem us, to credit us with His righteousness, so that we can have eternal life in Him… and to embrace Him as YOUR Savior today.