Hebrews 4:3-11 “There Remains A Rest”

Translation & Sermon by Nate Wilson for Christ the Redeemer Church of Manhattan, KS, 28 Oct. 2018

Introduction

• Last week, I took my family camping. It was lovely weather, and we had a great time that evening pitching tents and roasting hot dogs over the campfire and reading a Deep Creek story.

  • It was only after I crawled into my sleeping bag later that night that I realized a big problem: The tent had been pitched on a slope. It hadn't been enough to notice when we were setting up camp, but I spent all night just trying to keep from rolling downhill.

  • My wife had a different reason why she couldn't sleep, and that was because lying flat on the ground pinched nerves in her back that hurt all the way down her leg.

  • Meanwhile, some of the kids didn't sleep well because they heard strange noises outside their tent – I know I heard coyotes a few times.

  • Then the cold set in. A couple of kids were up looking for extra sleeping bags in the middle of the night.

  • At least we didn't have a baby with us. Our babies have never slept well in a tent, so they cry and keep everybody else awake.

  • Well, as the John Denver song goes, “We didn't get much sleep, but we had a lot of fun!”

  • When we came home we were in desperate need of rest, so it is providential that I should have a passage about rest to preach about this Sunday!

• Last week we looked at the importance of our heart-attitude as the make-or-break issue in relating to God and enjoying His blessings. Skeptical unbelief and rebellion disqualify us.

• Now as we pick up at Hebrews 4:3 and move on, the focus is upon God's rest.

• I am indebted to the Puritan commentator John Owen for helping me see more clearly what the author of Hebrews is driving at in this next passage:

• “He proceeds to consider the various rests that are on various accounts in the Scriptures called the 'rest of God,' and he concludes that after all other rests formerly enjoyed by the people of God were past, there yet remained a rest for them under the Messiah, which was the rest principally intended by David's prophetic words.” ~John Owen, 1650

  • He begins with the weekly sabbath and its literal rest from labor. This was instituted by God, and believers who follow God's pattern experience physical rest. The rest of the world that doesn't believe God is at work today. They are missing out!

  • Another “rest” instituted by God that is mentioned in this passage is that of the nomadic Hebrews settling down permanently in Canaan. However, their initial resistance to God's plan resulted in the Exodus generation who escaped Egypt never getting to enter the promised land. Only Joshua and Caleb who kept believing God's promise got to experience that kind of rest.

  • The next iteration of “rest” comes in a quote from one of the psalms of David, well after the settlement of Canaan. Psalm 95 also speaks of a rest which could be forfeited by unbelief. Under faithful kings like David and Hezekiah, God's people experienced political rest and blessing, but unbelief and idol-worship later resulted in the people losing possession of their rest in the Promised Land.

  • The writer of Hebrews extends this principle out to the Christian era. Trusting Jesus alone to cleanse our sin and make us right will give us rest, but walking in unbelief and disobedience to the call of the Gospel will result in a fall, both in this world, and in the world to come.

• So let's start with the creation week “rest,” picking up at the end of...

4:3 “…if they will enter into my rest” (even though His works came into being at the founding of the world, 4 for [you know] where He has spoken concerning the seventh [day] thus: “And God rested during the seventh day from all of His works.”)

• “This is an … indirect way of saying, 'these unbelievers did not enter into God's rest, although he had provided that rest into which they might have entered.' The providing of the rest is implied in the completion of God's works.” ~Marvin Vincent, 1886

• The plurality of things which God created have already come into being, and so God is at rest from creating material things because those works are finished.

• But not only were the physical elements created at that point, the spiritual plan of salvation was also established by that point in time:

  • Matthew 25:34 Then the King will say to those off to His right, "Come here, you who have been blessed by my father! Start inheriting the kingdom prepared for y'all from the foundation of the world” (NAW)

  • Ephesians 1:4 “…He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love…” (NKJ)

  • Revelation 13:8 “All who dwell on the earth will worship him [the beast], whose names have not been written in the Book of Life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” (NKJ)

  • 1 Peter 1:17-21 “And since the Father y'all are calling upon is the One who judges against the work of each man without showing favoritism, y'all should start lifestyling the time of your temporary residence with respectfulness, knowing that it was not using perishable things – silver or gold – that y'all were ransomed out of your empty lifestyle passed along from forefathers, but rather it was using precious blood from Christ, [who is] like a lamb without blemish and unsullied. He was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but was brought to light at the last times for y'all's sake - [y'all] who through Him are trusting in God (the One who raised Him out of the dead and who gave to Him glory) such that y'all's hopeful trusting should be in God.” (NAW)

• So these are ways in which God Himself is at rest¹ and can welcome us into the rest that is His.

• But that is a rest established over two thousand years before Moses and the entry into the Promised Land, which is recalled in v.5

4:5 And again, it is in this [quote], “…if they will enter into my rest.” 6 Therefore, since it is being left for certain ones to enter into it, and [since] the ones evangelized earlier did not enter on account of non-compliance, 7 again He marks out a certain day, “Today,” by the agency of David saying, after such an amount of time, just as he foretold, “Today if y’all happen to hear His voice, don’t start hardening your hearts.”

• Once again, there is opportunity to enter God’s rest by faith, but, as history proves, there is also opportunity to pass it by through non-compliance/disobedience/unbelief (ἀπείθειαν). The possibility is still open both ways; this calls for both cautious fear and hopeful faith.

• The fact that, centuries after God spoke these words through Moses, after the next generation of Israelites had moved into the Promised Land, God still holds out the same hope and warning in Psalm 95, indicates that God’s rest was bigger than just the Hebrews settling into the Promised Land, and it indicates that the double-edged warning and promise was not limited to the time of Moses, but would be for all people at all times.²

• “[E]ven if a man have sinned… (and here he means not unbelief only, but also murmurings [which was the specific sin of the ancient Israelites]) … as long as it is ‘To-day,’ he has hope: let no man then despair so long as he lives… but let him recover himself; for as long as we are in this world, the ‘To-day’ is in season.” ~Chrysostom

4:8 For, if Joshua had set them at rest, He wouldn’t have ever spoken concerning another day after these. 9 So a Sabbath-rest is being left to the people of God.

• Now, if you're reading a King James Version, it says “Jesus” instead of “Joshua,” and the reason is that they are both the same name in Greek, pronounced Ιησοῦς, so it is a matter of interpretation - not of translation - to recognize that it is speaking of Joshua rather than Jesus.

• But this brings up an interesting parallel. Two men, over a thousand years apart, with the same name – 'Yeshuah,' in Hebrew – did the same sort of thing:

  • The first led a nation of slaves into the promised land in fulfillment of God's promises,

  • the second led a people enslaved to sin into heaven, in fulfillment of God's promises.

  • “God had something to do with the naming of Joshua because he would represent the One who alone can lead us into the rest…”~Frank Barker, Jr.

• Now, who are the “people of God” for whom this Sabbath-rest has been left?

  • Remember that the word “people” is not the plural of “person” but rather is the designa­tion for an ethnic group which shares the same father at some point back in their ancestry.

  • Most of the time that the phrase “the people of God” shows up, it means the ethnic nation of Israel. For instance that's what it means when this phrase occurs in Hebrews 11:25.

  • Naturally that is the sense in which the Hebrew readers of this epistle would take it, but as John Owen put it, “He [the Apostle] lets them know that they could no longer retain... the privilege of being the people of God... without faith in Christ. If they failed in this, they would no longer be the people of God.”

  • In the New Testament, we see, at an unprecedented rate³, individuals with no relation to Jewish ethnicity being called the “people of God,” for instance the Roman army captain Cornelius: Acts 15:14 "Simon [that is Peter] has declared how God at the first visited the Gentiles [that is Cornelius] to take out of them a people for His name.” (NKJ)

  • According to Romans 9:26, the prophet Hosea (1:10) prophesied back in the Old Testa­ment that this would happen! "And it shall come to pass in the place where it was said to them,`You are not My people,' There they shall be called sons of the living God." (NKJ)

  • That is why Peter, in the New Testament could tell Eastern European tribesmen who believed in Jesus, “Y'all, however, are a select kind, a priestly royalty, a holy ethnicity, a people made to be around [Him] in such a way that y'all might extol the virtues of Him who called y'all out of darkness into His marvelous light – y'all who back then were not a people but now are the people of God – the ones who had not been shown mercy yet now have been shown mercy.” (1 Pet. 2:9-10, NAW)

  • And that's why the Apostle Paul could also tell Greek Christians in Corinth, “...you are the temple of the living God. As God has said: 'I will dwell in them And walk among them. I will be their God, And they shall be My people.'" (2 Cor. 6:16b, NKJ)

• Trusting Jesus to make you right with God correlates to having Christ call you His “brethren” (Heb. 2:11), which means that, in a spiritual sense, God is your Father, and that makes Christians “the people of God,” because they share a father in common. And if you are in that faith group, God has left something for you called a Sabbath-rest.

• The word for “rest” in Greek is Sabbatizmos, and it occurs nowhere else in the entire Bible, which is why the modern versions translated it with the added word “Sabbath.” The sabbaths of the Old Testament pointed toward a type of Sabbath in the New Testament which has been left in place for believers in Jesus.

• The only other place in the Bible where the word “Sabbath” and the word “leave” occur together is in Exodus 16:23 And Moses said to them, “Is not this the word which the Lord spoke? To-morrow is the sabbath, a holy rest to the Lord: bake that ye will bake, and seethe that ye will seethe, and all that is over leave to be laid by for the morrow.” (Brenton)

  • God set up an economy for His people such that they could have a day of rest from their regular labors, giving them enough food on the sixth day of the week to put in the pantry so that they could have food to eat on the seventh day without having to work for it. Meanwhile, those who refused to operate according to God's economy went hungry.

  • So today, God has set up a spiritual economy such that, generation after generation, those who believe that Jesus died to forgive their sins and rose to make them right with God have a sabbath-rest waiting for them - and there is nothing left for those who don't. Hebrews 10:26 “For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins” (NKJV).

• The “Sabbath-rest” in v.9 seems to be the same thing as the “rest” mentioned in the previous verses - as well as afterward in v.10.

V.10 for the one who has entered into his rest has also set himself at rest from his works, just as God did from His.

• Again, How do we⁴ enter that rest? Through “belief” in the “gospel” (according to v.2) – that is, through faith in Jesus (v.3). Conversely, it is missed when folks respond to the good news of Jesus with skepticism, unbelief, and disobedience (as per 3:18-19).

• The comparison is explicitly made between God resting from His works of creation and we who trust Jesus to save us, resting from our works.

• The context gives us no indication that this is talking about being lazy and quitting your day-job. Furthermore, the exhortations in the Pauline Epistles and Proverbs to be a good worker rule out the interpretation that this is speaking of a literal vacation.

• Furthermore, Jesus had said that He and God the Father were still “working” - thousands of years after the creation week. (John 5:17 But Jesus answered them, "My Father has been working [ἐργάζεται ] until now, and I have been working." ~NKJ))

• This must, therefore, be speaking of a different kind of work that stops when you trust Christ.

• This corroborates with what Jesus said in John 6:27-29 "Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you, because God the Father has set His seal on Him." Then they said to Him, "What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?" Jesus answered and said to them, "This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent." God is working to generate faith in our hearts; that's at least one thing He works at, even if His works of creation are long done, and when we respond in faith, it brings an end to our work of trying to save ourselves and make ourselves all right.

• This is the “foundational” starting-point, as Hebrews 6:1 puts it, “...the foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God” (NKJ).

• Romans 3:20-26 says it clearly: Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe. For there is no difference; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed, to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.” (NKJV)

• What then shall we do in light of the knowledge that God saves some of His rest to give to us in our generation and that unbelief/trust in Jesus is the hinge point upon which His promise rests?

V.11 Let us hurry therefore to enter into that rest in order that no one might fall due to the same example of non-compliance.

• “[T]his exhortation incites the recipients of the letter to display a spirit of zeal which is the exact opposite of the spirit of unconcern that proved so disastrous for their forefathers in the wilderness…” ~P.E. Hughes

• You may recall that the same verb “fall” was used in Hebrews 3:17 to describe the unbelieving Hebrews who did not enter Canaan when God called them to take it - and who were subsequently doomed to decades of wandering in the desert until they dropped dead.

• The fact that we are exhorted to “Hurry/labour/be diligent/make every effort/strive to enter that rest” indicates that it can be missed out on - if diligent effort is not applied to entering in! Why diligent effort? Because there are lots of people and things opposed to us putting our faith in Jesus alone. If we don't stand up to them, they could prevent us from entering God's rest!

  • The traditional examples from old Jewish rabbis was – and still is – a powerful draw away from trust in Jesus for the original recipients of this book.

  • For us it may be different bad examples. For instance, Hollywood actors are called “models” (a synoym for “examples”), and they are very influential on our culture: we naturally imitate their mannerisms, dress style, haircuts, speech idioms, and attitudes towards authority.

  • But God has given us a different model to follow, Jesus Christ, after whom we are named “Christ-ians.” John 13:13-15 "You call me Teacher and Lord, and you say well, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example/ὑπόδειγμα, that you should do as I have done to you.”

• The urgency of this exhortation to enter in by faith is highlighted by the prominence of the word “Today,” which indicates that the opportunity is limited. A “Tomorrow” will come when it is too late to enter God's rest.

  • When the first generation of Hebrews under Moses realized they had missed their chance to enter the promised land, they tried to mount a military campaign to enter Canaan and got slaughtered by the Amalekites and Canaanites (Numbers 14:45).

  • As Philippians 2 says, every knee will bow before Jesus on Judgment Day, but if you don't submit to Jesus before that day, it will be too late. That's why we must hurry to enter God's rest through faith in Jesus now – today!

Conclusion

• John Calvin applied “resting from our works” to mean repentance from the works of the flesh. He wrote, “[M]an becomes happy by self-denial. For what else is to cease from our works, but to mortify our flesh, when a man renounces himself that he may live to God?” I think that Calvin did not quite hit on the main point, but it is a good initial application: Repentance from sin and skepticism toward Jesus is the first step toward faith and entering God's rest.

• The main thrust of application, in my opinion, for this passage is that the grounds of our salvation is not works but faith.

  • “Every true believer hath ceased from his own works of righteousness, and from the burdensome works of the law, as God and Christ have ceased from their works of creation and redemption... Our business is to see to it that we be the legatees (“One[s] to whom a legacy is bequeathed.”~Webster's Dictionary, 1828), that we lay our claim to that rest and freedom from the dominion of sin, Satan, and the flesh, by which the souls of men are kept in servitude and deprived of the true rest of the soul, and may be also set free from the yoke of the law and all the toilsome ceremonies and services of it, and may enjoy peace with God in his ordinances and providences, and in our own consciences, and so have the prospect and earnest of perfect and everlasting rest in heaven... ” ~Matthew Henry

  • “This rest consisteth of five things: 1. In peace with God in the free and full justification of the person of believers from all their sins by the blood of Christ... (Acts 13:32-39) 2. In our freedom from a servile bondage-frame of spirit in the worship of God. 3. In our deliverance from the yoke and bondage of Mosaical institutions. 4. In that gospel worship whereunto we are called; this is the rest of liberty and freedom of spirit which believers have in obedience unto the Gospel; also of strength and assistance granted unto the worshippers for the performance of their worship in an acceptable manner; and then the worship itself is not grievous but easy, and suited unto the principles of the new nature of the worshippers. 5. In its being God's rest, and, by entering into it, believers enter into the rest of God. It is called God's rest, because He resteth ultimately and absolutely, as to all the ends of His glory, in Christ, as exhibited in the gospel; that is, in Him in whom His 'soul delighteth,' and in whom 'He is well pleased.' Through Him He rests in His love to believers...” ~John Owen, 1650

• This rest which comes from trusting Jesus is far superior to the rest you get on a camping trip or a vacation, and it will open out into a new horizon of rest in heaven.

  • “We shall then have joy without sorrow, and rest without weariness. As there is no mixture of corruption with our graces, so no mixture of suffering with our solace. It is a perfect rest from suffering. When the cause is gone the effect ceaseth. Our sufferings were but the consequence of our sinning, and here they both shall cease together. We shall rest from all the temptations of Satan, whereby he continually disturbs our peace. We shall rest also from all our temptations which we now undergo from the world and the flesh, as well as Satan. As we rest from the temptations, so also from all the abuses and persecutions which we suffer at the hands of the wicked men. Now we must be hated of all men for Christ’s name sake, and the Gospel; then will Christ be admired in His saints that were thus hated. We shall then also rest from our sad divisions, and unchristian quarrels with one another. There is no contention, because none of this pride, ignorance, or other corruption. Paul and Barnabas are now fully reconciled. We shall rest also from all our personal sufferings, whether natural or ordinary; or extraordinary, from the af­flicting hand of God. The last jewel in our crown, and blessed attribute of this Rest, is that it is an eternal Rest.” ~Richard Baxter, The Saints’ Everlasting Rest, ch.2

Communion Prayer?

• “O Lord God, grant Your peace to us, for You have supplied us with all things: the peace of rest, the peace of the Sabbath, which has no evening. For, all this beautiful order of things... is to pass away, for in them there was morning and evening. But the seventh day is without any evening – or sunset, because You have sanctified it to everlasting continuance in order that what You did after Your creation works (which were very good), resting on the seventh day, although in unbroken rest You made them that the voice of Your Book may speak beforehand to us, that we also after our works (also very good, because You have given them to us) may repose in You in the Sabbath of eternal life. For then indeed You shall rest in us, as now You are working in us; and thus shall be Your rest through us, as these are Your works through us.” ~St. Augustine, Confessions, 13:35-36

APPENDIX: Side-by side Greek Text and English Versions of Hebrews 4:3-11