Clergy/Leaders’ Mail-list No. 2-090 (Expository Sermon)

OBEY THE WORD, FIND THE REST (Hebrews 4:1-13)

by Rod Benson

“This is a world of permanent white water in which we’re all roaring down a wild river, none of us feeling like we either understand or control what we’re in the middle of,” said Peter Vaill in Healthy Congregations, a book discussing factors that encourage or discourage church health.

Many of us feel the cold spray and the gut-wrenching turbulence of that current every day as we venture out into the world. Some of us come face to face with it in the form of our children, and the strange attitudes and behaviours they express from time to time.

But the stress of rapid change, and the undeniable fact that the world isn’t progressing the way we might wish, does not provide an excuse to withdraw into isolation and hope it all goes away.

Nor does it give us an excuse to ignore the spiritual dimension of life, and the reality of God, and our responsibility to hear and obey his word.

GOD’S RESOURCES ARE UNLIMITED

You may be approaching a crisis of faith, or sensing a failure of nerve, as the readers of this letter to the Hebrews were. But, while all else changes, God’s nature remains constant. His supply of spiritual, emotional, material and physical resources is unlimited and never subject to delivery glitches.

God is good! You can trust God; you can put your life in his hands and say goodbye to your worry and cares! Not only does faith in God produce immediate change in your outlook; it transforms the future in a very real and powerful way.

But God isn’t in the business of instant gratification. He’s in the business of life transformation, and that by definition lasts your lifetime. God gives those who trust him many great and awesome promises, but he asks us to do our part, and build discipline into our lives, and persevere.

Hebrews 4:1-11 continues a theme commenced in 3:7-19, but whereas chapter three focused on the exclusion of unbelieving and rebellious Israelites from the rest God had promised them (that is, entry into the land of Canaan), chapter 4 offers hope and encouragement, along with a call to perseverance, to the Christian community – the new people of God, to whom the inheritance of God’s rest now belongs.

LEARNING FROM THE PAST

The author refers in chapters 3 and 4 to a familiar and embarrassing event in Israel’s ancient history, recorded in Numbers 13 and 14. The whole nation has escaped from Egypt across the Red Sea, has received the Law at Mount Sinai, and has reached the border of Canaan, the land God promised to Abraham.

Moses sends 12 spies into Canaan to gather intelligence (just as a spy satellite might do today). On their return, ten of them give negative reports, saying, “Let’s give up, it’s too hard!” The other two, Caleb and Joshua, have a different perspective.

We should go up and take possession of the land, for we can certainly do it . . . The land we passed through and explored is exceedingly good. If the Lord is pleased with us, he will lead us into that land, a land flowing with milk and honey, and will give it to us. Only do not rebel against the Lord. And do not be afraid of the people of the land, because we will swallow them up. Their protection is gone, but the Lord is with us. Do not be afraid of them (Numbers 13:30; 14:7-9).

Who did the people listen to? Responding to their own crisis of faith and failure of nerve, they did the democratic thing and voted for the majority – failing to discern that God was with Joshua and Caleb.

Their vision was clouded, their faith compromised, and their hearts far from the God who had just rescued them from Egyptian slavery in the greatest miracle yet to have occurred since creation! Their rest lay before them, but the promise was not accompanied by faith and therefore God let them turn away and die, one by one, in the desert.

VICTORY FOR THE FAITHFUL ONES

It was the next generation, along with Caleb and Joshua, who received a renewed promise, and who crossed the Jordan river and experienced the joy and peace of life in the land of Canaan.

The author of Hebrews refers to this tragic event in order to say that if others who called themselves God’s people failed to hear and obey his Word, and consciously turned their backs on him, and so easily descended into unbelief, it’s not impossible for those who call themselves God’s people today.

And so he warns the Christian community to whom he writes, reminding them of the rest God has promised them, and urging them to faithful perseverance.

What is this rest? The rest offered to Israel was firstly entry into the land of Canaan, where the people would experience relief from the turmoil of nomadic existence and security from the attacks of their enemies (see Numbers 14:31; Deuterogamy 3:20; 12:9-10; 25:19; Joshua 1:13).

But the context of Psalm 95, which is quoted in Hebrews chapters 3 and 4 (referring to Israel’s experience at Kadesh), implies that there is more to this rest than mere entry to and occupation of Canaan.

Joshua assumed leadership of Israel after the death of Moses and led Israel into Canaan. If Joshua had fully realised the promised rest, there would have been no need for the promise to be renewed by God, speaking prophetically through David in Psalm 95, where David anticipates future rest despite being well and truly settled in the land!

THE REST OF GOD

There must be a deeper meaning to the promised rest of God. Some interpret the rest as a “second blessing” – a deep, post-conversion experience of God’s grace whereby full sanctification or perfection occurs in the believer.

People holding this view take Israel’s experience as a metaphor of the Christian life, often linking the crossing of the Red Sea with conversion to Christ, and the crossing of the Jordan river with the “second blessing.” But the terrible battles, fierce giants and numerous failures of Israel’s national experience in the promised land scarcely resemble perfection or perfect rest! Life in Canaan demanded courageous heroes, not relaxed spectators!

If it is not Canaan, nor full sanctification, what is this rest of God? I believe the rest promised to the Israelites in the desert, and to succeeding generations, and to the church, is the eschatological reward believers inherit through salvation in Christ.

Canaan was a symbol of a more fundamental reality, just as the sacrificial lamb of the Old Testament revelation was a symbol of the Lamb of God of the New Testament who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29).

In fact, if you entered a synagogue in the second century AD, you would hear the rest of Psalm 95 expounded as a rest to be experienced in the age to come, at the consummation of redemptive history. The same thought seems to have been in the author’s mind when he wrote Hebrews 4.

Entering the rest, then, implies participating in the full process of salvation or redemption, including the ultimate realisation of the hope of glory. By the same token, exclusion from rest through unbelief or rebellion against God implies exclusion from the blessings of eternal life.

That is why the author warns his readers of the danger of unbelief and the deception of sin (3:12-13; 4:1, 11). Are we really so different from them? No. Our only substantial difference is our awareness of their history, their struggles, their sin – which places greater responsibility on us.

HOW TO FIND YOUR REST

In Oscar Wilde’s story, The Picture of Dorian Gray, young Dorian lives to excess, wallowing in debauchery and every form of worldly pleasure. Yet he never ages, not do the effects of debauchery appear in his features.

But hidden in an attic is a painting of Dorian, and it is this that ages. Year by year the portrait shows the real Dorian Gray – wrinkled, inflamed, decrepit, lurching toward death.

In our world, humanity in its sin appears to move from triumph to triumph. We accumulate scars, but learn to hide them well. We convince ourselves that we’re invincible, advancing toward Utopia, but each of us has our picture in the attic telling the true story of our achievements and failures, pride and shame – the record by which God will judge us with justice and righteousness.

Be aware of sin’s deception. Be aware of God’s vision and plans for your life. And resolve to live by faith, and live for God’s glory.

The message of the Bible is not doom and gloom but hope and encouragement! Unbelief and an unresponsive heart will result in failure to enter God’s rest. But the opposite is also true: living faith and responsiveness to the call and Word of God leads to rest – eternal rest. Don’t underestimate the awesome power inherent in faith directed toward an all-powerful and loving God! As William Lane suggests, “Faith brings into the present the reality of that which is future, unseen, or heavenly” (cf Ephesians 1:3; John 11:25- 26).

It’s not about generating great faith in God; it’s about simple, humble faith in a great God. Someone has said, “By perseverance the snail reached the ark.” You may feel like a snail today, but that’s not how God sees you.

Verses 12 and 13 provide a fitting conclusion to the passage, reminding us of what God says, and the encouragement to respond with reverent faith; and of what God sees, and the encouragement to respond with loyal obedience.

If you are a born-again, Spirit-filled Christian who lives before God in reverent faith and loyal obedience, have no doubt that God will notice and use you, and that neither you nor your world will ever be the same again!

Let go, and let God change and use you for his glory, and then enter your promised rest. Obey the word of God; find the rest of God. Yes, Lord!

——————–

E077 Copyright (c) 2002 Rod Benson. Reproduction in any form except for commercial purposes is permitted with full copyright notice intact. Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible: New International Version (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1980).

You can contact Rev Rod Benson by e-mail at <> To subscribe direct to his weekly sermons, e-mail him with “subscribe” in the subject.

Related Articles:

• Michael Hardin, The Jesus-Driven Life: Reconnecting Humanity with Jesus
• The Jesus Driven Life
• Paul: ‘inspired’? What does that mean?
• 25 LISTS OF EVERYTHING INTERESTING/IMPORTANT
• Miracles and the Virgin Birth etc.

This work, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License.