Entering The Rest (Hebrews 4:1-3)

Kootenai Church

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Hebrews chapter 4. We're going to read together. Actually, we'll start in chapter 3, verse 18, and we'll read through chapter 4 to verse 7.

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Chapter 3, verse 18. And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient?

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So we see that they were not able to enter because of unbelief. Therefore, let us fear if while a promise remains of entering his rest, any one of you may seem to have come short of it.

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For indeed, we have had good news preached to us, just as they also. But the word they heard did not profit them because it was not united by faith in those who heard.

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For we who have believed enter that rest, just as he has said, as I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter my rest.

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Although his works were finished from the foundation of the world. For he has said somewhere concerning the seventh day, and God rested on the seventh day from all his works.

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And again, in this passage, they shall not enter my rest. Therefore, since it remains for some to enter it, and those who formerly had good news preached to them failed to enter because of disobedience, he again fixes a certain day today, saying through David, after so long a time, just as has been said before, today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.

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Let's pray together. Father, we bow our heads and our hearts before a challenging passage and ask that you would by your spirit and by your grace, grant us the illumination that we need to understand things in your word.

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We pray that you would help me to be clear and concise in my explanation of these things, help us to be clear in our understanding of these things.

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And as we hear your word, give us clarity, even regarding how it is that you would have us to apply these truths and to think of Christ our

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Lord. We thank you for the grace that you have given to us this morning. And we ask your blessing upon our time here of our study and our meditation upon these things in Christ's name.

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Amen. The last time we were together, which was a couple of weeks ago, we didn't really start into chapter four.

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I backed up and zoomed out, as it were, and to give kind of an overview of this subject of God's rest.

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It's something of a difficult and challenging topic that we're addressing, and we just sort of tried to get our head around what the rest of God is or what

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God's rest is, as it's given here in chapter four. And then we're going to be looking, as we continue in chapter four, verses one through the end of this warning passage, there is a complex argument that is laid out here where the author is wanting us to see basically two things, that this rest remains and that we must be diligent to enter it.

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Those are the two points that he has here at the end of this warning passage. And last week, we kind of, last time we were together, we tried to just understand this difficult concept of rest.

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And it's difficult because in chapter three, it is entering into the promised land that is called

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God's rest. And in chapter four, the Sabbath is called God's rest. And yet when you take in the totality of the warning passage, it seems as if salvation in Jesus Christ is

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God's rest. So which is it? And it seems as if they had an opportunity to enter it back in the promised land, and we are implored to enter it even today.

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They didn't enter it, and so they missed it, and yet somehow it is available to us. So then we come to chapter four, and we ask this question, so which is it?

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Is salvation the promised land? Is it the Sabbath? Or is it salvation in Jesus Christ? And is the rest of God something that we have entered into, that we are in the process of entering into?

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Or is it something that we enter into in the future? And the answer to all those questions is yes. In fact, it's all of those things.

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So I offered you seven statements to kind of help crystallize what we mean by God's rest in chapter four.

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And I know that it's been two weeks, and I had to go back and review these seven statements. So I'm going to assume that if I don't remember my message that well, that you're not going to remember it any better than I am, because I studied it and preached it.

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So we're going to go back through these seven statements to help us kind of capture what it was that we were talking about when we just sort of got the overview of the rest of God.

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So here are, quickly, the seven statements that help us get this in our head. The first one is this.

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This rest that is spoken of here is God's rest, that is, it belongs to Him. Now, I argued last time that I don't believe this is something that God has created.

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I don't believe that the rest is a created thing. I believe it is something that is part of God's nature, part of His essence.

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It is an essential part of His being. It exists because God exists. It is something that He shares with us, and it is something that He commands us to enter into, and He makes available to us to enter into.

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He desires to share this with men. It belongs to Him not because He has created it.

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It belongs to Him because He is Him, or He is He, however proper grammar that is. Because God is who

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He is, by His nature, this rest is available to men. Now, that's the first thing. It's His rest.

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Second, this rest was available at creation week, which makes sense. Since God was at creation week, and He was back then after His creation,

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God entered into that rest, or God rested, and the implication seems to be that there was an element or an essence of God's nature that He shared with Adam in the garden.

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That rest was available then, but because of sin, we have forfeited that rest. Because of sin, we've been isolated from that rest.

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We cannot enter into it unless God makes a way for us to enter into it. So, though Adam enjoyed it in the garden, it is not something that after the fall was available for men to enter into because we are sinners by nature.

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And so, we are cut off. The unbeliever is cut off and isolated from God's rest, and he is restless.

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And unless God does something to bring men into that rest, that part of His nature that we share, unless God does something to do that, we would be forever cut off from it.

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We'd never be able to enjoy God's rest, this part of His nature and essence that He shares with us by faith. Third statement was the rest is described in various ways.

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It's described as a sharing in God's peace, in His righteousness, in His life. It is this settled confidence that we have when we simply rest in who

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God is, what God has done, what God has provided, what He shares with us, His nature.

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It is a fellowship with God. It is likened to just this settled, calm lack of anxiety and striving and contention and working and effort.

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That is what it means to enter into a relationship with God. We simply enter into a rest that He has designed for us.

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And number four, this rest is experienced in different ways and at different times. We looked at two Old Testament pictures of this rest, both of which are mentioned here in this passage.

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There is the Old Testament picture of the Promised Land. And the Promised Land is likened unto God's rest because the children of Israel were invited by faith to enter into something that was provided for them and given to them.

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And all they had to do was come in by faith. And in coming in by faith, they would enjoy the fellowship with their God that God had provided for them.

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And entering into that Promised Land was a picture of a greater reality. The second picture of a greater reality was the

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Sabbath. That's taking one day out of every seven to rest and to stop your working and stop your striving and just enjoy the peace and the provision of God and to thank

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Him and fellowship with Him in it. That is a picture of rest. So in the Old Testament, they had these glimpses looking forward to a greater reality.

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The fifth statement, this rest has not yet been fully realized. There are future elements of this rest. So though we have entered into it, we don't enjoy all of it as yet.

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There is a future kingdom expression of that rest when the Messiah reigns. There is a future heavenly realization of that rest when we get it in its entirety.

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And we are free from all efforts and all work and all striving. Not that we're free from activity because heaven is going to be very active, but we will be free from the strife and the striving and the anxiety that goes with life in this world.

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It will be a complete and full and perfect experience and enjoyment of God's rest. Number six, this rest is available today.

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As long as it's still called today, men and women can enter into this rest. Just because the wilderness generation forfeited that and refused to enter in and they perished in the wilderness does not mean that God has cut off any opportunity for men to enjoy that.

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It is still available today. And that's what the author of Hebrews is seeking to argue in this first part of chapter four.

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And then the seventh statement, we should be diligent to enter it by belief. We should be diligent to enter it by belief.

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Because if you do not, you will be cut off from God's rest and never enjoy it for all of eternity. So those are the seven statements.

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So is it the promised land, the Sabbath or salvation in Christ? Yes. The promised land was an

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Old Testament anticipation of that. The Sabbath was an Old Testament experience and anticipation of that.

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And salvation in Jesus Christ is the fullness of it. There are all these different elements. It is this part of, what is it?

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It is the righteousness, the peace, the grace, the fellowship, the settled tranquility, the love of God, the part of His nature that we get to commune and fellowship with because we are in Him and He is in us and the

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Father is in the Son and the Son is in the Father. We have fellowship and union and love and peace and rest in the triune

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God. And we get to enjoy Him. And we enjoy that now, and we will enjoy that fully in the future.

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That is what it means by God's rest in this passage. This is why the author likens it to a number of different things.

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And I think that that entire concept is something that Old Testament Jews would have understood. The original audience would have understood it far better than we do.

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So now we move on to chapter 4. So we've covered what it is. And now we're going to look at this complex argument that he lays out.

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Where is he going with this? And I suggested to you last time that in chapter 4, verses 9 and 10 and 11, we get the final conclusion of what he is driving at by talking about this rest.

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Verse 9, so there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For the one who has entered his rest has himself also rested from his works as God did from his.

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Therefore, let us be diligent to enter that rest so that no one will fall through following the same example of disobedience.

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So here are the two points that he's driving at. There remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, and we should be diligent to enter it.

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That's the point that he wants to make. This rest is still available and we should be diligent to enter it. So that is where he is going with the argument.

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And in verses 1 through 3, and that's the passage that we're going to be looking at this morning. In verses 1 through 3, he is basically answering this question, have we missed the rest of God?

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Have we missed God's rest if we're in Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ alone? That's the first stage of this argument.

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He's going to walk us through, and I think it's going to take us a couple of weeks to sort of work through where he's going. We have to lay the foundation.

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Have you and I, by being in Jesus Christ, missed God's rest? Or do we have God's rest because we're in Jesus Christ?

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That's what he says in verses 1 through 3. So let's read those three verses together, and then we'll see that there is in verse 1, a cause for fear, and then there is in verses 2 and 3, a call to faith.

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There's a cause for fear and there's a call to faith. Chapter 4, verse 1, therefore let us fear if while a promise remains of entering his rest, any one of you may seem to have come short of it.

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For indeed, we have had good news preached to us just as they also, but the word they heard did not profit them because it was not united by faith in those who heard.

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For we who have believed enter that rest, just as he has said, as I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter my rest, although his works were finished from the foundation of the world.

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All right, that's verses 1 through 3. First, a cause for fear in verse 1. Notice what he says, therefore let us fear.

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Now, the word for fear there is not the word that would describe a sort of anxious, exhausting, terrorizing terror of God, like the fear that a sinner should feel before a holy and righteous and just God because of their sin.

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That's not the type of fear that is being spoken of there. This type of fear is the type of fear that is a holy and reverential awe.

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All right, it's not the fear that you have, for instance, of a serial killer. It's the fear that you should have of your parents and disobeying them.

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It's the fear that you ought to have for a law enforcement official, a holy and reverential awe, a love and respect.

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Some of you are smirking because the only law enforcement official that you're aware of is Rich Black, so I'm not talking about him. Imagine a different law enforcement official.

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It's the type of reverence and respect you should have for somebody who is in authority and has power over you, but it has an element of love with it as well, has an element of love with it.

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So there is this reverential awe, this respect, this fear and honor, and it has a sobering element to it.

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It is something we ought to fear and we ought to have a sense of sobriety before God. So what the author is saying is that there is, and we should have, this reverential awe that makes us approach things like this with a measure of sobriety and seriousness.

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We ought not to take this command to enter into God's rest flippantly or lightly. If you're an unbeliever sitting here this morning, you've never trusted

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Jesus Christ, the message of this text, you ought to take this with all seriousness. Be sober about this.

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You ought to have a proper fear regarding the things that are spoken of in this passage. And he's making an argument that there remains still in verse one, we ought to have this fear if while a promise remains of entering his rest, any one of us may seem to come short of it.

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This is the cause for fear. Notice that he says a promise remains of entering his rest. Now that, ultimately, that's where he's going through the course of this argument.

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So he kind of lays out his conclusion here at the beginning because he gets down to verse nine. Therefore, a promise remains of entering his rest.

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What the author wants to show is that because this rest is part of God's nature and God invites us to enjoy and fellowship with him in that rest, because as long as God is

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God and you have breath in your lungs, you are able to take advantage of that. God calls you into it.

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He commands you into it. He brings you into it. By his grace, it is part of him. He enjoys this fellowship. And as a believer, you are able to enjoy that rest.

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By his grace, you have been brought into it. And so there remains this promise from God that we can enter into this rest, that this rest is available to us today.

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The failure of the wilderness generation, those who fail to enter into the promised land, that does not nullify this offer.

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The failure of all of our ancestors does not nullify this offer. As long as God is God, and by his grace we live, you can enter in.

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You are commanded to enter in. You are expected to enter in. God invites you to enjoy him and to enjoy this rest.

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And so if you refuse to enjoy this rest and you refuse to repent and believe, you have nobody to blame but yourself. It's not as if God has changed.

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It is there. Come and drink, God says. And so it remains, this promise remains of entering into his rest.

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I want you to notice something here. The nature of this promise, there was a promise to the Old Testament generation, wasn't there?

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The group that came out of Egypt and was about to enter into the land, yeah, the land of promise, the promised land, what was the promise to them?

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Believe, and God will bring you into this, you will enjoy fellowship and union and love and relationship and the provision and protection of God in the land that he has given to you.

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This is what God has promised. Believe, and you can have that. What is the promise to us?

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That we can be delivered from the slavery of sin and by God's grace we can be brought into a relationship and a fellowship with him and enjoy communion with God on the basis of what?

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Faith. So just as there was a promise in the Old Testament and the Old Covenant that God would share his rest with those who would believe in him, so there is the same promise to us today, and that promise remains.

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And the gospel is both a promise and it is a command. And I want you, we need to think of the gospel in these terms.

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The gospel is not an invitation that we accept or reject. The gospel is a command, repent and believe. That's the command of the gospel.

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God now commands all men to repent. That is the declaration that goes out. Christ, when he began his preaching ministry, said, repent for the kingdom of God is at hand.

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Paul on Mars Hill in Acts chapter 17 said, God now commands all men to repent.

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Turn from your sin and believe. That's the command essence of the gospel. So when we present the gospel, we're not pitching a product.

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We're not marketing something. We're not trying to appeal to somebody, make something appealable to people so that they would embrace it and take it.

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We're not trying to sell something in the gospel. We're simply communicating what God has commanded men to do. Repent and believe.

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For God has fixed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness through a man whom he has appointed having furnished proof to all men by raising him from the dead.

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Right? That is the command of the gospel. But the gospel is also a promise. Believe in the

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Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. That's the command. You will be saved.

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That's the promise. So the gospel is both a command and it is a promise. And there are all kinds of elements of the gospel message which are promises to us.

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The one who comes to the son, he will in no wise ever cast off. That is his promise.

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Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will live. You will have eternal life. And he will protect you and he will raise you up at the last day.

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That's a promise. He will not cast you off. He will raise you up at the last day. He will hold you secure all the way to the end.

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You will enjoy the living water. You will enjoy the bread of life. You will enjoy fellowship with God. You will have your sins forgiven.

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You will have your conscience cleansed. You will enjoy a clean conscience and a renewed heart and new affections.

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All of those are the promises of the gospel. There still remains this promise that you may enter into the rest of God.

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And he will never cast you off. Now, if he will never cast you off and if you are secure in Jesus Christ, then tell me what in the world does the end of verse one mean when he says in verse one, any one of you may seem to have come short of it.

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Let us fear if while this promise remains, any one of you may seem to have come short of it.

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Is it possible for a believer who has entered into God's rest to fall out of God's rest and then come short of God's rest?

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That is what it seems to suggest, right? Let us fear if while this promise is there, any one of you may seem to have fallen short of it or come short of it.

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There's an interesting textual issue with this verse. And the textual issue is this, it revolves around the definition of that word seem, lest any one of you seem to have come short of it.

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Now, there are two different ways of understanding the verse. Let me give them to you. Obviously, there's going to be the way of understanding the verse that is promoted and advocated by those who believe it is possible for someone to lose their salvation.

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Then there's going to be a way of understanding the verse that is advocated and supported by those who believe that we are secure in our salvation.

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So let me give to you the heretical. No, I didn't say heretical. I meant the wrong view first. Here's the wrong view that it's possible to lose your salvation.

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Here's what they would say. They would say that having entered into that rest, if I fail to believe or I fail to live righteously, or I fail to be diligent to enter it or to keep it or to strive or to hold onto it, that I might slip back into unbelief and sin far enough that I will actually fall in short of enjoying that rest.

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And if I fall short of enjoying that rest, I have lost my salvation. So it's possible for those who have entered in the past to not persevere or not continue in such a way that they actually, on judgment day, are regarded by God as having fallen short.

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Now, here's how they would define the word seem. The word seem there is a word that means to suppose, to presume, to assume, to think, to deem, to regard, or to have something in mind.

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See what the essential nature of that word is to think or to presume, to assume, to have something in mind, to regard it as so, or to think it as so.

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So in the perspective of those who believe you can lose your salvation, they would say that this would be God's assessment of you, that you having fallen into unbelief and having slipped back in your sin to a certain point that on judgment day,

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God would regard you as having fallen short of that rest, and therefore you would perish or go to hell because you didn't maintain it enough.

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So it is God then who does the seeming or the thinking regarding you concerning you falling short of it.

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That's how they would explain that. For those who believe that we are secure in our salvation, there is a far more natural,

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I think, understanding of what the verse means, especially in light of the original audience, when we consider to whom this book was written.

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Now, I would remind you to whom this book was written. It was written to Jews whose ancestors had forfeited the rest, whose ancestors themselves had had an opportunity to enter in, but denied it and rejected it and perished in the wilderness because of their unbelief.

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These same Jews, 40 years earlier, before the writing of this book, it's almost 40 years earlier, had crucified the

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Messiah and delivered him over to death. And these Jews to whom the book is written, they had come out of a system of religion that revolved around the temple and the sacrifices and the offerings and the feasts and the festivals and a priesthood and a location and blood and all the smells and bells and the liturgy and everything that went with their

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Old Testament Judaism. They had abandoned all of that, left all of that behind so that they could turn to Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ alone,

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Him alone. And now after turning from all of that, they're faced with soft persecution.

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They have every reason to expect that hard persecution is soon to follow because some of them have forfeited even their lands and their possessions have been seized.

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And they're looking forward to this kingdom that is to come with a city and foundation whose maker and builder is

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God. They have this as their anticipation, their expectation. They've abandoned all of that. And now, and I shouldn't even say it like this, but we have to say it like this, all they have is

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Jesus. Now put yourself in the mindset of a first century Jew. You're not doing sacrifices.

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God commanded the sacrifices. You're not doing the festivals and the feasts. You're not trusting in the priesthood or His intercession.

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You're not down at the temple every day or every week giving your tithes and giving your offerings. You have walked away from all of that and all you have is

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Jesus. You might be tempted to think that in giving up all of that, that you might actually miss

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God's rest if you traded in for Jesus. Get that?

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I've walked away from all of this and all I have is Jesus. Will I, if all

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I have is Jesus, will I miss that rest? Is Jesus enough?

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If we're giving up all of that, is Jesus enough? Now, since the word seem means to think or to assume or to presume, assume or to regard as something, read the verse again with that in mind.

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Therefore, let us fear if this promise remains and while it remains, you think you have come short of it.

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Do you see the warning? Don't think that having walked away from all of that, that you're actually going to come short of that rest.

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Look at verse three, we who have believed enter that rest. That's the certainty of it. If I walk away from all of this and I just believe in Christ, all

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I have is belief. I don't do the temple sacrifices. I don't do the offerings. I'm not trusting in the priest. I turn my back on all of that.

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I walk away. All I have is belief and all I have is Jesus. If that's all I have, am I going to miss the rest?

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Because some of these people that were in the original audience are thinking about turning back to that. There is an allure to the trappings and the ceremony and all the bells and smells and the whistles and the liturgy and everything that they had grown up with.

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They long to go back to that. They want to go back to that. And some of them may actually think that they would fall short of God's rest if they left all of that and only had

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Jesus. And what the author is saying is you have left the lesser for the greater. You have left the symbolism for the substance.

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You have left the shadow for the reality. Don't think that having turned from that and embraced

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Jesus that you will enter. Those who believe enter the rest. It is belief. Is belief enough? Is my faith in Christ enough?

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If I just have Jesus, do I have enough to get his rest? And the answer is an unequivocal yes. So what he is warning the readers about is them thinking that Jesus would not be sufficient and that they would need to add something to that in order to make sure that they didn't miss

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God's rest. Now that danger existed back then and that danger exists in a number of different forms today as well.

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I run into people who think that though they would say, I should say put it this way, though they would say that Jesus is absolutely enough, that he is sufficient.

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I don't need anything but Jesus and Jesus alone. As soon as those words get done leaving their mouth, they get busy adding something else to that.

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And I run into people who do this with the Old Testament, the trappings of the Old Testament. They are in many ways just like the

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Hebrews to whom this was written. They would say that Jesus is enough, but he's enough.

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But I also want to enjoy the Passover Seder in my home. And I also want to enjoy the feast and the festivals.

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I kind of want to dress a little bit like a Jew and observe the dietary laws and maybe even just keep the

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Sabbath. And there's all of this stuff that goes with the Old Covenant that I really enjoy because participating in those things makes me feel fulfilled.

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It makes me feel sanctified. It makes me feel close to God. I get something out of participating in all of these things.

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Is Jesus enough for them? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, they would say. But they add to their trust in Jesus all of these other things, whether it's the ceremonies or they're not sacrificing sheep in their backyard or anything like that.

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They're not making a pilgrimage to Jerusalem three times a year, nothing like that. But everything that they can embrace from that Old Covenant, they bring into their

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Christianity. Why? Because it makes them feel closer to God. And the biblical perspective on that is all of that, every last bit of it is unnecessary.

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You don't need any of it. Well, not the dietary laws?

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No. Not the Sabbath? No. Not the dress? No. Not the ceremonial laws?

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None of it. The feast, the festivals, the priesthood, it's all gone. All of that has been taken away. And to put it in a crass sense, all you have is

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Jesus. And the point of the passages, all you need is Jesus. You don't need all those other things. Now, some people don't necessarily do that with Old Testament things, but they do it with a lot of modern things as well.

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In other ways, they'll say, well, I know that I have Jesus, but just in case, I want to make sure that I've got the intercession of the saints or the intercession of Mary or my time with the priest or a sacrifice of the mass or my church attendance or my

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Sabbath keeping or my, and they just keep adding stuff to it. We ought to fear if we ever get in our minds to the point of thinking that in Jesus, we would fall short if we just had him and him alone, that we would fall short of entering into God's rest.

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And the author of Hebrews says, you should fear lest you think while this promise remains that God has promised you, those who believe enter in.

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That is his promise. And that stands, that remains. You ought to fear if you ever start to think that in Christ, you would actually start to fall short of that or come short of that rest.

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So here's the question. If all I have is Jesus and Jesus is all I have, is that sufficient to bring me into God's rest?

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Yes. That's what he's arguing. Yes. Jesus is the greater.

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He's the greater Moses. He's the greater David. He's the greater Aaron. He's the greater sacrifice. He's the greater high priest.

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He's greater in every way. He's greater than the angels. He's greater than everything else. All of those other things are just shadows and pictures of what was to come.

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They're looking forward to it and anticipating it. And now that the real, the substance has come, you need nothing else.

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Everything you need for God's rest, the totality of it is in Jesus Christ. Some people are terrified to think that Jesus is all they need for all of their justification, all of their sanctification, all of their security, and all of their glorification.

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Because there is this temptation in our hearts to think, I got to have something more. Something more makes me feel closer to God.

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Something more makes me feel loved and accepted. Something more makes me feel holier, more righteous, more accepted before God.

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All of that is unnecessary. We have to get to the point as Christians where we just simply say, if what

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I have in Jesus is enough, it is enough. And something else may make me feel closer to God. It is entirely unnecessary.

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We can stand as New Testament, New Covenant believers and rest solely in Christ and Christ alone.

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And we ought to fear if we ever start to think that by just having Him, we're falling short of God's rest.

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That is the cause of fear. Ever thinking that that is not enough. Every believer is called to embrace fully

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Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ alone and to eschew everything that might tempt us to think that that is not sufficient.

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He is sufficient in every way to give us the totality of all that God has for the believer.

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Do you believe, do you think, do you trust and do you live as if everything that God has for you is in Christ and Christ alone?

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Everything God has for you is in Christ and Christ alone. He hasn't reserved anything else outside of that, that you have to reach out and get if you are already in Jesus Christ.

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That's the cause for fear. Now look at the call to faith. Look at the call to faith in verses two and three.

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Verse two, for indeed we have had good news preached to us just as they also, but the word they heard did not profit them because it was not united by faith in those who heard.

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For we who have believed enter that rest, just as he said, as I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter my rest. So there is a comparison here between the

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Old Testament wilderness generation who failed to enter into the promised land and us. And what is the comparison?

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Both of us had good news preached to us. Verse two, when he says, for indeed we have had good news preached to us just as they also, who is the they?

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It's the wilderness generation whom God swore in his wrath, they shall not enter my rest. And we looked at that at the end of verse 18 and 19, to whom did

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God swear this? To the wilderness generation who came out of Egypt and they refused to enter and God swore then they will not enter my rest.

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Well, they had a good news. They had a message preached to them, which was good news. Now, just as the promise is different for each of us, their promise was to enter into a physical land, which was a foreshadowing of a greater reality.

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Our promise is to enter into Jesus Christ with the fulfillment of all that was pictured in the Old Testament.

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Their promises are different. They're different promises of the same nature. So it is with the good news that is preached to us.

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What was the good news preached to them? Delivered you from bondage. There is a land over here.

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Enter into it by faith. Just enter in, believe me, trust me and enter into that. And they said, no.

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Now that was the good news. You have a land prepared. You have something prepared that you have not worked for. Enter into it.

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What is the good news that's been preached to us? We have in Jesus Christ something prepared for us that we have not worked for.

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Enter in by faith. Do you see the parallel, the similarities? They had a good news preached to them, a promise, a message, an offer.

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We have good news preached to us, a certain message, the gospel message and a promise that we shall enter into God's rest.

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The good news of the gospel has come to us. There is good news that was given to them. What is the difference?

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The similarities are there, but what is the difference between the wilderness generation and we who have believed? Look at the rest of verse two.

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They heard, they heard this also, but the word they heard did not profit them because it was not united by faith.

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What was the difference between the wilderness generation and us? I should say those who, those here who have believed, what is the difference?

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It was faith. The word united there is a word that means mixed to mix together. Like you put various elements into a recipe and you mix them all together, blend them all together.

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That's kind of the idea there. We have good news preached to us. They had good news preached to them, but what is the difference? Why have we entered into God's rest?

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Verse three, those who believe enter into the rest. Why do we do that? And they did not because the promise that they heard, the word that they heard was not united or mixed or combined with faith in the heart of the recipient.

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So the difference is this. We have heard the word of God and received it by faith. They heard the promises of God and rejected it and did not receive it by faith.

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Now, lest any one of us for any moment or even a moment think that we have something of which to boast, we just need to remind ourselves of what scripture says concerning the deadness of man in sin and the inability of man to even turn from his sin or divorce himself from his sin.

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And what scripture says concerning the nature of that saving faith. A saving faith is a gift from God graciously given to us through the working of the spirit of regeneration who regenerates our hearts and enables us to believe and grants us the gift of repentance and faith.

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So it is all God's doing so we can have, we have nothing of which to boast. That's the point. We have nothing of which to boast.

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So we can't brag and say, well, we are better than the wilderness generation because we believe they didn't believe, but we did believe we were wiser, smarter, stronger, more spiritual, more attuned to the will of God.

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So we believed when they didn't, we can't boast for one moment. The truth is that the promise of God when it came to us was mixed with the faith to believe in the heart of we who received it.

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Stone -cold dead hearts like those in the wilderness generation had, they are unable to believe and unable to trust the promises of God.

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We need a regenerating and a renewing work of God in our hearts so that we can believe, so that we will believe, so that we do believe.

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The difference between them and us is that the word came to us mixed or mingled with the faith to believe it.

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And they only had the word preached to them. All they heard was the word. And it profited them nothing, verse two says.

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It did not profit them because it was united by faith in those who heard. It was not mixed with faith in those who heard.

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So hearing the word preached, hearing the promise itself did them no good. And the same thing is true with the gospel today.

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It falls upon the ears of millions who hear the gospel preached, but it does them no good. It profits them nothing.

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Why? Because it is not, it is not united or mixed with faith. Hell will be filled with millions of people who have heard the same gospel that fell on your ears, that fell on theirs, and it wasn't mixed with faith in those who believe.

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And they will perish. Just as the wilderness generation, they heard the good news, they heard the promise of God, but it wasn't mingled with faith.

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And so their bodies died in the wilderness, fell in the wilderness. What good did the promise do them if they didn't receive it by faith?

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What good did it do them? It did them no good. They perished. Hearing the truth of the gospel, not responding to it by believing and trusting that it is so, does the hearer no good whatsoever.

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It only hardens their heart, serves to harden their heart and increase their accountability and their judgment before God, because they end up rejecting the truth when they hear it over and over again.

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The difference between those who have believed, who have entered his rest, and the wilderness generation, both had a message.

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Both of them were presented good news, but only one, that is those who have believed and trusted, have entered that rest, because only one did the promise come with the faith to believe.

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So hearing only does them no good. As Hebrews 3 .19 says, they failed to enter. They were unable to enter because of unbelief.

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And so they missed it. They missed God's rest. They missed the physical enjoyment of it, and they missed the blessing of eternal life and enjoying communion with their

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God, because they would not believe. They did not trust him. So verse 3 says, for we who have believed enter that rest, just as he said, as I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter my rest.

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He's distinguishing here between those who did not believe,

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God swore, they shall not enter my rest, and we who have believed. We believe and those who believe enter that rest.

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That's a present tense, by the way, which seems to indicate that it is something that we are entering into, that we are enjoying currently.

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We are not only have we entered it at the moment that we believe in terms of its certainty, we also enter it currently as we are believing and trusting that itself is the work of God, and we will enter into that future expression of his rest.

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So there is a multifaceted way of understanding the rest of God. Somebody, I think it was

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Deidre asked me yesterday, she read something on Facebook, and she said, so is it accurate to say that salvation is a one -time event, or is it a continuing event?

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I said, well, it depends on what you mean by that. It is a one -time event in the sense that I have believed unto salvation, and when

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I did that, I can only do that once. It's not like I believe for salvation, and then six months later, I'm unsaved again, and I believe again, but salvation is also something that God does continually.

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He is saved. We are being saved from the wrath that is to come. Salvation is both a past event when I believed and was saved, it is a continuing process whereby

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I am continually being saved from the penalty of sin and from the power of sin, and it is a future reality when

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I will be saved entirely from the very presence of sin. So salvation is a past, a one -time event, a continuing event, and a future event.

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It depends on what aspect of salvation that we're talking about. Same thing with entering God's rest. We who have believed enter continually that rest.

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We currently possess an enjoyment of that fellowship with God that is the part and portion of those who have believed.

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Those who do not believe do not enter that rest. Now, there's one final aspect of this passage that I want to draw to your attention before we close.

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We have seen throughout the book of Hebrews that there are these comparisons that are drawn, right? Jesus is greater than the angels, chapters one and two.

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Jesus is greater than Moses, chapters three and four. Jesus is greater than Joshua, which we're going to look at in a little bit. He's greater than the priesthood, than Aaron, than the sacrifices, etc.

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Jesus is the greater of all of these things. Everything else was a symbol, a poor foreshadowing of the ultimate substance in reality, which is

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Jesus Christ. So the author has been drawing these comparisons in order to show to the people that having abandoned all of that, you're not forfeiting the greater for the lesser.

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You're actually coming to the greater and walking away from the lesser. He's greater than all of these things. There's one other way in which

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Jesus is greater than Moses, and that is this. The rest that he offers is greater than the rest that the

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Old Testament saints were offered. Notice that. What rest were they offered?

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Enter into the promised land. They were offered a chunk of real estate in the

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Middle East. Now, if real estate is your thing, that sounds great, but I'm here to tell you that a chunk of real estate in the

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Middle East is nothing compared to what you get in Jesus Christ. We step into the kingdom, we get all that real estate anyway, and the world, and the planets, and the universe, the entire kingdom.

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He's the heir of all things. He gives it all to his people. We get it all in the end anyway. They were offered a piece of physical land.

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We are offered not just that physical land, but everything else as well. The rest that he offers is greater.

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They were offered that rest, that piece of real estate, and fellowship with their God in the terms of the Mosaic and the

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Old Covenant, and the enjoyment of all those symbols and foreshadowings of that. What do we get in Jesus Christ? It's a greater rest.

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We get it all. So, not only is Jesus greater than the angels and greater than Moses, the rest that he offers is greater than the rest offered to the

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Old Testament saints. And if the rest that he offers is greater than that which is offered to the

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Old Testament saints, then the accountability and the judgment for rejecting that rest is going to be greater than the accountability and judgment for rejecting the rest that was offered to the

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Old Testament saints. The rest is greater, and the judgment for rejecting it is greater as well.

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Let's bow our heads. Father, we thank you that by your mercy and by your kindness that you have caused us to enter into this rest that is ours in Jesus Christ.

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Your mercy is good. Your loving kindness is everlasting. Your purposes never change, which means that your purposes for us can never change.

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And we pray that you would steal these truths into our hearts and drill them deep down inside of us so that we may never forget the sufficiency that we have in the person of Jesus Christ.

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May we never long for something more, but find our satisfaction, our fulfillment, all that we need for our justification, our sanctification, and ultimately our glorification in the person of Christ.

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Never let our hearts wander from these truths. Never let our hearts desire more and be deceived into thinking that there is more for us than what you provide for us in your

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Son. We thank you for your grace to us, and we thank you that you have saved us, secure us everlastingly.

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We pray, Father, that this truth may be the part and portion for all who believe, that we may depart from here with the love of the

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Father and the fellowship of the Spirit and the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, that it may be upon all those who are yours in Christ's name.