Finding “Rest” in God  | Hebrews

Hebrews 3-4

If you have got your Bible, I am going to read from Hebrews 3 and into Hebrews 4 today.

Before I read these particular verses, let me just acknowledge that we can only skim across this wonderful and deep epistle to the Hebrews, like skimming a stone across a lake; it will just bound at one point and then bounce and bounce. And we just have to have a few bounces across this vast and very deep lake that is the book of Hebrews.

I am trying to pull out the main, the key themes. We talked last week about the supremacy of Christ and the fact that in Christ God has spoken. Having spoken, that requires a response, and we are told to listen carefully to what He says and to not harden our hearts to His truth.

Now I want to read from Hebrews 3:7. I am going to read down to Hebrews 4:2.

It begins actually by quoting from the book of Psalms, which is a great background psalm to this section. But in Hebrews 3:7,

“So, as the Holy Spirit says: ‘Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion, during the time you tested me in the desert, where your fathers tested and tried me and for forty years saw that I did.

“‘That is why I was angry with that generation, and I said, “Their hearts are always going astray, and they have not known my ways.”

“‘So I declared on oath in my anger, “They will never enter my rest.”’

“See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God.

“But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.

“We have come to share in Christ if we hold firmly till the end the confidence, we had at first.

“As has just been said: ‘Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion.’

“Who were they who heard and rebelled? Were they not all those Moses led out of Egypt?

“And with whom was he angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the desert?

“And to whom did God swear that they would never enter his rest if not to those who disobeyed?

“So we see that they were not able to enter, because of their unbelief.

“Therefore, since the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us be careful that none of you be found to have fallen short of it.

“For we also have had the gospel preached to us, just as they did; but the message they heard was of no value to them, because those who heard did not combine it with faith.

“Now we who have believed enter that rest.”

That’s where I am going to stop.

Before narrowing down what I want to say to this particular passage, let me just give you the big picture of Hebrews of which this section is a part.

Hebrews, by and large, is a commentary on the Old Testament, and in particular, on what we call the Pentateuch, and in particular, the period from Exodus to Deuteronomy.

It builds a bridge between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant. Theologians speak about progressive revelation.

By that we mean that God has not given us everything in the first chapter of the Bible. And that as you go through the Bible up to the very end, there is a progressive revelation of truth that we are intended to understand, now completed in the whole of the Scripture.

But the nature of the progress is not from part-truth to whole truth; the progress is from promise to fulfillment.

So, you find in the book of Genesis things that are promised, little teasers that are thrown out and we scratch our head and say, “I wonder what that really is all about.”

And we get to the New Testament and we find that all those little promises that we didn’t always understand even as promises are brought to fulfillment supremely in the person, the work of Jesus Christ.

Now Hebrews builds a bridge from the promises of this early period in Israel’s history, the promises made to Abraham, promises made to Moses, promises made to Joshua, promises made to the prophets, to their fulfilment in the Lord Jesus Christ.

And the particular running story in the background of Hebrews is the story of the Israelites on their journey from Egypt where God had liberated them from their bondage and slavery to the land of Canaan, the land He had promised to them.

The journey lasted forty years walking through the wilderness. It included the giving of the Law on Mount Sinai. It included the setting up of the tabernacle. All these are important aspects of the book of Hebrews.

It never mentions the temple, by the way, which became the permanent replacement of the tabernacle. This is all the wilderness years that the writer to the Hebrews is looking at.

He talks about Moses on a number of occasions, about the priesthood of Aaron. He never mentions Solomon, who was the builder of the later temple.

And therefore, to understand what is being written here, we need to know something of that Old Testament story and why he takes it as a picture, a type if you like, of the life that you and I have been called to live.

You remember that the Israelites had gone to Egypt from Canaan during a famine.

One of the sons of Jacob (whose name was later changed to Israel) was Joseph, whose brothers had sold him to some slave traders who took him down to Egypt, auctioned him on the slave market, bought by a man called Potiphar; went to work in Potiphar’s home. Potiphar’s wife liked him and accused him later of trying to sexually abuse her.

He was thrown into prison, spent years in prison, and during that time he interpreted a few dreams, including a butler who went back to the king where he had been a butler; went back to buttle (is that what butler’s do?) for the king.

The king had dreams he couldn’t understand. He said, “Well, there’s a man in prison who interpreted my dream. Why don’t you fetch him? His name is Joseph.”

He came in and interpreted the dream of Pharaoh – seven lean cows eating seven fat cows and remaining lean cows. And Joseph said, “I know what that means. You are going to go through seven years of plenty, good weather, plenty of rains, and then through seven years of famine. And during the years of plenty you need to store up enough food to survive through the years of famine.”

And so, Pharaoh made Joseph the prime minister under Pharaoh’s leadership of the whole nation with the specific task of preparing for the years of famine.

Well, when the years of famine came, it has spread up to Canaan and Joseph’s brothers came to buy food in Egypt. And they were brought before Joseph – they didn’t know him because they assumed him long dead, but he recognized them.

And they bowed down in front of him. He didn’t tell them who he was. He played a few little tricks with them.

But eventually he did reveal who he was and he said, “Go back home and get my father (who was now an old man) Jacob and bring him back and all of you come and live here in Egypt during this famine.”

And they came and the Egyptians gave them some of the most luscious land in a place called Goshen in the Nile Delta. And they stayed there and they stayed there and they stayed there and they stayed there and they stayed there, and they stayed there for 400 years.

That’s a long period. That’s like going back to late 1400’s; 430 years, in fact, they stayed there. Back in the late 1400’s when the first European explorers were coming to Canada – that’s how far back it was in their history.

And they did not assimilate during that time. They multiplied over the years – much faster, it seems, than the Egyptians did.

And so, after 400 years the Pharaoh at that time became concerned, they might outnumber the Egyptians and overrun the land and make it their own. And so, he reduced them to slavery.

We don’t know how many years they were in slavery, but they were there for many years.

And then God raised up Moses. Again, his story is a fascinating one. He was a Jew but brought up in the royal palace, as you probably remember the story – no time to tell it to you if you don’t.

And Moses went to Pharaoh, sent by God, to say, “Let My people go.”

And Pharaoh said, “No, I don’t know your God. I will not let them go.”

And so, God began to send plagues against the Egyptians – ten plagues. The tenth, which was the most awful, which was the death of the firstborn son in every Egyptian family, the firstborn in every Egyptian livestock; every Egyptian sheep and cow and camel died that night when the angel of death came over the land of Egypt.

But that night the Israelites did not go to bed. They took a lamb for each family and they slew the lamb. They marked the doorpost of their home with the blood of the lamb and they ate the meat of that lamb, ready to run in the strength of that lamb the moment the word came, “You are a free people.”

And that, of course, is a beautiful picture and foreshadowing of Jesus Christ. When John the Baptist introduced Jesus at His baptism, he said, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”

And every Jew knew what he was talking about because they had re-enacted the Sabbath [Passover?] every year.

Paul talks about Christ our Passover Lamb has been sacrificed for us.

And so, this picture of coming out of Egypt covered and protected by the shed blood of the lamb and in the energy of the meat of the lamb, they got to the Red Sea and God opened the Red Sea. It’s another picture.

There are many pictures and types. Type is the word often used in the Old Testament of New Testament truth. And there are many in this story.

The Passover lamb is the type of Christ. Going through the Red Sea is a type of baptism because in 1 Corinthians 10 [vs.2] it speaks of

“They all passed through the sea. They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea.”

Beautiful picture of baptism because it is where they left their old master buried behind them because, you remember, Pharaoh was drowned behind them in the Red Sea.

And then God fed them in the wilderness supernaturally with manna. Again, manna is a type, a picture of Christ. When Jesus, in conversation with the Pharisees about the manna that God provided them, He said to them, “I am the Bread of Life. It’s a picture of Me.”

And He fed them water from the rock. And as 1 Corinthians 10 [vs. 3, 4] says there,

“They drank from the same spiritual drink…that rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ.”

We must be very careful not to superimpose our own interpretation of images and events in the Old Testament, but where the New Testament says, “that equals Christ, that equals the Christian life, that equals sin,” etc. then we must take them seriously and legitimately as images that we can use to understand the Christian life.

So, Egypt is a picture of being bound in sin in the New Testament.

The exodus is coming out of sin.

The Passover lamb is Christ dying for us.

The Red Sea is coming through as a picture of baptism.

The manna is the bread of life.

The water from the rock is Christ.

Canaan, here in Hebrews 4, is a land of resting in the sufficiency of God.

However, if that was the story of the Israelites, the point that is being made in Hebrews is that things went drastically wrong.

It says there in Hebrews 3:10,

“I was angry with that generation.”

(This is the generation God has redeemed and rescued and brought out of Egypt.”

“I said, ‘Their hearts are always going astray, and they have not known my ways.’”

Why was God angry with them?

Well, let me just read you some extracts from the passage we just read in Hebrews 3:9. He says,

“Your fathers tested me in the desert.”

“He was angry with that generation. He was angry for forty years. Their hearts were going astray. They rebelled. They sinned. They did not enter Canaan because of their unbelief. He declared they would never enter their rest.”

Now these were all quotations as to why God was angry with His people.

By the way, be careful about the idea that God is never angry with His people because in the Scripture He sometimes is.

If we are turning our backs and living in rebellion, then we come under His chastisement and His discipline, as they did in the wilderness.

And during those forty years that they wandered in the wilderness, every fighting man who was over the age of twenty when they left Egypt, died and was buried in the wilderness, with the exception of two men who we will see in a moment.

Now the journey from Egypt to Canaan should have taken eleven days. We are told that in Deuteronomy 1:2.

“It takes eleven days to go from Horeb” (that’s where God met Moses at the burning bush.) “… to Kadesh Barnea” (which is the southern border of Canaan at which point they were to have gone in and entered the land).

It is less than 500 kilometres. I have made the journey myself. I have gone on a bus from Egypt through to Jerusalem through the Sinai desert. It took about six hours including a stop at the border. It’s not far at all. It’s about the distance from Montreal to Toronto.

Just imagine a group of people leaving Montreal in 1976, and someone says, “They are coming closer! They have just reached Scarborough. It’s taken them forty years to get there.”

I worked out that they travelled an average of 250 metres per day.

The reason God brought them out of Egypt was not just to make life easier for them, to get the slave masters off their backs so they would no longer have to listen to the crack of the whip and the abuse of the men who were governing them and driving them. That would have been wonderful in itself.

But the reason God brought them out of Egypt was to bring them into Canaan, a land He described as “flowing with milk and honey,” where everything they would need would be available to them, where they would fulfill their destiny, where they would be restored to the purpose for which God set Abraham apart and become a blessing to the world.

Coming out of Egypt was only a means to an end. It was not the end. The purpose was not to get you out of slavery, great as that was. It was to get them back into the place that God had settled Abraham centuries before, that they might be a blessing to the world.

And through the journey God sometimes reprimanded the people for still being in the wilderness after all these years.

Leviticus 25:38:

“I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt to give you the land of Canaan and to be your God.”

But you are stuck here.

Deuteronomy 6:23:

“He brought us out from there to bring us in and give us the land that he promised on oath to our forefathers.”

He brought us out to bring us in. And we have come out, but you are not coming in. An eleven-day journey is taking all these wanderings around in circles for forty years.

If this is a picture of the Christian life - and the New Testament sees it that way – why has God saved us?

Is it to free us from the judgement of God? That’s a wonderful thing of course.

Is it to get us into heaven rather than going to hell?

All these of course are wonderful aspects, but the primary purpose for which God saved us is to reconcile us to God that we might rest in the fullness and the fullness of His sufficiency in our lives.

Often, we settle for skin of the teeth salvation. We get off the hook, you know, phew!

But we don’t intentionally live in that relationship for which we have been reconciled. We don’t submit to God. The theme of our lives is not “not my will but Yours be done” and we settle for a drab wilderness experience, having been brought out but have not really come into the life He has for us, a life a rest – we’ll see in just a moment what that involves.

You know marriage is a picture of this. When a person marries, according to the Bible, they do two things. They leave their father and mother. The culture generally was you stayed with your parents until you got married, so you leave your father and mother; that’s one side.

And then you cleave to your wife or husband, your spouse.

So, leaving, the negative, cleaving, the positive, are both part of marriage.

If you met somebody who is getting married next Saturday and all they could say to you was, “I am really looking forward to leaving home on Saturday,” you would probably say to yourself, “You are going to get a shock on Sunday” because whereas leaving home is necessary, that is not what marriage is about.

If you went to somebody’s 25th wedding anniversary, at the end of the meal the husband got up and said, “I want to testify that 25 years ago I left home and I have never been back since,” you would say, “How strange.”

But that’s how some of us talk about the Christian life. We know what we have come from, we know what we are delivered from and we are grateful for that – deeply grateful for that. But we have never come into the full quality of life that is intended for us.

There is an old evangelistic hymn that many of you will know and it sums this up.

Out of my bondage, sorrow and night
Jesus I come, Jesus I come
Into Your freedom, gladness and light,
Jesus I come to You

Out of my sickness, into Your health
Out of my want, into Your wealth
Out of my sin, into Yourself
Jesus I come to You

Israel had come out of their bondage, sorrow and night. But they did not come into His freedom, gladness and light.

And the reasons all had to do with their hearts. And we mentioned this last time, but in Hebrews 3:7-8,

“Do not harden your hearts.”

Hebrews 3:10:

“Their hearts were always going astray.”

Hebrews 3:15: They had a sinful, unbelieving heart.

It says a hardened heart, a wayward heart, an unbelieving heart. They had trusted God to bring them out when they applied that blood to the doorposts of their homes. Many of them would have wondered, “Will it really work? Will it really work? Will God really deliver us?” And He did, and they knew that He did.

But then their hearts had become hardened and they were not able to enter, Hebrews 3:18-19 says; they were not able to enter into this land of Canaan because of unbelief.

Do you know there are many Christians, many of us, remain the same year after year after year? We don’t grow; we don’t move on; we don’t see more of God this year than we knew a year ago. It is sheer unbelief.

I am not talking about your creed when I say that. “I believe in God the Father Almighty, the maker of heaven and earth and in Jesus Christ His Son,” etc. etc.

We believe all those facts, but the unbelief here was that there was no delighting in God, there was no joy in Him, no trust in Him, no expectancy of Him, no fresh experience of Him, just a dead creed.

It refers here to their inability to enter Canaan through unbelief and just very quickly the story behind that, because it is helpful to us; the story behind that is back in Numbers 13 and 14, when after two years, the Israelites had come to Kadesh-Barnea, which is on the southern tip of Canaan.

And God told them that now they should enter in there. And so, Moses selected twelve men, one from each of the twelve tribes, to go in advance and explore the land, spy out the land and bring the information back to them.

So, it says in Numbers 13:17,

“When Moses sent them to explore Canaan, he said, ‘Go up through the Negev and on into the hill country.

“‘See what the land is like and whether the people who liv there are strong or weak, few or many.

“‘What kind of land do they live in? Is it good or bad? What kind of towns do they live in? Are they unwalled or fortified?

“How is the soil? Is it fertile or poor? Are there trees on it or not? Do your best to bring back some of the fruit of the land.’”

And they did that. They went in and they examined exactly as Moses told them to do. They found out what the people were like. They checked out whether they were strong or weak, many or few. The towns – are they walled or unwalled? The land; is it fertile or not?

And they came back in Numbers 13:21.

“They went up and explored the land from the Desert of Zin as far as Rehob, toward Lebo-hamath.

“They went up through the Negev and came to Hebron, where Ahiman, Sheshai and Talmai, the descendants of Anak, lived. (Hebron had been built seven years before Zoan in Egypt.)

“When they reached the Valley of Eshcol, they cut off a branch bearing a single cluster of grapes. Two of them carried it on a pole between them, along with some pomegranates and figs.

“The placed was called the Valley of Eshcol because of the cluster of grapes the Israelites cut off there.

“At the end of forty days they returned from exploring the land.”

So, they come back from exploring the land and everything that God had said was true. In fact, when they came back, they reported back to Moses and the people that the land is rich. They had some grapes on their shoulders – it took two men to carry the grapes. They had pomegranates.

And they said, “The land does flow with milk and honey. God was right when He told us that.”

“But” they said, “there’s a problem. The people are powerful; the cities are large and fortified. There are giants in the land,” they said.

“There are tribes like the Amalekites and the Jebusites and Hittites (we don’t know why they are called the Hittites but it doesn’t sound good), and the Amorites (don’t care about anybody else, but I’m alright), the Canaanites.”

“We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we seemed the same to them.”

Now they were absolutely right in saying the land of promise was a land of warfare. That is true. But they came to the conclusion, “We can’t do this. We can’t do this.”

But there were two of the twelve – their names were Joshua and Caleb – and they saw it differently.

And in Numbers 14:6,

“Joshua’s son of Nun and Caleb son of Jephunneh, who were among those who had explored the land, tore their clothes and said to the entire Israelite assembly, ‘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 he 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.’”

What is the basis of Joshua and Caleb’s confidence? Was it that they had superior weapons? No. Was it that they had better training? No.

They said, “The Lord will lead us, the Lord will give it to us, the Lord is with us. This is not our business. “The God who called us is the God who will do it,” they said to the rest.

The key actually is in the word “give” in Numbers 13:1-2. God spoke of it as the land “I am giving you.” This word “give” is key.

I wrote a commentary on Joshua many years ago now and one of the things I noticed in working through Joshua was the number of times God said about Canaan, “I gave it to you, I gave it to you,” or “I will give it to you.”

And I went through and discovered that 28 times in the book of Joshua God said, “This is the land I give you.”

I was intrigued and I went back through Exodus on to Deuteronomy to see how many times God said that the land was the land He would give them. I discovered it was 72 times, which meant it was exactly 100 times God said about Canaan, “I will give it to you. I will give you the land. I will give you, give you, give you, I will give it to you, I will give it to you.”

When someone says, “I will give it to you,” what do you do?

“Oh, man alive, that’s going to be really difficult.”

Is that what you do?

“Well, I can’t do that.”

“No, I am going to give it to you.”

“Yeah, but, I can’t do that.”

“I am going to give it to you.”

“I haven’t got any money.”

“No, no, I am going to give it to you.”

What do you do when somebody gives you something?

You reach out an empty hand and say, “Thank you,” don’t you?

God has said 100 times, “I am taking responsibility for you entering into Canaan. I took responsibility for you to leave Egypt. It was I who brought you out. It is I who will bring you in.”

And you trusted God to bring you out but then you got too smart and you got so smart you said, you know, “Well we have got to be realistic about these things. We have to be practical about these things. Yes, God brought us out – that’s fantastic – but, you know, we don’t live in that kind of relationship all the time.”

People say it now; they said it then.

So, they took a vote and the ten outvoted the two. And they turned tail and went back into the wilderness in unbelief. And God told them in the desert in Numbers 14:29,

“In this desert your bodies will fall – every one of you twenty years old or more who was counted in the census and who has grumbled against me.

“Not one of you will enter the land I swore with uplifted hand to make your home, except Caleb son of Jephunneh and Joshua son of Nun.”

And for the next 38 years (this was two years into their journey) they went round in circles, not only living in the wilderness, but dying in the wilderness. And every single young man, twenty and over, who left Egypt had been buried in the wilderness with the sole exception of Joshua and Caleb when they came to Canaan.

And he summarizes in Hebrews 4:2 why they did not enter, why they did not experience God there because there it says,

“We also have had the gospel preached to us”

(This is the writer to the Hebrews now writing to his readers saying,)

“We also have had the gospel preached to us, just as they did…”

Different content but same purpose – God had something good for us as God had something good for them.

“…but the message they heard was of no value to them, because those who heard did not combine it with faith.”

They heard it but they didn’t combine it with faith.

Truth in itself doesn’t do us any good, you see. Hearing in itself doesn’t do us any good. Sitting here this morning in itself doesn’t do us any good.

It only does us good if we take the truth and we combine it with faith. That is, we say, “I understand what God is telling me to do, and I will do it in obedience to Him. And I understand what God Himself will do and I will trust Him to do it.”

It is truth combined with faith. And the purpose of the writer to the Hebrews in writing this was not to discourage the people and say, “What a pathetic history you folks have had, you know, your breeding is pretty poor when it comes to spiritual life and enjoying what God has for you,” but he writes this with enthusiasm in Hebrews 4:1,

“Since the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us be careful that none of you be found to have fallen short of it.”

There is a promise of entering His rest. What is this rest?

That word occurs eleven times in this chapter. What is this rest?

Well, he calls it a Sabbath rest in Hebrews 4:9.

“There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God.”

And then he defines it.

“For everyone who enters God’s rest also rests from his own work, just as God did from his.” (Hebrews 4:10)

So, there is an entering into something, what he calls God’s rest, where we rest from our own work.

What is meant by that?

When God rests on the seventh day, why did He rest? Was it because He was tired after six days of hard creating? (Monday was a busy day! Tuesday, man alive, Wednesday, that was a tough one. Thursday, Friday – I need a day off!)

Did God rest because He was tired on the seventh day?

No, He didn’t. God rested because He was finished. There’s a big difference.

The rest into which we are invited is the rest of God’s finished work, which is why, incidentally, there was no evening and morning of the seventh day, because it is a perpetual rest that we are to enjoy. Not a rest of sitting back and doing nothing, but a rest in the strength of God, the sufficiency of God, and in that we fight the battles.

I mean you go into the book of Joshua, which is a picture of this life of rest, and it is battle, battle, battle, warfare, warfare, warfare; that’s the Christian life. But in the midst of it, there is a rest.

When Joshua went into Canaan, they came to the Jordan River and they couldn’t cross it. And Joshua said, “Then the Lord will do amazing things among you. God is going to do this.”

“This is how you know the living God is among you. So, God, what do we do?”

“Take the Ark of the Covenant and walk into the river.”

And as they did, the waters dried up and so on.

So, it was God who did it. They had to obey, they had to act, but God did it.

Then they got to the city of Jericho and it was all tightly shut up it says, and Joshua said to the people, “God will deliver Jericho into our hands.”

Not to maybe sit back and say, “We just claim Jericho.”

“We’ll just claim Jericho,” whatever that means.

No, “What do we do?”

“Well, walk around the city.”

So, they walked around the city once a day for six days.

You know, what is the point of that? Just walk around the city walls and then at the end blow their trumpet and then go back to your camp. And then next morning, get up and do it another time.

Well, I think there probably was a tactic. I am sure when they walked the first morning and blew their trumpets there were folks in Jericho who said, “Did you see that funny group of people walking around this morning, and they blew a trumpet?”

“Yeah, I heard the trumpet.”

“Who are they?”

“I have no idea.”

Next morning: here they come again.

“Hey, there are some folks coming around again. See they blow the trumpet.

“Yeah, they do.”

I imagine the third morning a lot of people were up to see if it was going to happen again on the fourth morning, even more on the fifth morning. I think by the sixth morning, half the city was on the wall saying, “Who are these people? What are they doing?”

“And on the seventh day, walk around seven times.” At the end of seven times, you probably had everybody up on the wall, you know, to find out what’s going on. “And then blow your trumpet, shout for all you are worth, and the walls will fall down,” which is what happened.

Curiosity didn’t only kill the cat, you know. It could have been a factor in the people of Jericho.

But who did it? God did it. And they stepped into that situation saying, you know, “walking around the city six times and then seven times on the seventh day doesn’t in itself destroy our city. But we will do what He said and we will trust Him.”

And it is God who did it. And you can see that on through the book of Joshua as well.

And what he describes here is the rest. It is not the rest of inactivity. I mean a physical day off is good for us anyway, but that isn’t what this is about. We may be incredibly busy physically but we are resting in a strength outside of ourselves.

David wrote in Psalm 62,

“My soul finds rest in God alone.”

He wrote in Psalm 62:5.

“Find rest, O my soul, in God alone…He is my rock, my fortress, my refuge.

“Trust him at all times.”

When you talk in these terms people often start to feel, “Well, are you saying then that you don’t do anything?”

And I think we have already said that that is not the case. And actually, in Hebrews 4:11, I will give you this one last thing; he says,

“Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will fall by following their example of disobedience.”

Make every effort to enter that rest.

Does that sound like a contradiction?

Make every effort to enter and experience rest.

The best way I can describe it, and I may have used this illustration here before but I can find no record in my notes of ever having used this illustration here, but I have used it at different times over the years.

But the best way to illustrate this I think is to think about how a car works.

If I said to you, “What makes a car go?”

You would probably answer, “The engine under the hood.”

And you would, of course, be correct. With no engine the car is going to go nowhere. So, it’s the engine under the hood.

But many of you came here by car this morning and your cars are sitting outside with an engine under their hood doing nothing (at least you hope they are not).

Why?

Because, although you have an engine under the hood, an engine is not enough. You have got to get into that car and become the driver. And you put your key in it – if you have still got keys, and you start the engine and you put it into gear, you put your foot on the gas pedal and you begin to steer it down the road (or like some people, aim it down the road).

And if I were to come with you in your car, I might say to you, “What is making this car go? Is it the engine or is it the driver?”

The answer of course is it’s both.

The problem that many people make in the Christian life is they think it is just about being the driver; it’s just about me, it’s just what I do, it’s me trying, it’s me struggling, it’s me doing my best.

So, it’s like in the car, sitting behind the wheel and making all the noises a car would make and you look through the window and you are not going anywhere. So, you try even harder and you are going nowhere.

That’s one Christian that gets nowhere.

The other Christian that gets nowhere knows there is an engine under the hood and he sits there, starts it up, and he revs the engine up, you know, and every window in the neighborhood is rattling. People come out to see ‘what’s that noise out on the street there?’

But you never go anywhere. You look out the window and “I haven’t gone anywhere.”

Why not?

You can be a Christian, and say put your foot on the pedal, “Hallelujah, Praise the Lord! Isn’t God great?”

Yeah, so what?

It is the engine under the hood and the driver behind the wheel, and the driver takes the power of the engine and lets the car go down the road.

The Christian life is both obedience to God and dependence on God. “Make every effort to enter that rest.”

It consists of effort on our part and rest in His sufficiency. It consists of obedience on our part and trust in Him. It consists of discipline on our part and dependence in Him.

And when we do, what you find in Hebrews 4:2,

“The message they heard was of no value to them, because those who heard did not combine it with faith.”

Now we who do believe – that’s we who do exercise the faith – enter into that rest, he says.

And the message of the book of Hebrews in this section – Hebrews is full of warnings – don’t harden your heart, don’t fall away, don’t be guilty of unbelief, don’t deliberately go on sinning, don’t miss the provision of God. Do not try to live the Christian life by yourself because you will end up in the wilderness and do not sit back and do nothing; make every effort to enter into the rest of God.

So, the disposition of our hearts every day is, “Lord, I can’t but You can. Thank You that You are here, You are present; I can trust You.”

You can go back to your home and say, “Lord You are present in my life here.” Go back to your place of work, “Lord, You are present in my life here. Thank You I can trust You.”

Go back to your problems, your issues, your conflicts and say, “Lord, these are difficult but You are present in my life and I look to You and I trust You and I thank You and I rest in You.”

And you find God is at work.

Let’s pray together.

Lord Jesus, I thank You for the appetite that brings all of us here this morning, an appetite to know Your Word, that through Your Word we might know Yourself, an appetite to sing Your praises, to worship You, to be renewed in our confidence in You.

And I pray as we leave and go back into all that this week ahead of us will hold, that we will be those who trust You, and those who obey You, that we depend on You, but we discipline our lives to obedience to You. And thank You for the rest that we can enjoy in Yourself.