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If you would, please turn in your Bibles to the book of Hebrews. Hebrews chapter 4, we’ll be reading verses
1 through verse 13 this evening. Hebrews chapter 4, verses 1 through 13, Therefore, while the
promise of entering his rest still stands, let us fear, lest any of you should seem to have failed
to reach it. For good news came to us just as to them, but the message they heard did not benefit
them, because they were not united by faith with those who listened. For we who have believed enter
that rest, 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, for he has somewhere spoken of the seventh day in
this way, and God rested on the seventh day from all his works. And again in this passage he said,
they shall not enter my rest. Since therefore it remains for some to enter it, and those who
formerly received the good news failed to enter because of disobedience, again he appoints a
certain day, today, saying through David so long afterward, in the words already quoted, today,
if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts. For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not
have spoken of another day later on. So then there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For
whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his. Let us therefore
strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. For the word of
God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of
spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no
creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we
must give an account. Amen. You may be seated. Let’s pray. Our Father in heaven, we’ve come to
hear your word this evening. Lord, you are the shepherd of your people, you are our God, you are
the one whose word we have come to hear. We ask, Lord, that you would be gracious, kind, you would
feed your people with your word, and that you would open their hearts to hear, and that your word would
be opened and faithfully proclaimed this evening. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen. Well, have you
ever experienced FOMO? Perhaps I should say who hasn’t had a case or two of FOMO in their lives?
What’s FOMO? Fear of missing out. People often speak of it like it’s a mild disease
or a bad habit that’s difficult to break. I had really bad FOMO the other day. Your smartphone
is filled with applications that will attempt to play on this built-in desire to not miss out.
Notifications constantly bombard you from the screen, telling you how urgent it is that you
spend your attention and time on this app or the other. Red numbers pop up beside your applications,
begging you to check them and avoid missing out on what’s going on. Pages of junk mail arrive
in your mailbox with deals featuring won’t last long in order to leverage a quick decision to
purchase. You don’t want to miss out. Fear of missing out can easily become a problem
when we lose our ability to prioritize or make intentional choices about the way our yes in one
area becomes a no in another area. But the reason FOMO is so effective on us is because
there are legitimate things for us to be concerned not to miss out on.
And in our passage this evening, the author of Hebrews is leveraging
godly FOMO for our ultimate good. We ought to fear missing out on eternal rest
because the alternative is a lot worse than missing a good sale.
Now our passage this evening has two explicit exhortations.
The first is in verse 1, exhorts us not to fear, not to, exhorts us to fear. So verse 1 says,
let us fear while the promise still stands. Verse 2 through 10 set out to prove these two assertions,
one that we should not fear and two that the promise still stands. Verse 11 gives us another
exhortation, let us strive, and grounds that in the previous argument as well as verses 12 and 13
because our hearts are exposed to God. So this evening we’re going to see three points.
Let us fear in order to let us strive, in order to let us enter. So we’ll organize our time
with let us fear, let us strive, and let us enter. Now if you came to our passage, if you were reading
this passage in Greek, the very first word of this entire chapter would be a single word in Greek
which is translated let us fear. It’s normal, now it’s normal in Greek to put the verb like this at
the beginning of a sentence, so we can’t say that it’s necessarily being emphasized. It’s kind of
emphasized, it’s kind of normal Greek word order, but it would be the first thing that you would read
in this sentence, the therefore that we have comes as a second word. And so I think we need
to pay attention to this exhortation that begins the first part of our chapter. Now for some this
exhortation might seem strange. Isn’t Christianity supposed to be about taking away fear?
Around our house in North Carolina there’s a popular billboard that we drive by all the time,
faith over fear.
Think about 1st John 4 18. There’s no fear in perfect love, but perfect love casts out fear.
For fear has to do with punishment and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.
I’ve had numerous people quote that to me. John is making an important point there about love.
But that’s not the only thing that the Bible has to say about fear. In other places like Proverbs
and the Psalms, the Bible says that the fear of the Lord is wisdom. The fear of the Lord is the
beginning of wisdom. The fear of the Lord is essential. The fear of the Lord gives life,
among other things. So not all fear is a problem. There is a bad fear, but there’s also a good fear.
Now before we get into the specifics on fear, let’s take a few minutes to figure out what is
going on in this passage. How is the logic and the argument playing out? Verse 1 is an exhortation
to fear entering, fear failing to enter because the promise is still standing. Then verses 2 through
10 are arguing that there’s two groups of people. There’s those who enter God’s rest and those who
don’t. Now as common in the book of Hebrews, we sometimes have to jump a little bit ahead and look
at the end to start to figure out our author’s logic. He makes an assertion and then adds grounds
for his argument. So start looking at verse 8. Verse 8 says, for if Joshua had given them rest,
God would not have spoken of another day later on. This is bottom line logically. Look closely.
This is first an argument from the historical timeline of scripture. When was scripture written?
The quote that Hebrews 3 and 4 have been quoting from, that we saw mainly in chapter 3. Therefore,
as the Holy Spirit says, today if you hear his voice, this is all a quote from Psalm 95.
Now when was Psalm 95 written? Before or after Israel had entered the promised land under Joshua.
Under Joshua. Well, obviously after. David wrote it. Now if you look over, look at verse 7.
Again he points a certain day, today saying through David so long afterwards,
and the words are already quoted, today if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.
David, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, writes, today do not harden your hearts.
David gives an exhortation to his present audience based on the threat of missing God’s rest
as the first generation of Israel did in the wilderness. So we have to pay attention. We’ve
got several layers of meaning going on here. First, the writer of Hebrews argues like this,
First, the writer of Hebrews argues like this, the threat of missing God’s rest existed in
David’s time because David wrote it. The time of David’s writing was after Israel had entered
Canaan. Therefore, the author concludes, God’s rest must mean something bigger than simply
entering Canaan. Otherwise, David would not warn his hearers that they might miss it,
that they might not enter it, because they’re already in Canaan.
Additionally, he gets this from the quote, do not harden your hearts today, and they shall,
which we could say will not enter. Since Canaan was apparently not God’s rest,
at least in an ultimate sense, that means it must be something in the future as well. The words
shall not enter imply that the rest is still future, even after Israel had entered the land
of Canaan. But the writer of Hebrews sees a warning embedded, he sees a warning explicit,
but embedded in that warning he sees an implied hope. If God through David is still warning people
that they might miss his rest, it also means it’s still possible for some to enter it.
Look at verse one and verses six through seven.
While the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us fear lest any of you should seem
to have failed to reach it. And therefore, since it remains for some to enter it, and those who
formally received the good news failed to enter because of disobedience, again he appoints a
certain day, today, saying through David so long afterwards, and the words already quoted. Today,
if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.
The writer of Hebrews is saying the window of opportunity is open.
So, godly proper concern, godly fear that you don’t become a statistic.
This is not something that you want to miss out on. That’s why he wants his readers to fear.
Now, why fear? Well, fear because life is serious. There’s so much about this life
that can make us forget that this life is not all there is. We should take life seriously,
and we should take eternity seriously. Ecclesiastes says it’s better to go into
the house of mourning than the house of feasting, since it helps us remember the seriousness of life.
Life can feel trivial when we’re engaged in activities, engaged on social media,
or simply the pleasures of life, and we need to remember that this life is the doorstep to eternity.
Fear is put in the context of the reality that there’s a promise of entering his rest still
standing. The door is still open. The window of opportunity hasn’t yet closed. If the opportunity
were already gone, we would have no need to fear, but verse one gives us that exhortation.
Have godly FOMO, fear of missing out. You know, some parents find FOMO to be an effective way of
motivating children to clean their rooms or do their chores. If you don’t get your work done,
if you don’t eat all your dinner, you won’t get dessert or go to a party, but here we have God
using, in his word, fear of missing out to motivate us to enter that rest. But this isn’t
just a fear of missing out on something great. The other side, that missing out on God’s rest,
won’t just be a bummer. The other side is not simply not as cruel. Eternity awaits us on the
other side of this life. This life is merely a drop in the bucket. Like the one year of wilderness
traveling compared to the centuries of promised blessing in Canaan, the length of this life
is not worth comparing to what awaits in eternity. It’s been said that the closest thing,
that this earthly life is the closest thing to hell that a believer in Christ will ever taste.
And conversely, that this earthly life is the closest thing to heaven
that an unbeliever will ever taste. We’re repeatedly reminded in this passage that we’ve
been looking at, as God swore in his wrath, those who fail to enter rest will suffer wrath, eternal
wrath, holy, perfect, white-hot, utterly pure, unadulterated, wrath against the scorning,
belittling, ignoring, despising, and exchanging of God’s immeasurably glorious worth.
God’s glory will be upheld and vindicated, and the immense love of God will be displayed in a
writing of all wrongs and injustices, and pouring out his holy judgment on everything that seeks to
destroy and belittle all that is good and beautiful. This is so serious that the writer
of Hebrews goes beyond saying that he doesn’t want any of his hearers to suffer such a fate.
Look again at verse one. He says we should fear appearing to miss that rest. He doesn’t just want
you to be afraid of actually missing out, but to even appear as though you might.
I think we find a similar idea to what the author says later in chapter 12. In chapter
12 of Hebrews, verse one, it says, let us lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely,
and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us. He says don’t just lay aside sin,
lay aside anything that could encumber you, that could make you slow down, even if it’s not sin.
And Hebrews here doesn’t want us to even look like we won’t make it.
Israel appeared like they were going to make it. They looked like it was going to be good for them,
yet they missed out on the end. And Hebrews doesn’t want his readers, the author of Hebrews
doesn’t want his readers to take that chance. Now how did they miss out? In verse one,
they were not connected. Verse two, they were not united by faith with those who listened.
To those who listened, why wouldn’t he say to those who believed? Well, I think here he means
listening as a synonym for believing. And this makes sense because in other places, the Bible
speaks like this. For instance, in Galatians, Paul asked this question, let me ask you only this,
did you receive the spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Or in Romans 10,
verse 17, he makes this point. So faith comes from hearing and hearing from through the word of Christ.
The point here is that we have to listen with faith. We have several reasons to fear in this
passage. Verse one, the promise is available right now. Verse two, merely exposure to the gospel
message is insufficient to give you entrance. And verse six, disobedience results in a denial of
entrance. And finally, verse 12 and 13, he gives us another reason to fear is that God can observe
our hearts directly. You can’t fake your way in to God’s presence or sneak in as part of the group.
All of these are ways to be denied entrance and should cause fear. But conversely, they come
together to give us a complete picture of what it looks like to appear to have failed to enter.
It looks like someone who rejects or disbelieves God’s promises. It looks like someone who hears
the gospel but doesn’t really listen, doesn’t really take it to heart. And third, it looks like
someone who demonstrates this in a life of disobedience. So we have this extra warning
that such people should not expect to get away with it or overlooked in verses 12 and 13.
By the way, just a note about the word sword there. We shouldn’t think of one of those three
to five foot blades that they swing around in the sword fights. There’s another Greek word for such
bigger swords. We might actually be more inclined to call this weapon a dagger. A big sword isn’t
very precise instrument and you often use it more as a bludgeon. But the imagery in verse 12 here
is of a small dagger 12 to 18 inches long that can precisely dissect like a surgeon’s scalpel.
And it’s meant to remind us that we won’t be able to get away with hidden stubbornness.
You know, in this day of online meeting and working, it’s easier than ever to hide behind
pictures and images. And not to give anyone ideas, but I’ve seen this hack where supposedly
you can create a looping video of yourself, attentively paying attention, nodding along,
and somehow upload it as your screenshot on your zoom feed, allowing you to go and do whatever you
want instead. But Hebrews is saying, however sophisticatedly you might be able to fool other
people. You can’t fool God. He can see right to our hearts. He says it’s great. It’s great that
you’re here even tonight listening to this message. But Hebrews wants to remind us that without faith,
exposure to the gospel, hearing sermons, it won’t help you one bit on judgment day if you’re not
united with faith by faith with those who listen. So our passage is bracketed by two
exhortations. The first that we have is let us fear, but this is related to the second exhortation,
which we find in verse 11. We’ve been told to fear and to fear is meant to lead us to strive.
So secondly, let us strive. This comes from verse 11. Let us therefore strive to enter that rest
so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. This word strive carries the
idea of earnestly pursuing something. Still, it sounds a little odd on its face to say,
strive to enter rest. Feels a little contradictory. In addition, as Christians were taught
from scripture, Ephesians 2, 8 and 9, for by grace you have been saved through faith.
This is not your own doing. It’s the gift of God, not a result of work so that no one may boast.
So this can make us wonder how does striving fit in to the Christian life? How can we strive to
enter rest when salvation is by grace through faith and not a result of works? Well, this question
might arise from a misunderstanding about salvation that might come from an incomplete
understanding of the term grace. So let’s take a little detour to make sure we’re all on the same
page about this word grace. The definition that we’re most common, we’re most familiar with would be
that of unmerited favor from God or something along those lines. But what we sometimes forget
is that the scripture also uses the word grace as a power to do what is right.
Unmerited favor, we think of Romans 11, 6, for instance. But if it is by grace, it is no longer
on the basis of works. Otherwise, grace would no longer be grace. But in terms of power,
take a minute to flip over to Acts chapter 4 verses 33 with me. We’ll look at a few passages
quickly in Acts. Acts chapter 4 verse 33, and with great power the apostles were giving their
testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all.
You see the word grace being connected with the word power. You flip over a few chapters to chapter
6 verse 8. We see this kind of thing again, chapter 6 verse 8 of Acts. And Stephen, full of grace and
power, was doing great wonders and signs among the people. Or you flip a few chapters further
to chapter 20 verse 32, Acts chapter 20 verse 32. And it says, and now I commend you to God
and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and give you the inheritance
among all those who are sanctified. Finally, to cap this off, we might look at 1 Corinthians 15,
10. 1 Corinthians 15, 10 puts this all together, but by the grace of God I am what I am,
and his grace towards me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them.
Though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. Now of course, this power from God
is unmerited, unmerited favor. But if we try to insert the definition unmerited favor, every time
that the word grace appears in the Bible, it won’t make much sense. Now this incomplete understanding
of grace can also tie into an incomplete understanding of salvation in general.
Now sometimes in discussions about salvation, justification can get all of the focus. Now of
course, as a reminder, justification is what we call it when Christ is credited with our sins
and punished accordingly. And we are given credit with Christ’s perfect righteousness
and rewarded accordingly. Of course, this is summed up best in 2 Corinthians 521,
for our sake he made him to be sin, who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness
of God. We will never be able to exhaust the depths of this profound gift in our thinking,
writing, speaking, and singing into eternity. But salvation consists of more than merely being
forgiven of our past sins. Forgiveness of sins gives us peace with God, but our problem is much
bigger than being morally bankrupt and legally guilty. We’re also dead towards God. Our hearts
are rebels intent on disobeying and hating him. We need new hearts that are alive to God and love
him, not hate him. We also need the holiness of God. Hebrews chapter 12 verse 14 is a rather
famous verse. It tells us, strive for peace with everyone and for the holiness without which no one
will see the Lord. Salvation isn’t meant to simply give us a license to sin by forgiving everything
we’ve done in the past. And yet, if it were only justification, forgiveness of our sins and count
it as righteous, it might be. Remember Paul’s question, why not sin that grace may abound?
But God gives us the Holy Spirit to come inside us, to make us holy. Ezekiel 36 27 says,
I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my
rules. The Holy Spirit’s main role in our lives is to make us holy. That’s why grace is both
undeserved favor as well as power from God to be forgiven and walk in obedience. We do not strive
to earn our salvation, but we strive in the grace of salvation. So striving is not antithetical to
grace. We’re meant to strive in grace. But grace is just the backdrop, so to speak, the background
work. God’s behind the scenes work. The place where it makes contact in our lives is faith.
And here’s where we have a second safeguard to thinking that we can earn or merit or deserve
salvation ourselves. The way in which we obtain God’s gracious salvation is with the open hand of
faith. At its most basic level, we simply believe that God is who he says he is and can do what he
says he can do. That’s about all the Old Testament saints had to go on. But as the writer of Hebrews
has been stressing since chapter one, we have a much clearer picture now of how God’s salvation
works for us in the person and work of his son Jesus Christ. In the Old Testament, God just said
I’ll handle it. In the New Testament, he says the same thing, but we can see how Jesus does that
for us and understand how he handles our sin. And faith is the perfect instrument to receive God’s
grace because it prevents us from crediting ourselves or relying on our own power. The goal
of God’s salvation is to give us the benefits and him the glory. Now, how does this fit with striving?
Well, faith means relying on God’s resources, remaining dependent on him, not just for past
pardons, but also for future faithfulness. And yet everything around us, the remaining sin nature
that resides within us, fights that God dependence like crazy. So we have to strive to remain dependent,
strive to know how much we need God. And that’s the heart of our battle. In one sense, faith is
easy. Look at Jesus and you can’t help but take him at his word. The problem is we constantly take
our eyes off him. Daily we’re faced with difficulties that we think we have to handle in our own strength.
Car repairs, disobedient children, death of a loved one, threat of a job loss, financial troubles,
plans falling through, daily challenge to control our temper, to fight temptation and bitterness.
All these are temptations to handle them in our own strength. It’s so easy to strive to handle them
in our own resources, but Hebrews wants us to strive to depend on God. We might not say that
God can’t handle it, but practically we act as though we’re all on our own. We often get too
caught up in the busyness of taking care of it, to start to think that we maybe don’t need him after
all, which is a dangerous place to be. And we can start to seem to appear to have failed to reach
that rest, God’s rest. Faith takes hold of God’s grace, does not remain an intellectual ascent
to God’s ability and willingness or a mere emotional embrace, but it manifests itself
in acts of love towards God and others. Galatians 5-6, for in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision
or uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love. Faith is what counts
as it works through love. Your dependence on God will not be passive. It won’t make you stop. What
it will do is make you stop running on the fumes of your own strength and start running on the
real high octane power of God’s grace. So we’ve looked at the exhortation to fear, which is meant
to lead us to strive, but this is all meant to ensure that we enter. So let’s briefly consider
what it means to enter that rest. Number three, let us enter. In verse one, we see the promise of
entering his rest still stands. And verse six, it remains for some to enter it. Verse eight, if Joshua
had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on. All these seem to be saying
that the rest is in the future. And yet other verses seem to suggest that the rest is in the
present. Verse three, we who have believed entered that rest. Verse ten, whoever has entered God’s
rest has also rested from his works as God did from his. So which is it? Well, the answer is both.
God’s rest is not yet. The world is not made right. Things are not at peace. God does not fully dwell
with man. And yet God’s rest is already. In Christ, we can experience salvation now. We can have
fellowship now with God. And they’re both connected. You can’t have one without the other.
Just as John in his gospel speaks of eternal life as something that begins on this side of death
when someone is connected to Jesus, Hebrews says that God’s eternal rest must be entered on this
side of death in order to enter it on the other side. We will enter God’s rest one day. And yet
and yet we must enter God’s rest now. We must cease from our labors of meriting, attempting to
merit our own salvation and contrast the rest that believers are to enter with the unrest of
unbelievers. There’s no rest for the unbeliever because only true rest can be found in God.
Christians that come to the Boardwalk Chapel will sometimes ask me, what’s the best argument against
atheism or Islam or Catholicism or Hinduism or Buddhism? It seems like they’re all different.
They all need their own unique answer. I tell them two things. First, come to the training on
apologetics in June for all the specifics. But second, keep in mind the simple truth that apart
from Christ, everyone is trying to earn their own salvation somehow. The guilty conscience won’t
let you rest, and guilt can only be absolved by an adequate sacrifice. Jesus is the only answer.
Everyone, no matter what they claim to believe, they know that God exists and that one day they’ll
have to stand before him to give an account of themselves. And that can cut through a lot of
different philosophies. If you’re trying to earn your own salvation, like unbelievers are,
you’re never done. The thing about serving idols is they always demand more and more from you
while giving you less and less in return. The idols that the Canaanites worshiped,
the idols that the Canaanites worshiped, they required the literal burning of the children.
But the idols worshiped today, like money, purpose, and happiness, all have their own
steep fees of time and attention, with poor returns in this life and misery in the next.
There’s no rest in the pursuit of money or pleasure, even though they constantly promise
it’s just around the corner. If you think about it, rest is what we’re all ultimately looking for.
There was a man named Augustine, he was a theologian in Africa who lived in the 300s AD,
and he noticed this a long time ago. He wrote this to God,
Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you. Faith in God offers unparalleled rest.
Now it doesn’t always look that way from the outside. When we’re stuck in panic mode or doing
mode, it actually sounds less restful to place our trust in God, because it seems like we have to
take our trust off ourselves, which is true. Yet it is so powerful
that even the secular world has noticed the unexpected rest that faith offers.
We can see this in suggestions by unbelievers to just trust the universe, believe everything
will be okay. Those are empty promises that don’t give real rest. But we don’t enter God’s rest by
meditating on mantras, by special breathing. We enter God’s rest by faith in the person of God
whom we encounter through his word and prayer. Don’t neglect prayer. Sometimes it can be easy
to keep checking off the box of Bible reading. But when that never translates into prayer back
to God, we’re in danger of not benefiting from the message. Ask God to make his word slice open
your heart, make you vulnerable to God. But don’t leave it there. Talk to God about what gets exposed.
The rest is totally worth the risk. We’re going to talk more time, more next time next week about
how the Sabbath relates to God’s already not yet rest. But for now take a final look at verse 10
as we close. For whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his.
This is fundamentally God’s rest. It’s a rest in God and a rest with God. The rest that God
offers his people is fundamentally fellowship with him. God is not giving us gifts and then
sending us on our way. God is calling you to enter into his rest. He’s calling you to come
participate in fellowship with the triune God who created the world and brought you near by the blood
of his son. So come dear saints, enter now the now and future rest of fellowship with God. Amen. Let’s pray.
Father in heaven we thank you that you have given us your word. We thank you they have made this
promise that the promise still stands of entering your rest. So Lord we would ask that you would give
us believing hearts, hearts that listen, hearts that are united by faith. And Lord you would help
you would help us to enter that rest daily, even hourly, to enter that rest that you have
been in since the beginning of the world. We ask that you would do this in Jesus name. Amen.
Well in response let’s turn in our hymnal to 468.