Heaven is so appealing because it is a place where all negatives are forever eliminated.
No more war and struggle on every level, but peace and security with all threats gone. It
is a place of rest from all the strife of life. God’s goal is to share with all of His people the
blessedness of rest, which is the satisfaction that comes with a job well done and a task
completed. He finished His creation and rested, and He commanded His people to do the
same. The Sabbath was to be a taste of heaven where labor is replaced by leisure, and
where enjoyment was to replace employment. The Promised Land was a part of this same
picture. It was to be a place where His people dwelled in peace and prosperity in contrast
to being slaves for centuries in Egypt, and living in poverty. The Sabbath and Promised
Land were a taste of the ultimate in God’s plan for His people. They were a taste of
heaven.
These were mere shadows of better things to come, however, and they were never
adequate to accomplish the goal of giving people God’s experience of rest. The Sabbath
became a burden to people rather than a blessing because the Pharisees made so many
laws to regulate it that it became a pain. The Promised Land never became a place of
peace and rest because of the disobedience of the people and its history is one on warfare
and much disappointment. The children of Israel never did enter into the fullness of the
rest that God had for them, and so there remains yet a Sabbath-rest for the people of
God. It is still God’s goal to give rest to His people, and it is still the great challenge of His
people to enter into that rest. That is the essence of the message of Hebrews chapter 4.
God’s plan has not failed just because His people failed to receive and achieve it. He
wants His people to enter into His rest, and every generation of believers is expected to do
so.
Our rest is not found in the Sabbath, even though the principle of resting one day in
seven is still valid, and our rest is not in the Promised Land, for that was exclusive to
Israel alone. Our rest is in the Person of Jesus Christ who is our Sabbath and our
Promised Land. Jesus said in Matt. 11:28-29, “Come to me, all you who are weary and
burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am
gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” Jesus is our rest, and in
Him alone do we find all the peace and comfort that God wills for us to have. He is our
Promised Land where we live in peace with God. He is the greatest rest because in Him
we have rest for our souls. It is not merely rest of the body that we have in Him. It is rest
of the soul, which means that we have in Him an inner peace with God that is a real taste
of heaven. The Sabbath only gave rest for the body and it was temporary, but in Jesus we
have rest for the soul that is permanent. The rest we have in Jesus is like the appetizer of
a great meal. It will be followed by that great meal which is the marriage supper of the
Lamb, which is the beginning of the eternal banquet we call heaven.
Hebrews 4 is the great rest chapter of the Bible, for the word rest is used 9 times in this
chapter, and that is more than any other entire book of the Bible. It is an important
subject because it is an important part of God’s plan for man, and the people He chose to
experience His best in time failed to experience it because of their unbelief. God gave up
on them and swore they would not enter into His rest, but He never gave up on getting
people to enter that rest. Man’s disobedience and failure will not stop God from achieving
His goal, and so there always remains a rest. There always remains the danger of missing
it also, and that is what this chapter is about. The promise remains of a rest, but the same
problem of unbelief also exists, and so the writer is warning this new generation of God’s
people to take heed that they do not miss God’s rest because of a hardened heart of
unbelief that caused so many in the past to miss it. God is going to have a people who will
enjoy His rest with Him for all eternity, and they will be a people who enjoy a strong taste
of that eternal rest in time, but the only way to be a part of this people is to be a person of
faith and not a person of unbelief.
We start with the belief that the promise of rest is still valid. Verse 1 says the promise
of entering his rest still stands. In verse 3 it says we who have believed enter that rest. In
verse 6 it says it still remains that some will enter that rest. Verse 9 says there remains a
Sabbath rest for the people of God, and finally in verse 11 it says, “Let us, therefore,
make every effort to enter that rest...” The Old Testament people of God missed it, but
the New Testament people of God still have the chance to enter God’s rest, and that is
God’s will for all believers. This is not a popular subject, but it should be, for it is one of
God’s goals for His people and it should be a high priority in the life of every believer to
enter God’s rest. The implication is that we have already entered His rest by believing in
Jesus as Savior, but that we have not fully entered into His rest because we have not yet
made every effort to do so. In other words, it is easy to get in by belief, but to get deeply
into His rest so as to experience the fullness of it calls for determined effort on our part.
There is more to the rest that can be our in Christ than being saved. It is one thing to step
into a house, but it is another to own that house and enjoy all of its benefits. Salvation is
just the beginning of the rest that we find in Jesus. To get a greater view of what is
involved I want to look at some characteristics of the rest that can be ours by means of
topics that come under the letters R, E, S, T.
I. RELAX
When God finished creation He was not exhausted, for He is all powerful and does not
need rest, but He did it anyway to illustrate that there is a time to relax and enjoy what
you have made and not be always working to make more. Many people live their whole
lives in making money and fame and other things, but do not take the time to relax from
their labors to enjoy what they have made, and what God has made for them to enjoy.
God is no workaholic and He expects His children to imitate Him. Reach a goal and then
relax and enjoy it. Verse 10 stresses this: “For anyone who enters God’s rest also rests
from his own work, just as God did from His.” This has implications in both the physical
and spiritual realm. A Sabbath for the body where we just cease all labor for things and
have a relaxing time to enjoy them is a part of God’s plan for His people. Those who
never take a day off to relax, and those who never take a vacation from work are not
living in obedience to the principles that God has laid down for His people. The
workaholic is a sinner, even if they are working for God, for they are living in defiance of
His plan for them.
In the spiritual realm the idea of relaxing is crucial for the happy and wholesome life of
the believer. The abundant life Jesus came to give us involves this spiritual relaxing and
entering into rest. Spiritual resting is a matter of awareness that we do not have to labor
for our salvation, but wholly lean on Jesus. So many believers are infected with the false
idea of salvation by works that they never relax and enjoy what they have freely received
in Jesus. They do not have confidence that they are saved by Him alone and so they feel
the pressure of having to do so much to have assurance that they will be saved. This leads
to guilt for not doing enough and endless pressure to always be doing more. They can
never fully relax and enjoy the gift Jesus purchased for them. They have not grasped
what Paul says in Ephesians 2:8-9, "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith-
--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God---not by works, [we are to rest from
our own works!] so that no one can boast." When Jesus said “it is finished” it was
finished. His blood atoned for all sin and made it possible for us to be forgiven and
accepted into the family of God. There is nothing we can add to His work to be saved. We
need only accept His finished work and relax and enjoy the gift of eternal life. This means
that entering His rest is having a total confidence in Him and what He has done that we
are released from all pressure to save ourselves.
The Old Testament people of God had no confidence in God. In spite of all the
miracles they saw they never ceased to doubt and complain. They expected God to
abandon them in the desert, and they expected God to let them down and be defeated if
they entered the promised land. They always expected the worst and never had faith that
God would work on their behalf. This unbelief made them miss God’s best and they never
entered His rest. Ray Stedman writes about how this is still a problem today for the
people of God. He writes,
“Failure to expect God to act caused the disobedience of Israel in the wilderness, and a
similar failure destroys thousands today. It is called overachieving now, but it is the cause
for most of the breakdown of Christians under the pressure of stress or responsibility.
Pastors and teachers particularly have often been taught that they are personally
responsible to meet the emotional needs and to solve the relational problems of all in their
congregations. Many sincerely attempt this but soon find themselves overwhelmed with
unending demands and a growing sense of their own failure. Relief can come only by
learning to operate out of rest and by sharing responsibility with others in the
congregation whom God has also equipped with gifts of ministry.”
Entering the rest that is ours in Jesus is a matter of becoming more and more
confident in Him and in His working in and through us. When we lack confidence we feel
we must do everything ourselves. We are not surrendered and so we can never fully relax
with a sense of assurance. We are in Christ, but not deep enough to fully experience the
sanctification that enables us to fully relax. It is really all a matter of the level of our faith.
Faith comes in all sizes from little faith to great faith, and the more we move toward great
faith the more we can enter into God’s rest and relax.
Oswald Chambers wrote, “The stars do their work without fuss; God does His work
without fuss, and saints do their work without fuss. The people who are always
desperately active are a nuisance; it is through the saints who are one with Him that God
is doing things all the time. The broken and the jaded and the twisted are being
ministered to by God through the saints who are not overcome by their own panic, who
because of their oneness with Him are absolutely at rest, consequently He can work
through them. A sanctified saint remains perfectly confident in God, because
sanctification is not something the Lord gives me, sanctification is Himself in me. There is
only one holiness, the holiness of God, and only one sanctification, the sanctification that
has its origin in Jesus Christ. "But of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, Who was made unto us .
. . sanctification" (1 Corinthians 1:30). A sanctified saint is at leisure from himself and his
own affairs, confident that God is bringing all things out well.”
The bottom line is that Jesus is our rest, and the greatest rest for it can be experienced
in time, and will be experienced for all eternity by those who put their trust in Him. Enter
into it believer and avoid all of the stress that comes to those who think they must save
themselves by their works. Trust in His finished work and relax. - Karleen E. Wickham
has captured the essence of this point in her poem I Wore Your Flesh.
"Shut out the world's craving din,"
He says, "and come with me in
To a quiet place. Rest your soul
And feed on honeyed sweets.
I will not sneer at your triumphs
Or gloat over your defeats,
Neither condemn you, close to my heart.
My love is not based on your success.
I wore your flesh and know it aches;
I long to ease your wretchedness.
Don't be afraid to tell me all.
Trust me with your doubts and cares
And hidden things that devour you:
Well I know the tempter's snares.
I will gentle you with my hand.
I wore your flesh, I understand.
Arthur W. Pink has a paragraph on the invitation of Christ to come to Him for rest
that is a gem. He writes, “What a claim to make! This was something which no mere man,
no matter how godly and spiritual, could promise. Abraham, Moses, David could not have
bidden the weary and heavy laden to come unto him with the assurance that they would
give them rest! To impart rest of soul to another lies beyond the power of the most
exalted creature. Even the holy angels in Heaven are quite incapable of bestowing rest
upon others, for they are entirely dependent upon the grace of God for their own rest.
How this promise of Christ, then, makes manifest His uniqueness. Neither Confucius,
Buddha, nor Mohammed ever made such a claim as this. Ah, my reader, it was no mere
Man who uttered these words: “Come unto Me all ye that art weary and heavy laden, and
I will give you rest.” Though appearing in the form of a Servant, yet was He, in Himself,
infinitely more than that. He was the Son of God incarnate. He was Himself the Creator
of man, and therefore could He restore him. He was the Prince of peace and therefore
capable of giving rest.”
II. ENJOY
The purpose of relaxing from work is so we can enjoy the fruit of our labor. That is
what the Sabbath was for God, and He rested in the sense that He stopped working to
create in order to just enjoy what He had created. The Sabbath was given to Israel so that
His people could enjoy a day of great food and family fun.. The Jews even considered it a
special day for husband and wife to enjoy sex. If you study the Jewish practice of the
Sabbath you will discover it was a day of celebration. God wants His people to have
celebration in their lives. That is why there were so many feast days in the Old Testament.
When the Prodigal returned there was a great party of celebration, and it was the same
when the lost lamb was found and the when the lost coin was found. People celebrated a
lot when their was good news, and the greatest news that can be is the Gospel of Jesus
Christ, which makes it possible for all who trust in Him to be a part of the eternal banquet
that begins the heavenly union of Christ and His bride the Church.
To enter into the greatest rest is to go deeper into the joy of the Lord. Many know and
trust in Jesus as Savior, but they have not yet learned to enjoy Him. Part of the problem
is what we dealt with in the first point, and that is that they do not trust completely in His
finished work, but feel the need to labor to secure their salvation. They cannot rest and
enjoy what He has given, for they never know when they have done enough to be
acceptable to God. They lose the joy of their salvation because they do not rest and enjoy
it, but keep laboring as if it depended on them and their good works to secure their
salvation. They have not entered God’s rest where they just relax and enjoy the gift. Paul
wrote in I Thess. 5:16-18, “Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all
circumstances, for this if God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” Notice, it is a matter of
choice and not circumstances. You choose to be joyful, to pray, and to give thanks at all
times. Entering God’s rest in Christ is a choice to enjoy more and more fully what we
have in Him.
Pink writes of the meaning of the word rest here: “The Greek word expresses
something more than rest, or a mere relaxation from toil; it denotes refreshment likewise.
A person weary with long bearing a heavy burden will need not only to have it removed,
but likewise he wants food and refreshment to restore his spirits and to repair his wasted
strength. Such is the rest of the Gospel. It not only puts a period to our fruitless labor, but
it affords a sweet reviving cordial.”
We need to grasp that God wants His people to enjoy Him, and that only when we do
are we strong believers. God enjoys His being and His life, and He desires that all His
children do the same. In the great text of Neh. 8:10 we read, “Go and enjoy choice food
and sweet drinks, and send some for those who have nothing prepared. This day is sacred
to our Lord. Do not grieve for the joy of the Lord is your strength.” There is a time to
weep and a time to laugh, and we are to weep with those who weep and rejoice with those
who rejoice, but the laughter and rejoicing should far outweigh the weeping for the
people of God, for it His will that they enter into His rest and experience enjoyment as
their primary experience. That is why the Psalms are so filled with joy and gladness.
Psalm 5:11 says, “But let all who take refuge in you be glad; let them ever sing for
joy.” We will have joy for all eternity, but we are not to just be waiting for that
experience, for we are to be tasting eternity all through time. Psalm 16:11 says, “You
have made known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with
eternal pleasures at our fight hand.” Psalm 30:11 says, “You have turned my wailing into
dancing; you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy.” Psalm 31:7 says, “I will be
glad and rejoice in your love...” Psalm 40:16 says, “But may all who seek you rejoice and
be glad in you....” Psalm 89:15-16 says, “Blessed are those who have learned to acclaim
you, who walk in the light of your presence, O Lord. They rejoice in your name all the day
long; they exult in your righteousness.” Psalm 118:24 says, “This is the day the Lord has
made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.” Psalm 126:3 says, “The Lord has done great
things for us, and we are filled with joy.” These are only a fraction of the verses that could
be quoted that show God expects His people to enjoy His presence and salvation.
When we come to the New Testament we see that Jesus expected His followers to be
people of joy. His very teaching was to impart His joy to them. He said in John 15:11, “I
have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.”
When we have grasped the fullness of who Jesus is and what He has done we have entered
into the greatest rest, and our joy will be complete. Paul had fully entered the rest of
Christ and that is why he could write, even from a prison cell, what he did in Phil.4:4,
“Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again; Rejoice!” When you can be always in a
state of joy no matter what the circumstances, you have entered fully into the rest of God.
III. SECURITY
Insecurity is the reason believers cannot fully relax and enjoy what they have in Christ.
Christians are no different than the Old Testament saints when it comes to insecurity and
doubts. Christians are often filled with doubts and they do not feel secure at all. They
doubt God cares for them, and they doubt that they are worthy of being care for by God.
The result is they do not enter into the rest that can be theirs in Christ. God wants His
people to feel secure, and that is why He was constantly encouraging them and promising
them they could be secure in Him.
The concept is expressed well in Deuteronomy 12:10, where Moses said, “But you will
cross the Jordan and settle in the land the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance,
and he will give you rest from all your enemies around you so that you will live in safety.”
In Exodus 33:14 God said to Moses, “My presence shall go with you, and I will give you
rest.” To enter God’s rest was to put your trust in the promise of His presence. A child
feels secure in the presence of its parents and that is what God wants His children to
always feel in His presence. That is why Jesus promised that He would never leave or
forsake His disciples, but that He would be with them always. They could rest secure that
even when they did not see Him, He was there in their midst caring and guiding. Dr.
Charles Revis describes the rest of God as "an inner experience of peace which comes out
of trusting and obeying God" rather than "restlessness as a result of distrusting God."
When things did not work out as they expected and they ran into a crisis the Old
Testament saints lost their confidence in God and became so insecure they lost all sense of
God’s presence and peace. Jesus made it clear that His people would have tribulation, but
He said, “Be of good cheer for I have overcome the world.” Jesus expected us to enter
into the rest of feeling secure even if the world is falling apart and we are being tossed
about in a raging storm. As J. Oswald Sanders says, "Peace is not the absence of trouble,
but the presence of God." There may be all kinds of crazy things going on around us, but
as we continue to stay close to Jesus He guards our hearts with His peace not allowing us
to be shaken. Charles Orr wrote,
Oh! this is blessing, this is rest.
Into Thine arms, O God, I flee;
I hide me in Thy faithful breast,
And pour out all my soul to Thee.
There is a host dissuading me,
But all their voices far above
I hear Thy words, “Oh, taste and see
The comforts of a Savior’s love”;
And hushing every adverse sound,
Songs of defense my soul surround,
As if all saints encamped about
One trusting heart pursued by doubt.
O tenderness! O truth divine!
Lord, I am altogether Thine.
I have bowed down; I need not flee.
Peace, peace is mine, in trusting Thee.
The author of Hebrews is concerned that the Hebrew Christians are in the same boat
as the Old Testament saints, and that the persecution that they face as believers is causing
them to lose their security and their trust in Jesus. They are in danger of missing the rest
He has promised because of this insecurity. He is urging them to enter into the rest of
Christ by leaning heavily on His promises, and by claiming the reality of His presence in
difficult times. When you do not have the security of knowing Jesus is always with you,
then you will not be able to relax and enjoy the salvation and sanctification that He makes
possible. You see how all of these things are intertwined so that you need them all. If you
break the chain at any point all of the pearls drop off the chain, and you fail to enter the
rest of God. This holds true for the last point also, for it is the key factor that makes all
the others possible, and it is-
IV. TRUST
The security that enables us to relax and enjoy our salvation in the finished work of
Christ is based on our faith in Him, and faith is trust. It is believing and acting on that
belief, and this is the essence of entering into the greatest rest that man can enter into, for
it is establishing an absolute relationship to Jesus as Savior and Lord. When we fully trust
Jesus and believe all that He is and all that He promised, then we have entered into God’s
rest to the maximum degree that can be experienced in time. The eternal rest will be an
upgrade to the ultimate, but by trust we can experience the best in time. Without faith and
trust we cannot please God it says in Heb. 11:6, and the opposite will then also be true
that with faith we can please God, and when we please God we are fulfilling the purpose of
our life, and that will give us a sense of security which leads us to relax and enjoy all that
Jesus died to give us in terms of the abundant life. Trust becomes the doorway by which
we enter into the greatest rest that man can experience.
The Old Testament saints did not please God at all. They refused to trust Him and
obey His will to enter the land of promise, and the result is they never got a chance to
experience the rest He had prepared for them. We can do the same foolish thing now and
miss the rest that is provided for us in Christ. That is why Hebrews is so full of warnings,
for lack of faith and trust in God can lead believers to miss out on all that can be theirs in
terms of experiencing the greatest rest. If we will put our full trust in Jesus He will be our
Joshua who will lead us to victory over all the enemies of our souls, and lead us into the
promised land of peace, joy and security where we can experience all the benefits of His
rest.
Ron Wallace has written this on what he calls faith-rest. “Faith-rest is the attitude and
practice of being totally relaxed and confident in the character and plan of God based on
knowledge and trust in His word. It is not the normal Christian life to be worried and
upset about any of the many pressures and adversities we face in the world. Paul sums up
the reality of faith-rest in the promise stated at Philippians 4:6-7,"Be worrying about
nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made
known to God. And the peace of God which surpasses all thinking, shall guard your hearts
and minds in Christ Jesus."
God promised to feed His people with manna each day, and told them to trust Him and
not pick up more than what was needed for the day. Some did not trust God to provide
for the next day and they picked up enough for tomorrow too. The result was that the
manna spoiled and became rotted and worthless. Trusting God is obeying Him and then
just relaxing and not worrying about future provision. Trusting is living in a way that
demonstrates your trust in God. If you are always worried and in a state of anxiety, you
are not entering God’s rest at all, but are just like the Old Testament saints that missed
His rest. Trust is defined in Webster’s New College Dictionary as “total confidence in the
integrity, ability, and good character of another.” May God grant that we will have this
kind of trust in God so that we can enter fully into His rest in Christ.
CONCLUSION
Notice the paradox in verse 11 where we read, “Let us make every effort to enter that
rest, [it's our choice, we can choose to enter God's rest, or we can walk away from it and
experience the restlessness of being out of fellowship with God] so that no one will fall by
following their example [that is, Israel's example] of disobedience." The paradox is that
we are to relax and cease from our labor, and yet we are to work like mad and make every
effort to enter this rest. Vine's dictionary says of this Greek word for rest, "Christ's rest
is not a rest from work, but in work, not the rest of inactivity but of the harmonious
working of all the faculties and affections-of will, heart, imagination, and conscience
because each has found in God the ideal sphere for its satisfaction and development."
What we see here is that we have a choice just like the Old Testament saints had. We
can choose to give it our all to enter God’s rest in Christ, or we can live in disobedience as
they did and just drift along through life and miss God’s rest and His best. Rest is a gift
from God, but it is also a choice on our part to enter into it. Let us choose to enter in and
be able to sing
I've anchored my soul in a haven of rest,
I'll sail the wide seas no more;
The tempest may sweep o'er the wild stormy deep,
In Jesus I'm safe evermore.
