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October 10, 2004
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Hebrews
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Pastor Brian Shimer
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"Have You Entered into that Rest?"
Hebrews 4:1-16
- The church retreat is going so well. Kate Flanagan brought a fabulous message yesterday on living in the Kingdom of God to the fullest. We had a great afternoon of play, walks on beach, the big swing, and indoor conversations. And last night was the best talent show I have experienced-- great laughter and good God-blessed fun.
I returned last night so rested. It was like I had been on vacation after a week after yesterday's events.
This morning the house was chilly. You know that feeling. Sometimes I delay doing something about it, I mean, the dog won't mind why should I heat up the house so that the dog is warm when I am gone. But then again, I was in the house too for the early part of the day. So, at one point I took the few minutes it takes to lay in a fire. When the house is warm I relax more, I am not tensed up, there is a comfort to it. That was what it felt like last night to return from camp - like a warm house, my insides were warmed up, and except for anticipating today's message on "rest" I was totally at peace!
- In this chapter we are returning to that theme of God's rest we began last week. Last week we saw that God's command to us is to not harden our hearts to His voice, but to continue to train our hearts to listen for His voice. A listening heart is a believing heart, a heart that is focused upon Jesus.
Today we return to this passage because of the theme throughout of God's rest. We want supple hearts in order that we can be in the "rest" God intends.
So, what is this "rest" -- it is more than a circumstantial reality. We cannot say that God's rest is when everything in our lives is running smoothly, or we would never experience it.
But the author does take this word "rest" and wring it dry. He pulls every ounce of meaning from it.
- First he uses it to refer to the rest we experience in relationship to God - it is something we might term "peace with God". When the enmity between our lives and God's is settled, by our faith in Jesus, then, we are at rest. There is no more need to strive to please an impossible to please God, for God is on our side. "God is for you," Paul wrote the Roman Christians. And again God said, "Therefore, since we are justified through faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ…"
This is true for us once we enter relationship. The house of our heart is warm - there is a fire going. In this passage, the author illustrates this reality when in the closing verses he speaks of Jesus as the one who has "gone through the heavens," who understands our weaknesses for he was tempted in every way just as we are except without falling to sin, and who gives us access 24/7 to God's throne where we can go to find mercy and grace to help in our time of need.
Now that speaks of rest - the peace of mind that no matter how bad the going gets along the way, we dwell with one, we have access to one who understands and can help.
There is a security in knowing that God has everything under control. There is a confidence in this reality.
- Another meaning of the word in this passage is the rest intended for Israel in the Promised Land. This was the original reason for God to say, "they shall never enter my rest" in response to the way Israel put God to the test in the wilderness.
In the Psalm quoted throughout these chapters, David is referring to the test at the waters of Massah and Meribah in the wilderness. But do you remember when the Israelites were set to enter the Promised Land in Numbers 13? At this point God instructed Moses to send in 12 spies to take in the lay of the land and come report what they find there.
Ten of the twelve report that the land is marvelous, expansive, with incredible fruit (they come back carrying one bunch of grapes strung on a pole between two of them!), but full of giants. They incite the people to fear, distrust God, and lament their destruction.
The other two spies try to bring the people back to faith. They have an entirely different story. For this land to them is not an impossibility for one reason: "God has promised it to them."
"The land we explored is a wonderful land! And if the Lord is pleased with us, he will bring us safely into that land and give it to us. It is a rich land flowing with milk and honey (meaning productive for sheep and agricultural crops), and he will give it to us! Don't be afraid of the people of the land. They are only helpless prey to us! They have no protection, but the Lord is with us! Don't be afraid of them!" (numbers 14:5-9)
Joshua and Caleb knew God-so they saw this circumstance through the lens of the almighty God not through the lens of their own experience. Whereas the 10 spies felt like grasshoppers in the eyes of the giants of that land, Caleb and Joshua know the true giants are those with faith in the living God. These two men are a picture of the rest God intends a rest which gives us access to Him through any hardship, a rest which says: "This too God can handle."
When Karen went to leave the house and come to the retreat yesterday a.m. she took her stuff to the grey car and realized with
a panic that she did not have a key. Grace had borrowed her mom's key to that car a couple weeks back, and had not returned it. So, there was Karen stuck at home. She tried to reach my cell phone and then Mariana's, but I neither of us were in cell range at that time. As a last resort, she tried the speaker Kate Flanagan.
Kate had planned to leave at 8 a.m. But departure took longer than she intended. So, about 8;24 she was finally on the road heading toward the highway 6 out of Forest Grove through Gales Creek.
In nearly 10 years of knowing Kate, Karen had never had her cell phone number until last week. She had written it down just in the unlikely event ever to need it.
Karen phoned.
Kate heard her phone ring and pressed the "send" button to receive the call but at the second she said "Hello" she drove out of range and the call clicked off. She did not know who the call was from, but felt prompted by a big God to stop, turn around, and drive back toward Forest Grove until she could return the call.
Kate had to figure out where her phone records calls missed, found it, saw our number and phoned reaching Karen. She then drove back to Banks, picked up Karen and continued on toward the retreat.
Karen said through all this she felt a peace - it did not matter what the outcome was for she could see God was in control. She knew as did Joshua and Caleb that God could handle this problem so she was trusting, resting in God. "Let us cling to Jesus and never stop trusting him," the author writes in 4:14.
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- The third use of this word is in reference to God's creation of such a rest mentioned in the Bible as the 7th day of creation (4:4). This is a unique day for all the other days of creation have a beginning and an end: "There was evening and morning the first day," but the seventh day has neither. It is therefore the only eternal Day of creation. God dwells in this day.
So when we are in relationship with God, trusting and obeying him, we too are in that day. We are at rest.
But when we are in rebellion against God, with hardened hearts, refusing to listen for His voice, we are outside that rest. The author writes we ought to tremble in fear lest some of you fail to enter that rest (4:1). Or another way to understand this verse is that those to whom the author writes were believing that it must be too late for them, and lest they think that this "rest" has passed them by somehow, the author reminds them that God's offer for rest was not "yesterday" but today. Today is the day of salvation. Today is the day to experience this Sabbath rest.
So, "let us cling to him and never stop trusting him" (4:14).
So what's the bottom line for us and rest?
- First,
by faith know that you have entered it and practice the presence of God with you day by day, looking for His humor, experiencing the warmth of his presence … like the warm house.
- But second,
enter God's rest by practice. This passage alludes to this with reference to the seventh day and God's Sabbath rest available to His people, saying, "Let us strive to enter that rest."
It seems that this refers to our need to practice rest in our lives.
God worked for 6 and rested on one and then twice in the listing of the 10 commandments enjoins us to enter that weekly rest with Him.
So, am I referring to some legalistic keeping of the "Sabbath" encouraged by our puritan forefathers? Hardly. They missed what God wanted. They made rest into a work much as Israel did so many years before.
The word for rest here means to "cease" to "stop" to "desist". In the two places in scripture where the Sabbath is commanded there are two different reasons for keeping it. In Exodus it is the reason given here, because God rested. In Deuteronomy 5 it is because the Israelites had had no rest for 400 years during the bondage in Egypt.
These two reasons clue us into keeping Sabbath. The Exodus reason is theologically based - we are to think on God - relate to Him, in other words: a day to pray. But the Deuteronomy reason is a human one, so it is a day to remember I am not a human doing, a tool in someone's employ, but a man created in God's image and am to trust also by resting, by leisure.
We must strive to stop, to desist from productivity. It takes effort to trust God to handle the load for a day, to take a day for prayer and play. To relax enough to remember to not take myself too seriously, nor to treat anyone else as if they are just here for my benefit.
That is what God's rest is all about - the daily presence of God and the weekly practice of that presence in a day set apart to pray and to play before Him.
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