Let’s take our Bibles together and turn to the Book of Hebrews, as we continue our series, “Christ Supreme in All Things.” Hebrews 4:1-13 has been described by one scholar as “one of the most fascinating, enigmatic, and tightly argued sections of Hebrews.” It’s a fascinating exploration of God’s rest. And as you are turning there, let me relay to you a story of a person who found rest in the Lord. 

In the fourth Century AD there was a brilliant thinker named Augustine. But Augustine wasn’t just brilliant; he was also tortured by his lust and sin. He was enslaved to his carnal urges for sexual pleasure. Despite his pursuit of different religious and philosophical systems, he couldn’t conquer his sexual cravings. And he bounced around from one religion to another to find a remedy for his sinfulness. He was a restless soul. 

Well one day he was sitting unhappily in his garden questioning the meaning of life. And he was weeping uncontrollably about the state of his soul. And while weeping, he heard a child’s voice began singing in Latin, “Tolle, lege! Tolle, lege!” (“Take up and Read!” “Take up and Read”). And after that he randomly turned to a passage of Scripture (Rom 13:13-14). 

And here’s how Augustine tells it in his book Confessions: “I stemmed the flood of tears and rose to my feet, believing that this could be nothing other than a divine command to open the Book and read the first passage I chanced upon… Stung into action, I returned to the place where Alypius was sitting, for on leaving it I had put down there the book of the apostle’s letters. I snatched it up, opened it and read in silence the passage on which my eyes first lighted: “Not in dissipation and drunkenness, nor in debauchery and lewdness, nor in arguing and jealousy; but put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh or the gratification of your desires” [(Rom 13:13-14)]. I had no wish to read further, nor was there need. No sooner had I reached the end of the verse than the light of certainty flooded my heart and all dark shades of doubt fled away.” 

Augustine got saved that day. He got saved by randomly reading a section of Scripture. He got saved by hearing the Word of God and responding in faith. That was the cure to his restlessness. And it gave rise to one of the great quotes in human history. Most people who know Augustine know his famous quote. Tell me if you’ve heard this before: “Thou has formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee.” 

Now some people think that restlessness can be cured by a long nap! Or maybe a good night’s sleep! But that wasn’t the issue that Augustine was having. He wasn’t struggling with a physical restlessness. He was struggling with spiritual restlessness. He needed rest in his soul. And that’s the topic of our passage today. What I want to show you from Hebrews 4:1-13 is the 1) The Promise of Rest, 2) The Pattern of Rest, 3) The Source of Rest, and 4) The Urgency of Rest. 

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Let’s start with this. Let’s start with… 

1) The Promise of Rest (4:1-3)

The author of Hebrews says in verse 1,

1 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.

“What does that word ‘fear” mean in Greek, Pastor Tony?” Well brace yourselves for this. That word “fear” means “fear.” It’s the verb φοβέομαι which we derive our word “phobia” from. And as we see throughout Scripture there is good fear and there is bad fear. There is good anxiety (Phil 2:20), and there is bad anxiety (Phil 4:6-8). Jesus said himself, “[D]o not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matt 10:28). The book of Proverbs teaches that the fear of the LORD is a good fear (Prov 1:7; 9:10). And yet there is a perfect love that casts out fear (1 John 4:18). The writer of Hebrews says that there is a promise out there that is available to us. And we should fear if we fail to reach it. 

And notice the language here. It’s corporate language. It’s communal language.

let us fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it.

This isn’t just agony in our own soul that we should fail to embrace God’s promise. To be quite honest, I don’t agonize about this at all. I know I’m saved. I have assurance of salvation. I have soul rest. My agony is over the state of the souls of the people in my church. I told you a little bit about that last week. 

let us fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it.

Look at verse 2. 

2 For good news came to us just as to them [them being the Israelites], 

Literally “we are evangelized just like them.” Or “We are given the good news just like them.”

but the message they heard did not benefit them, because they were not united by faith with those who listened. 

They didn’t believe God’s Word in the wilderness. They didn’t heed God’s voice. They didn’t embrace the “good news.” The word for “good news” here is the Greek εὐαγγελίζω. We get our word “evangelical” from this word. The Israelites were evangelized but they rejected the “evangel.” They rejected the “good news.” 

“How did they reject it, Pastor Tony?” They didn’t unite it with faith! They heard the message, but it didn’t benefit them. They listened, but their hearts were hard. And they didn’t believe.

Martin Luther described “God’s Word” and a person’s “heart” as like two pieces of wood. And faith is the glue that bonds them together. In other words, faith binds God’s Word to your heart and they become united. They are merged into one. 

And just to be clear, faith is never just a blind leap into the dark. Biblical faith is anchored to God’s Word. Sometimes people portray faith like a blind leap in the dark. If you remember, there’s that famous scene from “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” where Indiana Jones takes a blind leap into this chasm and that is described heroically as the way of faith. But Christianity is never a blind leap in the dark. It’s always a leap into the light, the light of God’s Word. George Guthrie says it this way: “Trust in God is grounded in the revelation of God.” Biblical faith is grounded in God’s Word.

By the way, the Greek word for “message” in verse 2 is λόγος. I promise not to overwhelm you with Greek words in this passage, but that one is important. So make a note of that because we’ll come back to it. The Israelites heard the λόγος of the LORD, but they didn’t believe. You can’t just hear. You’ve got to believe. And their faithlessness led to restlessness in the wilderness. 

And here’s the opposite of that. Look at verse 3.

3 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.

Now listen, here’s how the analogy works. Let me connect the Israelites to us in the modern-day. God gave the Israelites a promise to enter his rest, and they rejected it through unbelief. They started craving after the leeks and onions in Egypt. They wanted to go back. And because of that they forfeited God’s rest. 

Similarly God gives us “good news.” God gives us his Word (the λόγος). God gives us a promise. Jesus said, “Come to me all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matt 11:28-30). What’s that talking about? That’s not talking about a nap! That’s not talking about a good night’s sleep! That’s not talking about a drug-induced state of calm or nirvana. That’s talking about soul rest. 

And the question always comes up with reference to rest: Is this a future thing or a present thing? Well Jesus was talking about a present reality. And I think the same is true with the author of Hebrews. He’s not talking here about eternity with Christ, even though that’s implied with this talk about the Promised Land. The Israelites had their Promised Land. We have our Promised Land. And yet this is something we can have already. We already have it if we have Christ. We have this rest. Look at verse 3 again. 

3 For we who have believed 

Past Tense – “Have believed.” 

enter that rest,

Present Tense – “Enter.” We enter it. We have it already. Sure there’s an already/not-yet reality to this. But this is more already than not-yet. We can have soul rest now. We are promised it. We can have it. 

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That’s the Promise of Rest. Write this down as #2. Secondly there’s… 

2) The Pattern of Rest (4:4-8)

Look at verse 4 with me.

4 For he has somewhere spoken of the seventh day in this way: “And God rested on the seventh day from all his works.”

Now follow the argument here, because the author of Hebrews pivots briefly away from the Israelites in the wilderness and starts talking about the seven days of creation… which is fun. This author is a creative thinker and you’ve got to keep up with him. 

And he says “he” has somewhere spoken of the seventh day. I think the “he” there is a reference to the Holy Spirit like what we saw in 3:7. But it could be a reference to Moses. 

And what did the Holy Spirit say through Moses about the seventh day? Well, God rested on the seventh day. Remember that in Genesis 2:2? It’s also mentioned in the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20:11. And why did God rest? Was it because he was just so exhausted from creating the world that God needed a nap? No. That’s an insult to God to think that. He doesn’t need rest. He’s all-powerful and doesn’t grow weary. So why did he rest? Well, let’s keep reading. 

5 And again in this passage he said, “They shall not enter my rest.”

That’s Psalm 95. So the author is bringing together Genesis 2 and Psalm 95. God rests. They shall not enter my rest. God rests. They shall not enter my [God’s] rest. Interesting. Let’s keep reading. 

6 Since therefore it remains for some to enter it, and those who formerly received the good news failed to enter because of disobedience, 7 again he appoints a certain day, “Today,” saying through David [Psalm 95] so long afterward, in the words already quoted, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.”  

Here’s the argument. This is fascinating. The author of Hebrews says that God’s rest was available “today” in that day in the wilderness. That was the “today” of the wilderness wanderers. And they failed to enter his rest. That day is probably a reference to Kadesh-Barnea when the Israelites rebelled against the Lord and got banished from the Promised Land. That was probably around 1445 BC (give or take).  

But Psalm 95 was written by David in roughly 1000 BC about 450 years later. And those people in David’s day had their “today.” They had their good news. And they had their promise from God that they either believed or disbelieved. 

And the author of Hebrews is piggybacking on both of those events including the creation of the world in Genesis 2 and saying to his audience too, “Today is your day.” The Israelites in the Wilderness had their “today” in the days of Moses. The readers of Psalm 95 had their “today” in the days of David. 

You’ve got your “today” in 65 BC or whenever this book was written. Today if you hear his voice, don’t harden your hearts. Heed God’s Word. Listen to God’s promise. Believe what he tells you. 

That’s the pattern of “Rest” throughout the Scriptures. Hear God’s Word. Believe God’s Word. Rest. Hear God’s Word. Believe God’s Word. Rest. That was true of the Israelites (Joshua and Caleb) 3400 years ago. That was true of the Israelites in David’s day 3000 years ago. That was true of the church that this author of Hebrews was writing to 2000 years ago. That was true of Augustine 1600 years ago when he was restless looking for rest. That’s true of our church today in AD 2022. God’s rest has been available to all of those peoples at all of those times. 

And to argue for that further, look at verse 8.

 8 For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on.

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Go ahead and write this down as #3. We’ve seen the Promise of Rest and the Pattern of Rest. Here’s thirdly…

3) The Source of Rest (4:9-11)

8 For if Joshua had given them rest…

This last week, as I was translating this text, I was really struggling with this verse. Because in Greek I kept reading “For if [Jesus] had given them rest…” And I was thinking to myself, “Jesus?” What’s he saying here? Is this like a reference to some theophany in the wilderness? Jesus as the Rock from 1 Corinthians 10:4? Jesus as the Commander of the Lord’s Army in Joshua 5:13-15? Where did Jesus give rest to the Israelites in the OT? And isn’t the use of the name “Jesus” anachronistic? That name isn’t applied to the second person of the Trinity until the NT! 

Well, then I looked at the English translation and it read “Joshua” and I was like, “Oh! Yeah! I forgot that Joshua and Jesus are the same name.” Joshua (יְהוֹשֻׁעַ) is the Hebrew form of the Name. Jesus (Ἰησοῦς) is the Greek form. So now verse 8 made sense. 

8 For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on. 

That reference to “another day later” is speaking of David in Psalm 95. The rest of God is an ongoing proposition. It wasn’t satisfied by Moses. It wasn’t even satisfied by Joshua. Because unlike Moses, Joshua actually did enter into the Promised Land! But still, there was an invitation to rest in the days of David while the Israelites were already living in the Promised Land. 

And just to be clear, in case you were keeping score in the book of Hebrews, Jesus is better than the angels (1:4-15), he’s better than Moses (3:1-5), and he’s even better than Joshua (3:8) who actually led the people into the Promised Land. But Jesus’s Promised Land is better than Joshua’s Promised Land! 

9 So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, 

In other words, there is a “Sabbath rest” for God’s people that goes beyond the Promised Land in Israel. It even goes beyond the command to worship and rest on Saturdays. Saturday was the day of Sabbath for the Israelites. But the author of Hebrews isn’t talking about resting on Saturdays. How could he? By the time he was writing this, the churches were already meeting on Sunday (see Acts 20:7; 1 Cor 16:2), the day of Jesus’s resurrection. He’s talking about a different kind of “Sabbath rest.” 

10 for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his. 

Look again at verse 10. Whoever has entered “God’s rest.” Whose rest is it? It’s God’s rest. This is not a feeling of relaxation. This is not the rest that we feel during a long vacation. This is entrance into God’s rest. We share the same rest that God enjoys. 

R. Kent Hughes gives the following illustration to help us understand this. He says, “To catch something of the idea here, imagine yourself invited by Prince Charles to enjoy his ‘rest.’ You are picked up by the Royal limo at Heathrow and whisked into London and through the gates of Windsor Palace where you are shown its glories. Then the two of you motor north in his 1968 Aston Martin to Balmoral Castle where you relax before a fire, scratch the ears of the royal hounds, and don a kilt and explore the royal trout streams. You are sharing what Prince Charles calls ‘my rest’—his personal rest.” “That sounds dreamy, Pastor Tony!” Yeah, maybe so. But God’s got something even better than that for us. He welcomes us into the rest that he enjoys, a rest that goes right on into eternity. 

And notice what the author of Hebrews says at the end of verse 10. 

10 for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his.

What is that talking about? That’s a reference to salvation by grace. That’s a reference to salvation by faith. That’s a reference to salvation by Christ alone. The reformers said it this way. Sola Fide. Sola Gratia. Solus Christus. By faith alone. By Grace alone. By Christ alone. We’re not saved by works, we’re saved by grace through faith. The Apostle Paul said it this way: “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Eph 2:8-9). 

Listen, if you want to enter into God’s rest… if you want to have assurance of salvation… you’ve got to, in the words of that old hymn… “lay your deadly doing down.” You’ve got to rest from doing in order to be saved. Let me say it this way—in order to enter God’s rest you’ve got to rest from your works. That’s essentially what the author of Hebrews is saying here. “For whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his.” You’ve got to lay your deadly doing down.

I remember reading a book a few years ago. It’s a great book on American history called The Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story. It’s probably the best book on American history that I’ve ever read. Read that book. Quit watching the news at night and read that instead. 

And I remember listening to a podcast with the author of that book, Wilfred McClay. And he was talking about his childhood. And he said that when he was a kid, he went to Sunday School at United Presbyterian church or something like that… some liberal denomination. And he said the message he got from his Sunday school teachers was basically this: “Jesus was nice, and then he died. So, little boys and girls, you be nice too.” I laughed out loud when I heard that. I thought to myself, “Do people really teach that ridiculous notion in Sunday Schools” “Jesus was nice, and then he died. So you be nice too, kids.” What a crock! You know what that is. That’s just warmed-over legalism. That’s not salvation by grace through faith. That’s just works-based righteousness that is repackaged and repurposed for little Christian kids. 

And that is not what children’s ministry should be teaching. Children’s ministry should be teaching kids that there is a little monster inside of them called sin. And you’ve got to kill that monster. You’ve got to kill that monster before it destroys you. 

And you know how you kill it? Do you know how? You don’t kill it with niceness! You don’t kill it with works. That is like bringing a knife to a gunfight! You kill it by believing God’s promise. You kill it by faith in God’s Word. You kill it by resting in the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross. Jesus is the source of our rest. 

10 for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his. 

11 Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, 

Not through works, but through faith. That’s how we strive. I know this sounds paradoxical, but it’s essentially the Christian life. You strive to rest. You strive as an outworking of that rest. In other words, we “work against all of our efforts to prove our righteousness. We must strive against all our efforts to justify ourselves.” 

11 Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. 

That word “fall” there is a reference to Israelites again. They fell because of disobedience. And that disobedience resulted from disbelief. They didn’t heed God’s Word. They didn’t believe, and so they disobeyed. 

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So let’s review, and then we’ll get to one of my favorite verses in the Bible. First there’s the Promise of Rest. Then there’s the Pattern of Rest, going back all the way to Genesis in the OT. Then there’s the Source of Rest. It’s God’s rest. And our rest is made possible, not by works, but by faith in the finished work of Christ. And finally, write this down as #4, there’s…

The Urgency of Rest (4:12-13) 

The author of Hebrews says this in verse 12. I love this verse. I’ve probably quoted this verse over a hundred times in my life. I memorized this verse in AWANAs as a kid. I might even have memorized it before that in Sunday School. In fact, I can’t ever remember a time in my life when I didn’t have this verse memorized. It’s been that formative in my life as a Christian. 

12 For the word of God [the λόγος 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. 

This imagery of the Word of God being like a sword is not unique to the author of Hebrews. Paul also calls the word of God the sword of the Spirit in Ephesians 6:17. It’s a vivid image. 

And like I said, I’ve known this verse since I was a kid, but I haven’t always understood why the author of Hebrews quotes this verse. What’s the context? Why is he saying this here? Well let me answer that. Let me first tell you “what” he’s saying, and then I’ll tell you “why” he’s saying it. 

First the “what.” What’s he saying? Well he’s saying that God’s word is potent. It’s living. It’s active. It’s not dead and passive. It has power to penetrate our hearts. 

The image of a two-edged sword here is instructive. It cuts two ways. It brings conviction and healing to someone who is responsive to it. It brings judgment on those who reject it. That’s the idea here. 

And for the person who is responsive to it, it cuts deeply to the division of soul and spirit. You might say, “What’s the difference between my soul and my spirit, Pastor Tony?” Well there’s no real difference. They are so tightly bound up with each other, that they are impossible to separate. But God’s Word is that sharp. It’s that piercing, that it can divide even the indivisible. 

That’s the metaphysical analogy he uses here. Then he uses a physical analogy. It separates even joints and marrow. For someone who is a priest or a butcher, they know what that means. You need a sharp knife to separate those things, because they are so inextricably bound up with each other in a person’s physiology. 

And God’s Word is so piercing, it’s so commanding, it can even discern the thoughts and intentions of our hearts. How many times have you struggled through something in your life, and God’s word pierces through all the confusion and all the smoke and mirrors and gets right to the heart of the matter? I’ve had that experience countless times in my life. God knows us better than we know ourselves, so of course, his Word helps us to understand what we can’t understand without him. 

And that’s the point of the next verse.  

13 And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account. 

Philip Hughes writes, “Clearly, as God is by his word the creator and sustainer of the whole order of creation, all, that is, all things, which includes all men, are open and laid bare to him.” Without God and without his Word, we would be like Israelites craving leeks and onions in the wilderness. We don’t know what we need. We don’t know ourselves. And what we think we need is horrible for us. We need God’s discernment. We need God’s help. We need God’s revelation. We need God’s Word. We need his sight. 

And he has given us his Word. He didn’t have to. He could have left us in ignorance, groping in the darkness. But he didn’t do that. He gave us his powerful, penetrating, piercing Word that exposes our hearts and helps us to discern what God wants from us. 

And that leads us to the “why.” Why is the author saying this now? Why is he talking about God’s Word now in verse 12-13? Well he’s connecting what God said to the Israelites in the wilderness with what God says to us in his Word. 

And that’s the link with the previous passage. Remember what I said about λόγος in verse 2? I want to come back to that now. That’s what stitches this whole passage together. The Israelites in the wilderness ignored God’s λόγος (“the message”).

2 For good news came to us just as to them, but the λόγος they heard did not benefit them, because they were not united by faith with those who listened.

They had their λόγος from the Lord, and they didn’t believe it. What’s our λόγος? What’s our message? It’s these Scriptures. It’s this Word of God, the Scriptures, and the gospel held therein. It’s the Word of God that testifies to the WORD of God, the λόγος of John 1. 

And here’s the urgency. We either unite this λόγος with faith and believe it, or we reject it. It’s a two-edged sword. It either heals us or destroys us. It either completes us or condemns us. It cuts two ways. There is rest and there is wrath. 

In fact, there is dramatic irony in the use of this word for dual-edged sword. When the Israelites defied God’s voice in Numbers 14, they were driven back and fell by the sword of the Amalekites. The Greek word for “sword” used in that passage is μάχαιρα. In Hebrew, it’s חֶרֶב. But in the LXX, the Greek translation of the OT, it’s μάχαιρα. They ignored God’s Word, so they got the sword. Sure enough, the Word of God in Hebrews 4:12 is also described as a μάχαιρα, a dual-edged μάχαιρα. Peter O’Brien states that this is the case because the Word of God exposes our thoughts and renders us defenseless before God. 

And look at the end of verse 13. We will give an account. By the way the word for “account” here is once again λόγος. The word λόγος in Greek is a very flexible word. It has a wide semantic range. And the idea here is that we’ve heard God’s Word, his λόγος. And we’re going to have to give our own λόγος based on his λόγος. 

You know I always quoted Hebrews 4:12 as a positive verse. And it is positive for some! It is positive if you heed God’s Word and obey it! But in context, it’s more warning than affirmation. It’s a dual-edged sword that cuts both ways. 

There’s an old Christian prayer that goes like this: “O thou elect blade and sharpest sword who art able powerfully to penetrate the hard shell of the human heart, transfix my heart with the shaft of thy love.… Pierce, O Lord, pierce, I beseech thee, this most obdurate mind of mine with the holy and powerful [blade] of thy grace.” This is a prayer that every one of us should pray. This is the prayer that every one of us should utter before we open God’s Holy Word. May we be more receptive and more faith-filled in our response to God’s Word than the Israelites were in the wilderness. That’s the hope of this author of Hebrews for his audience. That’s my hope for my life. And that’s my hope for the people of Verse By Verse Fellowship. “Pierce, O Lord, pierce, I beseech thee, this most obdurate mind of mine with the holy and powerful [blade] of thy grace.” 

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Let me close with this. I want to close by circling back with this concept of “Rest.” I read a portion this last week of a book called Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secrets. It’s a book that is on a lot of Christians Top Ten list. Hudson Taylor, if you don’t know that name, was a famous Baptist missionary to China in the nineteenth century. He started a ministry called Chinese Inland Mission that is responsible for leading countless people in China to Christ. And Taylor lived a fast and frenetic life. But as one author attests, Taylor lived and operated always in God’s rest.

Here’s how his son, Howard Taylor, describes it: “Day and night this was [Hudson Taylor’s] secret, ‘just to roll the burden on the Lord.’ Frequently those who were wakeful in the little house at Chinkiang might hear, at two or three in the morning, the soft refrain of Mr. Taylor’s favorite hymn [“Jesus, I am resting, resting in the joy of what Thou art”]. He had learned that for him, only one life was possible—just that blessed life of resting and rejoicing in the Lord under all circumstances, while He dealt with the difficulties, inward and outward, great and small.” 

Hudson Taylor experienced a down payment of that future rest which he now enjoys in the presence of the Lord. Even though his body was weary, and his mind was frantic, his soul was at rest. Is your soul at rest? Today, if you hear God’s Word, do not harden your heart as the Israelites did in the Wilderness. No. Combine God’s Word to your heart with faith and enter into God’s rest.