I'll figure it out here in a
minute. Before we begin, let's open with
a word of prayer. Father, we thank you that Jesus is that rock that
we can rely on. And Lord, I pray that today, you
will help your people to rest, to continue in the rest that
you provided or to enter into the rest. Lord, I pray that you would help
us not to take lightly the things of your word, but that you would
enable us to be encouraged and exhorted and comforted by what
we hear and see. And today, if we hear your voice,
we pray that you wouldn't let us harden our heart, that
you would give us ears to hear and eyes to see and hearts to
believe all that you have for us. Pray for your comfort, especially
to those who've lost loved ones. Pray that you would continue
to uphold them, encourage them, and give them peace. We ask these
things in your name. Amen. You can make your way back over to
Psalm 95 that I asked James to read for me. Just thankful that we have this
opportunity to meet together. But I've been thinking about
this psalm for a while, and I didn't know when or if I would ever
preach on it. It just has been something that's
been on my mind, I'd say, for the past several months. And
providentially, Not knowing that Eric was going to ask me this
weekend, providentially, he asked me on Labor Day weekend. And
Labor Day is meant to give us a rest, as it were. And so I listened to some people
I trusted, including Joe on this and on some related passages.
And one of the suggested, I guess, titles for this passage and for
related passages are Man's rest versus God's rest. In fact, that's
what I told Eric. I was thinking that that was
a good title. But it kind of bugged me because
it doesn't really say everything that it needs to say. And then
so I thought about it a little bit more. And not that the title
matters. It's more the content of what
we find in the passage. But another title that I thought
of was earthly rest versus heavenly rest. But that didn't really
capture it either. I guess fleshly versus spiritual. And then I heard one of Joe's
messages and I think he, if you want to go look for it, I believe
it's on Hebrews 3 and he says a call to rest And I think that's
a good title as well, but when I thought about it, I thought
about it is really what the psalmist and the related passages we're
going to look at here are talking about is a true and lasting rest
as opposed to a temporary and fleeting rest because You know,
for those of you still in the workplace and even those not,
I mean, Labor Day is a great weekend to enjoy another day
off of work, but while it won't be Monday, Tuesday will come
and it'll be back to your labors. It's a temporary thing. But the
rest that we're called to by scripture is not a temporary
rest. We're called to a permanent and
a lasting rest. So if you're in Psalm 95, I'm
gonna be turning to several other passages as well that are related
to this, but give me a moment to get there. Right or wrong,
I have electronic notes and a paper Bible, so mixing the two together. And we had it read, and I've
thought about it enough that I could take the chance that
I would remember exactly how it goes, but I don't want to
do that. So as we look at this psalm,
and again, as we look at related passages, I want you to see the
outline here first. So verses one through the beginning
of of verse 7, I believe is talking
about a call to worship. And we'll talk about that a little
bit more as we go through here. And then in verse 7, the second
part of the verse through verse 10, I think there is a call for
us not to harden our hearts in unbelief. And then at the end,
interestingly enough, and I'm going to base this on what the
writer of Hebrews says about this passage, there's a call
to enter his rest. I know how it reads there. I
can see it as well and remember it well. And I think that was
one of the things that attracted me to consider this passage because
I knew of what Hebrews said about this passage, and then I also
looked at this again and found it quite striking. So first of
all, let's talk about this call to worship God. The Psalms were
written and given to God's people, initially to the Old Covenant
people of Israel, but I believe they're given to all of God's
people in order to worship God, to praise God rightly. And in
the book of Hebrews, the writer says, the Holy Spirit says, and
it wasn't just David who wrote this or whoever wrote it, it's
not explicitly attributed here, but the Holy Spirit certainly
wrote these things. So if we want to understand what
it is to come together and worship God, we can do no better than
to look at passages like this in the Psalms. So notice here, and this is repeated
throughout this first section, we're invited to come. We have
come, let us sing, let us come before him in verse two, and
then verse six, come, let us bow down. So it's an invitation
to God. And yes, he's meeting with people
who are professed believers, not necessarily all of those
who gathered in Israel. As Paul says in Romans chapter
9, not all Israel is Israel. Not everyone who gathers in a
religious or church setting necessarily knows the Lord Jesus Christ or
believes him. But he's constructing the psalm
primarily for those who are believers in God, and even for those who
have not yet come to Him, this is an invitation as well. So
we're called to sing to God and shout joyfully to Him, to the
rock of our salvation, because He is the one who saves people
from their sins. Come, let us sing joyfully to
the Lord. And then we're instructed in
verse two in how to worship. We're to come before him with
thanksgiving. And elsewhere I and others have
treated this. I know Joe talked about being
thankful, being grateful, having a heart of gratitude. And really,
that's easy when life is good. But when life is difficult, when
you have struggles, when you have physical ailments, it's
difficult to see past those things and really to see that God still
deserves our worship and praise. That last hymn we sang, Jesus
is a rock in a weary land, a shelter in the time of storm. Well, if
there's no weariness, there's no need for shelter, we don't
see it. And so God, in his sovereign
wisdom, permits, ordains, establishes things in our life that we would
really rather have rest from. In this situation of life that
we're in, we have these situations that we will grumble about. will complain. I don't like it
and I have some water here. We'll talk a little bit more
about water in a bit, but we're called to worship thankfully,
no matter what our circumstances are. And who are we to worship? Well,
it's already been alluded to in the first verse, the rock
of our salvation. But we are also instructed in
verses three through five that Jehovah or Yahweh is the great
God and King above all gods. Not that there are other gods.
He's just saying anything that you might place either through
out-and-out idolatry where you worship an image and call it
a god, or through your priorities being incorrect, Yahweh, Jehovah,
Yahoshua, God is with us, is the great God and King above
all gods. And not only that, he is sovereign
in creation. In his hands are the depths of
the earth and the mountain peaks belong to him. The sea is his
for he made it and his hands formed the dry land. So only one God is worthy of
our worship, and he's worthy of our worship in part here because
of creation. But then in verses six and seven,
we're called to come and bow down and worship and let us kneel
before the Lord our maker. And I know when Joe went through
this passage almost exactly nine years ago, nine years ago and
a little bit, he said, and I agree with him, when it says God is
our maker here, he's not talking about the creation of all things. He's talking about the people
of God, the fact that he is their creator in the sense that he's
the author of the new creation. And you see that in the second
part of this section where he says, for he is our God and we
are the people of God. of his pasture, the sheep or
the flock under his care. God is our great shepherd. Jesus is called the great shepherd
of the sheep. And we are called in humble reverence
here to worship God because he is our God and we are his sheep. Wonderful thing. If I wasn't
drawn into all the related passages here, I could have left off and
just spent our time looking and contemplating at those things.
And I encourage you, those are great themes to be encouraged
by. But something caused David or
the psalmist here to remember, I guess, an infamous historical
occurrence, actually at least two historical occurrences for
the people of Israel. So those of us who know US history,
if I asked you for days that are infamous or that would be, Considered infamous, we could
think of December 7th, or we could think of September 11th,
or similar days like that. There were bad things that happened,
things that disrupted severely the world around us for a time
because they happened. And the same is true here. So we have this warning and the
psalmist thinks about the rock, and I believe, and when we'll
look at these two passages in Exodus and in Numbers, and then
go to 1 Corinthians, I think you'll see the correlation there. I think that the rock made the
author, or the Holy Spirit moved the author, or both, to relate
this story, and he says, today, If you hear his voice, do not
harden your hearts as you did at Meribah, and as you did at
that day at Massa in the desert, where your fathers tested and
tried me, though they had seen what I did. For 40 years, I was
angry with that generation. I said, they are a people whose
hearts go astray, They have not known my ways, so I declared
on oath in my anger, they shall never enter my rest. So if you're conversant in scripture,
you are aware of this, I would say, central story that is related
in multiple places in scripture. But we want to go back to the
beginning story, and that's in Exodus 17. You can either turn
over there or listen as I read. So Exodus 17, so just kind of
catching you up. Moses and Aaron are appointed
by God to lead the people out of Israel. And God miraculously
works to get them out. If you remember, there's the
plagues, there's the pleading with Pharaoh, there's the passage
through the Red Sea, and God's provision all along for the people
of Israel. And here they are again out in
the desert place, traveling from place to place, chapter 17 verse
1, and they camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the
people to drink. Interestingly enough, Rephidim,
if you translated it, instead of transliterating it, means
resting place. So they're at this resting place,
but they didn't have water. Now, we don't have that struggle
necessarily, but certainly that is a temporary need for which
you cannot go very long without solving. If you don't eat you
can go for extended periods of time without eating but water
even less so. It's a matter of days at best
without any water depending on on your situation. So there is no water So if you
wanted to take the, I guess, the earthly, physical, practical
view of this, they had a reason to complain. Come on, Moses,
did you really do this? You know, led us here to do that? And they quarreled with Moses and said, give us water to drink.
And Moses replied, why do you quarrel with me? Why do you put
the Lord to the test? And I think it's, If we think
about it for a while, we can understand why Moses is correct
in saying this. It's like God is the one who's
led us out here. He is the one who has to provide. But the people were thirsty for
water there, and the more I talk about water, the more I want
to drink from my water thing, but I'll try to resist that urge
unless I really need it. I'm not as thirsty as they were.
But the people were thirsty for water there, and they grumbled
against Moses, and they said, why do you bring us up out of
Egypt to make us and our children and livestock die of thirst? Now here is a bit of an exaggeration,
and I don't know how long they had gone without water, but they're
assuming the worst from the scenario that they're in. And I think
that that's a common failing of sinful human beings, assume
the worst from your situation. Then Moses cried out to the Lord,
what am I to do with these people? They are almost ready to stone
me. And the Lord answered Moses,
walk on ahead of the people, take with you some of the elders
of Israel, and take in your hand the staff with which you struck
the Nile, and go. Very specific instructions, and
we'll talk about that in a moment. I will stand there before you
by the rock at Horeb, strike the rock, and water will come
out of it for the people to drink. So Moses did this in the sight
of the elders of Israel and he called the place Masa and Meribah
because the Israelites quarreled and because they tested the Lord
saying, is the Lord among us or not? Now, I don't want to
moralize too much, but it's very easy for me to put myself in
the place of the Israelites grumbling here. But I want you to see that
in his specific instructions, he says, take a specific rod,
the one which you struck the Nile and it turned to blood,
and I want you to go strike the rock. Well, why is that significant? Well, like a lot of things in
the Old Testament, a lot of the history that's related to us
there, there's a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ. And if you
want to look at that picture, 1 Corinthians talks about this
specifically. So 1 Corinthians chapter 10.
actually also talks about this. I don't want you to be ignorant,
chapter 10, that our forefathers were all under the cloud and
they all passed through the sea, right? They all ate of the spiritual
food, verse three, and drank the same spiritual drink. For
they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and
that rock was Christ. And then it says, nevertheless,
God was not pleased with them. So you might think, well, this
is a bit of an overreaction, one-time sin. And yet God used this sin to
have a picture that is related in the Psalms, and then as we're
gonna see in a little bit, it's related in 1 Corinthians by the
Apostle Paul, and as we'll see, it's also related by the writer
of Hebrews. Christ was that rock. Christ
provided them rest. Yes, it was a temporal, in-time
physical rest, but, That rock that accompanied them, that rock
was Christ. So there's a second incident.
I believe it's said to be 39 years later. We'll go to Numbers
chapter 20. Numbers chapter 20 and beginning
at the beginning of a chapter. We read, in the first month,
the whole Israelite community arrived at the desert of Zin,
and they stayed at Kadish, where Miriam died and was buried. And again, and those are my words,
verse two, now there was no water for the community, and the people
gathered in opposition to Moses and Aaron. And they quarreled
with Moses and said, if we had only died when our brothers fell
dead before the Lord, why did you bring the Lord's community
into this desert that we and our livestock should die here?
Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to this terrible place? It has no grain or figs or grape
vines or pomegranates and there is no water to drink. So 39 years later, they still
haven't learned the lesson, very similar sort of thing. Last time,
Moses obeys God, follows his instructions, and we have the
striking of the rock with a rod that was used to bring blood
out of the Nile. Verse six, Moses and Aaron went
from the assembly to the entrance of the tent, a meeting, and fell
face down, and the glory of the Lord appeared to them, and the
Lord said to Moses, take the staff, and you and your brother,
Aaron, gather the assembly together, and then notice very carefully
here, speak, speak to that rock before their eyes, and it will
pour out its water. you will bring water out of the
rock for the community so they and their livestock can drink.
So Moses took the staff from the Lord's presence just as he
commanded him. So, so far so good. He and Aaron
gathered the assembly together in front of the rock and Moses
said to them, listen you rebels, must we bring you water out of
this rock? Then Moses raised his arm and
struck the rock twice with his staff, and water gushed out,
and the community and the livestock drank. But the Lord said to Moses
and Aaron, because you did not trust me enough to honor me as
holy in the sight of the Israelites, you will not bring this community
into the land, and I will just insert the word rest here, because
that is the way that it was looked at, into the rest, that I give
them. These were the waters of Meribah
where the Israelites quarreled with the Lord and where he showed
himself holy among them. So think about it, the first
time, very symbolic of Christ, the Lord Jesus Christ being stricken
and smitten and afflicted for us. But that was a once for all
sacrifice. This time Moses puts himself
in the place of God and Aaron and says, must we do this? God had called him to speak to
him, and as believers, we don't need Christ re-sacrificed for
us every Sunday like those in Roman Catholicism believe happens. We don't need Christ re-sacrificed. It was a once-for-all sacrifice,
and that is what we're to get out of this picture here. So
when we talk about the rock of our salvation, he was stricken
once for us, and then he continues to provide as we speak to him,
as we ask him, as we pray to him, as we tell him to provide
for our needs. He provides for us according
to his wisdom and his goodness and his mercy. What Moses did here was a serious
sin. He put himself in the place of
God and he took and really harmed the picture that God was using
to teach the people about the Lord Jesus Christ. So now you
can understand why it is God would say for 40 years in Psalm
95, I was angry with that generation. And if you read through the first
five books of the Bible and you reassemble the history because
there are parallels there, you will see again and again and
again there was a hardening of their hearts in unbelief. God
had provided miraculously for them. God had provided well for
them. He provided manna and water,
and yet that was not enough. They shall never enter my rest.
Seems like a down note. Let's look at Hebrews beginning
in chapter three. And just a little bit of background
for the book of Hebrews. And when you think about the
book of Hebrews, what you need to think about is a group of
professed believers who are wavering because of persecution and because
of difficulties about going back to their religious heritage. And for our time, it may be going
back to not being seen as so weird, you know, that group of
people who believe that Jesus is everything. Well, we believe
Jesus saves, but, you know, we believe, you know, these things
in addition to that, these extra biblical things. So they were
being tempted to go back to Judaism, to go back to the law, to go
back to Moses. And in the first several chapter
or first couple chapters he talks about angels because they figured
prominently in judaism at the time he said he showed how jesus
is greater than angels and here in chapter three in the beginning
of the chapter he says that jesus is greater than moses he says
therefore holy brothers who share you who are struggling who share
in the heavenly calling Fix your thoughts on Jesus, the apostle
and high priest whom we confess. He was faithful to the one who
appointed him, just as Moses was faithful in all God's house,
and we actually, and the writer of Hebrews will talk about this,
about a failing of Moses, but for purposes of the discussion,
the writer here is not gonna quibble about that. He's gonna
say Moses was faithful in all of God's house. But Jesus has
been found, verse three, worthy of greater honor than Moses.
Why is that? Just as the builder of a house
has greater honor than the house itself, for every house is built
by someone, but God is the builder of everything. Moses was faithful
as a servant in God's house. And then verse six, but Christ
is faithful as a son over God's house. And then he adds this,
and we are his house if we hold on to our courage and the hope
of which we boast. And then he quotes our passage
and he prefaces it with verse seven, so as the Holy Spirit
says, today, if you hear his voice. And you'll see some minor
differences and in part because of the likelihood that the writer
of Hebrews was using the Septuagint, he was looking at a slightly
different text, but Pretty much the 100% idea for idea here. I'm not trying to criticize it
that way, but I'm just gonna say, if you look at it, it's
gonna seem slightly different, just like if you look at an NIV
versus a King James, you're gonna see slight differences. So what
is conveyed is the same, even if there are slight differences
in wording here. But think about it, they're wavering,
they wanna go back and... I want to say Paul, the writer
of Hebrews, kind of like the writer of Psalm 95, I believe,
is David. I've always thought, kind of
loosely held, that Hebrews are written by Paul, but I understand
that isn't a necessity to believe, and nowhere is that explicitly
or implicitly stated. But here we read, Christ is faithful
over, and then we read the warning to hold on to our courage or
to our hope that we've been given. And likewise in Psalm 95, we
have a similar sort of warning to the people there, not to harden
their hearts. How are we to understand that?
I thought salvation is 100% a work of God. It is. But part of the way in life that
we show that we're truly saved is by persevering, not perfectly. I mean, look at Moses, look at
David, a man after God's own heart. Look at Peter. Look at
other saints of old. We struggle with sin. But I don't
remember the exact words, but as Joe said, it is like I can't
know whether or not you're the elect of God, but if you continue
in resting in Christ, I have a belief that you are and that
we show that. Not that we gut it out and we
do it ourselves, far from it. But if God begins a good work
in you, if he truly does it, it's not some man-made work,
then he's gonna be faithful to complete it. So therefore, we
need to, if we hear his voice today, and we are, the Holy Spirit
wrote the words that I've referenced, so even if you throw out all
of my words, You're hearing God's words from him today. Today,
if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts. And like I said, he quotes from
that. Verse 12, see to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful,
unbelieving heart that turns away from the living
God. but rather encourage one another
daily as long as it is called today so that none of you may
be hardened by sin's deceitfulness. We have come to share in Christ,
and again, he does the same thing here, if we hold firmly to the
end the confidence that we had at first. And as just has been
said, If you're wondering if he thinks the text is important
today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts. So
we're exhorted not to trust in ourselves, not to lean on our
own understanding, not to trust our own hearts. Our hearts are
wicked and deceitful. Desperately wicked, I believe,
is how it's referred to in scripture. So what we need to do is we need
to stop trusting our feelings and even our logic that we can
spin out. Is God really with this Moses
guy? I know all these other things
happened and God provided for us. I'm thirsty right now. Is
God really with him? That's an unbelieving heart.
That's a heart that you want to today Stop thinking that way. And then I don't have time to
go through all the verses here, but essentially what he does
here in verses 16 through 18 is he does a, I guess you would
call it the Socratic method. He uses a questioning sort of
thing. Who was it who rebelled and so
on. And verse 19, he says, so that
we see that they were not able to enter because of their unbelief. How did they unbelieve? The grumbling,
occasionally, that is not unbelief, but persisting in that, doubting
that God was with Moses and that God had provided a way of escape,
that was their unbelief. That was their persisting for
40 years in unbelief. But then in chapter four, verse
one, he says, therefore, since the promise of entering his rest
still stands, And that's where it's like, well, wait a minute.
They won't enter my rest? I declared in my anger, they
won't enter my rest? Well, and he'll go on to explain
this further, the fact that God speaks about a rest means it
can be entered. And the fact that you and I are
still alive right now means that we can believe and enter that
rest, that we can obtain a true and lasting rest by trusting
in Christ, one that has consequences in this world, but in the world
to come, even more importantly. Even though we may thirst, we
may hunger, we may suffer wrongdoing, it's true, that there remains
a rest, a promise of entering as rest still stands. He says,
let us be careful that none of you have been found to have fallen
short. How would they fall short? By
being unbelieving like the Old Testament Israelites, by persisting
in rumbling. Verse two, for we have also had
the gospel preached to us. The news that they had preached
to them was obviously of not the detail that we have, or even
the writer, the audience, the original audience of the book
of Hebrews. It wasn't as good as that. But
we both, they back in Exodus, and we today, and those during
the time of the writer of Hebrews, that audience, all of us have
had the gospel preached to us. Trust in Christ, trust in the
rock. Trust in God to provide. Trust
that he will be with you and never leave you or forsake you.
Trust him for everything, including your sin. But he says, but the
message they heard was of no value to them because those who
heard it did not combine it with faith. We know faith is a gift
of God, but unbelief, lack of faith is the issue. It's the issue for all of us.
Verse three, now we who have believed enter that rest. And again, he quotes that passage,
just as God has said, so I declared on oath in my anger, they shall
never enter my rest. And I believe what he's doing
here is he wants to make sure they understand how he's coming
to this conclusion. Because you could be confused
at this point. Certainly he understood that
his writers could be confused at this point. How is it that
he keeps saying there's a rest we can enter when he says unbelief
means they can't enter the rest? And he says, yet his work has
been finished since the creation of the world. For somewhere he
has spoken about the seventh day, he's making reference to
Genesis 2.2, and on the seventh day, God rested from all his
works. And again, in the passage above,
he says, they shall never enter my rest. And what he's doing
here is he's comparing, and he'll make it clear here in a minute,
he's comparing the Sabbath rest So as a people, they were very
familiar with this idea of a Sabbath, take one day in seven. But that
was to be a reminder of what God had done. And the writer
of Hebrews here says, well, God rested from his work. And what
he's gonna go on to say is, shouldn't we go on? The point wasn't, that
we just know this fact, God rested from his work. We need to know
that, but that isn't the point. The point isn't taking one day
in seven. In fact, and I found it interesting,
some of you may be familiar with J. Adams was Presbyterian background. And in his later years, he wrote
a little booklet about why the Sabbath isn't for Christians,
which I thought was a great book. And he makes reference to this.
The point isn't that day. That's a type, a shadow. And the ironic thing is, is those
who would say you need to keep the law of Moses in order to,
you know, you get saved by faith, but you need to continue by keeping
the law of Moses. You need to show faithfulness
to the Sabbath. That's the opposite of what the
writer is saying here. He's trying to get them not to
do stuff like that. Stay away from going back to
Judaism. And if you have a background
like I do and like Paula does, stay away from Roman Catholicism. Stay away from any sort of ritualistic,
works-based effort to earn favor with God. No, stay away from
that. And rather, rest. It remains that some will enter
the rest, like I said. God set aside a certain day,
the Sabbath rest. And then to make it complete.
And Joe had taken us nearly all the way through the book, for
if Joshua, not Jesus, it's the same word, but if you have a
King James, it'll say Jesus, for if Joshua had given them
rest, God would not have spoken later about another day. So the
land wasn't rest. What he's saying is, historically,
God resting from his work of creation, that isn't enough. That was a type, but that isn't
enough. Remembering and trying to keep the law, that isn't enough. In fact, you can't do it. And
the land that so many people were looking for, just adherence
to the land, and even today, people talk about Israel needs
to go back into the land, whether they do or not, to me, is not
a biblical or spiritual matter, it's a historic and political
one. But he says, if Joshua, by bringing
you into the land, had given you rest, we wouldn't talk about
another rest. There wouldn't be another rest
to talk about. And then he says, verse nine,
there remains then a Sabbath rest and he means. the fulfillment
of the carnal Saturday, not Sunday, Saturday Sabbath rest for the
people of God. For anyone who enters God's rest,
not these types and shadows, not Labor Day, I'm gonna enjoy
my day off, trust me, I'm gonna enjoy my day off, but that's
a rest that doesn't give me the type of rest spoken of here.
For anyone who enters God's rest, also rests from his own work,
just as God did from his. And I really like the analogy
Joe made here. He said, people make this too
complicated. He said, if you're out and you're
in your garden, and you still could be this time of year for
a little while longer, and you're hoeing, And you think, man, I could use
some rest. You don't keep hoeing. You put
the hoe down, and you go in and sit down and get something to
drink, and you relax. And likewise, when God calls
us to rest, we don't need to continue in labors. Before we
were saved, maybe we got to a point of understanding where we're
like, man, I'm in bad shape. I'm gonna try to do some good
things. I'm trying to live my life a certain way so God will
accept me. Well, when you see the truth
of the gospel, you're called to rest. Jesus provides you rest. Jesus provides me rest. And then
he uses a somewhat paradoxical, I can speak here, phrase when
he says in verse 11, Well, let me back up. I'm jumping
ahead of myself. Verse 10, I said, anyone who
enters God's rest also rests from his own work. And here's
a creation analogy that's given just as God did from his. That's
why we're told about creation, not to satisfy our curiosity,
not for it to become a scientific... I believe the creation account,
don't get me wrong, but it's not intended to be a full scientific
account. They didn't think in those categories
or whatever. I don't believe God worked through
evolution or anything like that. That point of us knowing about
the creation, God created everything good, and then he rested is in
the new creation, God takes care of everything. He makes everything
good. He makes it all new. And then we get to enter rest
with him. That is what we're called to.
That is how we need to look at this. We enter into rest like
him. Not that we're creating or saving
ourselves. No, in both cases, God did the
work and we're able to rest. But there's this paradoxical
statement here in verse 11. Let us therefore make every effort
to enter that rest so that no one will fall by following their
example of disobedience. And I'll use Joe's analogy again.
Don't keep going back to the hoe, leave it there. Make every
effort to avoid the hoe. And for some of us who didn't
really like gardening growing up, I had a grandfather who loved
to go pull weeds and do that. I hated dealing with that, hoeing
and pulling weeds, but he loved to do that. That was his relaxation. But in my case, it was just more
work. Or pulling dandelions. My dad insisted on seeing the
roots of the dandelion, if you can imagine. Pull the dandelion
out. If you don't do it just right,
guess what? You get about that much of the
root, and it's very clear you didn't get it all. That wasn't
rest for me. That was work. And the writer
here uses a statement to capture our attention. You want to labor? Labor to rest. Labor to rest. Trust in God. It is impossible
for us in our flesh. Those of us who have been saved
by grace through faith, we still struggle with that. We still
struggle with this idea that we can just let God do the work. We want to help him every once
in a while. And our flesh gets in the way. Well, today, if we hear His voice in the call to worship here,
God calling us to trust and rest in Him, today, if we hear that
voice, don't harden your heart. Happens so often. Stop looking
to yourself. I know I struggle with that. Don't despise the finished work
of Christ. Don't be like those who grumbled
in the wilderness. No, God will provide. May be
hard, may be difficult, but just believe that the promise of rest
remains for those who trust and continue in our Lord Jesus Christ. May by the grace of God, all
of us who hear this word do so. Let's pray and then I'll have
James and our guest pianist Anne come up. Father, we just thank
you once again for this time in your word. We pray as we enjoy
this longer weekend and have this time of rest from some of the things that the world
has for us that we'll be reminded of the rest that we have in Christ,
that today we can enter into that rest, today we can rejoice. And every today that you give
us by the grace of God, because we're not promised any more todays
than this one, but any further days that you give us, may we
continue to rest and rely upon you. Help us as we go forth. We ask
this in Jesus' name. Amen.