Let's turn to the book of Hebrews,
to chapters 3 and 4. We're going to go and look a
little bit over what we did last week and thus far, and then catch
up where we are in chapter 4. Again, I will exhort you all
to please be reading this letter throughout the week, as well
as the Gospel of John. For as you read, the Lord teaches,
and as the Lord teaches, you agree with what you're taught,
if it indeed is from the same Spirit. So, if you want to know
the Bible, you must be in Of course, as a way of reminder,
Hebrews is written as a polemic against Judaism. Those Jewish
Christians who were being tempted through pressure and through
culture to come back to the confines of Judaism, to the Law of Moses,
to the spiritual pictures and shadows of Jesus Christ and His
righteousness. And to do so, Paul said, would
be to forsake Christ. Just as we've learned as Paul
wrote to the Galatians, he is writing similar things but with
more Old Testament anchors to the Jewish community in Christ. Chapter 3, Paul begins to deal
with how Christ is greater than the shadows. How Christ is greater
as a son than Moses was as a slave. That Jesus is the one who takes
takes everything that the Father is and displays it perfectly
as God. And in verse 12 of chapter 3,
this exhortation and admonishment comes, take care brothers lest
there be any in any of you. I never can get that phrase out.
lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading
you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every
day, as long as it is called today, that none of you may be
hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For if we have come to
share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence
firm to the end, as it is said, today if you hear His voice,
Do not harden your hearts, as in the rebellion. For who were
those who heard and yet rebelled? Was it not all those who left
Egypt, led by Moses? And with whom was he provoked
for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned,
whose bodies fell dead in the wilderness? And to whom did he
swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who were
disobedient? So we see that they were unable
to enter because of unbelief. Therefore, while the promise
of entering His rest still stands, let us fear lest any of you should
seem to have failed to reach it. For good news came to us
just as to them, but the message they heard did not benefit them
because they were not united by faith with those who listened.
For we who have believed enter that rest, as he said, I swore
in my wrath they shall not enter my rest, although his works were
finished from the foundation of the world. For he had somewhere
spoken of the seventh day in this way, and God rested on the
seventh day from all his works. And again in this passage he
said, they shall not enter my rest. Since therefore it remains
for some to enter it, and those who formerly received the good
news failed to enter because of disobedience, again he appoints
a certain day. today, saying through David so
long afterward in the words already quoted. Today, if you hear his
voice, do not harden your hearts." For if Joshua had given them
rest, God would not have spoken of another day. So then there
remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For whoever has
entered God's rest has also rested from his works as God did from
his. Let us therefore enter that rest so that no one may fall
by the same sort of disobedience. For the word of God is living
and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to
the division of the soul and of the spirit, and joints in
a marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the
heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked
and exposed to the eyes of Him to whom we must give an account."
Now I will not go through all of that today. And the reason
I wanted to pick back up into chapter 3 is because it is one
thought as it moves into chapter 4, therefore. Remember it wasn't
until the 16th century that these letters, I mean that these numbers
and verses actually existed. There was no such thing as a
verse in the letters of the New Testament. Even the Gospels are
still letters. So we must not take these divisions
to heart and think that now there's something new being said. So
when we look at chapter 3, we begin to see that Paul is referring
to the Israelites, the chosen of God, who were led out of the
wilderness by Moses, by the mighty hand of God in all of his signs
and all of his wonders, by his providence to feed them and give
them water in the middle of the wilderness. And because of their
unbelief, that means they did not believe and trust in the
promises of God, he allowed them to perish. He allowed them to
perish in the wilderness where their bodies would lie dead.
So this is a picture of God's election and this is a picture
of God's reprobation. Those who will not believe and
cannot believe and do not believe are considered, even in this
temporal covenant of the promised land on this earth, they fell
in the wilderness. They did not receive the promise
of life because the promise is conditioned on what? Being the
elect, number one, and number two, the promise is conditioned
on faith. That's a necessary condition
of the one who is the elect. So there is no such thing as
an elect person who will die without believing the gospel.
So therefore we look at the New Testament teaching by the Apostles
when it says, by faith, by grace you've been saved through faith,
to be received by faith, this is to be believed by faith, etc. It means that we believe in the
promise of God for His people. And so we don't discern any other
way except the way the scripture teaches it. So if we look at
this latter part of chapter 3 and we see how he asks these rhetorical
questions, we need to pay close attention to the fact that he
says in verse 19, So we see, and he's talking about himself
and other believers of his company who are also the audience of
this letter, we, the believers, the chosen of God, the elect,
the Israel of God, we who are the saints who are in Christ
Jesus, we see that they, the unbelievers of ancient Israel
in the Exodus, were unable to enter into the what? The promise
of God's rest because of unbelief. And so the question then comes
naturally, doesn't it? The question comes, then what
about us? We are also Jews, ethnically. Are we also prohibited from entering
in the rest? Sometimes people mess up things
because of Schofield and Darby and others. We have a plethora
of ideals or ideologies concerning the nation of Israel to which
we should probably wait for another day to discuss, but ultimately
we need to recognize that the Bible does not teach dispensational
It does not have doctrine of dispensationalism through the
fact that which would say, let me get it this way, that Jews
are saved in a different way or in a different manner or in
a different season and that the promises, the temporal promises
to the Jewish people of antiquity are still going to be filled
in a temporal way in contemporary or future times. That's not the
point of Scripture. The Jews received the promised
land. Who received it? The Jews who were believing in
the promise of God to give them the promised land and to give
them what it represented, which was eternal life, hope, a kingdom
of their own. And that picture was a shadow.
God is not in the business of establishing eternal creation. from the world that we live in
right now where he's going to continually and perpetually let
things go the way they are forever. There will come a day where God
will establish all things new. So until that time, then the
promises given to the Jews, of course some of them entered in,
but all of that original, if you can say all, most of that
original generation who failed to believe in God, he refused
to allow them to see. And we ask the question, then
why? Because God does as He chooses. I mean, they obviously saw His
power. They obviously saw the work of
His hand. They obviously heard His decrees. They obviously looked
and saw the power of God to bring them out of an impossible situation.
They saw the provision of the Lord, but yet they refused to
trust in Him. They refused to have true faith
in God. Now, we're like that sometimes.
Sometimes, even though we have God-granted faith in the Lord
Jesus Christ, that He finished the work of salvation as God
finished His work of creation, that is also a picture of salvation.
that God is finished with it. He rested. He's not doing anything
else concerning salvation. It is done. There's nothing else
left to do. There's no condition left to be met. His elect people
are indeed going to be saved. They will believe because they
have been justified through the blood of Jesus Christ to be received
by faith. So, as the creation was finished,
God rested. And then God promised eternally
to His people a rest that they would enter in with Him, where
their work would be finished. And we'll get to that, if not
tonight, we'll get to that next week. So it is clear that people
might be fearful. Am I able to believe? Now of course we can answer that
in two ways, both of which are true. You are able to believe
if God permits you to believe. And you will believe and able
to believe if you are indeed the elect of God. There's nothing
wrong with teaching these truths from Scripture. So when we see,
therefore, verse 1, chapter 4, while the promise of entering
His rest still stands, now does that not seem contradictory? I will not let them enter my
rest. But now the promise still stands. Well, who is he talking about
in chapter 3? He's talking about the unbelievers of ancient Israel. Now the present-day Jewish people
who are counted in Christ this very day, who received this letter
as its original audience, he's saying to them, while the promise
of entering His rest still stands, let us fear, lest any of you
should seem to have failed to reach it. Now I don't know about
you, but it comes off a little weird to me for Paul to write
about fear. It comes off a little strange
when he's already said how Jesus is the one who sanctifies, how
Jesus is the one who redeems, how Jesus finished the work of
redemption after making purifications for sins and sat down, he rested
from his work, he's done. And so on and so forth. that
He has, through His blood, defeated the work of death, the power
of the enemy, and the power of death, and delivered all who,
through fear of death, were subject to lifelong slavery. So now we
see that we should have feared death, but now we don't fear
death. But what is the fear? Well, I mean, it's something
that we could really go on and on about and try to parse out
and look at proof texts all over the word and see what we can
come, but let's continue to read and see if maybe Paul might not
help us. He says, let us fear, lest any
of you should seem to have failed to reach it. But what's he mean?
Let us have caution. Let us be aware. Let us pay attention. Has he not already said that?
Therefore, now we must pay closer attention to what we've heard,
lest we drift away. Because what's going on? Jewish
Believers are starting to apostate. They're starting to say, I'm
no longer trusting in the gospel and the promise of God's provision
through Jesus Christ the Son, and because of that, I'm going
to go ahead and stick my safety net underneath me that I might
do the works that I'm used to doing, even though I know they
may point to Jesus, they will give me a better assurance and
security in Jesus. And Paul says no. So it does
create a fear. But this fear is resolved. This
fear is resolved very quickly. But it should cause us to ask. Beloved, when we see the call
for testing ourselves to see if we're in the faith, it is
one of these times where we test ourselves to see if we're trusting
fully in the person of Jesus. to see if his work is sufficient,
that the promises of God are enough. Remember what I said
about four minutes ago that some of us, even as believers, do
have this mindset of doubt? Let me give you a few examples
before I continue. The first example would be when we know
that we have eternal life, we know that our joy is Christ,
and so we pray and we labor over these things, but oftentimes
what happens is we come to a place where it's very easy for us to
forget that God has promised and is faithful. And so we begin
to plan on our own how we're going to secure what we want
and what we think is best for us rather than trusting and waiting
patiently in the Lord. That's why James is a good company
letter for Hebrews as we study, because James talks about having
wisdom. If we want wisdom, then we ask,
and the Lord is gracious to grant wisdom, and then we stand fast
in that wisdom. We do not just decide, okay,
I know what the Lord has promised, I know what the Lord's Word has
given me, and what the Lord's Word has taught me, but I'll
continue to wonder if it's truly the Lord's will. If it's in the
Word of God, it is the will of the Lord. And it is the Lord's
will when He puts you where He has you. And so if we look at
this rest, we need to say to ourselves, have we found the
rest of Christ? Have we found the security of
eternal life in Jesus Christ? Or have we failed to reach it?
How do we know if we failed to reach it? Beloved, I believe
that the test is this. Is there something in our life
that we'd rather see transformed so that we could be a little
more secure in knowing that we have eternal life but it is not
what the Bible has promised to the point that in doing so we
are actually succumbing to unbelief? Succumbing to unbelief. Now there
are moments of doubts, there are moments of unbelief in our
lives, but the Word of God as written to these struggling Christians
who were being tempted to go back to the old ways. We notice
the old ways was not debauchery and sexual immorality and thievery
and hatred and murder. The old ways were righteousness
and morality and striving to enter into the presence of God
through the precepts of the law. But we should look and we should
see, verse 2, 4, good news came to us just as to them. The gospel,
which is the message of the finished work of Jesus, came to them. And the gospel in the Exodus
is exactly the same as the gospel today, except the preciseness
or the explicitness of what the gospel would look like was not
given to them. It doesn't matter because if
they believed just as Moses lifted the snake in the wilderness and
they believed in the promise of God they had eternal life,
they lived. But if they did not, no matter how earnestly they
looked at the snake, believe in the promise of God to live,
they did not live. And Jesus says that that pointed
to Him. So the Exodus pointed to Him. So we look at this faith
And we look at this gospel, and the gospel of God's promises
to the Israelites was given. They would not believe it. They
could not believe it. So they died. And although they
may be ethnically Jewish, that is not what unites them to the
Lord. It is faith alone that unites
us to the Lord. And those who did listen, like
Joshua and those that followed him, even Moses, Look what it
says, for good news came to us just as it did to them, but the
message they heard, listen, no pun intended, the message they
heard did not benefit them. Because the gospel can go forth
and it should go forth to every person that ever has lived in
the world and we should be ready and willing to teach the Bible
one on one, one on two, one on five, one on a thousand, whatever.
As often as God gives us the opportunity within the confines
of the way He's created us to be in our personality and our
giftedness. to proclaim the promises of God of eternal life for His
elect through Jesus Christ and His finished work of atoning
and propitiating for them on the cross, and the promise of
true life and glorification through the resurrection of Jesus Christ
from the dead. All of this is a gift of God. Everyone can hear
it with their ears, but the only way they can hear it with their
hearts and minds and souls from a spiritual sense is that God
grants them faith, which is what repentance means. He granted
them to believe the message of God's provision, of God's promises,
of God's resting hope. So they were not united by faith. Look at the second part of verse
2. They were not united by faith
with those who listened. So they were different only in
faith. They were all Israelites. They
were all rescued from bondage. They were all led by the power
of God into the wilderness. They were all promised eternal
life if they believed that God would give it to them. But the
circumstances of life began to take away The power of an emotional promise. And only when God the Spirit
plants faith in us are we able to hold fast to the promise of
God in spite of what we see. And they could not see where
God would take them and how God would do it, and they wanted
to know all the details therein, and even when God made promises
after promises, using power after power, and a display of His power
continually, even in 40 years, they grew more and more callous,
and they were deceived, and their hearts were hardened by sin. For we who have believed, enter
that rest. As he has said, I swore in my
wrath, they shall not enter my rest. We who have believed enter
that rest. We are in that rest. Although
his works were finished from the foundation of the world. All that God has done, he has
completed it is yes, it is amen, it is true. Nothing shall thwart
the plan of God. He does as he wishes after the
counsel of his own will. And when he speaks of this rest,
we need to understand it is the picture of Christ. That is why
we practice. I want you to hear what I'm saying
here. That is why we practice. The first day of the week to
take aside from all of our earthly desires, our earthly pleasures,
our earthly necessities, we set it aside to assemble together
as God's people to worship together, to hear the word together, to
take the Lord's table together, to remember the body of Christ
together, and to be the body of Christ together as a way of
resting from our labor as a foreshadowing of the perfect promises of Jesus
Christ. That is why we do these things.
That is why we are compelled by the love of God and His grace
and mercy to be together as the saints. And that is why many
people's faith fail them over and over again when they forsake
the assembly. This is the letter that Paul
talks about that. Because that is one of the litmus,
not one of the litmus, that is one of the obvious observations. I know I'm being redundant there.
That is one of the obvious realities of those who have forsaken the
gospel, is when they no longer care to be around the brethren. And so they're no longer together.
So verse three, for we who have believed enter this rest as he
said, as I swore my wrath, they shall not enter my rest. Although
his works were finished from the foundation of the world for
he has somewhere spoken of the seventh day in this way. And
God rested on the seventh day from all his works. And again,
in this passage, he said, they shall not enter my rest since
therefore it remains for some to enter it. And those who formerly
received the good news failed to enter it because of disobedience. He's repeating himself. He says,
since therefore there is opportunity, and I don't want you to take
the opportunity as a free well-meant offer in that context. I want
to show you that Paul is reminding his readers that the door to
eternity is not closed for them. The door to grace is not closed
to them. For they who are in Christ, they who are the elect
of God, despite their genealogical past, or their family tree, or
their ethnicity, there remains for some to enter. And those
who formally received the good news failed, he reminds them,
to enter because of disobedience. They did not believe God. Remember verse 19 of chapter
3? They were disobedient. Who were they? Those who were
unable to enter because of unbelief. So when Paul talks about disobedience
in Hebrews, he's talking about unbelief. not believing the gospel,
either by adding to or not believing. So again, he appoints a certain
day. And he says it, doesn't he? Today. What is today? Is it next week? Is it a thousand
years from now? Is it when they put the heifer
back together and put the temple back together and start? No,
it's today. As long as it is called today, exhort one another
so that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of unbelief. So again, he appoints a certain
day. Today, God says through David, so long afterward in the
words already quoted, today, if you hear my voice, do not
harden your hearts. Believe in what I've said. Believe
in what I've promised. Believe in that rest which is
yours in Jesus Christ. Trust in me. That is the voice
of God. Sometimes we have a problem in
our intellectually based, debative, argumentative culture, especially
now where everybody's sort of separated and able to get online
and just sort of fuss and complain, which is a sin, by the way. Do
all things without grumbling and complaining. It's easy for
us to sit and think, well, you know, you can't say believe in
God. Yes, Jesus says that. Believe in God, believe also
in me. To believe in Jesus Christ and His work is to believe in
God. To believe in God is to believe in Jesus Christ the Son.
To believe in Jesus Christ the Son is to believe in the promises
of God for eternal life. To believe in the promises of
God for eternal life is to trust in the fullness of the hope that
comes to the very beginning of time when God created Adam and
Eve in the garden and He promised them that through the seed of
the woman He would give life to His people. And the list goes
on. And some people would argue,
especially Jewish people would argue as they hear this letter
and as they continue to see what Paul has written, where he said,
where they would say, okay, well, okay, that first generation died
out, but the second generation, they went into the promised land
with Joshua. So we also must follow after
Joshua. Because that's the rest we're
looking for. Isn't that the rest we're looking for? Isn't that
the peace that everybody wants? They want temporary peace over
a temporary problem in a temporary place on a temporary planet.
That's what we want. And if we're really honest, that
would be better. And we could wait a long, long
time for the promises of God. If he could just deal with the
present time issues, we would be in a lot better place. So
we think. Yet we are to embrace our suffering in this present
day that it may display the suffering of Christ that we who are in
Christ will suffer as He suffered so that we are assured of a better
place. And as those generations who
doubted God, they also doubted Joshua. They doubted Joshua. As Moses was laid to rest in
the desert. And the Lord, dealing with the
burying of his body, Joshua took the reins. The name Joshua means
Yahweh saves, which is the exact same physical, literal name as
Jesus. Yahweh saves. So even when the
law could not bring them in, it was the Lord that did, through
the picture of Joshua, through absolute, impossible feats of
victory. And if Joshua, look at this in
verse 8, had given them rest, God would have not spoken of
another day later on. So then there remains a Sabbath
rest for the people of God. For whoever has entered God's
rest has also rested from his works as God did from his. Now
let's put this in perspective as we close this time out tonight.
If Joshua and the promised land that God had given the Israelites
in a temporary way was the point of the promise, then it's been
done and it's over. And if that was the promise that
was taken away and now for some strange reason they have to go
get it back, then it's all on them, it's not on God, for they
lost that which God had given them. But if this were true, then why
would God speak of another day? Why would God speak of a true
day, of a future day, of a true Sabbath wrath? So because God
has promised a true Sabbath rest, eternal life in Jesus Christ,
finishing this life and finishing it well by faith alone in Jesus
Christ who loved me and gave himself for me because he lives,
not I. This promise is there. And because
we work, and because we strive, and because we labor, we are
aware of the fact we are not at rest. We labor in our faith. We labor in our faithfulness.
We labor in our passion and our love for one another, which is
our love for Christ. We labor in all these things.
We labor in our minds. We labor in this world. We even
labor in order to eat, in order to live, in order to work. Yet there is a day when it will
all be done. And we who are in Christ right now have entered
God's rest as a promise. See, it is something that we
will receive fully and be aware experientially in the future.
But right now we are in that promise. We are in the promise
of God. We are seated in the heavenlies with Jesus Christ.
We're not waiting for the time when we stand before the Lord
to go, okay, now I'm saved. We are saved this day. We have
been given life this moment, and Jesus Christ is our Sabbath,
and in Him we rest. And because of that, we are no
longer working as these apostate people wanted to work. We are
no longer laboring to prove or to massage or to to display a
better condition based on our election or based on the promises
of God. We hope fully in the finished
work of Christ and in doing so we rest from our work just as
God has rested from His. It is finished is a promise. My peace is with you, as we talked
about this past Sunday, is a promise. Let us therefore, verse 11, strive
to enter that rest, that no one may fall by the same sort of
disobedience. And I'm going to stop there.
The same sort of disobedience is unbelief. And I'm going to
say this in closing, extremely dogmatically. People who tell
you otherwise lie, and they make God a liar. This is not up for discussion.
This is not a systematic theological debate. This is not an interpretive
nuance. This is directly from the context
of what Paul has written thus far and is continuing to write
as we continue to learn this letter. We either are resting
in Christ this moment or we are still in our sins. And if we take the perfection
of Christ, hope and promise, and we add to it works, we are
not resting in Him. Let's pray. Father, help us to
rest. Lord, show us just the depths
of our depravity that we might praise You for Your glorious
grace. Help us to see. Help us to be at peace. Lord,
cause us to pray for ourselves and to pray for one another.
And Lord, bring us together very soon that we may do the work
that You've commanded us, to love each other and to exhort
one another to not be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.
Teach us to obey You because of our love for You, because
of Your love for us, that we might serve one another in the
Gospel, in the reading and teaching of the Word, And in the helping
and encouragement of one another as we walk together in this war
that we call life, knowing that it is that we are victorious
and the one who has overcome the world. And as you talk through
your apostle John, what is it that has overcome the world?
It is our faith in the victor, Jesus Christ, the righteous.
In his name we pray. Amen.