KASUMIGAOKA
2017/12/17
SERMON: “The Lord’s Sabbath and Our Faith” 「主の安息と我らの信仰」
TEXT: Hebrews 4:1-11
I. INTRODUCTION
Hebrews 4 begins with these words: “Therefore, since the promise of entering [God’s] rest remains, let us be careful that none of you should seem to have fallen short of it.” The “promise of entering God’s rest” seems to refer to God’s promise that He would give Abraham and his descendants a land to live in where they would have peace and prosperity. When the Israelites followed Moses out of Egypt, they planned to go to that land and to settle there. But as Psalm 95 says, they “provoked” God by hardening their hearts toward Him; so God declared, “They shall never enter My rest.” As a result, the generation of Israelites who departed from Egypt was not able to enter the land of Canaan. “They were not able to enter, because of their unbelief,” it says in 3:19. However, the sons and daughters of those who died in the wilderness did succeed in entering the promised land. Moses’ successor Joshua led them into Canaan, where they settled and established the kingdom of Israel. So, if God’s promise was fulfilled in the days of Joshua, why does Hebrews 4:1 say, “the promise of entering God’s rest remains”? What is this “rest” that God has promised? And what is the connection between our faith and our ability to enter and enjoy “God’s promised rest”? These are the questions that Hebrews deals with here in chapter 4. Let’s consider these two questions more carefully as we look at the Scripture passage before us today.
II. GOD’S PROMISED REST AND OUR CHRISTIAN FAITH
First, let’s take up the question about the promise of rest. There are three things mentioned in our passage that can help us to understand what this “rest” is. The first matter is that the promise was not completely fulfilled in the days of Joshua. Because Hebrews tells us that “the promise of entering [God’s] rest remains,” we know that the promised “rest” is not simply the promise of a place to live in Canaan. Before the time of King David, that promised land had already been occupied by Israel for as long as 400 years. The Israelites had lived in Canaan continuously all that time! But Hebrews tells us in 4:7-9, “[God] again set a certain day, calling it ‘Today.’ This He did when a long time later He spoke through David, as in the passage 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 later about another day. There remains, then, a Sabbath rest for the people of God.” So, it is clear that God’s promised “rest” was not just a land to live in, or a rest from “wandering in the wilderness.” It was a rest from work. The word for “rest” used in v. 9 confirms this. It is an unusual noun, which means “a keeping of the Sabbath,” that is, “resting from work.” This fact is further explained in 4:10, where Hebrews tells us, “For the one who has entered His rest has also rested from his works, just as God did from His.” In Egypt the people of Israel had experienced a life of slavery. No matter how hard they worked, they were not rewarded for their work. All of their striving brought them no advancement or benefit. Their work was unrewarded, hopeless, and futile. The writer of Ecclesiastes in 2:22-23 expresses the same attitude toward unending and unrewarded work: “What does a man get for all the toil and anxious striving with which he labors under the sun? Because all his days his work is painful and grievous; even at night his mind does not rest. This too is meaningless.” But God had promised rest from such hard and meaningless work.
And both Psalm 95 and Hebrews tell us that God’s promise of entering that rest remains today, and we must be careful that we do not fail to enter that rest!
The second thing that Hebrews tells us about God’s promised rest is that people learn about it through the preaching of the gospel. The Greek word used in v. 2 and 6 is a special word (evangelizomai) meaning “proclaim the good news of the gospel.” Verse 2 says, “For we also have had the good news proclaimed to us, just as they did, but the message they heard was of no value to them, because they did not share the faith of those who obeyed.” Think about this really amazing statement! Hebrews clearly says that even in the days of Moses, the “gospel” was preached to Israel! The gospel hope of forgiveness of sins and redemption by the Savior Jesus Christ was preached to us, just as it had been preached to the Israelites, long ago. Of course, the details of Christ’s life and ministry—His birth, His teaching about the kingdom of God, His suffering and death on the cross, and His resurrection, etc.—were not announced to ancient Israel. But a message that Israel heard frequently was their need to repent of their sins, and trust in God’s salvation. God had taught them to look to Him for salvation, because He is a God who is both righteous and merciful. For that reason, the writer of Hebrews says that the people of his generation had heard the gospel preached to them, just as the people of Israel had heard the gospel more than a thousand years earlier. Of course, the promise of a land to live in was not the real hope of the gospel, either in the days of Moses, or David, or in the days of the early church when Hebrews was written. The promise of entering God’s rest was the hope of trusting in God’s grace, rather than urgently striving to become worthy of God’s reward by one’s own good works. Hebrews urges us to accept God’s message of grace and embrace the hope of eternal life through the Savior. Otherwise, we will be like the generation of Israelites who hardened their hearts and, therefore, could never enter God’s promised rest.
The third thing Hebrews tells us about the “rest” that God has promised is that it is “God’s own rest.” Verses 1 and 10 say it is “God’s rest.” And in vv. 3 and 5, God calls it “My rest.” But why does God call it His own rest? It is not called God’s rest only because He offers it to us. God calls it “My rest” because God Himself has inaugurated it by His own example! God Himself is enjoying this rest, and He invites us to enjoy it with Him! Look again at the end of v. 3–v. 5. “And yet His works have been finished since the creation of the world. For somewhere He has spoken about the seventh day in these words: ‘On the seventh day God rested from all His works.’ And again in the passage above He says, ‘They shall never enter My rest.’” God Himself has shown us what this promised rest is. He showed us by finishing all of His creative work in six days and resting on the seventh day. And God asks us to enter into His rest by laying aside our work, and resting in God’s perfect grace for our salvation. That is why vv. 9-10 say, “There remains, then, a Sabbath rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from their works, just as God did from His.”
But how can anyone enter into that wonderful “rest” that God has promised? V. 11 says, “Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will perish by following their example of disobedience.” This brings us to our second question in Hebrews 4: What is the connection between our faith and our ability to enter and enjoy “God’s promised rest”?
Let’s look once again at v. 2 and the first part of v.3: “For indeed we have had good news preached to us, just as they also; but the word they heard did not profit them, because it was not united by faith in those who heard. For we who have believed enter that rest, just as He has said.” Last week we read the warning in Hebrews 3 against hardening our hearts toward God. Here in the fourth chapter Hebrews further explains the kind of faith that God requires from us, so that we can enter into God’s rest. First, we must throw away every last bit of “hope” that we may somehow save ourselves by our own efforts. Isaiah says that “all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment; and all of us wither like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away” (Isaiah 64:6b). Why can’t we do anything to merit entrance into God’s rest? The Bible shows us the reason in the first chapters of Genesis. Adam and Eve, our first ancestors, did have an opportunity to merit entrance into God’s eternal rest. God gave them work to do in His garden of Eden—not just cultivating the garden and protecting it. God gave them the responsibility of obeying one simple command. But neither Adam nor Eve was successful. Both of them broke God’s commandment when they took and ate fruit that God had forbidden them to eat. God had said, “From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you shall surely die.” They chose to disobey God, and at that moment they lost the hope of ever entering God’s rest on the basis of their own good work. That is why the apostle Paul wrote to the Church in Ephesus, “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world” (Eph. 2:1-2). The reason the Israelites failed to enter God’s promised rest was because they did not believe what God had said to Adam and Eve. They did not really believe that they were “dead in their sin,” because of the disobedience of their first parents. When God said to them, “Trust in Me. Put your hope in My grace and mercy,” they resisted God. They refused to believe that they could never enter either the promised land or God’s eternal rest without working, that is, their own merit. Even today there are countless multitudes of people who do not believe that their spiritual condition is as desperate as God says that it is. They think that they can somehow enter into “God’s rest” on the basis of their own good work—that is, as if Adam had never failed, and as if the human race were basically “good.” But such a hope is futile. “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” “There is none righteous; no, not a single one.”
But the failure of Adam and Eve did not end all hope. “There remains a promise of entering God’s rest.” It is God’s promise, rooted in His amazing grace! Abraham discovered the wonderful power of God’s grace hundreds of years before Moses’ day. When God promised to give Abraham and his wife Sarah children in their old age, Genesis 15:6 says, “Then he believed in the Lord; and [God] reckoned it to him as righteousness.” It was Abraham’s faith that opened the way to receive God’s promise. That is the obedience that God requires from us all—the obedience of faith. If you have that faith in God who justifies the ungodly, and if you believe in the Redeemer who gave His life for you, then you will enter God’s rest. It is the only way that God has left open for us. But it is all that we need. It is the good news of God’s grace in Jesus Christ. That is the one promise that remains for any of us to enter God’s rest.
III. CONCLUSION
As we conclude today, let’s remember these two things that call us to trust God and to enter God’s promised rest. The first is that God is still gracious. His grace is still being proclaimed today through the gospel of Jesus Christ. People around you are still being converted by God’s grace; they are hearing God’s voice “Today” and they are placing their lives in the safe-keeping of the Lord Jesus—our Savior. The gospel is an old message, but it is as powerful to rescue man today as it was in the days of Abraham, or Moses, or David. The Holy Spirit of God continues to use the truth of the good news to awaken people to their miserable, helpless condition as sinners, and to bring them to put their faith in Christ. “There remains a promise of entering God’s rest.” “Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts.” Second, remember what Hebrews tells us in v. 9. “There remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God.” Many people balk at the principle of keeping the Sabbath as a day of holy resting. Many Christians do not understand why God gave this special and wonderful opportunity to the descendants of Abraham. They think the Sabbath is a kind of “burden” they must bear, or otherwise, that the rule of Sabbath-keeping has passed away entirely. I do not want anyone to think that keeping the Sabbath as a Christian is a “good work” that is required in order to be saved. That is the exact opposite of what this Hebrews passage teaches us! But why does Hebrews tell us that, just as “there remains a promise of entering God’s rest,” there also “remains therefore a Sabbath rest for the people of God”? The answer, I think, is that the Sabbath points us to God’s promise. We keep the Sabbath as Christians to remind ourselves in a practical manner every week that we really do trust in God’s grace. It requires faith in God’s promises to keep the Sabbath holy; that is, to put away all of our work on the Sabbath day. The Sabbath is a burden, if people trust only in their own hard work to succeed. But there are Christians who trust in the grace of God for their success in this life and the next. They are the ones who will work diligently for 6 days every week, using all the gifts and the time that the Lord has given them to work. But when the Sabbath day comes, they do not use the Sabbath as a day to “finish their work.” Instead, they put away their work and they join the Lord Himself in the wonderful privilege of “resting.” To these people the Sabbath is a “delight,” and not a burden! If we remember that this is the purpose of God’s holy Sabbath—to rest in God’s grace–then we will not fill up every Sabbath day with meetings and activities, no matter how useful they may seem. God has given us His Sabbath rest as a reminder of the eternal rest that He has prepared for us in Christ; and as a sign to the world that we belong to Christ and are trusting in His grace, not in ourselves. May God give us joy and peace in remembering and keeping the Sabbath as the people of God!