Today we wanted to spend a few minutes sharing on Hebrews, the book of Hebrews. We shared about Hebrews the week before conference. It was the last time I was up here. Who remembers what we shared about then? Besides Jim.
That was chapters 1 and 2 of Hebrews. Today we want to look at chapters 3 and 4. The thought in chapters 3 and 4 is: enter His rest. That is why that song was so good.
As a review, in those first two chapters the Lord had a word for us. In chapter 1, He talked about how great a Christ we have—the immensity of Christ—and how God has spoken to us in His Son.
Then, in the first verse of chapter 2, He said, “Therefore,” or, “Since all this is true, we ought to pay much closer attention than ever to the truths that we have heard, lest in any way we drift past them and slip away.” So it was a drifting. The author’s burden is that we not drift.
We remember, just as a review again, that we do not know exactly who the author of Hebrews was, but we know for sure that it was the Holy Spirit writing to us and to the people in that generation. He had a burden that they lay hold of the Lord.
This was approximately A.D. 70, just before the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple. The first Christians were Jewish, and they were somewhat taken up with religious form. The Lord was after them to have a living faith in a living God.
You know, I think that it is very comfortable to stay in a religious system. It is comfortable to hide in a religious system, and that was true for them. They did not want to bear the reproach or the persecution of coming out of a religious system.
We can fall into that same temptation. Our goal is to meet around the Lord. I remember my father, for years, would tell me, “I would like to meet with you guys, but I just can’t do it.” He was a long-term Methodist, and he had my mother—his wife—to deal with.
May we be willing to go outside the camp. Hebrews 13:12 says:
Therefore Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people through His own blood, suffered outside the gate.
So let us go out to Him outside the camp, bearing His reproach.
For here we do not have a lasting city, but we are seeking the city which is to come.
I think that is a word for all of us: to lay hold of Christ. That is the basic foundation. It is so, so easy to fall into Christ plus. “I believe in Jesus and something else,” but we need to stay away from it.
The other thing, just in review, is that Hebrews is a book of exhortation. Exhortation has two pieces: correction, but also encouragement.
I believe the correction here is, “Do not drift,” but the encouragement is, “Enter His rest.”
Discipline is an unpopular item anywhere. Raising children today, people say, “Oh, that is so mean—you would spank a child.” You know, “Spare the rod and spoil the child.” Right, Jack?
But there is this big thing: the police. “We do not want the police policing.” My goodness. We want to do what is right in our own eyes. Of course, society breaks down.
Just as an illustration, we had a neighbor across the street. We do not live in a rich neighborhood, but we do not live in a terrible neighborhood.
One day, a year ago—two years ago now—we were babysitting grandchildren. All of a sudden, a police car showed up across the street, and then two unmarked cars showed up. Before they left, there were five cruisers, five unmarked cars, and two police box trucks.
We thought there were two or three dead people in there. We did not know what was going on; the police would not tell us. Well, it turns out that in this quiet suburban neighborhood, our neighbor had a grow house. He was growing quite a bit of marijuana in the two spare bedrooms on the back side of the house, and they hauled away two box trucks’ loads of marijuana-growing items.
This was a nice man who had been a nice neighbor for years. His wife has left him. He has a ten-year sentence; he has done one year, and he is on probation for ten. So he lost his house. They foreclosed on the house, and his last act was to pack all his belongings and tow his car to Seattle, where marijuana is legal.
We need to be careful that we do not despise discipline. That is a long story to say that we are most thankful to receive discipline.
Hebrews 12:7-9 tells us:
It is for discipline that ye endure; God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father doth not discipline?
But if ye are without discipline, whereof all have been made partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons.
Furthermore, we had the fathers of our flesh to discipline us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live?
Thank God that He would take the time to discipline us. So, for today, I wonder what message of exhortation we have here in chapters 3 and 4.
Chapter 3 refers to the nation of Israel, who had been delivered from great darkness. They came out of Egypt, out of great darkness, but they did not enter into God’s calling and what He had for them. They spent their days wandering in the wilderness.
Hebrews 3:16-19 says:
For who, when they heard, did provoke? Nay, did not all they that came out of Egypt by Moses?
And with whom was He displeased forty years? Was it not with them that sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness?
And to whom sware He that they should not enter into His rest, but to them that were disobedient?
And we see that they were not able to enter in because of unbelief.
I think the big lesson here is that Israel was delivered from real darkness in Egypt, but they were stopped short of what God had called them to. They came out, but they did not enter in.
We have been recipients of a great deliverance. Stephen referred to it today. We have been delivered from the domain of darkness, but are we entering into God’s provision? It is for us to enter into all that God has given us and called us to, but it is also for Him.
Let us look at Hebrews 4:1-13. Because of this example of Israel not entering in, the author says:
Let us fear therefore, lest haply, a promise being left of entering into His rest, any one of you should seem to have come short of it.
For indeed we have had good tidings preached unto us, even as also they: but the word of hearing did not profit them, because it was not united by faith with them that heard.
For we who have believed do enter into that rest; even as He hath said,
As I sware in My wrath,
They shall not enter into My rest:
Although the works were finished from the foundation of the world.
For He hath said somewhere of the seventh day on this wise, And God rested on the seventh day from all His works;
And in this place again, They shall not enter into My rest.
Seeing therefore it remaineth that some should enter thereinto, and they to whom the good tidings were before preached failed to enter in because of disobedience,
He again defineth a certain day, Today, saying in David, so long a time afterward, as hath been before said,
Today if ye shall hear His voice,
Harden not your hearts.
For if Joshua had given them rest, He would not have spoken afterward of another day.
There remaineth therefore a Sabbath rest for the people of God.
For he that hath entered into His rest hath himself also rested from his works, as God did from His.
Let us therefore give diligence to enter into that rest, that no man fall after the same example of disobedience.
For the word of God is living, and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and quick to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart.
And there is no creature that is not manifest in His sight: but all things are naked and laid open before the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.
We will talk about those last two verses later. But that is the subject for today: enter His rest.
Israel had truly been delivered from Egypt. But instead of entering into Canaan and all that God had for them, what did they do? They wandered in the wilderness.
For how long? Forty years—wandering in the desert, murmuring in unbelief. God had a calling on their lives, and He made provision for them to enter His rest. But they spent forty years in self-centered wandering.
There was a calling on their lives. I just wanted to stop for a minute and talk about them wandering for forty years. We have heard “forty years” lately, right? What have we been hearing forty years about? A generation. Forty years as a generation.
As I was going over these notes, I thought, “Hmm, generation—forty years.” On one side, a generation is forty years, so the next generation needs to come in. On the other hand, have we been wandering? Those of us who are the older generation, have we been wandering for forty years in unbelief?
The question is, what is the younger generation? I am sixty-seven. If you take sixty-seven and subtract forty years, how old is that? Twenty-seven.
So let me just say, is the younger generation zero to twenty-seven? I do not know. The younger generation is not a bunch of kids. How old is Brother Kong? If you subtract forty, who is the younger generation from his perspective? Stewart is sixty. How old are you?
This younger generation includes us all. I really want to make an appeal to all of the older generation that we not spend our days wandering in the wilderness.
I can tell you, it is very easy to wander in the wilderness. For those of you who have been working so hard, just waiting for that day to retire so you can meditate and be spiritual—forget about it. I have been retired for eleven years, and there is no magic to get your heart set on the Lord.
So, those who are between twenty-seven and one hundred years old—that younger generation—I just want to encourage us not to spend our days wandering in the wilderness. That is just an aside.
These folks caught in Egypt had a calling. There was a calling on the nation of Israel.
Genesis 13:14-15 says:
And the Lord said unto Abram, after that Lot was separated from him, Lift up now thine eyes, and look from the place where thou art, northward and southward and eastward and westward:
For all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed for ever.
Genesis 15:7 says:
And He said unto him, I am the Lord that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give thee this land to inherit it.
God had a calling and a purpose upon Israel. He intended them to be a testimony to the Lord in this world, and that included possessing the land. They were to be God’s people as a testimony to all creation.
We know that they stumbled and fell. They entered into Egypt because of the famine. How many people entered into Egypt? Seventy-two? It seems like I read Brother Kong once said seventy-five, but it was seventy or seventy-five, in that range.
Then they came out hundreds of thousands and millions. God blessed them so much in Egypt that Pharaoh got afraid of them. There was a Pharaoh raised up who did not know Joseph, and so he put them under hard labor. He tried to murder all the boy babies, tied into Moses’ story, and they were in dire straits. They had to make more bricks with no straw.
They cried out to the Lord, and He answered them. Exodus 3:7-9 says:
And the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction of My people that are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows;
And I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey; unto the place of the Canaanite, and the Hittite, and the Amorite, and the Perizzite, and the Hivite, and the Jebusite.
And now, behold, the cry of the children of Israel is come unto Me: moreover I have seen the oppression wherewith the Egyptians oppress them.
God promised them a great deliverance, and He gave it to them. Exodus 14:21-22 says:
And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the Lord caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all the night, and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided.
And the children of Israel went into the midst of the sea upon the dry ground: and the waters were a wall unto them on their right hand, and on their left.
We know that the Lord performed great miracles. But soon after they came out, they did not want to enter into the land. Right away after their deliverance from Egypt, Exodus 15 says:
And the people murmured against Moses, saying, What shall we drink?
Exodus 16:2-3 says:
And the whole congregation of the children of Israel murmured against Moses and against Aaron in the wilderness:
And the children of Israel said unto them, Would that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the flesh-pots, when we did eat bread to the full; for ye have brought us forth into this wilderness, to kill this whole assembly with hunger.
God had a calling on them: to be delivered out of Egypt and to be a testimony to Him.
Do you get the application? God has a calling on us. To be delivered out of Egypt is just the start. He calls us out to be a testimony unto Him.
Israel came out of Egypt, but because of hardness of heart and self-centeredness, they wandered forty years in the desert. What a great warning to us.
God has delivered us from darkness into His kingdom for a purpose. Let us look at Colossians 1:13-18:
Who delivered us out of the power of darkness, and translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His love;
In whom we have our redemption, the forgiveness of our sins:
Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation;
For in Him were all things created, in the heavens and upon the earth, things visible and things invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things have been created through Him, and unto Him;
And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist.
And He is the head of the body, the church: Who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things He might have the preeminence.
He has delivered us from the domain of darkness into His kingdom, that He might have first place in everything. And it might start with us.
For Him to accomplish His preeminence in all things, it needs to start with us—that our lives, individually and together, might be a living testimony to Him.
Third: enter His rest. We are to lay hold of Christ as everything. On the cross, Jesus said, “It is finished.” His sacrificial work at Calvary has made full provision for us for everything that we need.
As we think about entering His rest, I would like to break it down into two thoughts: peace with God and the peace of God. Both are our possessions.
We were all created to have communion and fellowship with God. Those of us who have been saved knew that we were longing; we were lost without hope. But God revealed Himself to us, and we became new creatures in Christ. We were born again.
In the fall, man was kept out of the garden. Genesis 3:24 says:
So He drove out the man; and He placed at the east of the garden of Eden the Cherubim, and the flame of a sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.
What a terrible condition: to be cut off and separated from God, knowing that this is how we were created, and yet finding ourselves in this condition.
I believe one of the greatest burdens of the author of Hebrews was that we come into a relationship with God and exercise that right and that privilege. Hebrews 10:19-22 says:
Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holy place by the blood of Jesus,
By the way which He dedicated for us, a new and living way, through the veil, that is to say, His flesh;
And having a great priest over the house of God;
Let us draw near with a true heart in fullness of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and having our body washed with pure water.
One of the authors I read said this passage is the climax of the book of Hebrews. So, if we do not remember anything else from today, remember this: enter His rest by coming into the presence of God and communing and fellowshipping with Him.
He has made a way for us to abide, to commune, to fellowship with Him, and to gain Christ. Woe be it from us that we remain far off.
It is interesting: the opening today had an exhortation to enter His rest, and Stephen’s word today had an exhortation to open the door. He stands at the door and knocks. It is our God-given privilege to abide in the rest of God, in His presence.
We need to value, keep, and exercise the blood—to keep short accounts. One way we wander is to harbor sin, harbor an evil conscience, and not deal with it. Let us keep short accounts and take the blood daily for our cleansing, that we can enter into the presence of the Lord.
Augustine said:
You have made us for Yourself, O Lord, and our hearts will remain restless until they rest in You.
We have peace with God. We have drawn near by the blood of Jesus, and we need to make that a way of life.
But we also can have the peace of God. We can take Christ as our peace. Our environments in this world system are so absolutely crazy and stirred up to get us away from the peace of God. The world is in a spin. It is in a mess.
I am seeing all these young people here today. Somebody hand me your phone. Who has a smartphone? Who has an iPhone with them? Well, it does not matter.
That is the biggest—this is a phablet more than a phone—but anyway. I am not picking on you, but the world is totally full of distractions. These phones drive you nuts.
We got an iPad when Sharon broke her shoulder. One of our children gave her an iPad. We did not use it for about six months, but I have been using it lately. I was sitting in the den one evening, surfing and looking for a cover for my boat, and Sharon came in and said, “What are you doing?” I said, “Oh, nothing.”
Nothing. That is why I am slow to get any devices, because I have that temperament.
He wants us to live in peace so that we can commune and abide with Him. I want to look at a few verses that have meant something to me over the years. I could probably get everyone in the room to give me their verse on peace.
Isaiah 30:15 says:
For thus saith the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength. And ye would not.
You have to include all of that verse: “And ye would not.” It is God’s will that we be in quietness and trust. Absolute trust in the Lord is our strength.
I can tell you some of these verses because I am the most stirred-up and nervous person there is. I guess most of you know that. So it is a battle. It is a battle we have won.
Proverbs 3:5-6 says:
Trust in the Lord with all thy heart,
And lean not upon thine own understanding.
In all thy ways acknowledge Him,
And He shall direct thy paths.
Simple verse, profound application. Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways consider Him, and He will make your path straight.
Psalm 46:10 says:
Be still, and know that I am God.
Another translation says, “Cease striving and know that I am God.” He is looking for absolute trust in Him, and He is our peace.
We have been studying the Gospel of John. It is just a blessing when we study these things together. John’s burden in his Gospel was that we see Christ. At the end of the first century, people were falling away, and he called people to see Christ—all the “I am” statements.
One “I am” I would like us to look at today does not say, “I am,” but John 14:27 says:
Peace I leave with you; My peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you.
Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be fearful.
Christ in you is peace. Christ—more of Christ—is peace, and we have Christ. It is not a separate thing, not a separate quantity that we gain; we gain Christ, and He is peace.
Paul said the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace. Peace is one of the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians. Peace is the fruit of the Spirit. The fruit of the flesh is unpeace.
Number four: division of soul and spirit. For years, I have wondered about this passage. That is Hebrews 4:11-13:
Let us therefore give diligence to enter into that rest, that no man fall after the same example of disobedience.
For the word of God is living, and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and quick to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart.
And there is no creature that is not manifest in His sight: but all things are naked and laid open before the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.
There is no creature hidden from His sight. All things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do. We can trick one another that we are at peace, but we cannot trick the Lord. He knows. He knows our hearts.
One thing that struck me is that one reason we keep so stirred up and so active is that we do not have to deal with the fact that we have no rest, that we are not at peace with God.
One of the biggest things that keeps us from entering His rest is our soul life, our natural life. It is so easy to be stirred up in the knowledge of good and evil, and we are unrestful. But we are born again in the spirit. We have the knowledge of the tree of life, and He is after us to live out of the tree of life.
We need to divide soul and spirit, abide in His Word, abide in His truth, and allow Him to examine our hearts. We need to be realistic with ourselves.
There was a story in the Bible that tells us about one of our forebears who thought he was at rest and was not. The Lord had to deal with him at length. The oldest book in the Bible is Job.
The first issue that the Lord dealt with in man, if this is the oldest book, was Job. In Job 3:25-26, after the Lord dealt drastically with him, Job said:
For the thing which I fear cometh upon me,
And that which I am afraid of cometh unto me.
I am not at ease, neither am I quiet, neither have I rest;
But trouble cometh.
This was a righteous, good man, doing what was right in the sight of man and God, but he was not at rest. We thank the Lord for His discipline on Job.
This book is often thought of as how to endure suffering, but it seems to me like it was a book of discipline: this long, drawn-out story where Job came to the end of his reasoning and was drawn to the living God. The Lord wanted him to come to rest in Him and enter His rest.
Job 42:5-6 records Job’s statement after all his trials, after the Lord spoke mightily to him:
I had heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear;
But now mine eye seeth Thee:
Wherefore I abhor myself,
And repent in dust and ashes.
Let us not be a people who know the Lord only by the hearing of the ear. Oh my goodness, what a great temptation. “I have heard of Thee by the hearing of my ear, but now mine eye sees Thee.”
The Lord was after Job’s complete being. Even though he was a good man, Job came to rest in the Lord when he saw Him. Praise God. What a great example: when he saw the Lord.
How can we conclude? I believe the Lord is after us today to be wholly given to Him, to trust Him fully, and find Him wholly true. Enter His rest.
The author of Hebrews knew how important it was to be at rest in the Lord. That is the way we come into being part of His testimony. It is Christ in us. His testimony is that we are at peace in Him.
We have received peace with God. Colossians 1:20 says:
And through Him to reconcile all things unto Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross; through Him, I say, whether things upon the earth, or things in the heavens.
Praise God, we have peace with God. What is there that can keep us from having the peace of God? Nothing but ourselves being unwilling to give up and give it all to Him.
He is Sabbath rest—all the rest we need. The Lord is calling us not to be as Israel, leaving Egypt and wandering in the wilderness. He has called us to a great calling: to be His people, in our lives individually and as a company, to be a testimony to Jesus Christ.
He does that by rest in Him, being full of His life. And He says this today: “Today, if ye shall hear His voice, harden not your hearts.”
Let us therefore give diligence to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of disobedience.
Lord, we pray that we would be people who lay hold of Christ as our birthright, as our full provision, and that the testimony of that might be rest and peace—peace with God, coming out in the peace of God in our lives.
Might it be to the end that You might have preeminence, and that there might be a people on this earth where the testimony is, “God is in your midst.” In Jesus’ name.