“So we see that they could not enter in because of
unbelief.” (Hebrews 3:19) Israel was unable to enter the rest and Promised Land
of God, not because they didn’t walk far enough, not because they didn’t earn
it with their time in the desert, not because their leadership was weak, but
because they didn’t have faith. It
is important to notice that faith was not the entry fee to the rest of
God. Faith itself would not have
been what got Israel into rest, God would have been who got them into
rest. Faith allows God to move you
into proper positioning, it does not earn the favor to move his hand. Thus, faith is not the ticket, but lack
of faith is the disqualifier, for it moves you into a place of wandering where
God cannot have his way. Jesus
Christ is the author of faith, and he desires to perfect it in all people.
(Hebrews 12:2)
Unbelief disqualified Israel from entering God’s rest, but
his rest has not disappeared, nor has the promise of entering it been
revoked! “Therefore, since a
promise remains of entering His rest, let us fear lest any of you seem to have
come short of it.” (Hebrews 4:1)
This is the first of four commands of action that the author of Hebrews
give to his audience in chapter 4, “let us fear.” There it is,
the blessed fear of God, but not a fear of punishment, or a fear of God himself
disqualifying me, but a holy and burning fear of not being with Him in his
rest. There is a wondrous place in
God where your only and most overwhelming fear is that you would screw up the
rest and the work of Jesus with your own effort.
The second verse of the chapter illustrates the unchanging
nature of God and his message, for, “the gospel was preached to us as well as
to them; but the word which they heard did not profit them, not being mixed
with faith in those who heard it.” The gospel has indeed been preached for all
of time. Here we find out that the
Israelites had heard it, Romans 1:20 tells us that all people have heard it
through creation, and we know it was brought with the person of Jesus. So what exactly is the gospel, the
author of Hebrews goes on to tell us. “The works were finished from the
foundation of the world!” (Hebrews 4:3)
(See also Rev. 13:18, Eph. 1:4, 1 Peter1:20) That is indeed the good
news: God did it, it is finished, He is resting and His rest is open for
us. God is not scrambling trying
to save people, he is not scrambling to take care of you, he has done his work,
and is eagerly awaiting your joining Him in his rest. “There remains therefore a rest for the people of
God. For he who has entered His
rest has himself also ceased from his works as God did from His.” Hebrews
4:9-10 That is the mark of those
who have not fallen short of the grace and rest of God. They have stopped working, they don’t
know what it is to try, they have entered the glorious rest of God and have no
illusion of needing to obtain anything more for themselves. Believers are resters and resters if I
can be so bold are those that rest!
“Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone
fall according to the same example of disobedience.” (Hebrews 4:11) I have very often in my life been
supremely concerned about obedience and I praise God for that concern, for
there are many who call themselves Christian that care not if they obey the Father. However, so much of my diligence in
obedience came outside of the revelation disclosed in this verse. We are to be diligent in resting,
because to do anything other than resting would be to step into
disobedience. To rest is to
obey, we must not walk through life trying to get more God, or more blessing,
or more breakthrough when God has simply said “Here I am, walk with me!” So often our Christian activity is
nothing more than religious insecurity in the finished works of God.
So what does this diligence look like? How do we ensure that we don’t try too
hard, or start working? How do we
avoid making our attempts to rest just as much of a binding religious activity
as everything else we do? Thanks
be to God, he gives us the answer, we sit and let him have his way with
us. We let him reveal the depths
of our striving, we let him reveal the depths of his finished works, and thus
the depths of our shared rest. We
in faith invite the living “Word of God,” in other words Jesus, to know us and
help us know ourselves and Him.
The scripture reads, “For the word of God is living and powerful, and
sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and
spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and
intents of the heart. And there is
no creature hidden from his sight, but all things are naked and open to the
eyes of Him to whom we must give account.” (Hebrews 4:12-13) Praise God that we are naked before him
and that he wields a big sword!
God wants to divide your soul and your spirit. That’s part of his plan in rest. I want to clarify that this desire of
God doesn’t connotate one being evil, or bad, or even necessarily less
than. However, we must understand
that the division of these things is good and desired and central to our being
able to live in rest and outside striving. The soul is the hub of emotion, and as such it is the soul
that is liable to try to earn favor.
It is the soul that has a tendency to insecurity. It is the soul that gets nervous about
its standing and pushes the panic button of works. The spirit on the other hand is that which connects us to
the realm of heaven. It is the
spirit that is the storage place of faith, and thus the spirit from which we
are to direct our actions. It is
only from living from our spirit in the Spirit that we will rest in God. Again, this does not mean that the soul
is bad, without the soul we would be unable to in the faith of the spirit walk
in love and grace to those around us.
Further God wants to separate our joints from marrow and
subsequently to discern the thoughts and intents of our heart. We are triune creatures: spirit, soul,
and body. We have already
established God’s work to establish our spirits as the command center for our
lives, but it is our body, our joints that will carry out everything we
do. Thus God wants to get to the
heart of our actions. He wants to
lay our works before him, naked and exposed, and show us where these works are
motivated by anything other than faith.
Jesus said that He did nothing apart from the Father. Thus when Jesus’ works are set before
the Father, there is nothing impure behind the working of his joints. All came from God and all came from
love ,for God is love, and thus it is that Paul testifies that if we do all
good things without love we are nothing! (1 Corinthians 13:2)
Our bodies are crucial and beautiful and divinely
constructed, but there has only ever been one body that without fault. Praise God for that one, for our Jesus,
who is not a “High priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in
all points tempted as we are, yet without sin.” (Hebrews 4:15)
It is thus, because of this faultless lamb that our consciences are able
to be cleansed completely. (Hebrews 9:14)
A guilty conscience is what God is seeking to eradicate in the place of
rest. A guilty conscience always
stems from lack of faith, and it always drives us out of his presence. Thus, knowing that fullness and
perfection of Jesus Christ and his offering, let us, “hold fast to our
confession of Him.” That is the
third instruction. We are to fear
falling out of rest, to be diligent to enter rest, and now the picture gets
clearer as we cling to the confession of Jesus Christ as Lord. This command is singular in its nature,
and so wonderfully simple. Hold on
to your confession of Jesus as your perfect lamb, and as you hold onto it two
things will happen: all guilt will and shame will fall away, and you will want
nothing more than to be at rest with him.
Thus it is that we come to our final command! “Let us therefore come boldly to the
throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of
need.” This is the heart of the
Gospel, God finished it so come, rest, and receive. So often we are afraid to preach the radical nature of the
gospel. The devil has instilled a
fear in God’s people of their sinful nature. The fear is that if we don’t give people something active to
do they will just get caught up in sin or lethargy. Here is the reality.
God is good, he did it, rest with Him, get what he’s got for you, and
you will do more than anyone who is trying to get things done. The only command that we can give to
God’s people, as the author of Hebrews shows is to rest in God! God has purchased rest for us because
he wants us to rest in Him. That
is the Good News and nothing more than “rest!” is the gospel. All else is unnecessary dead works of
religion. So rest and be blessed.
