Hebrews 4:1-13 Overcoming Apostasy: Finding True Rest

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Overcoming Apostasy: Finding True Rest

Hebrews 4:1-13

Introduction: Last week we talked about the first motivation the Hebrew writer gave for avoiding the tendency to drift away. God has spoken through his Son in order to show us his eternal purpose to crown us with glory and honor and put the world to come in subjection to us. This was stated in the very beginning (Gen. 1:28), and is being fulfilled through Jesus who is “bringing many sons to glory.”

In our text today, we will see the Hebrew writer’s second motivation to be careful not to fall. In this case his motivation is the “rest” that God foreshadowed from the very beginning (Gen. 2:2-3).

The full scope of the text is 3:7–4:13. We usually talk about it as a the second of five “warning sections” in Hebrews. However, while the writer is warning, he is also is giving a strong positive motivation just as he did in chapter two. The motivation is God’s Rest.

Therefore, the outline of the text looks like this:

• 3:7-19 Therefore, since we have a great high priest who is bringing us to “glory and honor,” do not harden your hearts as in the day of testing in the wilderness.
• 4:1-13 There remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God.

1. Do Not Harden Your Hearts
   1. 4:1 “Therefore … let us fear…” These words are the pivotal point in the two sections of our text. The verse implies a positive and negative. First, there is the promise of entering his rest being still available, but there is also the danger of failing to reach it. As in all the warnings in Hebrews, the danger of failing is not remote or improbable. It is easy to drift and it is easy to fail if we do not exercise carefulness and watchfulness.
   2. The Greek word for “fear” truly takes a scholar to understand. It means FEAR! The NLT translates, “So we ought to tremble with fear.” (It is like a toddler trying to reach up and touch the top of a stove or thinking nothing of walking in the middle of the street.) It isn’t because God is waiting to whack us, it is because without God we are dead!
   3. Now we come to a more careful look at “therefore.” The writer gave the strong warning of “fear” and the ease of failure because it already happened with Israel (3:7-19). The summation of that text would go like this: After God delivered them from bondage, they hardened their hearts and rebelled. The result was that God swore with an oath that they would not enter his rest. 
   4. In 3:16, we see the shocking statement: “Who were those who heard and yet rebelled? Was it not all those who left Egypt led by Moses?” In other words, who failed? It was the very people God delivered!
   5. In 3:12-13, we see the exhortation that is based on Israel’s failure and therefore the possibility of our failure. Notice the warnings from these verses:
      1. “Take care…” The idea of “taking care” and being “careful” were repeated admonitions to Israel as Moses preached to them in Deuteronomy. This takes a strong watchfulness and inner examination.
      2. “Lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. Do you know whether or not there is “in you” an evil unbelieving heart? “Oh no! Not me!” Do you think yourself better than these Hebrew Christians who had endured so much persecution? Put simply, this is a rebellious spirit when we are called to obey something we don’t want to do.
      3. In our text (3:7—4:13), there will be three primary remedies to avoiding an “evil, unbelieving heart. In 3:12-13, we encounter the first and immediate remedy: “But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today,’…” Now, will you be the exhorter or the one who needs exhorting? The answer is yes! What does that imply? We need each other. We need together time with each other. We need to be able to allow other Christians to call us on our “drifting” and “slippage” lest we be hardened. Hardening happens by small, repeated acts of disobedience, which grows into stubbornness. The beginning of hardening is almost always imperceptible (drifting).
   6. 3:19 – Unbelief is not the idea of believing that God does not exist! Israel believed God existed. It is a matter of trusting God’s ways. The question is whether God is sufficient or not. Is God able to provide all we need and bring us to true rest? Or, are we going to seek that “rest” now? Every time God tested and challenged Israel in ways that were not agreeable to them or not comfortable to them, they decided they needed to return to Egypt! Egypt will give us rest! We have the same problem. We are impatient when we struggle emotionally, when we are not being “fed” with the “food” we desire (Cf. John 6:47-49).
   7. 3:10 “Therefore I was provoked with that generation, and said, ‘They always go astray in their heart; they have not known my ways.’”
      1. When Israel was complained about the manna, it was because they didn’t like “God’s ways.” When Israel refused to enter because of giants, they denied God’s sufficiency and God’s ways.
      2. Before you throw stones at Israel, please consider their journey to the Promised Land. There was always something that could cause a person to complain. Are you connecting with that? And how did they respond? Something needs to change! It is not right that everything does not fit our desires! Let’s go back to Egypt! Oh how that is us! Everything has to be fixed. 
      3. Have we considered these words from Deut. 8:2, “And you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not…Know then in your heart that, as a man disciplines his son, the Lord Your God disciplines you.” 
   8. Therefore, 4:1-13 is the answer to having an unbelieving heart so that we become hardened.
2. There Remains a Rest for the People of God
   1. In Numbers 27, as the 40 years of the wilderness wanderings have come to an end, the daughters of Zelophehad came before Moses to report that their father had died in the wilderness because of his sin, but left no sons, only them. Their request was that they should still be able to have an inheritance. God agreed and they were given the inheritance their father would have had. Give some thought to these remaining women and the stark reality of their father failing to reach God’s rest. It is not just a warning, but also the sadness of those who were left. This is the message of the text. 
   2. Therefore, seeing God’s eternal purpose to bring us into his rest is the second remedy for an evil, unbelieving heart. 
   3. First, let’s simplify the text.
      1. God introduced his rest (Gen. 2:2-3)
      2. David warned Israel not to harden their hearts like the days of the wilderness and miss the rest (Psalm 95).
      3. Joshua did not give rest. The Canaan promise was only a foreshadowing of the eternal rest God had planned before time began.
      4. Therefore, the rest remains! The Lord’s 7th day “rest” never ended. There was no “evening and morning.”
   4. Consider God’s original intention pictured by the Garden.
   5. Consider what Israel should have been considering on each Sabbath, each sabbatical year, and each Jubilee.
   6. Consider the future rest with God, and therefore the importance of the love and desire we are to have for him. Do we want to enjoy being in the presence of God forever? (Teresa always asks me if I’ll have time for her in heaven! Well, of course, I love you! Do we have that attitude toward God?).
   7. Consider why God was so angry and promised to destroy them when they would not observe the Sabbath (Ezek. 20).
   8. Consider also the reason Jesus constantly healed and noted his work to save souls on the Sabbath.
   9. Consider how the writer is using God’s rest as a motivation…
      1. For fear and careful watchfulness over our hearts
      2. For not losing endurance and slipping back
      3. For striving for the wonders of living in God’s  presence in his rest.
   10. Now we can see that the primary point of the Sabbath was not about resting the physical body. God’s point had to do with where his people’s focus should be. God is offering uninterrupted fellowship without concern for physical needs. Remember, Israel did not have to worry about food on the Sabbath, whether the “day” or the “year.” It is all about being with God. Could there be anything greater? 
3. Lessons
   1. What is our attitude about worship?
   2. What is our attitude about prayer and study?
   3. What is our attitude about enjoying singing and praising God together?
   4. What is our attitude about 3:12-13? Think you can’t have that evil heart of unbelief? Think you do not need exhortation and encouragement from fellow Christians? Think you do not need to give exhortation to others? Think you can just watch online?
   5. Final exhortations:
      1. Therefore, the one who enters the rest has first labored to enter. God worked, then rested and we do the same.
      2. “Let us therefore strive to enter. Without striving, it is possible to fall by the same kind of disobedience of the wilderness generation.
      3. Verses 12-13 Here is the third way we avoid an evil and unbelieving heart. Back to the need for the word of God, using the word to penetrate the thoughts and intents of our heart. By comparing our heart to God’s word we are able to see what God sees in us.

Conclusion: God’s rest is true rest. No matter how hard we try, we will never find rest in this life. So quit trying, and find rest in God. This coming rest is so great, so wonderful, the intention of God from before the foundation of the world, “let us fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it!” 

Berry Kercheville