Bringers of Rest

With just hearing today’s passage, you probably noticed that the central theme is rest. In those 11 verses, some form of the word “rest” is used 10 times.

Whether you are a young child or great grandmother, I think you understand how beautiful rest it. We all understand the longing to be done with chores at home, or an assignment for school, or a project at work. We all want to feel unburdened and unforced to continue in some kind of difficult work.

It seems to me that our culture today isn’t good at work, and it isn’t good at rest either. And I’m including myself in that assessment. In terms of work, it’s a challenge to stay diligent engaged. And then, in terms of rest, it’s a challenge to unplug and disconnect effectively. Our computer-based, work-at-home, content-streaming society has got work and rest all mixed up, and that leads to us not excelling at either.

Well, what is true from a physical or societal point-of-view can also be true from a spiritual point-of-view. We don’t know what it means to properly work for the Lord, and we don’t completely understand what it means to rest in Him either. They can be elusive realities.

The original audience of Hebrews didn’t understand the concept of spiritual rest either. They didn’t know how it would come, and they didn’t know how it would. The Israelites looked for rest through Moses, and they also looked for rest through Joshua. But neither was complete, and neither was achievable in their own strength, either individually or collectively. What they needed to understand, more than anything else, was the rest that comes through Christ.

So, these are the headings I’m going to use in our message this morning. We’ll look at the rest provided by Moses, the rest provided by Joshua, and then, finally, the rest provided by Christ.

Before we get into that, though, let me give some background information starting from a more general perspective.

God is a God of rest. We know that He rested on the seventh day of creation, and we know that He promises and provides rest to His people.

When sin came into the world, a curse came over the world, and life became especially painful and difficult. Man was designed to work the ground, but now, the ground was going to fight back. Friction was introduced into the design. There would be thorns; there would be sweat; there would be hard ground.

The woman was designed to help her husband and to bear children. But again, there was friction and pain. Bearing children would be especially painful, and loving and submitting to her husband wasn’t going to be easy. She would have a heart that pushed against that. Once again, friction was introduced into God’s design. Friction in our work, friction in our hearts, friction in our relationships. There would be all kinds of pain in every generation.

But when the curse came over the world, there was also a curse pronounced on Satan the serpent. And this curse for Satan was a promise to mankind. One day, a Son would be born who would bruise, or crush, the head of the serpent. Pain would be undone. Rest would come into the world.

Well, generations passed, and pain kept coming, and so did sin. Eventually, there came a man whose father named his “rest.” Do you know who that was? That man was named Noah. He did not bring rest to the world, but it was through him that God reset the human population, and then nations were formed.

God chose a man named Abraham and told him that he would become a great nation that would bring a blessing to the world. That’s how we got the nation of Israel. But rather than experience perpetual rest in their own land Israel, ends up spending 400 years as slaves in Egypt.

And that brings us to our first category, which is the rest of Moses, or the rest provided by Moses.

For the past few weeks, we’ve been talking about the salvation God provided under Moses, so I won’t spend a lot of time here. But the short version is that the generation that left Egypt missed out on the Promised Land because of their unbelief and disobedience. They missed out on the rest that Moses was sent to help provide.

But there’s another element of Moses’ rest that’s important to understand. That rest is known as the Jewish Sabbath which God instituted early on. The Hebrew word “Sabbath” comes from a verb that means “to rest.”

In Exodus 16, God gives the Israelites instruction on how to gather manna. For five days out of the week, the Israelites had to gather enough for one, single day. On the sixth day, however, they had to gather enough for two days, and on the seventh day, they would not gather anything. That seventh day was a “Sabbath.” It was a day to rest. Work stopped. This was a Sabbath in connection to collecting manna. But once the nation no longer needed to rely on manna, the principle of a Sabbath still remained.

The Law of Moses had a number of different Sabbath rests built into it, but the most famous rest was the weekly Sabbath, which comes to us in Exodus 20. This is commandment number 4 out of the 10 that the people heard for themselves.

God says to them—[8] Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. [9] Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, [10] but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. [11] For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

On its face, I think the fourth commandment stands out among the rest because, on its own, it doesn’t sound very religious. Don’t worship any other gods. Don’t make any idols. Don’t blaspheme God. Honor your parents. Don’t murder. Don’t commit adultery. Don’t steal. Don’t lie. And don’t covet in your heart what other people have. To us, those all sound like very reasonable, moral requirements. They make sense. But what about this rule about resting one day out of the week? Why is that in there? I’ll give you three reasons.

At the most basic level, the fourth commandment, just like every other commandment, was a spiritual test. It was a spiritual test. In fact, back in Exodus 16, when God gave instructions about the manna, God said he was going to test the people, to see whether they’d walk in His law or not. Obedience to this command was an expression of faith and trust in the God who gave it to them.

Now, this wasn’t an arbitrary rule for future generations. It cost them something. It meant that when you could have been outside plowing your field or harvesting your crops, you didn’t. And neither did your slaves. You took a day to reflect on the power and goodness of God, and you trusted in Him to provide.

Letting the land rest, and letting the people rest, brought many practical benefits, but that doesn’t seem to be the main purpose. First of all, it was a spiritual test. Second of all, it served as an identifying characteristic. It was an identifying characteristic. This law was going to set the people of God apart from the people of this world. It made them stand out. Every other nation was out there working seven days, but not Israel, if they were going to be obedient to God. This set them apart. This made them different. This showed that they were holy.

In Exodus 31, God said to the Israelites that the Sabbath was a sign between them and God. That’s similar to what God said to Abraham. The Abrahamic covenant came with the sign of circumcision. The Mosaic covenant came with the sign of the Sabbath, so it was a serious thing for the people.

In Exodus 35, God requires the death penalty for those who break the Sabbath. And we see one example of that happening in Numbers 15. Israel is still wandering in the wilderness, when they find a man gathering wood on the Sabbath day. God says that that man should be stoned. He should be put to death for what He’s done. He has rebelled against God’s law. He has failed the spiritual test, and he has cast off an identifying characteristic of His people.

The seriousness of the Sabbath law led future generations to create more laws about what the people should and shouldn’t do. By the time Jesus comes onto the scene, the Pharisees and the Jewish system had added all kinds of laws about how far you could walk in a single day and what kind of knots you could tie or untie. The Pharisees even got mad at Jesus because He healed on the Sabbath. Apparently, He broke one of the rules they had invented.

That kind of system turned the Sabbath upside down. It stopped being a day of rest, and it became a day of judgment and fear. It was a burdensome day. It completely missed the heart of God which was to provide rest to His people.

The Pharisaical version of the Sabbath also ignored a third purpose of the Sabbath day. The Sabbath was spiritual test. The Sabbath was also an identifying characteristic. And thirdly, the Sabbath was a joyful preview. The Sabbath, ultimately, was pointing to something that was yet to come.

The Jewish system elevated the Sabbath in such a way that it became the goal. It became an end rather than a means. The Sabbath was intended as a preview, to point forward to something that was yet to come. It pointed to God’s blessing upon the nation and upon the world.

And this brings us to our second section for today, which is the rest of Joshua, or the rest provided by Joshua.

The generation of adults that left Egypt under Moses never got to see the Promised Land. They saw the hardships of Egypt. They lived under the hardships of the wilderness. But they were looking forward to the blessing of the Promised Land, where they would have abundant provision and rest.

Under the leadership of Joshua, the Israelites entered into the land and began to take it over. They became God’s instrument of judgment over a wicked people. They started by destroying Jericho, and then that conquest expanded until the land was divided among the tribes.

But even though the Israelites moved into the Promised Land and took over a huge portion of it, future generations knew that they never finished the task. Their rest was never complete or perfect.

And this is what the author of Hebrews picks up on in verse 8. There was an even greater rest to come—greater than the rest of Moses and greater than the rest of Joshua. This is the rest of Christ, the rest provided by Jesus Christ. That’s our final heading for today.

Look with me at verse 8. He says—For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on.

What’s that talking about? When did God speak of a rest to come? That comes from the quotation of Psalm 95. Moses’ generation was hoping for a rest. And that rest was still being offered in the time of the Psalms. There is a rest to come. There is a rest greater than Moses or Joshua offered. There is a rest greater than what David or Solomon offered. This is the rest offered to us by Jesus Christ.

It is the spiritual rest of knowing that there is no need for any of us to work for our salvation, or to work to keep it. There is no work needed to gain or to maintain the favor of God. It has already been accomplished by Jesus Christ, and it will be ours if we receive Him in true faith and genuine repentance.

This is the promise of verses 9 and 10. It says—So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, [10] for whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from his works as God did from his.

Just like God rested from His work of creation, everyone who trusts in Christ gets to rest from any works done under the Law. There is no way to earn salvation through works.

Ephesians 2:8-9—For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

Titus 3:4-5—But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, [5] he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit.

Salvation has never come by works. It has always been by grace through faith. God saved the Israelites out of Egypt by His grace. The Law was intended to show them how to enjoy fellowship with God. But it was also intended to show them that they could never be holy or righteous enough for God. They needed a sacrifice. They needed a payment.

Romans 8 reminds us that the Law was weak, from an earthly perspective. But what the Law could not do, God did. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us.

The “us” there at the end is those who have confessed and repented of their sin, turned from trusting in themselves, and surrendered their lives to Jesus Christ. They are declared righteous by their union to the perfect Christ. He fulfilled the Law on their behalf. And so, we rest in Him.

Jesus Himself said that He came to fulfill the Law. He didn’t say the Law was worthless or purposeless. But He came because the Law of Moses was pointing to and preparing people for Him. And that includes the laws regarding the Sabbath. They were pointing to the rest God’s people would have through the Messiah.

And that’s why, if you read the New Testament epistles, there is no requirement or mandate regarding the Sabbath. That is not part of the Law of Christ; it was part of the Law of Moses, and it has been fulfilled in Christ.

Romans 14 says we are no longer subject to some calendar for worship. We will have differences as to how we approach that kind of issue. What matters is that we worship God from the heart, fully convinced in our own minds about how to honor Him.

In Colossians 2, there is the explicit command not to pass judgment on one another with regard to dietary restrictions and with regard to the Sabbath. Colossians 2:17 says—These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.

The Law has fulfilled its purpose, and it has also been fulfilled in Jesus Christ. He is now our Sabbath rest. We don’t have a Tabernacle or a Temple now, as a distinct place of worship. We don’t have dietary restrictions. And we no longer have a Sabbath commandment, because it has been fulfilled in Jesus Christ.

We worship on Sundays, not because there’s an explicit command about that, and not because Sunday is the new Sabbath. We worship on Sundays because we follow in the historical tradition of the New Testament church, going back to the first century. In some cases, they gathered every day, but there was a special emphasis placed on the first day of the week, the day Christ rose from the dead, Sunday. But we cannot be legalistic about that, as if those who have corporate worship on a different day are automatically sinning. The law of the Sabbath has been fulfilled, so it is no longer binding on us.

But more important than a doctrinal understanding of the Sabbath today, is the practical response of accepting the Sabbath rest that can only be found in Jesus Christ. Only those who have done that will find true rest. And this is how this portion of Hebrews ends.

Look at verse 11—Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.

ESV says “strive.” Other translations say “be diligent” or “make every effort.” The King James says, “let us labor.” This comes from the Greek word spoudádzo which comes from a noun that means “haste” or “diligence.” So, we could even translate this: “Make haste, or hurry, to enter that rest.” Be urgent about this. Don’t let this opportunity slip away.

There is rest in Christ, but upfront, there is a requirement of diligence and urgency. Do not rest until you’re sure that you have the rest of Jesus Christ. Don’t take it for granted. Enter into that rest. Trust in Christ.

Anyone looking to rest through the Law of Moses is hoping in self-effort, and that will never be enough. Anyone looking to rest in the land of Joshua is hoping in circumstances. But your circumstances in this life will never be enough, either. Don’t hope in self-effort. Don’t hope in circumstances. Hope in Jesus Christ, who will give you spiritual rest today if you confess and trust. And He will give you eternal rest when He comes to save you forever.