A Superior Rest Pt. 2

Before I jump into reading the passage this morning, I want to call your attention to a couple exciting things going on in the life of our church and beyond that.

Later in our service today, I will introduce to you the pastor of Temple Baptist Church, Doctor Mike Parnell, and he will be joining us. I'm going to give an intro and introduce him to our congregation. We have been in conversation with them about moving to Temple Baptist in January, and we're very excited about this. This is an opportunity for you to get to see and hear from Doctor Mike Parnell in person, and we'll talk more about this at our congregational meeting on the thirtieth of this month.

Couple other things happening this week. Right after this service, myself and a bunch of our elders are going to be exiting quickly to go over to our daughter church, Reconciliation Presbyterian Church on the South side of downtown. They are having a congregational meeting today to vote on their new elders, to elect their church planner as their pastor, and to petition our denomination to become their own church. This is huge. And we've never been at this place before, so this is something really to be celebrated. That'll be right after this service. We will jet over there and then there will be a celebration, Lord willing, in August when they become their own particular church in the denomination.

And finally, several of our leaders will be at our denomination's annual gathering, General Assembly, which is in Richmond all this week. So you can pray for James Sutton and Paul Deschamps and Elliot Grudem as they're there during this week and for their time there.

Anyway, lots of updates, lots of good things going on. Ask you to keep those things in prayer.

Scripture Reading

I'm going to lead us in reading scripture today. We're going to be back in Hebrews chapter three and four. I'm going to do a lot of reading for us today. If you want to follow along on the screen behind me, this is from Hebrews three and Hebrews four.

Therefore, holy brothers and sisters who share in a heavenly calling, consider Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession. Christ was faithful as a son over his household, and we are that household if we hold to our confidence and the hope which we boast. Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion." Watch out brothers and sisters so that there won't be in any of you an evil unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage each other daily while it is still today so that none of you is hardened by sin's deception. For we have become participants in Christ if we hold firmly until the end the reality that we had at the start. As it is said, "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion." Therefore, since the promise to enter his rest remains, let us beware that none of you be found to have fallen short, for we also have received the good news just as they did, but the message they heard did not benefit them since they were not united with those who heard in faith. For we who have believed enter that rest in keeping with what he has said, "So I swore in my anger, they will not enter my rest." Even though his works have been finished since the foundation of the world. For somewhere he has spoken about the seventh day in this way: "On the seventh day, God rested from all his works." Again, in that passage, he says, "They will never enter my rest." Therefore, since it remains for some to enter it and those who formally received the good news did not enter because of disobedience, he again characterizes a certain day, "today." He specified this speaking through David after such a long time: "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. Therefore, a Sabbath rest remains for God's people. For the person who has entered his rest has rested from his own works just as God rested from his. Let us then make every effort to enter that rest so that none will fall short in the same pattern of disobedience. For the word of God is living and effective and sharper than any double-edged sword, penetrating as far as the separation of soul and spirit, joints and marrow. It is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. No creature is hidden from him but all things are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give an account. — Hebrews 3-4

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

You know, last week, we looked at rest as the main theme of the whole Bible from contents to maps.

The entire book is about a God who creates and rests, who gives us a day, a Sabbath day for rest, and who defines what it means to know him as rest. And here's the main point of last week's sermon: we enter God's rest by resting. We collapse on Christ. That's what salvation is—collapsing on Jesus. Jesus has done for us everything that is required, everything that the law required in order for us to have full relationship with God the Father. He's done everything. The only thing that remains for you to do is nothing but believe. Rest on him. You enter God's rest by rest.

I told you this is a two-parter, so you're getting the second part. If you weren't here last week, sorry, but if you missed this, the second part of this is a challenging one because we ask this question: How do we stay in God's rest?

Staying in God's Rest

How do we stay in God's rest? Now, that may be a strange way for us to think about rest. It's a strange way to use that phrase even. We think about rest in terms of not working, being at peace, not striving, not doing. But it's interesting—the writer of Hebrews speaks of rest almost as if it's a place. A place that you go to and a place that you stay in. It's that concrete in his head. Entering God's rest, staying in God's rest.

You enter God's rest by rest, but how do you stay in God's rest? Because here's why this is such an important thing. This is the meat and potatoes of this whole passage. It is always the tendency of the human heart to move on and to drift and to go after other things and leave the rest of God for something else.

Now, if you were paying attention this morning as I read, you may have noticed there are several scary ifs in the passage—if as in like, if this then that. Several scary ifs in the passage. He refers to this congregation. He's writing this letter. The author of Hebrews is writing this letter to this congregation, and he calls them from the very beginning, from the get-go. He assumes that they are Christians. He calls them here in this passage "sharers in the heavenly calling," only to put a bunch of conditionals on that. And I want you to hear the tension of this. Did you hear it?

Christ was faithful as a son of his household. And we are the household if we hold on to the confidence and hope in which we boast. — Hebrews 3:6

If? Or:

For we have become participants of Christ if we hold firmly until the end of the reality that we had at the start. — Hebrews 3:14

How do we understand those ifs? Those are scary ifs. But I've got to warn you—this is not the only place in the Bible that we read scary ifs. The Apostle Paul, who wrote about a third of the New Testament, has a bunch of these ifs all over his letters. Listen:

You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. You are children, also heirs—heirs of God and coheirs with Christ if we suffer with him. — Romans 8

Consider God's kindness if you remain in his kindness. — Romans 11

Test yourself to see if you are in the faith. Examine yourselves unless you fail the test. — 2 Corinthians 13

Now he has reconciled you by his physical body through his death to present you holy and faithful, faultless and blameless before him if you remain grounded and steadfast. — Colossians 1

Does that bother you? I hope it bugs you a little bit. This was a hard sermon for me to prepare. I want the author of Hebrews to say, "But by the way, everything's good." Give us some kind of blanket statement of assurance. But here's what we see: There are limits to what we can know of any other person's spiritual condition. We are dependent on outward manifestations of spiritual realities to tell us what's on the inside of anybody else. Is there fruit in a person's life? Does that person love Jesus and stay with Jesus over the long haul?

So here's the caution. Spiritual rest is available, and all you need to do is rest on him and trust in him. However, make sure that you hold fast. Make sure that this is really who you are. He says even in this passage, "I'm persuaded of better things in your case," and yet he continues to give them these cautions. Why? Because he's a good pastor.

So notice what the author doesn't say about remaining in his rest. He doesn't say it's all okay. He says test yourself, examine yourself. For this morning, it's going to be a little bit like a spiritual MRI. A little check-up. How am I doing on the inside?

Now this was no theoretical conversation for them. The people who received this letter were people who had converted. They'd grown up in Judaism with all the practices of the synagogue and the sacrificial system and the dietary restrictions and going to the temple for sacrifices. All of those things were part of their experience. And when they came therefore to believe in Jesus, it's much like people who are modern Hindus or people who are in Islam who leave that faith to become Christians today.

They were outright rejected by their family. This was a huge thing for them to leave and to attach themselves to Jesus by faith. And the caution is a lot of them are now at a point where they want to go back. Things are hard.

Friends, this is no theoretical conversation for us either. In the last few years, the American church has lost an enormous number of people who used to be part of Christian fellowship. De-churching, leaving the faith, at least leaving the institution of the church. And I just want to be transparent. I'm really sympathetic to that. It's hard to be identified with the church. Many of you experience this inner tension. You struggle with the church, and you may think the pastor is the last person who gets it. No. Even just these last few weeks I've had issues with my own denomination over some decisions that I'm like, I don't like that. It's hard to be identified professionally as a pastor with the institution of the church. The church is hard. Many of you have been hurt by the church, and so I don't want to pretend like anybody who has left the church has intentionally left Jesus behind.

And yet the warning of this passage is really important for us. It's really timely. It's really important for us to think about what it means to identify with Jesus and what it means to identify with his people. So maybe this is getting older—I'm only down to two points these days. So heart disease and hold on—that's really my only two points for you this morning.

Heart Disease

You know, the human heart, the physical heart that you have in your chest, is an amazing muscle. It beats 100,000 times a day. That equals about 2,900,000,000 times over the average lifespan of a person. Your heart pumps 2,000 gallons of blood every day. The average adult male has 12 pints of blood, the average adult female has nine pints of blood. That means your blood goes through your heart 2,000 times every day. That's incredible.

And yet we all know how very dangerous it is if you develop conditions around your heart. Heart attacks are incredibly dangerous. Do you know that most heart attacks happen on a Monday? Somebody's had a good weekend and they're hitting the stress of work. In a year, most heart attacks happen on Christmas Day, a time of celebration. Heart attacks are incredibly serious, and yet of course this isn't a doctor's visit for you this morning. There are all kinds of warning signs. Heart attacks don't just happen—they happen because there are all these factors that have been going on for a while and have been ignored.

Spiritually speaking, the heart is just as important, if not more so. We in America talk about the heart two ways. We talk about it as the muscle in your chest and your emotions. "Just follow your heart"—that's the tagline of just about every kid's animated movie. It's about your emotions. But in the Bible, the heart is a metaphor, but it's a much broader and bigger metaphor for all of the inner part of you. The Bible speaks of your heart as having thoughts and plans and emotions. The heart is the center of you rationally, volitionally, and emotionally. It's huge. There's a lot of concern for the health of your heart, and so the writer of Hebrews is writing us this morning again with this same kind of MRI checkup. How's your heart? How's the inside part of you? Be careful.

So let's do a heart scan that this writer has for us. There are four parts of this scan. Beware a sinful, unbelieving, turning away, hard heart. Let's look at each of these in turn.

Beware first a sinful heart. It says in this version, an evil heart. That's the residue of the fall that's in every one of us. There is something deep inside every one of us that is contrary to the things of God. Were any of you or are any of you contrarians, at least in your teenage years? Like somebody says, don't do this, and you're like, oh, I'm doing that. There is in every one of us an inner anarchist to the things of God. No, I'm not gonna do that. No, you say that, I'll go over here. Something in us is resistant to God. That both wants God and doesn't want God. We're like this: Come here, go away. Come here, go away with God. That's something in each of us in seed form.

Second, beware an unbelieving heart. Now let me use that term and explain it very carefully. Unbelief and doubt are two different things. Doubt is not the absence of faith—it's the questions that you have about faith. You can only doubt in many ways what you already have. When a Christian doubts, he or she fears that what I've put my hope on maybe it's not real. Is this true? Is this true for me? That's doubt. Christian doubts are a normal part of the Christian life. We've talked about this over the spring.

Unbelief is something different.

Unbelief in us is a spiritual blindness that's willful, a determined resistance toward God. If it builds on a sinful heart, an unbelieving heart is not only an inner anarchist but is willfully blinding yourself. A doubting person says, "I can't understand the truth." Unbelief says, "I'm resistant to this. I don't want this to be true." When unbelief is added to sin, we end up doing things like justifying behavior, hiding, lying, covering up. We end up doing things where we callous ourselves to God's commands.

Have you ever played a string instrument? You develop calluses on your fingers over time. It's really painful when you start playing guitar or violin or cello. But over time you develop calluses that allow you to push down the strings and it doesn't hurt as bad. Those are good on the outside. They're bad on the inside. This callousness in us is spiritually dangerous. As one pastor, Paul Deschamps, shared with me: he said the most dangerous word for us to say to God is not "no." It's "nah." You get the difference? "Nah. I don't really care." When that happens, you need to be really careful. It's almost like you need somebody with those bright yellow vests and the big sign and the lights going: "Caution, your insides are in danger."

A sinful, unbelieving heart. Third, a turning away heart.

Have you ever been sailing? If you've been sailing, you know that one of the hardest things about sailing is keeping the boat going in a straight line, keeping the boat on a correct course. The only thing you have to do when you're sailing to get off course is nothing. You don't have to do anything. It's very easy to get off course sailing. Each of us has a sailboat heart. We have a heart that naturally wants to turn away from the living God, turn away from what he says.

A sinful, unbelieving, turning away heart, and then finally, a hard heart—an unhearing hard heart.

Did you notice three times in the passage the quote from the Old Testament? "Today if you hear his voice don't harden your heart." When the Bible says something three times it's like, "Hey y'all sit up and listen. This is really dang important. This is really really important." Three times we're told the same thing. There is a tendency in each of us to develop a hard heart. Just like hardened arteries are dangerous for a heart attack, a hard heart is incredibly spiritually dangerous to us.

What do you have to do to ruin Play Doh? Just leave the lid off. Over time, what happens to Play Doh? It turns into that crusty dry stuff. To keep Play Doh fresh, what do you have to do with it? Use it. Stretch it. Knead it.

There's in each of us a tendency to leave behind the rest of God, to abandon Jesus and his people, to drift away. We sing this song in our church and there's one line that goes: "Prone to wander, Lord I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love." No one starts off the Christian life and says, "Hey I'm in it for the short run," but the Bible warns us. The seeds that are sown in us—there's a tendency for weeds to grow up, for the seed to fall on stony path, for shallow rocky soil, for the cares and pleasures of life to remove that.

Remember, Jesus never moves. What good news there is for us in that. Jesus never moves an inch. The Bible tells us he is the same yesterday and today and forever. He is always turned toward his children. His heart is toward you this morning. The heart of the Father is incredibly soft toward you. Do you know that? Do you have any idea how much God loves you? How much God is gracious toward you? But it's never him that moves. It's always us.

This is why we need so much the admonition: Hold on.

Hold On

The whole time I've been writing this sermon, I've been thinking about the song by Journey. We're gonna do a call and response this morning. You ready? "Don't stop believing." You all are good, except I didn't hear any of the falsetto. I really wanted the falsetto, but I didn't do it because I knew my voice would crack. I practiced over and over for that this week and I just was like, no, I can't be the only singer. I need some help. So thank you, very good. "Don't stop believing. Hold on."

That's really kind of the main point of this passage: Don't let go. Don't let go.

Now, how do we hold on? What does it mean to be people who hold on? Well, the Bible tells us here some really good stuff, very simple. Number one, and if you're gonna take notes, it's the only thing I care about you taking notes on:

Consider Jesus.

That's the beginning of this passage. Now I know the word "consider" is weak sauce in English, but what that means is to study, to examine thoroughly. Never take your eyes off of Jesus. Keep looking at him. Are you familiar with competitive rowing?

We've had a number of teenagers in our church involved in competitive rowing. The little tiny boats they use for teams are called shells, and they have a whole line of rowers and then a person in the back called the coxswain. Have you ever heard of that word? It's not spelled like it sounds, but the coxswain looks insignificant compared to everybody else in the boat but is maybe the most important person on the boat. We've had a couple of coxswains part of our congregation without us even knowing it.

The coxswain is often a very small person who doesn't row. You may be looking at this thinking, "Who's the person who gets the free ride? That must be a great job." But actually, the coxswain is the only person looking forward. All the rowers are usually these hulking large people with gigantic shoulders. The coxswain is this little tiny person, but the rowers are facing the coxswain. The coxswain is the only person looking ahead, and the coxswain calls out the strokes and guides the direction of the boat. Incredibly important.

Now it doesn't matter how great and how huge and incredible your rowers are. If they don't pay attention to the coxswain, they will not win that race. If they don't keep their eyes locked on, study, consider, keep their eyes focused on the coxswain, no way they're going to win.

Let's apply this to Jesus. This is where my analogy breaks down. Because he's not just the coxswain, is he? He's not just the one shouting out directions of where to go in your life. He's also the rower. It's his strength that carries you through. He's the whole dang boat. He's what keeps you afloat in this life. And yet the admonition, even though my analogy breaks down, the admonition doesn't. Watch. Keep your eyes on Jesus. Watch him. Keep looking at him.

When Jesus invited the apostle Peter to come out and walk on the water, there's an amazing scene. Jesus comes walking to the disciples on the water. They're in a boat in the middle of a storm, and Peter's like, "Is that you?" And he's like, "Yeah, it's really you." Peter says, "If it's really you, let me come out to you," and Jesus says, "Come on, Peter." So Peter takes a step out onto the water and he's fine as long as he's looking at Jesus. Some of you grew up on this story so you know the ending. What happens when he takes his eyes off of Jesus? He sinks. That's right. He sinks down.

This is why we're here this morning. This is why church. We don't take attendance here. Nobody is earning anything here. God is not up in heaven going, "I saw him here, looking good. She looks good this morning. She's here. She was on time even." God doesn't care. That's not why we're here. We're here to keep our eyes on him.

My job is the weirdest job in the world. It is not to run an organization. It is not to make you happy about our church. It is not to grow a big church. It is to help you see Jesus. That's it.

There's a famous sign that was on a pulpit in a church in Los Angeles. It was just on the inside of the pulpit. There's a quote from the book of John:

Sir, we would see Jesus.

That's what you're here for. Why? Because you're prone to wander. We need a fresh sight of Jesus all the time. This is the only thing that really keeps us afloat. He's our coxswain. He's our rower, and he's our boat. Keep looking at him. We need to see more with the eyes of our heart. Otherwise we get numb and hardened and callous and indifferent and bored and overwhelmed with sin and guilty and filled with shame and all the things.

Encourage One Another

The second way you hold on to him is encourage one another. Did you notice in this passage it says:

Encourage each other so that you will not be hardened by sin's deceitfulness.

There's a sense in this passage and in the whole Bible that we own each other. There is a sense of ownership and belonging that is like nowhere else. We really need the bond and the connectedness in the family of one another, and American Christians don't get this.

American Christians view church community as an extra. We view church membership as optional. We view participation in community life as voluntary. We say, "When we have time, if we have time, when we feel like it." Not the first century Christians. Not most Christians in the world. They think of the vital need of the connectedness of these people in this room with you right now. This isn't gravy or icing. It's like oxygen. It's not like Netflix or Hulu. This is like dinner and a place to sleep at night. This is not like cruise control for your car. This is like gas in your engine.

It is a vital necessity that you are part of a local church. I'll say that again: it is a vital necessity that you're part of a local church. Not just dip your toe in, but really in. Really in.

Hebrews 3 says that if anyone has a hard day, everybody around them is to encourage them. Man, don't you want that? Anybody here who's like, "I don't need any encouragement today"? Look at all those hands. No. Everybody needs encouragement. Right. Literally the word here is parakaleo. This is where we get our phrase for our team in our church who works alongside our elders—the Parakaleo team. Parakaleo means to shout alongside. It means to call alongside. To come beside someone else and shout them back to safety.

It's like somebody lost in the woods. You know, if you're lost in the woods, you don't need a team of people who are whispering, "Hey, Jeff, over here." You don't need a team of people who are indifferently standing on the edge of the woods going, "Well, we'll see." You need a group of people who go in the woods and yell your name, who are coming alongside calling, "Jeff, over here! This way!" Again, don't drift from the family of God. This is why church. You need a body.

What happens when someone has an accident where they lose a limb? Doctors can keep that limb sort of alive for a very short period of time to reattach it. It's a very complicated surgery. But it's dead apart from the body. You need the body. Don't underestimate in any way the value of the body of Christ. For you to leave this behind or casually be apart or dip your toe in and not really be a part, you're hurting only you. And I say that out of full love for you. Don't just drift. You need church.

Use God's Word

Finally, use God's word. This is the last part of this passage, and I know that as we were reading through this, it seems like we're talking about all these things about rest and one-anothering, and then it suddenly talks about God's word. Well, it's weird. It sounds like there's a change of subject, but it isn't. Let me show you this.

All throughout Hebrews, the way Hebrews works and how I divided up my sermons is that the word "therefore" sort of acts as a stop-start throughout Hebrews, kind of defines the sections. There's no "therefore" at the beginning of this, which tells us this is part of the same section of Scripture. So, God's word—why is this? How is this something that helps us to hold on to His rest? How is hearing His word?

This is again why church. Why we need the church. Every Sunday you come and you hear me or somebody like me stumble through explaining a passage. Now you hear God's word preached to you, and there's something that happens here that can't happen on the podcast. The Bible has promises about the people of God gathered and God's word proclaimed to them. I know that you can get more done listening to me or a lot of better preachers than me while you run, while you multitask, while you do laundry. No doubt. No doubt they're better voices and communicators. But there's something that happens here that happens nowhere else. The promise of God is that He is among His people gathered.

So to be here and listen—this is what happens to you when you walk in this room. You have to cede control. You can't fast forward me, can you? You're like, "Yes, I wish I could," or play me on twice as fast, right? You can't change the channel. You can't pause the sermon. You're here and you're trapped. No, I don't want to scare anybody. You can go to the bathroom and all that, but you can sit here and daydream. You can sit here and do your shopping list for your groceries, but you're here and God is present among His people. He promises this like nowhere else.

So not like, "Man, our church is the best." I'm just like, you need something. You need to be under the preaching of God's word every Sunday. Would you value the gathering of God's people? You know, value it so much that you say, "You know, I'm not going to go on vacation. When I plan my vacations, I'm going to plan until the last possible moment. I'm going to make a plan to come back on a Saturday instead of a Sunday, and I'm going to come back so I can be here with God's people. And then I'm going to go home and take a long nap. And then I'm going to get ready for Monday. And I'm not just going to have no margin in my life. I'm going to value being here because I need the assembly, I need the fellowship, I need the word, I need other people shouting to me, encouragements. I'm not going to miss a chance to be with God's people."

Look, I know that this may be a hard sermon for you this morning. You're like, "Man, last week was unrest, and this week feels like 'do, do, do.'" And I walk away with a sermon with lots of do-dos. Good. You got my dad joke. Why does this feel like a "do-do" sermon? Why is this overwhelming maybe for some of you? If you're hearing that, you're getting a feel for what Jesus did for you. Jesus was faithful to the uttermost to His Father. Jesus always heard and responded rightly to God. Jesus was among God's people. Jesus listened to God's word. He did perfectly all that was required of the commandments.

God has given you in Christ everything you need to live the Christian life. He's given you his word. He's given you a spiritual family. He's given you his spirit. We come to rest by his grace and goodness and his gifts in us, and we remain in his rest by abiding and being present to God and one another. Being with him and with his people.

So how'd you do on your spiritual MRI this morning? Probably like me, not so good. If you find this morning that there are things in you that are resistant, are turning away, hard, I have good news for you. You are in the right place this morning.

You know when you don't do the dishes at night and you wake up in the morning, all the food that was on there is crusty. But you know the trick, right? All you have to do with the crusty food dish is soak it in the warm water. And what was crusty and hard and you had to scrub to get off suddenly loosens and just floats away.

Brothers and sisters, you're in the right place this morning. Fellow hard-hearted people like me, you're in the right place to soak. Just a moment, we're gonna go to the table together. Maybe one of the greatest gifts God gives his people is soaking in the grace, soaking in the mercy of God. It's open for you if you're a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. Come and let the hard things in you be loosened this morning.

Let's pray together. Father, we thank you for your word. There's nothing like your word. And sometimes it says things to us which are hard and we need so badly. Give us courage today to respond to your gospel grace. Soak that deep into us. Help us to value the fellowship and the brotherhood and sisterhood. Help us to call each other, to encourage each other. Lord, help us to be people who value being present with one another on Sundays, present with each other close in our lives. Lord, help us to exchange the way we look at the world for the way you look at the world. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

Would you respond to God's word by standing.