A Superior Rest

Well, we're going to be in Hebrews chapters three and four today, and it's a longish passage. So I'm going to let you all sit back and listen. I'm going to read aloud for us. We're going to read from Hebrews chapter three verses one through eleven, sixteen through 19, and then four:one-eleven. So listen now these words from the book that we love.

Therefore, holy brothers and sisters, who share in a heavenly calling, Consider Jesus, the Apostle and High Priest of our confession. He was faithful to the one who appointed him, just as Moses was in all God's household. For Jesus is considered worthy of more glory than Moses, just as the builder has more honor than the house. Now, every house is built by someone, but the one who built everything is God. Moses was faithful as a servant in all God's household, as a testimony to what would be said in the future, but Christ was faithful as a son over his household. And we are that household if we hope, if we hold on to the confidence and the hope in which we boast. Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, today if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion on the day of testing in the wilderness, where your ancestors tested me, tried me, and saw my works for forty years. Therefore, I was provoked to anger with that generation and said, they will always go astray in their hearts and have not known my ways, so I swore in my anger they will not enter my rest. For who heard and rebelled? Wasn't it all who came out of Egypt under Moses? With whom was God angry for forty years? Wasn't it with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the desert? And with whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, if not those who disobeyed? So we see that they were unable to enter his rest because of unbelief. 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 it 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, and on the seventh day God rested from all his works. Again, that passage, he says, they will never enter my rest. Therefore, since it remains for some to enter it, and those who formerly did receive the good news did not enter because of disobedience, he again specifies 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 did from his. Let us then make every effort to enter that rest so that no one will fall into the same pattern of disobedience. — Hebrews 3:1-11, 3:16-19, 4:1-11

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

The Navajo Chief's Blanket

The longest running show on PBS, twenty eight years and counting, is Antiques Roadshow. And the premise of the show is that people from all over the country go through basements and attics and pull out things that they consider could be valuable. And they bring them in on live TV and they have them assessed for their value by a professional, evaluated by an appraiser.

One of the most famous episodes, this was way back 2001, and I have a picture of this, a man named Ted Kuntz brought in a blanket. And it's a blanket that had been in his family, passed down from generation to generation. In fact, before the show it was hanging on the back of his couch. And he brought it in and said, can you give me a value to this?

You can immediately see in the episode that the appraiser kind of sits up. And he asks Mr. Kuntz a question. He says, are you a wealthy man? Mr. Kuntz, Ted Kuntz says, no, not really. He says, yes, you are. And what he reveals is that this is a Navajo first phase chief's blanket. And not only was it of incredible value, in 2001 the estimates were, he said, on a bad day, the appraiser said, $350,000 to half a million dollars.

But this is not just a valuable object, it's an invaluable object. He said this: what you have on your couch is a national treasure.

And I want you to think about what it was like for Ted Kuntz picking up the blanket to go home. I wonder if it felt different to fold it that time. I wonder if his hands trembled just a little bit touching that something that had been around his house, in his family for generations.

He went on to sell the blanket to a private bidder who ended up giving it to the Museum of Art in Detroit. You can go see it on display today.

The book of Hebrews, which we're looking at this summer, is like an appraiser looking at Jesus again and saying, "Do you have any idea what he is worth?" The name Jesus—whether you are a Christian who has loved the name of Jesus, or you're a person who's just grown up in America and heard the name Jesus—it is easy for that to become old and to sort of become, "Yeah, yeah, Jesus."

So today we're going to listen to the appraiser, the author of Hebrews, this anonymous author who helps us understand what we have: the treasure that we have in Jesus. Invaluable.

I'm going to look under these points if you're taking notes: the one word summary of the whole Bible, two operating systems, and the hard work.

The One Word Summary of the Whole Bible

What's the one word summary of the whole Bible? If you went to Crabtree Valley Mall and interviewed people this afternoon and said, "Could you sum up the whole Bible in one word? The whole Christian message in one word?"—you'd probably get a lot of responses. You'd probably get things like prayer, or belief, or saved, salvation, maybe obedience, being good. There's lots of ways people might try to sum that up.

But one of the most biblical ways we can sum up the whole message of the Bible is this one word: rest. We've been singing about it all morning. You've heard it throughout our liturgy all morning—rest.

I think most people would say that rest would be one of the last words they would think of when they think of the Christian faith. They may think of moral effort or spiritual practices or doing things, but not rest. How does the word rest hit you? Do you let that wash over you this morning?

When we think of rest, it's something we want. It makes me hungry. I want rest. We tend to look at summertime. We just shifted gears after Memorial Day, and we all sort of naturally think about vacation coming up—through the school system, you're like, that's rest, that's vacation time. But the word vacation has the same root as vacate, empty. Rest has connotations of being full, satisfied, a real sense of wholeness.

Rest is what none of us can get enough of. Anybody here want some rest? We are a restless people. Many of us have a hard time resting even at night when we're in our beds. We're busy and we're tired and we're ragged. And many times, even our vacations don't bring rest. They can make us just as tired. Anybody ever needed a vacation from your vacation?

God's Rest

The Bible tells us a story of a God of rest, a God who makes the whole universe and rests. It's puzzling because the Bible also says that God never grows tired or weary. God created for six days and then rested. His act of rest can't mean that he just needed to catch up on sleep. It meant God rested. He delighted in it. He savored what he had made. He enjoyed it.

And then he did three things to dedicate that day. He refreshed himself on that day and made that a memorial, a pattern to continue. He blessed that day, the Sabbath day. He sanctified it and held it holy and said, "This day is for you to enjoy me and one another."

It's interesting—we have no logical, social evolutionary reason for a seven-day week. We have a very clear one for a twenty-four hour day: the rotation of the Earth. We have a very clear one for the demarcation of a month with the lunar cycle. We have a very clear demarcation of a year with the Earth revolving around the sun. But there's no social evolutionary explanation for the seven-day cycle, except this: God rested. And it tells us God made us for rest. He made us for rest.

Rest in the Old Testament

The great story of the Old Testament is God's rescue of his people out of four hundred years of slavery in Egypt. He delivers them from Pharaoh and the Egyptian army, takes them out into the wilderness of Sinai, and there he gives them the law and heads them toward the Promised Land. This is the big story of the Bible.

One of the laws that God gave them at Mount Sinai was rest—a Sabbath day. It's fascinating because he does three things related to this.

First, when he commands them to take a Sabbath day, he marks days differently than we do. We mark days when we get up. The Sabbath day started when you went to bed. The first thing you did on your Sabbath was sleep. And not only was it sleep for you, but there was a command: this was for your whole household. Your goats were to take a Sabbath. Your donkeys were to take a Sabbath. People serving in your household were to take a Sabbath. Foreigners in Israel were to take a Sabbath. Everybody got this rest.

And he provided for it. In the desert he gave them manna, this miraculous food from heaven that appeared every morning except for the Sabbath day. And the day before the Sabbath, twice as much food would appear, so that nobody had to cook, nobody had to do anything that day. It was all provided. God made a way for them to rest.

He commanded them to rest. The end of the Bible is also about rest. New heavens and the new earth of the book of Revelation are all about God creating a place of rest, of ultimate home, where we rest with God and one another. This is what this whole thing's about. The entire book is about rest.

You know, in olden times, in this country and in Europe, when people did not have enough money to put a lot on their tombstone, they would put three letters: RIP. And as a kid, I was always like, why are people—why is everybody named RIP in the graveyard? What does it mean, class? Rest in peace. And it wasn't a picture of a big nap. It was a picture of finally being with the Lord and being at rest. The hope of eternity with Jesus. Rest, soul rest, fullness, satisfied, completion. There's something in you that kind of wants that?

It's not just the story of the beginning of the Bible and the end of the Bible. It's what God is up to in the whole of the Bible. The writer of Hebrews is telling us this. The beginning part of this passage says God's building a house. God's building a home. What do you do at home? A house is a building. Home is where you can rest. God is building a home, a place of security, a place of safety, that you would be part of His family, that you could enter into His rest. This is the whole picture.

One word summary of the Bible: Rest. Rest with God. Rest in God.

So this is sort of a two-part sermon. This week is how do we enter into the rest. Next week, how do we stay in the rest. This week, how you get in. Next week, how you stay in. Rest. The one word summary. But there are two operating systems that we read out in this passage. And at the heart of this passage is a comparison between two people: Moses and Jesus.

Moses and Jesus

You know, it's nearly impossible to overstate how big Moses was to the Jewish people, how Moses continues to be to those who practice Judaism. This isn't just like George Washington, the founder of the country. This isn't just like Abraham Lincoln, the great liberator. It's not like thinking of the most powerful people in your country that you could think of. This is not like Bill Gates or Elon Musk. It's not even like the most famous people we could name, like Oprah or Taylor Swift or Beyoncé. Moses was huge. He's huge for five reasons. He's a man appointed by God to lead the people out of slavery in Egypt into the Promised Land. He was the deliverer of the people. He was the greatest prophet. He spoke to God like somebody speaks face to face. He's the one who gave them the law, and he's the one who all first five books of the Bible are attributed to him. He's the great historian of the early part of the Bible.

And even in Jesus' day, Moses' shadow was so big. You notice when you read the New Testament, all the stories around Jesus, people come at Jesus and they attack him on the basis of Moses. They cite Moses over and over. "Moses said this, Jesus." And it's funny because Jesus cites the same person. Jesus also counters and says, "Yeah, yeah, let's talk about Moses. Moses saw my day." This is what Jesus says. "Moses saw my day. He knew I was coming and was glad of it. Moses was my little brother."

So in Hebrews 3, the author is comparing Jesus and Moses. Jesus is superior to Moses, is what he says. The first people who heard that would have gasped out loud. They would have been shocked. You can't say that. Nobody says that.

It's a comparison. Think of a giant mansion home, manor home. Think of Downton Abbey or the Biltmore, one of those kind of big houses. He makes this comparison. He says, "You know, Moses is great. He's like the butler in the house. But Jesus owns a house. Moses is great. He serves breakfast. Jesus built the house. Moses great. He mopped the floors. Jesus is the heir of all of it."

But it's funny because it's not just a comparison between Moses being good and Jesus being better. It's thinking about them as two operating systems. Now, there are a lot of you who know a lot more about operating systems. You traffic in computers for your work, and you know how operating systems work. But for the rest of us, we've got smartphones. So I can talk operating systems with the rest of you.

What is an operating system? It is software that runs all the rest of the software. It is the main thing that holds it all together and runs it all. He's comparing here Moses OS, if you will, and Jesus OS.

So this book was written—this book of Hebrews—was written to people who were Hebrew in their background, grew up in Judaism. They grew up around all of Moses OS. They had a synagogue they went to every Sabbath day where they heard somebody read the Old Testament scrolls.

They had the dietary restrictions. They did not eat pork. They did not eat shrimp. They did not eat a lot of things that were on that list. They went to the temple in Jerusalem, the Central Temple, a couple times a year for the annual feasts and sacrifices. They had priests. They studied the Torah, particularly those first five books of the Bible. That's Moses' OS. And these are people who had, in the first century, converted from their Jewish background to Christianity, which is sort of an outgrowth of Judaism. They said, oh, Jesus is what all that was pointed to. He's the Messiah. He's the Anointed One. He's the one that all of this was about. But now, they're in a place where things are hard, and they're doing what we do when things get hard. You want to go back to what you know. You want to go back to the old ways. You want to go back to what's familiar, and they're tempted to leave behind this new faith in Jesus and go back to the things of Judaism. And so this is really what the author is talking about here. It's like, look, don't go back. Moses' OS was great, but it had limits built into it. It was temporary and provisional.

So he cites a story from their past. He said, remember, the people were leaving Egypt. They were on their way through the desert to the Promised Land, and they grumbled against God, and they were unbelieving. And what's fascinating is they're headed to the Promised Land. They're thinking this is rest. It says in this passage, they didn't enter the rest. Why? Why didn't they get to enter there? Here's the surprising thing. It wasn't because they were bad. It wasn't because they were doing all these illegal, immoral things. The passage tells us twice why they didn't get to go in.

We see that they were not able to enter the rest because of unbelief, or the message they heard did not benefit them because it was not united with faith. — Hebrews 4:19

A lot of times people think of Judaism and think of your Old Testament as if the way that they related to God was by doing lots of things to make themselves approved by God. That is not the case. The law in the Old Testament was never given as a way to prove yourself right with God. It was never a system to earn God's favor. The law was given in the Bible for three reasons. One, to show us how we're sinners and how we need God. Two, to show us what God is like. And three, to show us after we are with Him in salvation, how we continue to please him.

But look what the writer of Hebrews shows us. This is how Old Testament people were saved. They were saved by believing, and they failed to enter into God's rest because of unbelief, because they didn't believe. Lawkeeping was never the point of Judaism.

So the writer says here, Moses' OS was always provisional, always limited. He said, you know, Joshua, if Joshua had really been able to give them rest, God would not have spoken, even back then, about a coming day, about a real Sabbath rest that remains for God's people. So he's saying, don't go back. Don't go back.

Jesus OS

Switching from Moses' OS to Jesus' OS, he's telling them, is not like switching from iPhone to Android or Android to iPhone. This morning, my iPhone updated its software. I didn't have to tell it to do that. I got an update to my operating system, 17.5.1. Yes. Now think about that. What that tells me is all the other previous operating systems, iPhone 5, iPhone operating system 7, iPhone operating system 12, all of those are resident in iPhone 17.5.1, but now it's just a little faster and a little better. It does more faster than it did before. And that's what's being shown to us about our Old Testament versus our New Testament. What we see in Moses' OS has been superseded by Jesus. Moses' OS was always a beta version for Jesus' OS.

So let's review Jesus' OS. We said these words earlier in our service. What's the big invitation from Jesus?

Come to me, all you who are weary, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart. — Matthew 11:28-29

What is God, what is Jesus offering us? Work? Pressure? A to-do list? Regulations? Things we need to worry about? No. He offers us rest.

People came to Jesus and said, Jesus, what do I need to do to do the work that God requires? And Jesus could have been like, oh, boy, you gave me the chance. Right? I need you to feed the poor. I need you to encourage each other. I need you to bind up the hearts of those who are struggling. I need you to do all these things, and all those things are in the Bible. But he answered one thing. There's only one thing you need to do. Believe. Believe in the one he has sent.

What's the one word summary of the Bible? Old and new. Rest. Believe in Jesus. Resting in him alone. Collapsing on Christ.

And we read these words earlier too. On the cross, as Jesus was breathing out his last gasping breath, he says this one word in Aramaic:

Tetelestai, it is finished. — John 19:30

What was finished? All the work that God had given Jesus to accomplish on our behalf.

All that was required for salvation. He is the perfect sacrifice who gives us not only His active, but His passive righteousness. He gives us all of his goodness, plus he covers over our sins. There is, therefore, Christians, nothing left to do. There's nothing left to accomplish with God, prove to God, perform for God, merit with God, earn to satisfy God. The thing that's required of us is to rest, believe, trust that what He has done for us is what we never could have done in his cross, in his life, only to rest on him.

So here's the big takeaway. We enter God's rest, according to Hebrews, by resting. We enter into God's perfect rest by resting.

Two Examples of Rest

So two examples of this. Several years ago, David Letterman had this stunt that he would do on The Tonight Show. He had a Velcro suit, and he had the soft side of the Velcro on his body, and he had a little trampoline in the back there and a wall with the sticky side of the Velcro. And he would run and jump and stick to the wall, attached to the wall, hanging only by Velcro. One of my favorite gags—faith is like Velcro. It really is. It's the Velcro that attaches us to Jesus. We hang on Him by no effort of our own, sort of stuck there, like Letterman stuck on the wall, somebody to come pull Him off. Faith is simply trusting in Him, collapsing upon Him, resting in Him.

Think about those little birds. They ride around on the back of a rhinoceros. Those are called oxpeckers, like woodpeckers. An average adult rhinoceros weighs between 2,000 to 3,000 pounds of bone and lots of muscle and a lot of armor. Those little oxpecker birds weigh less than two ounces. You think that rhino looks like they're under a lot of strain with all that weight on the back? It's nothing for the rhino to carry those little birds. It is nothing for the Lord Jesus to carry you. It is nothing for Him.

So here's the invitation. Enter His rest by rest. Just like the Israelites on the way to the promised land. This is our promised land. An eternity with God, resting in him, with one another. Better than vacation. Better than vacating. Being whole, being full.

The person who has entered his rest has rested from their own works just as God did from his. You only enter God's rest in the present by resting from your own works. So can you knock off this trying to prove yourself? Just stop. Stop the being good enough. Stop the doing enough. Stop the always performing. The Mosaic law was never meant to be a meritocracy. Jesus was never meant to be a meritocracy. We enter rest by rest, like the Velcro suit, like the rhino and the little birds.

The Hard Work of Resting

And here's finally the last thing. The hard work of entering Jesus' rest. Now that sounds like a strange thing to say, but that's right out of this passage.

Let us make every effort to enter his rest. — Hebrews 4:11

Doesn't that sound odd? Effort to rest. Well, if you're paying attention, you may know already that resting is one of the hardest things to do. It's one of the hardest things in our lives. I think it takes great effort to rest, to be still. This isn't just being lazy. This is truly being settled on the inside, at peace, silent on the inside. It's the hardest thing, isn't it, to wait on God, or to trust in the Lord, to not do anything, to not try to make everything happen? It takes incredible effort just to be still and rest in the Lord.

The only way to be a part of God's rest is to rest, and the only way we can rest is because he's done everything. The only way to get in on his rest is resting in Christ, collapsing on Jesus.

So listen again to this invitation. Three times I'm gonna say: Let's make every effort, make every effort to enter his rest. That's in line with everything we've heard so far in this book. Be diligent. Pay attention. Pay close attention to what you've heard. Don't neglect a great salvation. Consider Jesus. Fear only the unbelief that will keep you from rest.

Second, let's make every effort to enter his rest. Do you see the great lesson here? The great work of being a Christian is day by day trusting God, being still on the inside, trusting the promise of God to help guide us and care for us and protect us and bring us into the future of His holiness and joy that will satisfy our hearts, trusting in Him that day by day, letting go.

Finally, let us make every effort to enter His rest. The invitation goes like this. If you're sitting here this morning and you're thinking, that must be really good for those other people, But not me. I'm too blank. The passage says there's no too blank. As long as it's called today, as long as there's a day called today that Jesus has not returned yet, there is always an invitation open. Come. It's not too good to be true. It's not too good to be true for you.

This is an honest offer I can make this Sunday and every Sunday. The rest of God is open to you. God only wants to give you himself, and all you need to do is nothing. Open hands, I receive from you, Lord Jesus, what I can't do for myself. I can't make myself holy. I can't make myself right. I can't make myself good. I can't even bring my own peace. I'm gonna ask you to give me everything.

This is why I started off our sermon with the Navajo blanket, because I love that the treasure was an object of rest for that man. He probably napped under that blanket on his couch. Similarly today, the great treasure that's offered to us in the Lord Jesus Christ is your rest. Would you come and let him cover over your life, over your sin, and bring you into his rest, that you might know the fullness of what it means just to collapse? Rest in Him.

Let's pray together.

Father, we thank You for Your Word. There's nothing like Your Word. We thank You that the consistent message of the Bible, Old Testament to New, from the contents to the maps, is rest in Christ, an invitation to be with you, an invitation to rest in all of what you've accomplished for us in Christ. Lord, we pray today. I pray for those who've heard this message a thousand times and those who have never heard it before. Would you help us simply to collapse on you today? Lord, we need you more than our hearts even know, more than we could ever identify. Lord, meet us today. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

Would you stand and respond to God's word as in song together?