Sermon Text: Hebrews 4:1–13
Preacher: Pastor Brian Sauvé
The New Joshua & His Everlasting Sabbath
It is so good to be back in the pulpit. I am really thankful that we have pastors and pastoral candidates like Dan and Kevin, who can open the Bible in my absence and faithfully preach God’s Word. And thank you as well to everyone who has been praying for Lexy and the baby and bringing us dinners and everything else. We are really thankful to the Lord for all of you. You know who you are.
Lexy and baby Cyril are both doing great. He’s huge, by the way; bigger than a politician’s ego and probably has the rough density of depleted uranium.
We are back in the book of Hebrews this morning, so if you have your Bible, go ahead and turn to Hebrews 4:1, and Lord willing, we will cover from verse one to thirteen this morning.
This section, and it really began all the way back in Hebrews 3:7, is actually something of a sermon within the book on another book of the Bible, that’s Psalm 95.
And in context, you will know, especially if you were with us three Sundays ago, that Psalm 95 recounts the story of the generation of Israel that, though they saw with their eyes the salvation of God in their exodus from slavery in Egypt—that though they saw the plagues, the parted Red Sea, the drowning of Pharaoh’s armies; though they saw the water from the rock, the bread from heaven, and the law given at Sinai; that though they saw the pillar of cloud by day and fire by night, and the cloud resting on the tent of meeting with Moses—that though they saw all of this, they did not enter into God’s rest, they were barred from the Promised Land, and dropped dead in the wilderness after four decades of wandering.
And so, in Hebrews chapter 3, we made eye contact with this great warning, “Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the Living God.” That was the warning: Don’t fall away!
In our text this week, the author of Hebrews wraps up his sermon on Psalm 95. And what we’ll see is that it’s as if he’s picked up speed through the Psalm, and that when he hits the last verse, Psalm 95:11, he launches off of it in order to make this one, surpassingly important point. That final verse reads like this,
“Therefore I swore in my wrath, ‘They shall not enter my rest.’”
-Psalm 95:11
From this one sentence, one surpassingly important point, which will therefore be the one, big point of today’s sermon: Strive to enter the rest that God offers you today through the Lord Jesus Christ. In order to understand this one point, we need to answer two essential questions:
1. What is this rest?
2. How do I enter this rest?
Look with me, if you will, at Hebrews 4. This is the Word of the Living God:
“Therefore, while the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it. For good news came to us just as to them, but the message they heard did not benefit them, because they were not united by faith with those who listened. For we who have believed enter that rest, as he has said,
“As I swore in my wrath, ‘They shall not enter my rest,’” although his works were finished from the foundation of the world.
For he has somewhere spoken of the seventh day in this way: “And God rested on the seventh day from all his works.” And again in this passage he said, “They shall not enter my rest.”
Since therefore it remains for some to enter it, and those who formerly received the good news failed to enter because of disobedience, again he appoints a certain day, “Today,” saying through David so long afterward, in the words already quoted, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.”
For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on. So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from his works as God did from his.
Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.”
-Hebrews 4:1–13
Reading the Types
Now, the first thing we will need to do if we are to answer those two questions—what is this rest and how do we enter it—is to take a moment to get oriented in the text.
This will probably surprise none of you, but this requires us to do some typology. Remember, typology is what’s happening when we find out that this is about that, often that some Old Testament reality is about a greater New Testament fulfillment.
The this and the that of our text are two peoples: The Jews who were delivered from slavery to Egpyt and the Jewish Christians who were delivered from slavery to sin, the direct audience to whom this letter was written. The whole context of this section of Hebrews, as a sermon on Psalm 95, makes the focus on comparing these two peoples plain.
The Jews in the wilderness were faced with the temptation to shrink back to the familiarity of life in Egypt. The Jewish Christians were faced with the temptation to shrink back to the familiarity of life in Jerusalem, that is, to shrink back to the shadow of the now-fulfilled Old Covenant system, the blood of bulls and goats in the Temple in Jerusalem.
What this means is that the captivity of the Israelites in Egypt is therefore comparable typologically to the whole of the period of the Old Covenant. Now listen, because here is where the parallels meet in exquisite detail: God brought Israel out of captivity in Egypt by the blood of the Passover lamb, where they then spent a generation, 40 years, wandering in the wilderness.
The Church was brought out of her captivity to sin through the bloody death and resurrection of the better Lamb, the Lord Jesus, and then endured their own wilderness generation—from 30 AD to 70 AD—their own wilderness testing—a time where the city of Jerusalem, especially Jerusalem’s Temple, still stood as a tempation for the Hebrew Christians.—one that many gave into and fell back to, hence letters like Paul’s to the Galatians, warning of the Judaizer heresy, a damnable mixture of the Old Covenant Ceremonial law with the gospel.
So just as Egypt gleamed in the rearview mirror for the newly-freed Israelites on their way to the Promised Land, so now Jerusalem, with its Temple and sacrifices and familiarity, gleamed in the rearview of the newly-freed Jewish Christians in this generation.
And the warning is the same for both, because the danger is the same for both, and because some of the Jewish Christians in that first-century generation were going to drop dead of the very mistake that their forefathers dropped dead of in the wilderness generation of Exodus: Unbelief. That’s fundamentally what it was for a Jewish Christian to shrink back to the Temple—unbelief.
For a Jew to reject the substance of Christ’s New Covenant work for the Old Covenant shadows is an act of unbelief, refusal to believe what God had spoken through his Son.
So bringing it all together, here’s the warning—again, this is a sermon with a single point: Don’t shrink back and fail to enter the rest of Jesus Christ, the gospel rest he has fought and died and risen and is now ruling to provide!
What is this Rest?
So now, let’s try to answer our two questions. The first is simply, “What is this rest?” Obviously, we won’t be able to obey the command to enter this rest without knowing what it is.
And as we answer this question, we will find out not only what this rest is, but also why we need it. So what is this rest? The text brings together two pictures from the Exodus generation by way of answer: The leadership of Joshua into the Promised Land, and the Sabbath day rest of Israel.
Greater Joshua, Everlasting Sabbath
We could sum it up like this: Jesus is our greater Joshua, who leads us into the Everlasting Sabbath of his Kingdom, the greater Canaan. Let’s walk through the first 11 verses, and I’ll stop as we go and offer some commentary so you can see where I’m getting this point. Verse 1,
“Therefore, while the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it. For good news came to us just as to them, but the message they heard did not benefit them, because they were not united by faith with those who listened.”
-Hebrews 4:1–2
So the generation of Israelites in the wilderness, just like the recipients of the letter of Hebrews, heard the “good news,” that is, the gospel, invitation to this rest. Hear that! The Old Covenant Jews did not have a different gospel. Same gospel. Same promised rest in Messiah. But they failed to enter the rest they were promised due to unbelief. More on that in a moment, but now we get into the Sabbath talk. Verse 3,
“For we who have believed enter that rest, as he has said, “As I swore in my wrath, ‘They shall not enter my rest,’” although his works were finished from the foundation of the world.” For he has somewhere spoken of the seventh day in this way: “And God rested on the seventh day from all his works.” And again in this passage he said, “They shall not enter my rest.”
-Hebrews 4:3–5
This is Sabbath language, right? Built into Israel’s week was a reminder of God’s work and rest. God created all things in six days, and then he rested from his work of creation on the seventh day. And so the people of God were instructed through Moses to themselves rest from their work on the seventh day, the Sabbath.
This Sabbath rest is a type of the rest we are to enter in Christ, because that rest offered to the people of Israel wasn’t just about a day off each week. Look at verse 6,
“Since therefore it remains for some to enter it, and those who formerly received the good news failed to enter because of disobedience, again he appoints a certain day, “Today,” saying through David so long afterward, in the words already quoted, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.”
For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on. So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from his works as God did from his.
-Hebrews 4:6–11
There was more to this promise than what the day—or even as we’ll see, what the Promised Land—would give. The Sabbath day is typological; it’s a shadow of something Jesus is himself and that Jesus does himself.
Think about it with me. The Sabbath day rest was built on the people embodying what God did in creation: Six days of work, then one of rest. What the author of Hebrews is telling us is that Christ does something similar after his work of new creation. God rests after his work of creation; Christ rests after his work of new creation.
So what does that mean for us? Because every facet the text gives us in description of what this rest is shows us a corresponding reason that we need it. What does it mean that this rest we are to enter is the rest of Christ after his work of new creation?
See this with me, and it’s a careful distinction in the text: Verse 11 tells us that we ought “…therefore strive to enter that rest.” See it? That rest. That particular rest that has just been described, namely, to enter Jesus’ rest. Not our own, homemade rest. This isn’t our rest, it is his rest.
What does that mean? Why is that important to see? Because it shows us that we are not obligated to do the thing that one usually must do before one rests—which is to work. No, this is Christ’s rest, because he has already done the work, and he has risen from the dead to reap the rest that his work has won, an everlasting Sabbath from the work of new creation, because that work is finished.
In fact, as the fulfillment and the substance of the promise and the shadow of rest seen in the seventh-day Sabbath, Jesus intensifies and magnifies and reorients the seventh-day rest into something greater: First-day rest.
Think about this: For the Jews under the Old Covenant, they worked then they rested. But soon after the resurrection, the Church began to meet for teaching and worship on what they called the Lord’s Day, which is not the last day of the week, but rather the first.
Why? Because Jesus began the work of New Creation on the first day of the week, Sunday, the day that he rose from the dead. So listen, this is so huge: They worked and then rested, we begin our week with rest. They worked for rest, we work from rest. We start with rest, because the work is already done.
That’s why it’s so important, as we’ll see in a minute, that we enter this rest, not by our works, but by our faith! This rest is the ceasing from the work of new creation. We are not working to make ourselves new, because that has already been done. All the work that we do is the work of a new creation.
So why do you need this rest? Hopefully you see it already: Because you were dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, but God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he has loved us, has caused us to be born again to a living hope, new creation, new life, kept for us in heaven, unfading and indestructible.
You need this rest because the work that preceded it was for you an impossibility; you couldn’t do this work. But unless the work was done, you would be without hope and without rest.
The work is the work of Christ, his sinless life of embodied righteousness, the perfect Man, who reclaimed what was lost in the first creation, Adam.
It is the work of his dragon-slaying victory on the cross, crushing the head of the Serpent who invaded and corrupted that first creation.
It is the work of his blood, his wrath-bearing blood, where he put the cup of God’s wrath for sin to his lips and drained it in a draught, paying the penalty owed us.
It is the work of his death, his full acceptance of our sin-wages, his body cast into the ground and buried.
But it is also the work of his resurrection, because that body was no mere body—as is no body—but a seed, cast down into the earth to die, but also to shoot up new, bearing fruit ten, fifty, a hundred, a billionfold.
And it is the work of his ascension to heaven to rule as the God-Man, as the head of a new humanity, with all things put under his feet as was intended for mankind from the first. But this man is immortal. And this man is the head of the body, the church. And this man has commissioned his millions, the hosts of the Lord of Hosts, sent to plunder the serpent’s domain in evangelism, to disciple the nations and teach them obedience to his throne.
We enter that rest through that work—the finished work of our Lord.
Could you do that work? Could you drink that cup? Could you break those seals and open that scroll, the scroll of the New Covenant, signed in perfect blood? Could you remake the world? Couyld you save yourself?
No. You need this rest, because you cannot do the work that earned it, but you are beckoned into it nonetheless thorugh union with the one who did that work—the Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, strive to enter that rest.
Jesus is greater than Joshua, because Joshua may have led the people into the shadow of Canaan-rest, but our greater Joshua, Yeshua, Jesus, leads us into the everlasting Canaan-rest of the Kingdom of God.
How Can I Enter this Rest?
We’ve already given the answer to this question in name, but how can we enter this rest. Or, to put it another way, how can I obey this insistent command?
Because that’s what this is—a persistent, insistent command, no mere suggestion. This whole text aims to bring us, the people of God, to obedience to this command to enter the Sabbath rest of our greater Joshua—hopefully you saw the tension in the phrase, “Strive to enter this rest.”
The answer that is given just as insistently as the command is issued is a mere two word statement: By faith. We enter this rest, not by our works or our might or our theological acumen or our earning, but by the empty hands of faith, by believing the promises of God and the provision of God in Christ.
This could not be more plain, from the entire sermon on Psalm 95 given here in Hebrews 3 and 4:
“Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God.”
-Hebrews 3:12
“For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end.”
-Hebrews 3:14
“So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief.”
-Hebrews 3:19
“For good news came to us just as to them, but the message they heard did not benefit them, because they were not united by faith with those who listened. For we who have believed enter that rest…”
-Hebrews 4:2–3
We enter this rest by faith. What is faith? Faith is childlike trust in the Person and the promises of God. Faith is what happens when you hear God say, “It is finished!” and you believe that it actually is, that the work is done, that you aren’t good enough, but that it’s ok, because Jesus has given his good-enough to you.
Listen, this is one of those watershed divisions where the Christian gospel divides sharply from all other theologies, philosophies, and gospels. All other systems of faith seek justification, acceptance, salvation, somewhere down the line, by works, not by faith.
It’s true of Hinduism, with it’s hundreds of millions of gods who must be appeased to enter the rest of the spirit realm, a kind of gnostic-heaven where the hope is deliverance from the bodily world—salvation by works.
It’s true of Buddhism. Buddha taught that we aim for Nirvana, a state of total peace. How? By means of the Noble Eightfold Path and it’s Four Noble Truths, which all really aim to convince us to despise all desire and longing and achieve a state of desirelessness—salvation by works.
It’s true of Islam. Muhammad taught that we reach heaven if Allah weighs your good works against your bad works and decides you are worthy, and even that our good works can cancel out our evil works:
“For those things that are good remove those that are evil.”
-Surah 11:114
Your good works are like weights on a great, cosmic scale. On judgment day,
“The balance that day will be true: Those whose scale will be heavy, will prosper: Those whose scale will be light will find their souls in perdition.”
-Surah 7:8–9
Salvation by works. Why? Why this antithesis? Because all of these other faiths and philosophies are counterfeits of the Christian gospel made by sinful men, and at the core of sinful mankind is a sinful heart that loves to earn.
At the heart of sin is pride, and pride cannot abide grace. Pride hates grace. It hates grace, because grace leaves no room for self-exaltation. At the heart of pride is the unquenchable thirst for deity, the unslakable desire to be God.
That’s why Eastern mysticism and monism proclaims that we are all of one thing—that there is no separation or division between God and things, between creature and Creator, but preaches the false, arrogant gospel that we are all of god and god is everything. You have the divine spark.
That’s why Mormonism preaches a pitiful Christ, a mere created man, who won his deity through good works—and so can you! You can be a god! You can rule your own cosmos!
All of it runs backward on the evolutionary chart of false religion to the fountainhead flowing out of the lying mouth of the Serpent in the garden: Disobey God, and you can become like God. Obey, and you will never reach your potential.
That’s why right now, your flesh abhors the idea of this rest that is on offer, this New Creational rest of our Lord Jesus. And our flesh is so sneaky that we can even convince ourselves that we are in this rest when we are actually far from it, resting in our works—even our religious works, even our Church membership.
He Has a Sword
And that is why this section ends with the exhortation and warning of verses 11–13,
“Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.”
-Hebrews 4:11–13
You need to hear this, right now, this morning: The Lord knows your heart, and he knows who are his. He knows that some of us are white-knuckle clinging to the shreds of our good works and the best we can offer to God in our own efforts.
And he would tell you, right now, put them all down. Put down your filthy rags. Put down your self-righteousness. You are not alone in this room in your total inadequacy—all of us are right there! None here is good enough. You are certainly not good enough, and you never will be in your own works.
You are not a good enough Joshua to lead your soul to Canaan. You can’t cross that river. But the Lord did. He threw down the lying Serpent and took up the throne, and he beckons you there, right now, a great and sympathetic High Priest.
And so I’d like to end this morning with the words of the Prophet Isaiah, by reading to you Isaiah 55, which unfolds this promise and the Lord Jesus’ invitation to you right now—today! As long as there is a “today,” this invitation stands:
“Come, everyone who thirsts,
come to the waters;
and he who has no money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without price.Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread,
and your labor for that which does not satisfy?
Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good,
and delight yourselves in rich food.
Incline your ear, and come to me;
hear, that your soul may live;
and I will make with you an everlasting covenant,
my steadfast, sure love for David.Behold, I made him a witness to the peoples,
a leader and commander for the peoples.
Behold, you shall call a nation that you do not know,
and a nation that did not know you shall run to you,
because of the LORD your God, and of the Holy One of Israel,
for he has glorified you.“Seek the LORD while he may be found;
call upon him while he is near;
let the wicked forsake his way,
and the unrighteous man his thoughts;
let him return to the LORD, that he may have compassion on him,
and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.
For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.“For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven
and do not return there but water the earth,
making it bring forth and sprout,
giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,
so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;
it shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,
and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.“For you shall go out in joy
and be led forth in peace;
the mountains and the hills before you
shall break forth into singing,
and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress;
instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle;
and it shall make a name for the LORD,
an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.”-Isaiah 55