“Sabbath” – Part 2 – Hebrews 4:1-11

Some of you are tired this morning. It may be that you stayed up too late last night watching TV or playing on your phone and you are paying the price for it today. Some of you didn’t sleep good last night because of the problems in your life and now today you are mentally and physically tired. That’s a rough place to be. I know. We’ve all been there.

You may be mentally tired because you spent all of last week at work trying to figure out what to do and how to do it and today you just want to put your brain in neutral for a while. I get it. Some of you are spiritually tired. You are wondering if your faith is real or if it is something else. You are wondering if God is real and if so, how long before He makes this life “worth it.” Where are all the promises that you have heard about for so long? That, too, is a place most all of us have been and it’s hard.

Some of you are just flat tired of this old life. You don’t have a death wish or anything like that but you are just tired of dealing with the problems of this nasty, old sin-sick world and I don’t blame you one bit. This world is hard and mean and it is getting worse by the day. Good grief, don’t turn on the news or you might just go running down the street screaming.

Well, I have good news for you. If you are physically, mentally or spiritually tired or if you are all three, this is the right place for you for several reasons. This is the right place to be if you are tired because our church doesn’t have any rules and if you want to come in and go sound asleep you are welcome to. We even have pillows and blankets in the back if you want them. Now, you need to know that I have a Sharpie and I will most definitely draw a little Hitler moustache on you while you sleep but you just relax and don’t worry about it.

This is a good place to be if you are tired because this is a peaceful place. It is peaceful on Sunday mornings and peaceful all through the week. Not long ago, a lady in the community called and asked if she could come up here during the week and just spend some time alone praying. She said she knew she could pray at home but with her family around, it was hectic there and so she came up here and just prayed for a long time. This is a peaceful place and good for that.

This is also a good place to be if you are tired because, as we learned last week, this is our Sabbath. What is a Sabbath? Do y’all remember? What does it include? A Sabbath means a time to stop, sit, celebrate and worship. It is a day set aside to be holy and different and set apart from the others to reflect on who God is and what He has done, is doing and is going to do. This is our Sabbath rest.

But as I alluded to last week, there is more to the Sabbath than just resting from work on Sunday. In fact, the author of the book of Hebrews reminds us that there are actually four different kinds of Sabbath rest. Now, don’t worry if you haven’t been observing all four. Nobody has. One of them happened thousands of years ago and one of them will happen in the future, so it’s okay.

Turn to the fourth chapter of the book of Hebrews. Hebrews is between the books of Philemon and James in the New Testament. Good luck finding Philemon. It’s tiny. But Hebrews is towards the back and it’s okay to look at your glossary. It’s after the three “T’s” – Thessalonians, Timothy and Titus.

Hebrews was written to the Jewish Christians after Jesus had ascended back to Heaven to reassure them that the Gospel that they had heard was true and still the only way to Heaven. The author of Hebrews, whoever he was, speaks to the Jewish Christians in words and with illustrations that they could understand. So, if you read through Hebrews and get a little confused, it’s because it wasn’t originally written to American Christians in 2020. We can, though, glean bushels of truth from what is written if we take time to study it.

I was glad when I read John Piper’s study of this passage. Piper is a famous pastor and NASA smart and usually able to write a commentary on a passage rather than read one so I was glad when he said about Hebrews chapter 4, verses 1-11, “This is hard to understand.” That made me feel better because after reading this half a dozen times, I was still thinking, “This is hard to understand.”

We won’t do it justice today but we can learn about the kind of Sabbaths that God wants for us as we read it and study it so let’s do that now. Hebrews 4:1-11 says, “Therefore, since the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us be careful that none of you be found to have fallen short of it. ² For we also have had the good news proclaimed to us, just as they did; but the message they heard was of no value to them, because they did not share the faith of those who obeyed. ³ Now we who have believed enter that rest, just as God has said, “So I declared on oath in my anger, ‘They shall never enter my rest.” And yet his works have been finished since the creation of the world. ⁴ For somewhere he has spoken about the seventh day in these words: “On the seventh day God rested from all his works.” ⁵ And again in the passage above he says, “They shall never enter my rest.” ⁶ Therefore since it still remains for some to enter that rest, and since those who formerly had the good news proclaimed to them did not go in because of their disobedience, ⁷ God again set a certain day, calling it “Today.” This he did when a long time later he spoke through David, as in the passage already quoted: “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.” ⁸ For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken later about another day. ⁹ There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; ¹⁰ for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from their works, just as God did from his. ¹¹ Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will perish by following their example of disobedience.

To know what is going on here, you need to know the back story and that comes from the book of Numbers, chapters 13 and 14. Instead of reading both chapters, I’ll just give you a quick Reader’s Digest summary of what happened. The Hebrew people, who had been slaves in Egypt for 400 hundred years were finally and miraculously delivered out of slavery by God. He got them out of Egypt miraculously and parted the Red Sea miraculously so they could cross on dry land and then their enemies were drowned.

Then when they get to the other side, God said, “Okay, great! Now, I have good news for you. I have a wonderful place for you to go. I have it all prepared for you and it’s just down the road a little way. Just walk over there and enjoy it. It is a land flowing with milk and honey and I want you to go there and just rest as my people. I will be your God and you can just rest there.”

So, the people get right to the edge of the Promised Land and look it over and say, “Uh, God, we can’t go in there. There are people living there. And they are big people and scary.” And God said, “Oh, don’t worry about them. I delivered you out of Egypt and I am delivering you into Israel. This is my plan, now go on and just rest.”

“Uh, but God, those people are really big and mean and we’re scared. We can’t do that. Just take us back to Egypt. We want to go home.”

“What? You ungrateful, unbelieving little…I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you just wander around in the desert for 40 years and see how that works for you!” And they did. Instead of accepting God’s gracious gift of rest, they did doughnuts out in the desert until that whole generation of unbelieving Jews died.

So, now, 1500 years later in the book of Hebrews, the author says in chapter 4, verse 1 that God’s promise of rest still stands. Let me read the first part again and we will see the first kind of rest or Sabbath that the author talks about. “Therefore, since the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us be careful that none of you be found to have fallen short of it. ² For we also have had the good news proclaimed to us, just as they did; but the message they heard was of no value to them, because they did not share the faith of those who obeyed. ³ Now we who have believed enter that rest.”

Stop right there. That rest, that Sabbath is the rest we today have in our relationship with God through His Son Jesus. It is available to anybody and everybody but you still have to trust God for it and what a rest it is! It means we no longer have to work and try and toil to please God enough that He will let us into Heaven. It means that our good deeds don’t have to outweigh our bad deeds because God doesn’t even look at that scale. We are saved by grace and through faith, not works. (Ephesians 2:8-9) So we don’t have to work and worry that we aren’t going to make it. What rest there is in that!

I can’t say that I have ever actually watched the game show Jeopardy, but I still somehow know who the host is. I heard Alex Trebeck say the other day that he doesn’t believe in any certain God but if there is a Heaven that he knows he will go there. How Alex? How do you know? Where is your assurance? I’ll take “Bad Theology” for $1000, Alex, because that’s not how it works. How scary it must be to not have the blessed assurance of God’s promise found in places like John 3:16 that says if we believe in Jesus – and we know that belief means a changed life – that we will inherit eternal life in Heaven with Him. But because we have that assurance, we can rest – Sabbath, Shabbat – in Him.

Hebrews goes on to tell us in verse 4 of another Sabbath and it is the one that we talked about last week so I won’t spend a lot of time on it now. Now, when I say, “We talked about it” some of you are thinking, “Yea, YOU talked about it last Sunday morning and we all sat here bored as mummies.” Well, I want you to know that WE all talked about it Sunday night sitting around the tables in the Fellowship Hall while eating ice cream and cake and if you missed it, you missed out on some wonderful, encouraging study – and ice cream and cake.

We talked about what a Sabbath really is and what it should look like in our lives, how it should be more than just another day that we decide if we are going to go to church or not and how we ought to want to please God and take a special day to honor Him and rest from our work at the same time. That is a true Sabbath and we need it.

I’m also not going to spend a long time talking about the Sabbath found in verse 8 because it is the Sabbath that God wanted for the children of Israel but they lacked the faith to go in and take it. They saw big people and God looked too small to them when all along, the Creator of those big people and everything else had a plan to give them the land and a Sabbath rest in it. What a shame they didn’t see their God as big so their enemies would have been small. A wise person might see a lesson to be learned there as well even today.

Ah, now we get to the really good stuff. Not that the other wasn’t good, but when Hebrews 4, verses 9-11 talks about the next kind of Sabbath, my ears perk up. I get excited. I can’t wait for this future Sabbath. Let’s all read it again. I hope you still have it there in front of you because I want you to see it. I don’t care what’s going on in your life. I don’t care how bad it’s getting or how crazy this world is. When you turn on the news and see major cities all over the nation literally on fire, you can rest. When the virus is turning your world upside down and your kids are acting the fool and your health is deteriorating and the list just goes on and on, you can read this and rest, knowing that God is in control and He loves you and has a plan for you for all eternity. And it doesn’t have anything to do with what lives this world thinks matter. It doesn’t have anything to do with who is President or if you wear a mask or what China is doing or what your bank account is doing or not doing or anything else.

Read Hebrews 4:9-11 again with me. There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; ¹⁰ for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from their works, just as God did from his. ¹¹ Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will perish by following their example of disobedience.

Do you know what he is talking about there? That’s Heaven. That’s our Promised Land that God has prepared for us and wants for us and all we have to do is take it. Accept it on faith. That’s it. Now, I hear ya. What about that last part that says we need to make the effort to get there? Well, you know what that effort is? This is it. *Sits down*

“Lord, I have to admit that it is all I can do to just sit here and trust you because it’s hard. It’s hard because so many things don’t make sense. They aren’t fair. I don’t understand. Heaven sounds too amazing to be true and the price to get in sounds too amazing. But I trust you. I trust you because you have proven yourself to be trustworthy. I love you because you have loved me first. I ask you to forgive me of my many sins and to come into my life and be Lord of every aspect of it. But you are going to have to help me with that. I’m still human and I know I will still struggle to make wise choices and so I’m thankful that your Spirit will live in me and guide me.”

“But I look forward to the day when I can truly rest in you in Heaven. I can’t wait to see my loved ones again. I can’t wait to run and not grow weary. I can’t wait to sing with Mary and talk with King David and eat enchiladas with Paul! I can’t wait to sing your praises for all eternity and worship you with billions of other people but the thing I look forward to most is just resting in You and with You by your grace and mercy.”

That’s the Sabbath I look forward to. It’s the Sabbath my Mama looked forward to all of her life and is enjoying right now. How about you? Do you have the blessed assurance that you will be there? You can. Pray with me right now.