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