Rest

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. Do you think we're worn out? A little weary? A little tired? Yeah, today the gospel of Jesus Christ is not just some idea floating around in the clouds that pie in the sky, by and by, someday you're going to get to a place that's nice. It's not just a little fire insurance in that sense, you know, as people have said, you know, got that policy stored away, I'm good. There is extremely practical, and let me tell you, I need this sermon as much as anyone today. By the way, for the interns, you don't preach at people, you preach with them, right? And I was taught in my internship back in 1985, that you preach first to yourself, so you apply the text to yourself. You have to be under that text as much as anyone. If that makes some sense? Okay? So, the gospel of Jesus Christ has practical results, and one of them, I believe, is that you can actually experience, at moments at least, not perfectly, man, this week I've been anxious like you wouldn't believe, because Monday, first day of class, everything happens, right? But, you can have an experience of rest. We're going to look at that. We're going to look at what rest is, deep abiding rest, not just blowing off work, not just crashing at the end of the day, not just taking a little vacation. That is not the kind of rest. That's the world's rest. That's the best, but the Bible speaks of rest in a very deep and profound way. By the way, why do we need to rest in our culture? We are, I believe, you could say, American culture is the most work-righteous, work-centered, righteous culture to the core. It's all about work. It's always all about work, and it's about more work, and more work, and more work. Just think about this. When you introduce yourself, what do you say? What do you say? I don't go up to people and say, Hi, I'm John. I'm the son of Edward and Arlene Roth. We're part of the Roth and Schluckbeer clan from both Missouri and Michigan. You don't talk that way, do you? Other cultures do. But we, what do we say? Whatever I do for a living. And that's what we say is what justifies us, what's the center of our identity. And so I tell you all the jobs I'm doing, and the best thing I can ever be in our society is busy. How are you doing? Busy. That means, oh man, you must have the life, right? You are important because you're so busy. Okay, we're going to look at this complex passage. Hebrews is not an easy book because it is so tied into the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, in so many ways. Hence the name Hebrews, right? But today we're going to look at this word rest, and what's going on in this chapter. And it's multifaceted in a lot of ways. I'm going to just have to give a couple examples in it, not all. But the word rest, or being at rest, occurs nine times in ten verses. So that tells you something when a word keeps getting repeated like that, how important it is. Now, just a little background, we don't know who wrote the book of Hebrews. We don't know who, but we do know it was written to urban Christians who had a Jewish background. And they were facing the difficulties of living in this in-between now. They used to be in Jewish culture, but no longer acceptable in that. They don't fit into Roman culture. Roman culture was extremely status-driven, as we've talked about in the past, hierarchical, and definitely treated the 90% or so were slaves in Rome. So they treated humanity in very beastly ways. Jewish culture, in one sense, was a good place to find rest, but it had also turned into just this legal code of 613 commandments, and just trying to be a stickler for all of those rules. Neither culture, in a sense, had a lot of rest in it. And they're caught in between, and they're wondering if this in-between makes any sense anymore, because they're getting persecuted by the Romans, and they're not excluded by the people from the Jewish background. Should we just kind of go back to one or the other? And the whole book of Hebrews is saying, don't do that, because you're going to end up back into a slavery to the law, or consumed by the beast of Rome, that just inhumane world. And so we read, instead, this exhortation to enter God's rest. He's the one who has it and wants to give it. So let's read Hebrews 4, 1 through 10. 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 entered on the seventh day, rested on the seventh day from all his works. ...