1073. Rest in Jesus

Welcome to The Daily Platform from Bob Jones Today's message will be preached by Dr. Ted Miller, a professor in the School of Religion. And their endurance in great trials and yet they are faithful to our Lord. And so we respect Dr. Miller and his family. We love him and we pray that God will greatly use him as he speaks to us this morning. Thank you. Please turn your Bibles to Hebrews chapter 3.

I'll be there as well in a few moments. But to set some context, I'd like to imagine or have you imagine that you have a best friend. We'll call him Eldad. And Eldad, as you might imagine from his name, is an Israelite. In fact, I want you to imagine that you're an Israelite.

And virtually everybody you know is an Israelite. And you and Eldad have known each other for a long time. Your fathers were friends. You each are grown now and have your own families and you currently live next to each other. Now that's not saying much because also in your imagination, I want you to imagine that you live next to everybody. Your tent and Eldad's tent are virtually on top of or underneath everybody else's tent, stretching out about as far as you can imagine in every direction. You've been camped at your current location for about a month, just over six weeks. You're enjoying a brief period of just waiting. It's been around a year and a half or two years since you all fled Egypt. And you are very, very ready to settle down in the promised land.

You're actually at a location called Kadesh Barnea. And your journey began when the current leader of Israel, who you hadn't heard from for a very long time, showed up and began speaking with a number of other key leaders of Israel, said that God had sent him, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, had sent him to rescue you and all of your nation out of slavery in Egypt. You and Eldad and everyone else, at that moment, while still slaves, feel the first sense in a long time of real hope. But your hope is also mixed with a serious dose of reality. I mean, it's easy to talk about getting out of Egypt, who hasn't talked about it.

But getting out is an entirely different matter altogether. The next few months were, quite frankly, a blur, but with the kinds of memories that you could never forget. You had never seen anything like it. Moses and the God who sent him systematically broke the most powerful nation on earth. The culmination of it all, at least while you were still in Egypt, was the night that you received the message that very soon you would be leaving. But as part of your preparations for leaving, you had to follow some very, very specific instructions. You and Eldad and everyone else were told that each family needed to kill a lamb, spread its blood with a common reed above the door in your household. Failure to do so would result in the unimaginable horror of the death of the firstborn within each household that did not comply. Now there's actually no question that you would comply.

You didn't even think about it. Of course you would do it. But you also mulled over the question of, should I tell and explain all this to my family? And you and Eldad talked it over and you decided that, although you were certainly going to obey, you weren't going to tell, at least in details, your sons. You would not tell your own 10-year-old son. But somehow he found out, because kids always do.

They talk and they overhear things that they shouldn't and not every parent is as careful as you are, of course. So when your son, Dorian, comes to you later that day and says, Dad, do we have many lambs? Your heart sort of comes up in your throat and you know exactly what he's asking. You get down to one knee and you take him by his little shoulders and you look in his eye and you say, Dorian, listen, you don't have to be afraid at all. We can trust God.

I have a lamb. And son, I'm not going to let anything bad happen to you. I guarantee it. You couldn't tell exactly how he's processing all this, but he sort of stayed particularly close to you all night that night. It's like a little shadow around you. You did all the preparations. And when it finally got time to sleep, he wouldn't sleep. And you're exhausted.

And so finally, in some desperation, you yank a bench and pull it over against the wall. And you settle down with your back against the wall and your arm around him. And he settles with his head against your chest. And finally, he falls asleep. And you feel his body, the tension just relax, and he rests.

And somehow, in spite of all your frenzied thoughts, you somehow, sometime, fell asleep as well. You awaken to absolute chaos, as does Dorian and the rest of your family. And in the chaos and panic of that night and the intervening months, when you awaken your family, you're fleeing your oppressors. You watch them all die in the Red Sea.

You feel the pain of thirst, the terror of hunger, the anguish of not knowing one day to the next how you can provide for you and your little ones to just keep you alive. Through each of these episodes, you just get continuously impressed with Moses. I mean, the guy is normal. He has bad days like everybody else. But he's just this amazing example of stability and faithfulness. Every time something happens, he keeps saying, look, it's going to be okay. We can believe God. We can trust him. He's going to help us.

He's not going to abandon us. And now, past Sinai, we've been eating manna for some time, we've had the water from the rock, and you and your family and all of us were just waiting. We're waiting to get into Canaan, a land we've never seen but which our forefathers lived in.

And Caleb, a member of our tribe, we'll say we're all in the tribe of Judah, and one member from all the other tribes, they've gone to scope the land. The weeks have worn on, and the anticipation is growing. All the kids are just talking about how excited they'll be to finally get out of the wilderness and into their new houses and the new places where they'll be.

And at last, the spies return. And they have good news and bad news. The place is a great place to live.

And they say, look, it is like the milk and honey are just flowing. It is unbelievable. It is a land of plenty. But there are also plenty of people living there.

And that's the bad news. They are mighty in reputation, mighty in number. They're well armed. They live in fortified cities.

Some of their warriors are so massive that they say, we feel like bugs when we're around them. I mean, it just doesn't look good. And as you listen, and as Eldad and all the rest of the people listen to this report unfold, you feel your heart start to sink.

You just, you can't believe this is happening. The whole journey has been an absolute fool's errand. I mean, slavery in Egypt was horrible, but walking into sure death, that's crazy.

Who would do that? And what was Moses thinking? Did he think we were just going to walk into the land, that people were going to give up their cities and walk off? But what was I thinking? I mean, what kind of fool's hope did I entertain to make me think that dragging my family out of Egypt and pulling them across the wilderness, how did I ever think that this was going to end well? And you realize as these thoughts race through your mind that you're staring at the ground, and you hazard a glance over at Eldad, and he's staring at the ground rather pensively, and he looks up, and your eyes beat his, and you hear an echo of your own thoughts as you see him shake his head slowly in disbelief. And you realize all his kids are staring at him, and then you realize all your kids are staring at you.

In that moment, you're shouting up ahead, and you realize that there's two men, Joshua and you know Caleb, they're shouting, and they're having an argument, a shouting match with these other guys who are giving the report, and they're saying, no, no, you don't understand, we can go in. God is going to help us. You can believe him.

You can trust him. We don't have to stay here in the wilderness. The other spies and the now growing mob are greater in number, and the shouting match becomes morphs into a mob united against Moses and Joshua and Caleb, and you and Eldad and I all join in the outburst. How dare these fools take us from the relative security of Egypt to certain death in the wilderness.

If God wanted to kill all of us and kill our children, he could have spared all of us a lot of trouble. At this point, we need to leave this mob that's forming at Kadesh Barnea. We need to fast forward about 1500 years. We need to fast forward to the period of the early church, and particularly to the audience of the book of Hebrews. I want you to imagine now, if you would, that you are a young Jewish adult. You've grown up in the cultural and religious atmosphere of following and observing the Jewish law, the mosaic ceremonies and celebrations. You've observed from a child the law, the customs, the Passover, all the feasts, and one day we hear for the first time of a man named Jesus of Nazareth.

And as you listen to the message of who he is and what he's done, it all just starts to click. And as you hold up what the messenger is saying about who Jesus is and what he's done against the tapestry of Moses' law and the observation of the commands and the celebrations and the ceremonies, it all just fits. I mean, this is the prophet that Moses said in Deuteronomy 18 would come when the people of the mountain said we're scared to death, don't let God talk to us anymore like that.

We can't handle it. Moses says there's going to be a prophet who comes who will speak to you like I do. This is the Passover lamb. This is the one whose blood was shed and died so that other people could live. This is the one who in the firstfruits rose again. This is the one who sent the Spirit back at the time of the Pentecost, the harvest.

It all just fit. And not only does it all fit and just make so much sense to us, the people delivering the message, they're doing miracles and they say, look, God is proving to you and to all of us that this Jesus of Nazareth is his son and you can follow him. Just like you'd followed Moses, just like you'd believed Moses, now you can follow him.

And now, that was some years ago. And although you and I were convinced that Jesus was the long-awaited one, many of our fellow Israelites, it never really clicked for them. They weren't convinced.

The whole issue had, in fact, split the synagogue in half. And family relationships, friendships, they're all strained now. You feel the tension of the estrangement and the ostracism and the lost opportunities, the conversations that never happen.

Maintaining relationships is just very, very difficult. And you've got this general agonizing sense of, what if I was wrong about this whole thing? And sometimes you wonder. You really wonder if you still believe that Jesus was the one you're waiting for. And this kind of person is in the audience that the author of Hebrews anticipates. In Hebrews 1 and 2, the author of Hebrews lays out who Jesus is. He is God.

He is the Son of Man. And what he has done, the sacrifice that he made, and that wraps through chapter 2 with the warning that we have to be very careful not to let these things know. We have to be careful not to let them slip.

To just sort of go away without even thinking about it. All the pull is against you here. But 2.18, the verse just before chapter 3, ends with an interesting thought.

And I want to draw your attention to it and I want to trace some ideas through chapter 3 and 4. For in that he himself also has suffered being tempted. So here's this God-man. He has suffered being tempted.

Well that's one thing. But he doesn't just know what it's like to be tempted. He is able to help those who are tempted.

That's a new idea. How is this possible? Let's look at how the author starts talking about the difference between Moses and Jesus. And he starts talking about Moses here as we keep going in chapter 3. For this man was counted worthy of more glory than Moses. He speaks very favorably of Moses, but he doesn't think of Moses and Jesus as being inherently in competition with one another. But no matter how much regard that the people of Israel had for the faithfulness of Moses and that Jews to this day still have for him, the regard that you have for Moses can never match the regard for Christ. Because you regard a faithful servant differently than you regard a faithful son.

A faithful child is always greater in the household than a faithful hired hand. In addition he plays briefly with this idea of house, but Christ as a son, verse 6, as a son over his own house, whose house we are, if we hold fast the confidence and rejoicing of the hope unto the end. And then he alludes back to the mob that was forming at Kadesh Barnea. And read with me in verses 7 through 11. Wherefore, as the Holy Ghost saith, today if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts as in the provocation in the day of temptation in the wilderness, when your fathers tempted me, proved me, saw my works forty years. Wherefore, I was grieved with that generation, I said, they do always err in their heart, they have not known my ways, so I swore on my wrath, they shall not enter my rest.

The people here did not succumb to just some general temptation here. God had told them specifically to go forward. And they refused, we all accused God of trying to kill us, and announced that we were going back, back to Egypt. And this action, God's calls, in verse 9, tempting him.

Now first, bless this may seem a little bit odd, it sounds like James may be contradicting Hebrews, because Hebrews says that they tempted him, and James says that you can't tempt God, but it says in James that you can't tempt God to perform evil. But think about the flow of thought that has worked up to this moment in the story in Numbers 14, where they tempt God. I mean, God has provided every step of the way as they've gotten out of Egypt. They would be dead by the Egyptians, by the Red Sea, by hunger, by thirst. They would never have survived if God was not holding them in his hands.

They were dependent on God whether they liked it or not. And that they get to the point of entry into the land, and they decide they can't depend on God. And they tell God, the very God who sustained their lies, that they're trying to get them killed, that he's trying to get them killed, and they announce that they're going back. And they have all to tell God that he's trying to get them killed? I mean, how are they ever going to go back to Egypt on their own? There's no path back, there's only a path forward, and it's only by following the living God. But they're ready through their hardened heart. So in verse 12, let there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God.

There isn't any other hope. And the author of Hebrews turns this story from Numbers 14 at Cade of Parnaea into the strongest of pleas to his audience to say, you cannot make the same mistake. As a matter of fact, it wouldn't even be the same mistake, it would be worse. Because if you rebel, if that generation rebelled against the servant and reaped 40 years of wandering in the wilderness, how much worse will it be if we rebel against God by rebelling against his son?

Everything's magnified now. And the author of Hebrews says in chapter 4 verse 1 that he wants them to experience something that most of us would just as soon avoid. Let us therefore fear. The entire weight of this Old Testament episode of this massive failure that resulted in the people that God swore he would bring into the land not going in, all that weight now falls on this generation that the author of Hebrews is talking to. But there's a development of thought here that I want to trace through chapter 4, not by expositing every verse, but looking for two recurring words.

The two recurring words are let us. Let us fear, he says in chapter 4 verse 1, lest a promise being left us of entering into his rest, lest any of us should seem to come short of it. The word was preached to not profit them, it was not mixed with faith in them that heard it. And then he explains for a little while how that rest was still available to the people of God through some prophecies of David and of Joshua. And pick up in verse 9, he says there remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God. So we're, he says, the first generation here after Christ, we're in the same crux that they were in. They were going to enter rest, but didn't we have a promise of rest and what will we do? For he, verse 10, that is entered into rest, hath ceased from his own works, as critical as God did from his, let us labor therefore to enter into rest.

What an interesting phrase. Lest any man should fall after the same example of unbelief and that let us labor at the beginning of verse 11, I want you to think of that in contrast to the unbelief at the end of verse 11. We're laboring to enter into rest and not to enter into unbelief. And he says in verse 12 how powerful God's word is, how it can just drill into us and expose us in ways that we can't hide from. And then in verse 14 to 16, he says something that sounds just like the end of chapter 2 but with some added material. Seeing then that we have a great high priest that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the son of God, let us hold fast our profession.

There's the third let us. He starts with let us fear. Then he says let us labor to enter into that rest and now let us hold fast our profession. Well quite honestly that's the very thing that's wavering and I'm not sure I can hold on to it.

You need something, he says. For we have not a high priest which cannot be touched with a feeling of our infirmities. Jesus knows what it's like to feel that pull to go back. He was tempted in all points like as we are.

Yet without sin, he did not go back. Let us, what's the next word, therefore come boldly. What a cool transition from the beginning of the chapter to the end. It starts with let us fear and ends with let us come boldly. The fear is real. The weight of responsibility cannot be changed. But God, even though he draws our attention to the fear of the weight of this situation, the author of Hebrews says to his audience, that is not where God intends to lead us and leave us.

He is moving us to a kind of bold coming that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. You see we've been hearing recently that the Christian life is a race and that you can't quit. But this is not a kind of race where you just dig deeper and grit your teeth and somehow hang on to the end of your rope and just hope you don't let go. It is not a labor of self-effort.

Is it actually, ironically, a labor of non-labor? Look at what it says back in verse 10. For he that has entered into his rest, he hath what? Ceased from his own works. We have real confidence but it's not in us.

It's where? It's in the one who is both our example and the one who turns around and doesn't just say, do it like I did it. He turns around and says, I can help you. We've been hearing a lot about God being our help. And a lot of things start coming together with this episode of the Passover to the wilderness wanderings to Kadesh Barnea and the update that we get this. The theological implications in the New Testament. How much more should we realize what God is doing for us today? You see, God did not rescue Israel from Egypt just to show off his power.

And he didn't, he wasn't like missing incense burning and need to get some people going with this. God did all this for Israel because he loved them. And the expressions of his love in the Old Testament are actually almost embarrassing to read sometimes, at least not loud. And even though God's love is always greater and God's love is always first, it is still described in scripture as the kind of personal love that desires reciprocation.

God loves you and he wants you to love and depend on him. That is the reciprocation. It is not an earning of anything, it is merely the response to everything that he's done in his love. He rescued that generation that eventually turned into a mob. In Numbers 14 he details exactly how he will exactly reward them in kind. They forgot that just as their own sons trusted them to spread the blood above the door at the Passover. That they could trust their father to not let anything harm them. God did not bring them through the wilderness to kill them.

So where are you? Your heart wavers sometimes. Do you realize that God loves you more than any father ever could? Any earthly father? And he wants you to love him back with all of your being. And God wants you to love him in a way that, as he describes in John 17, that you and I are one with him.

This is a relational thing. It's not merely that God wants to do things to you or do things for you or do things through you. He wants to be with you. He loves you.

And what does he want? For you to take even that wandering heart and say, Lord, I don't even know how to hang on sometimes. Like that father who begged Jesus to save his child.

Sorry. He said, Lord, I believe. Help out my non-belief.

When you realize how much God loves you, and that every obstacle he brings into your life is a piece of learning not to turn on him, but to depend on him, that is when you are exactly where God wants you. And you are reciprocating the greatness of his love as a creature can reciprocate. Our love is never first. Our love is never greater.

But it is real. And that is what God wants. He wants you to depend on him, not just to follow him, not just to think of him as a good example, but to go to his throne room and ask for the thing he wants to give more than anything else.

And that is his help. You've been listening to a sermon preached at Bob Jones University by Dr. Ted Mellor, which is part of the study series about Christ in the Old Testament. I'm Steve Pettit, president of Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. Thank you for listening to The Daily Platform. If you're looking for a regionally accredited Christian liberal arts university, I invite you to consider BJU, which is purposely designed to inspire a lifelong pursuit of learning, loving, and leading.

For more information about Bob Jones University, visit bju.edu or call 800-252-6363. Thanks for listening and join us again tomorrow as we study God's Word together on The Daily Platform.