Christ’s Rest is Salvation (Part B)

Now, again in verse 2 at the bottom, now, not being mixed with faith in those who heard it.

The Word of God did not benefit them because they didn't believe it. I have had places in my life where I've come across things where I know what God promised, but I was nervous. And I would make the prayer. We know that New Testament prayer of the Father, Lord, I believe. That willingness goes miles with the Lord.

That's what He's looking for. And now here's Pastor Rick with part 2 of his message, Christ's Rest is Salvation. And this is being taught from Hebrews chapter 4.

There is nothing at all except this manna before our eyes. That was their complaint against God. They didn't like how God did business. They remembered the good things about Egypt, but how convenient to not remember the evil things.

The loss of their, again, newborn baby boys. And so he takes his audience, the writer of Hebrews does, back to that moment and says don't be like this. Don't start hurling complaints at Christ because you're getting persecuted for Christ. Expect to be persecuted. It proves your faith that it is genuine. People are persecuted for a lot of things.

You happen to be being persecuted for the truth. Stand fast in it. He says let us fear lest any of you seem to come short of it.

This is frustrating to see how many want to say. No, it doesn't mean come short. It means something else. It means just what he is saying.

The prophet with this let us, 13 of these let us appears in this Hebrew writing. And the reason why is the writer is not putting himself above the people. He's including himself with the people.

I'm one of you. Whatever warnings come from heaven that apply to you, they apply to me too. All the prophets included themselves because they're not above the message. We'll get to this next session in Hebrews in the 12th verse of this chapter that the word of God is a two-edged sword. It cuts both ways.

And whoever is in the way gets cut. Prophet and people alike. Peter, when he wrote to the persecuted Christians in the fifth chapter of his letter, he said to the elders, to the shepherds, to the pastors of the flock, he said shepherd the flock of God which is among you. Not shepherd the flock of God that you're above. Shepherd the flock of God because you're one of the sheep too. You've just been given teeth, a little bit sharper, and you've been given assignment and a little bit different, but that's the flock that belongs to the Lord. And he says serving as overseers, not by compulsion, but willingly.

Not for dishonest gain, but eagerly. He says here now again in verse one, lest you fall short of it. Hebrews 3 again, now with whom was he angry? Verse 17, 40 years.

Was it not those who sinned, whose corpses fell in the wilderness? They came short. What difference does it make if you swim almost to safety? It's about the finish line. It's about getting all the way there. That's why Paul with a word of relief, I have finished the race.

I have kept the faith. Finally, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give to me on that day and not to me only, to all those who have loved his appearing. When Paul makes his use, this is the great apostle Paul expressing that finally he's reaching the finish line. He knows they're going to chop his head off. He's only hoping that the henchman makes a clean cut so he can get out of here.

It is something wonderful. No Christian needs to be paranoid about these things. We have an advocate with the Father. One reason why so many Christians get so emotional about this, I don't believe that.

I believe once I'm saved, I'm always saved, is because they think if you sin as a Christian, then now you're lost. We have an advocate with the Father. We have someone who speaks on our behalf. He stands and intercedes. It is Jesus Christ. He died for us. He didn't die for you so that if you get angry at your neighbor, you now go to hell. He didn't die for you so if you commit some great sin, look at the sins of those in the Old Testament. David, King David, what he did. Yet, even David, as an advocate with the Father, or had because David is now in glory, but until the resurrection, he had an advocate with the Father.

And that's how he makes it in. So no Christian need be paranoid. I believe in the blessed assurance of the saved, of those who love Christ. I believe there is no blessed assurance for those who reject him.

This is plain and simple. There is now therefore no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus. What does that mean? You adhere to the Lord. You walk with him. You stay with him. How wonderful is that?

Why would I want to walk that back? At Jude 24, he is able to present you faultless for the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, in spite of yourself, with exceeding joy. And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

Surely, goodness, I mean these are verses, but here's what Job said. He captures what the Christian spirit on salvation should be. All those who love the Lord can say this. I know that my redeemer lives, and he shall stand at last on the earth, and after my skin is destroyed, this I know, that in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another, how my heart yearns within me. That is the voice of the righteous, not bickering about, am I safe? Am I safe? Yes, you are safe if you love the Lord. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved. That was for the Philippian jailer, and it is for everyone else too. What warnings abound in our scripture? They abound nonetheless.

Just take two of them. 2 Corinthians 5-11, Paul says, knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men. He says we know that people who reject Christ are going to go to hell, so we persuade them with truth. Hebrews 10-31, it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God, judging hands.

That is that two-edged sword, is it not? If you want to be sped, fed, if you want to be spoon-fed, that's the word I was looking for. Words that are lies, but they make you feel good, there are plenty of those places outside these walls, crouched outside these walls like a roaring lion. If you want to be fed lies, what are you doing in the house of God? Who would dare come into God's house expecting to be told lies? Who would dare come into God's house with a script in their hand? This is what I want to hear from you. And if you don't tell me what I want to hear from you, I'm out. Or the pastor should be out.

Or that church is this. I'm going through some serious problems in my life, I want to know about how God's going to fix those problems. That's blasphemy to dictate to God. So many have gone before you with the same and worse problems coming into the house of the Lord, just simply wanting His presence, wanting Him to just minister to them as only He can, and He does do that.

He doesn't have to do it in His house, but He does do it in His house. In verse 2, for indeed the gospel was preached to us as well as to them, but the word which they heard did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in those who heard it. Now you see, the writers who wrote the scriptures presupposed that their audience were not fools.

They knew their audience were going to keep up with them and what they spoke, and if they did not, they would take the time and explain it as best they could. The gospel that they heard is good news, but not the good news of the New Testament developed gospel as we have it. That's not possible. Jesus Himself said that, Luke's gospel, chapter 10, verse 24, and I have to put this here because someone will certainly come up, well, I'm a literalist. Well, no, you're not.

No one can be. Not and still makes sense out of things, but anyway, I tell you that many prophets and kings have desired to see what you see and have not seen it and to hear what you hear and have not heard it. Peter talks about it too in other places it's mentioned, but the point is they had the good news of God. We belong to that unbroken witness. The same God that spoke to them in the wilderness is the same God that speaks to us, and His will was expressed to them. His care was made available to them.

That is the good news for them. He'll make that distinction a little further down. I'll use that word. The secret word today is distinction or distinct.

He'll come and make that again, but we'll get scrambled if I jump to it too early. Therefore, to them, the good news of their deliverer of Yahweh and all that He revealed Himself to be was given to them. What they did with it is not believe. They simply said, yeah, we know you're speaking to us, but we don't think you can do what you said you can do because there are giants in the land, and we can't get past these giants, so we don't believe it. Now, I'm simplifying it, but that's what they did, and that is what brought the ire of God upon them. They had the promise of entering the promised land, and they said the promise is no good. And so God was angry. He was infuriated with them, and it's just been expressed in chapter 3 and some of the verses we've taken from chapter 3. And so now He tells His audience, don't you think you with a better gospel message or a more developed message, I should say, you with a more developed message, don't you think for one moment that if you reject that message, you're going to be spared. They weren't spared, and they did not have the light that you have. And if you mess up here, you deserve what you get.

There's no reason to mess up here. He says, but the word which they heard did not profit them. The word which they heard, that is the distinction, is that word, that's the point. That distinguishes the New Testament gospel that we have from the good news that they had. They did not know Jesus by name. They'd go to the cross and die for their sins. They had symbols, they had types and emblems, they had shadows, but the substance did not come until the New Testament. And He'll talk about that later on in chapter 10.

He'll really hammer that point again and again. If you were to sit down and read Hebrews in one sitting, you would be deluged by these points that this writer is making to them. Deuteronomy chapter 1, here's what God said. Here's the good word to them. Yahweh your God has set the land before you. Go up and possess it as Yahweh God of your fathers has spoken to you.

Do not fear or be discouraged. That's just one part of the good news they received concerning entering the land, which He's using as a parallel. He's saying they were to enter the land, you Christians are to enter heaven. And if they were bide in Christ, of course, as a covenant people, they would go to heaven too. Because they did not go into the land, I should point out, does not mean instantly that they didn't go to heaven. That's not what's being discussed and that's not why He's bringing them up.

But that's a side note. For instance, Moses and Aaron did not get into the promised land. They certainly are in heaven and many others too.

But there's the land that they were disqualified from. However, even within that number, there were some that were just outright not believers. That's the whole story when the serpents bit them and they put the brazen serpent up and said, Just look at it, you'll be healed and the ones that wouldn't look at it would die. They're rejecting God's word.

So, coming back to this. Now, again in verse 2 at the bottom now, not being mixed with faith in those who heard it. The word of God did not benefit them because they didn't believe it. I have had places in my life where I've come across things where I know what God promised, but I was nervous. And I would make the prayer, we know that New Testament prayer of the Father, Lord I believe, help my unbelief. That willingness goes miles with the Lord. That's what He's looking for. You've reached a point where in your human strength you cannot trust anymore. You default to spiritual strength and you give it to Jesus.

And that's what that Father did. Lord, I can't believe like you want me to believe. Peter, a similar thing. Peter, do you love me? Do you agape me? Well, I phileo you. I love you, Lord, but I don't love you like you want me to love you because I can't. I tried, I thought I had it. I thought all these would fail, but my love would prevail over these trials and temptations that awaited me.

And I failed. So humbly, I love you as best I can, but I love you. Jesus knew that. Jesus, if you wanted to get on the wrong side of Jesus, just tell him Peter didn't love him. And Jesus would fix your clock for you, even if he didn't have one. And so this understanding the person of Jesus Christ, it's not a religion we have.

That's religion in the sense of the dictionary sense of the word. But we have this dynamic relationship. There are forces at work when we are related to Christ.

Every born-again believer knows it. Yeah, you have lulls. You go through struggles. One proof of your salvation is when you're very disappointed with what God is doing. There are going to be those. Someone should be happy when something sorrowful happens. Oh, we praise the Lord in spite of those things.

That does not mean we would have voted for it. There are many things I would like to change about this life, even little things. Haircuts. Why do you have to have them? Why can't you just have G.I.

Joe hair? It just stays right there. There's a lot of stuff in this life. Those aren't deal breakers with us. Well, anyway, not being mixed with faith and those who heard it. Faith is the detonator. The word is the explosive, but faith detonates those things and believing them, accepting them, and always recognizing that he actually is Lord. And you can read something in the scripture and like it and want it for yourself and not get it, and he's still my Lord. And that is faith.

And that is what those in the wilderness were not willing to do, and that's what they're tinkering with here in this audience. Verse 3, For we who have believed do enter that rest as he has said. So I swore in my wrath they shall not enter my rest, although the works were finished from the foundation of the world. We who believe, we enter. We enter. There's rest in this life, yes, from time, but there is a final rest that is coming where there is no more labor in the realm of sin, with sin present with us.

It's simple enough. We enter heaven, not Canaan, where he says they shall not enter my rest. He's quoting Psalm 95-11, and he's doing that to say to them, Joshua didn't give them the rest that they would have had, but God did not leave it there. When he finished them off in the wilderness, God still said, There's rest for my people, and that has developed through the ages, and that's why he quotes David who came 500 years after Joshua. And he says, Although the works were finished since the beginning, that's why he's quoting Genesis 2-2 when he says the foundation of the world. Part of God's plan is not something random, so it is without salvation, Ephesians 1-4, just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should behold him without blame before him in love. From the beginning, this has been God's plan.

It's been intercepted by sin. Verse 4, For he has spoken in a certain place of the seventh day in this way, and God rested on the seventh day from all his works. So the idea of this rest, this concept of rest for believers, originates with God, and for his people it is made available to us also. God's Sabbath out of Eden was broken by man's disobedience. God rested the seventh day, but then man sinned.

How does that work? Jesus said, My Father works until now, and I work, and so do we, because of sin. But before sin, it was just rest.

Everything was nice. Adam walked in the cool of the day with the Lord. We're going to have a superior rest when we enter those gates in heaven. Verse 4, For he has spoken in a certain place of the seventh day in this way, and God rested on the seventh day from all his works. Verse 5, And again in this place they shall not enter my rest.

So he's keeping the parallel before them. He's not letting them lose sight of the severity of the consequence that will befall them. God is serious. He is serious about rejecting those who reject him. This is our message to the world, and we can't lose sight of it.

We have what they can get nowhere else. The truth concerning God, sin, mankind. Using Canaan to illustrate the destination and the consequence of failing and unbelief. For the Jews again, it was the promised land.

The church, ultimately it is heaven. Verse 6, Since therefore it remains that some must enter it, and those to whom it was first preached did not enter because of disobedience. Do you get the feeling this is being driven, pile driven in, repeated over? He's stressing it over. He's not letting them get away for not for one moment are they catching their breath? He's holding up before them judgment, judgment, judgment for unbelief. They would come away from this doing some serious thinking about departing the faith. There has to be fear at work. What if you had no fear of hell? You would answer the cry of your flesh every time it made a noise.

Why not? What consequence do I have to fear from a holy God? Hell changes everything, and that's why the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Yes, we have grace. We boldly enter into the presence of the Lord, but that does not mean for one moment that we're free to be sacrilegious and blasphemous.

That we're free to parade about as though God is not holy and serious about the things that He has made clear to us. Interesting thought about this sixth verse that they were practicing the Sabbath, the fourth commandment, that did not entitle them to be right with God. Well, I practice the Sabbath.

Yeah, well, you're going to have to do a lot more than that. And they eventually became that very way with Jesus Christ. Oh, look, your disciples are breaking the Sabbath.

They're eating grain off the stems, and this nonsense. We hold up the Sabbath. Jesus said the Sabbath was made for man, not the man for Sabbath. The church is made for us, and we not for it. We're not slaves to ministry or service in that sense.

God has given us these things, and we are to avail ourselves of them. He says because of disobedience, the consequence. And so we find this was something that was stated in the early 1900s concerning Christianity. At least in this country, what would happen if Christians did not adhere to the Spirit of God?

It goes this way. They will seek religion without the Holy Spirit. We have that. Forgiveness without repentance.

We have that. In other words, I don't have to say I'm wrong before God. Just forgive me. Just behave as though I'm fine. It doesn't matter what I do. This is something that many Christians are infuriated when the church upholds the word. When we take them and say, no, we're not going to let you do that. You can't come back here until you fix this. This is what the Bible says.

It's right here. They get very indignant oftentimes. Not all the time.

Sometimes they submit and correct it, and it's a wonderful story, but other times they don't. They want forgiveness without repentance. Repentance involves more than just saying I was wrong.

It means you change the direction you're going in. Salvation without rebirth. I don't need to be born again. I just need to go to heaven.

You just need to save me because it's me. You see this happening today. And then the fourth one, the fourth warning for the church, those who seek heaven without hell. Well, in the sense that, yeah, there's no hell in heaven, of course, but what's meant by that is there are those that think only heaven exists.

There is no hell. And that is to, again, call God a liar. I point these things out so that we can be ready to address them when given the opportunity. In verse 7, again, he designates a certain day, saying in David today, after such a long time as it has been said today, if you will hear his voice, do not harden your heart. Now, that long time is from the time between Joshua and Moses, when the people didn't enter in the land and they perished, to the time David wrote this, and then from the time of David to its being preached right now. So great urgency is placed on this today, thrice. This is the third time.

He did it twice in chapter 3 and he's doing it here now. It is always time for a lost soul to come to God. God will never say, oh no, not yet. I'm not ready for you.

I will never do that. He says today the essence of Christianity is getting right with God in this life through faith in Jesus Christ alone. There are no auxiliary saviors. There's no plan B for salvation. It's through Jesus Christ. And if you don't open your heart today, then tomorrow you may find it is too late. So falling short of that rest that is heaven. I would also say, when he mentions David here, that if Jesus is not the Messiah, then there will never be one, because there's now no way for the Jew to prove that he is from the line of David, and Messiah has to do that.

Jesus did it, of course. You've been listening to Cross Reference Radio, the daily radio ministry of Pastor Rick Yastin of Calvary Chapel in Mechanicsville, Virginia. As we mentioned at the beginning of today's broadcast, today's teaching is available free of charge at our website. Simply log on to CrossReferenceRadio.com. That's CrossReferenceRadio.com. We'd also like to encourage you to subscribe to the Cross Reference Radio podcast. Subscribing ensures that you stay current with all the latest teachings from Pastor Rick. You can subscribe at CrossReferenceRadio.com or simply search for Cross Reference Radio in your favorite podcast app. Tune in next time as Pastor Rick continues teaching through the book of Hebrews right here on Cross Reference Radio.