In college we were given an assignment by one of our teachers that had to do with today’s passage. He wanted us to look throughout Hebrews and see what the difference between “approaching rest” and “entering rest” was. He told us as he gave us this assignment that he didn’t expect any of us to get it right. Isn’t that a great way to go into an assignment; with the expectation that you are going to fail. Well, I studied throughout the book of Hebrews as it talked about God’s rest and I looked up the passages from the Old Testament that the book of Hebrews quotes and I decided that I thought there was a minute difference: people who approach God’s rest can leave it. People who enter God’s rest stay in it forever. So I wrote up my thoughts and handed them in. When I got my paper back he told me that I had written a good paper that actually made some very good points, but I missed the true difference. He pointed out as he handed back the papers that all of us had missed it. I should point out that this was the same professor that gave us an assignment at the end of our senior year, which he claimed was actually impossible to do.
He then went on to tell us what the difference really was. We approach God’s rest here on earth when we follow him and he gives us the peace and rest that we need. Only after this life is over, when we have entered God’s presence, are we truly able to enter into God’s rest. My professor, with his impossible assignment helped me to look at one of God’s great promises in new light. I was able to see God’s promise of rest in a new way, but unfortunately, a great promise of God was turned into an academic exercise. You see, God does promise us, his children, rest. We who toil at our labors have the Sabbath rest to look forward to. And so let us approach God’s rest in our lives today and let us look forward to the Sabbath rest that we will enter at the end of our days.
1. Sabbath Rest
So, today’s scripture talks about a couple different topics, all of them, I think, important to our Christian walk. First, it urges us on toward God’s promised rest. Second, it talks about the path that will get us to that rest, through the word of God. Third it talks about Jesus and refers to him as a great high priest who has sacrificed for us so that we may approach the throne of grace with confidence.
So again we see that Hebrews is a book full of deep theology but also a book that has much to teach us. Mark Bucanon, in a book about God’s rest, talks about the importance of Sabbath rest, not only when we enter heaven but throughout our lives today. I hate to say it, but we have decided as a culture to truly ignore the commandment in the Bible that tells us to remember the Sabbath and keep it holy. We say that we are too busy to make time for Sabbath rest. Or, perhaps our Sabbath is the hour we are here at church on Sunday. But the Bible commands us to take a full day of rest every week. It wants us to lay down our burdens and rest in God’s presence. So, what is Sabbath? It is hard to define. Jesus himself showed that the people in his day got it wrong. But Mark Bucanon says that what Sabbath really is is a day to pay attention. It is a day to stop your busyness and pay attention to what’s going on around you. When you’re busy doing you don’t get to see what’s happening around you, and you don’t get to experience God, either.
At the retreat that Lisa and I went to the beginning of the week, Larry Magnusen, the speaker at our retreat, commented on the fact that we all like to see God in the rainbows. We like big, dramatic things that will show us that God is present. And sometimes those big dramatic things happen and we see God clearly. But most of the time God doesn’t work that way. Instead, God is more like “Where’s Waldo”. “Where’s Waldo” was a series of books where you had to study the pages closely to find a character, Waldo, hidden among the art on the page. You had to pay attention. You had to study closely. I like this analogy. It tells us that God is there, in our world, but sometimes we need to look closely if we want to see him. Sometimes we need to study the world around us if we want to know where he is. Sometimes we need to pay attention. And that is what Sabbath rest is all about. It is our chance to stop what we are doing and pay attention to God.
The speaker at our retreat went on to tell us that rest isn’t getting all of your work done so that you can then relax and have a time of leisure. No, rest means that we are to take a break from our work, from our activities, even when we don’t have the time to.
We don’t know how to rest anymore. We aren’t taking that time to pay attention. And we are teaching our children that rest is wrong. This is a sin. Being too busy in our lives is a sin. It goes against one of the Ten Commandments. It goes against the teachings of Jesus.
2. The Word Alive
I want to go back to that “Where’s Waldo” illustration again. If God isn’t always visible at first glance, if we need to pay attention if we expect to see where he is working, then study is of utmost importance. And what do we study? We study the word of God. So it makes sense that the book of Hebrews moves from Sabbath rest to talking about the word of God. For our Sabbath rest should include time with this word.
Hebrews says some powerful things about the word of God. And this is one of the few places in the Bible where it is talking about the word of God and it is talking about scripture. You see, most places, when the Bible talks about the word of God, it is talking about Jesus. This is mostly because the Bible wasn’t written yet and because the gospel of John loves to refer to Jesus as logos, or God’s Word. The Bible does talk about scriptures and tell us what we should do with them, but it usually doesn’t use the phrase “Word of God” to do so. But here it does: “For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.”
Wow, that’s not the most affirming description of the word of God. It sounds almost painful. It kind of makes sense, with that description, why it is that we all tend to do what we can to avoid spending time in God’s word. It’s going to penetrate us like a sword. It’s going to divide or souls from our spirits, our joints from our marrow. Wait a minute, isn’t the soul and the spirit the same thing? Well, here we discover that they are separated by the word of God. Maybe I don’t want to take that time of rest after all. Maybe I don’t want to be spending time with such a dangerous weapon as this whole word of God thing.
But, truly, do you want to spend any time with the word of God if it doesn’t have any power? I mean, if these are just words written by people thousands of years ago, then, really, what’s the point? But if this is the word of God; if there is power here; if there is even danger that these words will change you and pierce you and make you new; then reading the word isn’t scary it’s amazing.
As I went through the ordination process a couple years ago, one of the questions I was asked was how the Bible had changed my mind and changed my actions recently. You see, many of us come to scripture with our pre-formed beliefs and our pre-formed ideas about the way the world is and the way it should be. We remember what we have been taught and hold dearly to that and then go to scripture to prove ourselves right. We skip over verses and passages that don’t conform to our point and rely heavily on verses that we agree with. Basically, we are taking the strong, double-edged sword and blunting it so that we won’t cut ourselves. But scripture is truly doing its job when you are looking at it and discovering something new about God, something new about yourself, and something new about the world you are living in.
Give God power over your life. Allow him to encourage, challenge, strengthen and even break you with his holy word. It can be a scary process, but it can be a wonderful one.
3. A Great High Priest
And we have hope as we enter this process. The hope is that God isn’t going to take us too far. The hope is that scripture will tear us apart and then put us together in a better place than we have been. You see, we have a great high priest in Jesus who has been through the things we go through and who has given us access to our God. A few weeks ago we talked about this in confirmation, it’s a powerful concept. In Jesus, God was able to experience the life we live. Jesus faced pain. He faced temptation. He dealt with loss. He also enjoyed the company of his friends. He celebrated with those around him. He felt joy.
Jesus brings us eternal life because of his suffering on the cross and because in his death he conquered death and in his resurrection he brings new life. But Jesus did more than this. He experienced humanity. He knows our weaknesses. He understands us. And so he offers us rest from our toils. He commands that we spend time in our lives in rest. He gives us his word to change and transform us. And he goes before his father on our behalf so that we can come before God in peace and receive God’s mercy in our lives.
This is the true gift that Jesus offers us: God’s mercy and grace. But this grace and mercy isn’t just about when we appear before God’s throne at the end of days. It is also a grace and mercy that we experience today in our times of need. I love verse 16 of Hebrews chapter 4 because it talks about that future in front of the throne and then it comes back to our present needs: “Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”
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