Where to Find Rest When You’re Stressed

Hebrews 4:1-13

Post- Service Discussion Questions

1. Where is the most peaceful place you have been to?
2. Do you have an “escape” in your normal week?
3. When you think of rest, what do you think of?
4. Who is someone you know that seems peaceful all the time?  Why?
5. What does Philippians 4:7 say?  What does it mean?
6. What does Matthew 11:28 say?  What does this tell us about Jesus?

Two close friends were on vacation at a crowded beach resort in New York City. One man was becoming very frustrated with the sounds of the city. He could hear the crash of construction workers, the sirens going down the street, the people shouting and the roar of the subway under the street. He leaned over to his friend and said, “All of this noise is ruining my vacation!” His friend sat and listened in silence for a long time. Then he thought to himself, “If you were to put all this noise together, you could make some beautiful music. All it needs is a little rhythm. Right now it is disconnected and exhausting.” He went back to his studio and composed his most famous work of all time listening to the noise of the busy streets of New York City. His friend was George Gershwin, who wrote Rhapsody in Blue listening to New York City.

Right now your life may be this exhausting list of noises and crisis that are competing for your attention. Every day you seem to be bouncing from one crisis in life to another. Today we are going to look at what it means to find real peace, real genuine peace. Not that you won’t still have difficulties in life. The peace that I’m talking about is the peace that goes down to the soul level. Every single person that I know, this is not an exaggeration, every one of them are looking for the kind of peace that the book of Hebrews describes in Chapter 4.

We’ve been studying through the book of Hebrews in the Bible. Last week we looked at the passage of scripture that describes the children of Israel when they were wandering through the desert. An entire generation of Israelites was looking for rest and didn’t find it. Today we are looking at the rest that God promises. Open your Bible to Hebrews Chapter 4. I want you to see with me today where you can find rest when you’re stressed. It is very clear from Hebrews Chapter 4 that that rest is only found in Jesus.

Listen to me carefully. This sets the tone for everything I’m going to say today. You don’t get to rest on your own efforts and abilities. It is because of who Jesus is and what Jesus has done (His finished work on the cross and the empty tomb three days later) that you and I can find rest. It is crystal clear from the book of Hebrews Chapter 4.

I. Jesus worked so that we can rest. v. 1-3

God’s promise of entering his rest still stands, so we ought to tremble with fear that some of you might fail to experience it. ²For this good news—that God has prepared this rest—has been announced to us just as it was to them. But it did them no good because they didn’t share the faith of those who listened to God. ³For only we who believe can enter his rest. As for the others, God said, “In my anger I took an oath: ‘They will never enter my place of rest,’ ” even though this rest has been ready since he made the world. 

The “them” that he is referring to in verse 2 is the children of Israel who wandered in the desert for forty years. The entire generation of Israel died in the desert because they lacked a faith in a God who was big enough to give them real genuine rest.

We are right in the middle of a redefinition of what it means to be the children of God. Chapter 3 of Hebrews described this generation of Israel who didn’t believe in a God who was big enough and as a result in God’s anger they wandered the desert for forty years instead of entering the rest that he had prepared for them.

Listen to how he starts this passage today. He says you and I should “tremble with fear” that the same thing might happen to us. He’s not asking you to doubt your salvation. He doesn’t want you to doubt whether or not you are truly a Christian and you’re going to heaven. He’s asking you to examine where you are placing your trust. Are you making the mistake of trusting in yourself and your own efforts like ancient Israel did or are your trusting only in the rest that Jesus offers which goes deep down to the soul level? It’s not the take a nap on a Sunday afternoon kind of rest. Or, the hang out with a glass of ice-cold sweet tea watching a ball game rest. That’s not the rest he is referring to. He is literally referring to a state of being not a place. He is talking about tranquility and peace that goes deep down into the soul. He says that rest has already been ready for you. It’s already been prepared for you. It’s been ready since God created the world. All you need to do is make sure you are trusting in the right place. The danger or warning for us is to not trust in ourselves, in a denomination, in your own good religious works to get you into heaven. It doesn’t work that way! Don’t you dare trust in yourself to be able to handle the circumstances of life. That won’t work either.

There is a famous 19^th century Scottish pastor by the name of Horatius Bonar. Bonar came from a long line of Scottish pastors, over 300 years. He tried to warn his church more than a hundred years ago about this very thing. He said, “To take comfort from our good doings, or good feelings, or good plans, or good prayers, or good experiences, is to delude ourselves, and to say peace when there is no peace. No man can quench his thirst with sand, or with water from the Dead Sea; so no man can find rest from his own character however good, or from his own acts however religious.” It is not your work that makes it possible for you to really find rest. It’s Jesus and what he has done for you thousands of years ago on the cross and when he rose from the grave. That’s where real rest comes from. I will tell you, church, it is the exact same sin that Adam and Eve committed in the Garden of Eden to try to be good enough or work hard enough to live life without God, or to try to handle life all on your own. It’s the same sin that you and I have to be on guard against today.

What the writer of Hebrews is saying is stop committing the sin of trusting in yourself and start letting Jesus work in you and through you. When you do that you will find real rest. That rest comes from him. Not from you. The truth is that Jesus set the example that you and I should find in our rest.

II. Jesus set the example for our rest. v. 4-5

⁴We know it is ready because of the place in the Scriptures where it mentions the seventh day: “On the seventh day God rested from all his work.” ⁵But in the other passage God said, “They will never enter my place of rest.” 

Last week we looked at the end of Hebrews Chapter 3 and I told you those verses were cut and paste from Psalm 95. Psalm 95 describes in the first half how great God is and in the second half the consequences when we don’t worship God. Thousands of years ago when this book was written, in the synagogues in Jesus’ day when the Rabbi’s used Psalm 95 they would almost always follow it up with Genesis Chapters 2 and 3.   When they were preaching they would describe who God is and what He did at creation. If you’ve ever been in church before you know the story of creation. God creates the heavens and the earth. For six days God is at work. The Bible says it was morning and it was evening the first day, second day, etc. At the end of all six days of God creating it was good. Then Genesis tells us that on the seventh day God rested.

Let me ask you a question. Why did God rest? Was it because he was tired? Was he worn out from all the creating that he did? Was it because he exhausted himself and there was nothing else that could be created so he decided he was done?   The answer to the questions is that God rested to set an example for us. By the way, if you read Genesis very carefully you’ll see that it never says morning, evening, the seventh day. This gives us the idea that God is still resting today from his acts of creation. What God did was set the example for us. Jesus did the exact same thing when he practiced a Sabbath rest. You and I are created in God’s image and we need to rest. God set the example for us back in the Garden of Eden. We need rest. That is the way God has wired us. If we don’t rest it damages our relationship with God and it damages all our other relationships.

Jane Rubietta was an author who wrote the book Resting Places. She said in her book that rest communicates something basic about our relationship with God and God’s relationship with us. Rest says that we need to take time to spend on our relationship with Jesus. You can’t shortcut this. I’m not asking you to go to the mountains, grow a beard and eat wild berries to get this kind of rest. Frankly, most of you ladies wouldn’t be able to pull that off anyway. What I am suggesting is this. That some of you in this room, especially moms with young children, rest for you may be just spending a little time with Jesus when the children are napping. For those of you who work and have an overwhelming schedule, what you may need to do is schedule a lunch appointment where it is nothing and nobody but just you and Jesus. For some of you who have been away from home for too long what you may need to do is schedule a weekend at home where it’s just you and your family and you can focus on each other and your relationship with Jesus. Or, a great way to rest ironically enough would be to go away for a week on a mission trip. While you’re exhausting yourself and working yourself to the bone you’ll find that because everything else in life has been stripped away you are able to focus on your relationship with Jesus in ways you are not able to do here at home.

Rest may look a little bit different for all of us but every single one of us needs the rest that Hebrews is referring to. The deeper the rest, the deeper your relationship with Jesus is. If you try to shortcut this you are ultimately shortcutting your walk with Jesus. That’s why Jesus offers us a real opportunity to rest that we can’t find anywhere else.

III. Jesus offers the opportunity to rest.v. 6-7

⁶So God’s rest is there for people to enter, but those who first heard this good news failed to enter because they disobeyed God. ⁷So God set another time for entering his rest, and that time is today. God announced this through David much later in the words already quoted: “Today when you hear his voice, don’t harden your hearts.”

God led his people, Israel, out of Egypt. He led them through the wilderness. God put them right on the edge of the Promised Land and said, “I’ve been promising for 400 years that I’m going to deliver you and give you the land flowing with milk and honey. I’m going to give you rest.” Incredibly the people of Israel didn’t have strong enough faith. Only two men believed that God was big enough to bring them into the Promised Land. God allowed them to wander through the desert for 40 years. He handed that rest over to their children and their children’s children.

The writer of Hebrews is talking to Jews. He is saying that God will do the exact same thing to them if they don’t believe in a God who is big enough; in Jesus who is real enough to radically change your life and to give you rest. Most of here are aware that the Jews for the most part did not want to hear the message. So, God poured his Spirit out on the Gentiles. Millions of them would come to faith in Jesus because they believed in a God who is big enough. The danger and warning is that he will do the exact same thing today if you don’t believe in a God who is big enough or Jesus who is real enough to give you real rest from the stress that you are going through in life right now. That’s why all of us need a Sabbath rest.

That’s why what we do in here on Wednesday nights is so important to our church. We do a full up worship service and the exact same sermon on Wednesday nights that we do on Sunday mornings. Here’s why. This church like almost every other church in the world is guilty of taking a few people and wearing them out to try to make every thing that happens around here possible. Many people in the church don’t lift a finger to serve and so a few people do all of the serving in most churches. That’s true here too. The reason why we do a full up worship service on Wednesday nights is so we can look people in the eyes and say, “if you’re serving on Sunday, then come on Wednesday night and be served. If you’re working in our church on Wednesday nights then come on Sunday mornings and worship. Serve on Wednesday, be served on Sunday. Worship on Sunday, work on Wednesday.   We want you to have a real genuine day of worship where you can focus on nothing but your relationship with Jesus. Wednesday nights are very important to what we do around here.

I want to challenge you to do something. I want you to start to pray about it right now. I want to challenge you to make a commitment when this service is over. Here’s the commitment: That you will take one hour a day and spend it with Jesus. I’m not saying that you don’t do anything. For me the best time to spend with Jesus is very early in the morning when I’m running. Just me and my relationship with Jesus is on my mind when I’m running. I’m asking you to take one hour a day and spend it with nothing and no one but Jesus and focus on him. I’m asking you take one day a week and let go of all the distractions in life and focus on Jesus. You can still hang out with your family but let Jesus be the focus of your attention. Here’s where it gets tough. I’m going to ask you to take one week a year where it’s just you and Jesus. Maybe you go on a mission trip, maybe you go to the mountains, maybe you go to the beach, maybe it’s just you and your family, but you leave the cares of this world off to the side and you focus on Jesus. One hour a day, one day a week, one week a year. I promise you if you spend that kind of time with him you’re relationship with him will grow like it has never grown before. You can’t short cut time with Jesus if you want your relationship to grow deeper with him.

The rest that Jesus offers is supernatural. It’s not the rest that you find relaxing at the house watching a ball game. Let’s look at how the book of Hebrews describes it in Chapter 4 verse 8 through 10.

IV. Jesus’ rest is supernatural. v. 8-10

⁸Now if Joshua had succeeded in giving them this rest, God would not have spoken about another day of rest still to come. ⁹So there is a special rest still waiting for the people of God. ¹⁰ For all who have entered into God’s rest have rested from their labors, just as God did after creating the world.

If you were to look at the original language here, the writer in Hebrews is now using a play on words. The name Joshua comes from the same root word as the name Jesus. He is comparing what Joshua did and what Jesus did. He says, “Look you all know the stories of how Joshua entered into the Promised Land. How he went to battle and conquered all the foreign armies, and he handed the people of Israel the land that God had been promising them for 400 years.” The Jews would have remembered this. By the way, that rest didn’t last forever. Pretty soon new enemies sprang up and then the Philistines were at war with Israel. Then it was Egypt that was at war with them. Then it was Syria, the Greeks, and the Romans and when this was written they were still occupied by the Roman government. He says, “That rest that Joshua provided which is a rest that a person can provide here on earth is temporary.” The rest that Jesus gives is eternal because it is soul deep. Nothing can steal that rest away. For the person who genuinely knows Jesus Christ and is really, passionately following Jesus, that rest begins right now today. He is the one that helps you deal with all the stress that life throws at you. It starts today and goes on forever when you experience ultimate rest. The rest that lasts forever is really waiting for you in heaven but it starts today.

How many of you know a person that no matter how bad life gets they are able to handle it and keep it all together? How is it that those people are able to keep it all together when everyone else is freaking out around them like a Ping-Pong ball bouncing from one crisis to the next? Why is that person able to keep it all together? The truth is that they probably have faith in God, who is bigger than their circumstances and who is able to help them deal with whatever it is that life is throwing at them. That’s exactly what Jesus offers to all of his followers. You don’t have to bounce from one stress in life to another or from the circumstances of one day to the struggles of the next.   You don’t have to live life that way.

Jesus is offering you real rest. It is rest in him and what he has done for you. Not in you or how you handle the circumstances in life. The truth is that when you get down to it Jesus exposes what you are really resting in. He exposes what you are really looking to when it comes to faith or what you are really trusting in.

V. Jesus exposes what you’re resting in.v. 11-13

¹¹So let us do our best to enter that rest. But if we disobey God, as the people of Israel did, we will fall. ¹²For the word of God is alive and powerful. It is sharper than the sharpest two-edged sword, cutting between soul and spirit, between joint and marrow. It exposes our innermost thoughts and desires. ¹³Nothing in all creation is hidden from God. Everything is naked and exposed before his eyes, and he is the one to whom we are accountable. 

Can I be honest with you? I really struggled with verse 11 in this chapter. It had me tied up in knots earlier this week because look at what that verse says about how Jesus exposes what we are resting in. I thought the writer was crazy. He’s saying work hard to rest and put your best effort into resting. It didn’t make any sense to me until I started to attach verse 11 with 12 and 13. Verses 12 and 13 describe what you are really resting in. It exposes what you are trusting in. Nobody else in this room knows what God knows about you. No one else in this room can cut to the very recesses of who you are and what you are trusting in like Jesus can. This has a strong warning with it. It asks the question, have you taken a good hard look at yourself to find out what you are really trusting in? Are you trusting in yourself or are you trusting in someone else?

It is fascinating that he would use the idea of a two edged sword. Most of us when we approach the Bible we turn to it like it is the thing that separates saint from sinner. Of course that is true. But, what he describes is the Word of God that cuts to the very soul of a saint. It has an edge on both sides. The Holy Spirit cuts to the very recesses of your soul and asks the question “What are you really trusting in? Are you trusting in yourself or are you trusting in your Savior?” Nothing can hide from it. You see it cuts going in and it cuts coming out. It cuts to separate the saint from the sinner. It also cuts to the very soul of the saint. It asks what are you trusting in?

All of us, because of the society that we live in, need rest. The question is what are you resting in? Who are you trusting in? Like everyone else in this room, I too need the rest that Hebrews is describing. It is the rest that goes to the soul level and it handles any circumstance: family, finances, health, etc. The rest that Jesus is offering handles all of it when you place your trust in him and only him.

Here’s my challenge for us today. First, for Christ’s followers, examine yourself and see if you are really resting in him or trusting in yourself. If that is you, I ask you to put it back into Jesus hands where it belongs. For every other person in this room, you can’t hide and are completely naked before God. I want to challenge you if you’ve never settled once and for all where you stand with God through his Son Jesus Christ that you would settle that today.

Post- Service Discussion Questions

1. Are you sick of  living in the fast lane? Do you have a day in your schedule where you get genuine rest?
2. What does real rest look like?
3. Why did God rest on the seventh day of creation?
4. What is the supernatural rest that Jesus offers in Hebrews 4:8-10?
5. Does anything destroy your ability to rest in Jesus right now?  Should anything be able to destroy your rest in Jesus?
6. Pray for each other, that we would rest only in Jesus.  Pray that we would not allow anything to destroy the rest that Jesus offers us.

Oops! We could not locate your form.