Let's return to Hebrews chapter four. Hebrews chapter four. Hebrews four and verse 11 is the central text in this chapter. Hebrews four verse 11. Let us therefore strive to enter that rest so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. If you ever asked yourself this question, where can I find rest? Maybe if you're a worker who uses your hands, you're engaged in physical, muscular work each day, then that's maybe a daily question. Oh, to get rest for my body. But for most of us, we are, we're pretty sedentary. A lot of us spend a lot of our time sitting down. driving, sitting down, working at screens, sitting down, and yet we still crave rest. Not so much for our bodies, but if only I could get rest for my mind, if I could turn my mind off. Or maybe it's emotional. You have these feelings. that just continually disturb you and distress you and perturb you, just feels like an inner storm. Many things can be very peaceful outside of you, and yet inside there's a storm and you just, man, when can I just get calm? When will the Lord say, peace, be still? Or maybe you do have outward problems in relationships, different complicated life situations. And you maybe feel like the psalmist did in Psalm 55, verse six, who said, oh, that I had wings like a dove. Then I would fly away and find a desert place where I could be at rest. You ever feel like that? One of my own ambitions, believe it or not, to fly one day. No, not in a plane, like myself. And I look at the developments there of things like drones you can sit in, and even these jet packs. And it's not just the thrill and the excitement, but it's just being able to get away. Just fly sometimes as far away as you can, and find a quiet place. I don't know if I'll see it here. I might need to wait to heaven to fly like that. But we all ask this question one way or another, don't we? Where can I find rest? And that's what we want to look at today. And I want to begin by just trying to set the background for this. In verse one it reads, therefore, which always means this is a conclusion from what went before. He's made an argument in verse three. that many of the children of Israel did not enter the rest of the promised land. And on the basis of that, he begins chapter four. So this is a conclusion based on his reasoning in chapter three. Then we have a promise. And we're told here there's a promise of entering his rest, God's rest, and that that still stands. So we have a promise here that we will return to. And when you're thinking of this promise of the promised land, I want you to think of it in three different ways. First of all, there's the physical land, right, the Canaan. that patch of the Middle East which was promised to Israel, which they were eventually given, which they then lost, which they got back again, which they lost, and even just in the last century they got much of it back again. And at these various times when the Old Testament people of Israel had the land, there was a rest, there was a security. There weren't just nomads wandering around. So there's a physical rest. Secondly, there's a spiritual rest, spiritual rest. The promised land was never the ultimate destination. We read later on in Hebrews that those who were looking to get into the promised land were looking beyond it, actually. They were looking for a spiritual land. They were looking for spiritual rest. They were looking for spiritual security. And then thirdly, there's eternal rest. So you can imagine, here's an Israelite, and they managed to get that physical rest in a physical land. All good. And through the good news coming to them in the word of God, they also got a spiritual rest in their physical land. They found salvation, they were able to rest in the promised Messiah, and find peace. But there was something else that was not complete, that was not finished. There was thirdly an eternal rest that they looked forward to in an eternal land. with the eternal God. So the physical rest was a picture of the spiritual rest, which was a picture of the perfect eternal rest. And so when we read here about a promise of entering his rest, it's not just the land, and it's not just the spiritual rest, it's ultimately our eternal rest. Then, there's an exhortation. Okay, we've got a conclusion, and we've got a promise, Let us fear. So he's saying, I want you to respond to this, not just look at it passively, but actually take action. Let us fear, lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it. As Old Testament people failed to reach the physical land, so some of those who got in the promised land failed to get that spiritual rest. And this is addressed to us too. As we seek spiritual rest, as we seek eternal rest, we're told here, don't just say, I've got rest because I've got the promise. You have to believe in the promise. You have to act on the promise. And then we have an explanation. So how come there's this physical land, spiritual land, eternal land? He's saying, well, the good news came to us just as to them. Don't think that the Old Testament people got bad news and we're the only ones that got the good news. No, he's saying good news came to them as well. It came to them through these promises of physical land and physical rest, and by faith they were able to see that as a picture of what God could do for them inwardly and eventually outwardly in heaven. The good news came to us and to them. But the response was not the same, and he points us here to two examples, example A, Those who believe enter that rest. Example B, those who don't believe do not enter his rest, verse two. So he's saying, look at these two groups of people and recognize them as examples to learn from. that just because you have promises does not mean you're going to the promised land. That there has to be a hearing of God's promises and a believing of God's promises and an acting on God's promises. And then finally here we have a connection in verse two. Although his works were finished from the foundation of the world. Now, we've been here talking about rest for us. or rest for God's people in the promised land, in the spiritual land, in the eternal land, past, present, future. We've been focused here in verses one and two on rest for human beings. But not at the end of verse two. Although his works were finished from the foundation of the world. And what this is telling us is that God's rest is connected with Israel's rest. God's rest is connected with our rest. And we'll see that in more detail as we go on. Now we want to turn to verse three and we'll see God's rest was perfect. God's rest was perfect. It's a picture of the Garden of Eden. that is explained to us in Genesis 2, verses two and three, where we're told God rested from all the work that he had created and made. He was busy for six days creating this perfect world, and then seventh day rest. Now that doesn't mean God was tired. after all these massive acts and he now had to take a breather. No, God doesn't get tired. God doesn't need refreshment. It means he stopped creating and started enjoying what he'd created. He stopped his works and started looking at his works with satisfaction and pleasure and a sense of reward for all that he had done. This picture of God resting on the seventh day, enjoying his creation, his works, is really a symbol of what is complete, what is perfect, what is enjoyable. And what we have here is his works were finished from the foundation of the world. For he has somewhere spoken of the seventh day in this way, and God rested on the seventh day from all his works. It was a perfect rest. It was a complete rest. There was nothing else to do but sit back, as it were, and enjoy. Find pleasure in all that he had done. And then in verse five, it says again in this passage, he said, they shall not enter my rest. Now, here he's referring back to Psalm 95, which of course was many hundreds of years after the promised land was secured, right? And David's quoting it. to his own people and saying, unless you believe and act in faith, you won't enter his rest. So he's not talking there about the promised land. They're already in it when David wrote this. So what he's speaking of here is God's rest, they shall not enter my rest. And again, it's pointing towards God's rest as the final resting place that everything else is a picture of. So we've got a promise here of God's perfect rest. We see a holy, almighty, powerful being looking at all he's made and saying, beautiful, enough. nothing lacking, everything complete. He could really, and you know how rare this is for us, it doesn't matter how good a day of work we've had, we can never ever lie back and say, we've done it all. There's always another to do. And there's usually a longer to do at the end of the day than there was at the beginning of the day. But for God, there was no to do, to do. It was all done. I was finished. And so he can speak of my rest. And he made that a pattern for us. In Genesis 2 and Exodus 20, he says, remember the rest day. To keep it holy, four and six days, God made the earth and the heavens and everything in it and rested the seventh day. He's saying, use my rest as a pattern for your rest and make this a priority because in it there's a promise of deeper rest as we shall see. So God's rest was perfect, verses three through five. Israel's rest was limited, verses six through eight. We read in verse six, since therefore it remains for some to enter it, And those who formally received the good news failed to enter because of disobedience. This is referring to two groups of people. Those who did not enter the promised land and their carcasses were spread throughout the wilderness. And second group is those who did enter the promised land but never entered into spiritual rest. They had that outward physical benefit, that material blessing, but they never sought more than that. They never looked at that as an invitation to rest in God and his salvation. So they failed to enter because of unbelief. And here we're told, since therefore it remains for some to enter it. Keep that in mind as we flick through a few verses here. Verse seven, he appoints a certain day, saying, today, saying through David, so long afterward. So Israel's got a rest, and yet, here we're being told, when David speaks, there's still a rest. It's not complete, it's not finished yet. And then in verse eight, for if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on. It was Joshua who led them into the promised land, who conquered it, and they had it. And yet, after that, in Psalm 95, for example, God is still speaking of another rest. So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. So God's rest is perfect. Israel's rest, it's not perfect, it's not complete. There's still something missing. Even those who entered that land and who enjoyed its plenty and were able to receive all of God's blessings in it, it wasn't final. It wasn't all that God was looking to give to them. He was wanting them to go further, find spiritual rest in him, and look forward to eternal rest that this land was just a picture of. In other words, although God said, I want you to enter my rest, My perfect rest I want you to enjoy, most of them didn't in one way or another. They took a shallow, superficial, physical rest in the land from all their enemies, but they didn't enter God's rest perfectly. Israel's rest was limited. They're entering the promised land, and yet even there, it's not done. Then finally, the Christian's rest is growing, verses nine through 10. When we think of the Christian life, what are we thinking of? Well, it begins with rest. That's how it begins. It begins with Jesus saying to us, come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, heavily burdened, and I will give you rest. And that promise still stands. If you look again at some of these verses, verse one, the promise of entering is rest still stands. Verse three, we who have believed Enter that rest. Verse six, it remains for some to enter it. Verse nine, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. And verse 10, for whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from his works as God did from his. Have you begun there? That's where Christian rest begins to grow, with resting from our works. And it's not like we look at the works we have done in this world, the good works, the accomplishments, the charitable work, the donations maybe, the kindness we've tried to show to others. It's not we look at that and say, oh, that's just brilliant. That's enough. I can rest now, my conscience can be at rest. I can rest in God's presence because look at all I've done and look at all I've been. Look at all the good I've accomplished. Well, this world is full of people who try this and fail. If you want to go and visit a Roman Catholic chapel every day, You'll see every day people coming in for more mass because they cannot rest in their works. They do not see they are enough. You look at the Muslims and their five pillars and they're praying multiple times a day and it's never enough because they look at their works and they know it's not good enough. But the same applies to us. There are multiple people in the pews of Reformed churches who look at their works and that's their hope, and yet they know it's hopeless, it's not enough. And there's no rest. Still conviction is going on in their hearts and minds. They know they are not enough, what they've done is not enough, and they cannot enter that rest. What does resting from our works mean? It means looking at these works and saying, I'm done with them. It's over, finished. I am not going to look at them again, because I know they are not enough. God looked at his work that was perfect. We look at our work with all the imperfections and we just, we hide our eyes. So resting from our works means turning away from our works and resting in God's works. And entering into his rest means not just entering into his work of creation. We can find some rest there. But it means entering into his work of salvation. Not so much resting in creation, but resting in the cross. looking at that work, looking at that accomplishment, looking at that success, looking at all that blood and sweat and tears that went into that work, and saying, that is enough. That is satisfying. That completes me. That is my enjoyment and my pleasure. That's what it means, to rest from his works, and in doing so, we can enter God's rest. It's amazing that he says, come to me, and I'll give you rest, and he's saying my rest. How rested is God about his hope of heaven? 100%. It never crosses his mind, does it, that he might one day be evicted from heaven, or he might be unworthy of heaven. It never crosses his mind. There's just no category for that in God's life. And that is what God is inviting you into, Christians. that by believing in Jesus, you can enter into a rest that is as complete and perfect and satisfying and enjoyable as that, and you can actually, by faith, end up with no category for your own works as a means of salvation. You never look at them again. You put no hope in them whatsoever and all you do is look at His work. Try to imagine that moment when God looked at what He had made at creation and how His soul was filled with peace, with rest, with calm, with tranquility. Try and think of that moment when Christ finally satisfied His justice. When He could look at that cross and find such pleasure in what His Son has done. No matter where He looked at His Son or His work, not a flaw, not a spot. How enjoyable, how beautiful was that moment in God's soul. That can be ours as well. As good as that, that's what God wants to give us. He gives us a promise of entering His rest. We who have believed enter that rest. It remains for some to enter it. Some here, it remains, it's there, it's waiting for you, it's open to you, it's available, it's accessible, it can be all yours, not tomorrow, but right now, by faith, by turning completely away from yourself and looking only to Jesus. Don't leave this with this true of yourself. Don't leave here with this true of yourself. It remains for some to enter it. Whoever has entered God's rest. You get that, believer? It's not God's got a rest and then he's provided a rest over here. No, he's saying it's my very rest. take it, enjoy it, bathe in it, swim in it, lie and float in it, just sunbathe in it, whatever you need to do, just let it bring rest. And of course, unfortunately, sadly, We can't quite keep a hold of that all the time, can we? We get moments, we get periods maybe of life when we really do get it, and then we kind of lose it again. We look forward, don't we, to that day when we truly will enter, not just up and down spiritual rest here, but perfect, eternal rest. Never again will we look at our works. Never again will we look at our sins and be troubled by them. Never again will we be surrounded by the mess of life and all the way it just confuses us and darkens us. We will truly enter that rest, enter that rest. So where can I find rest? Yes, it's growing through life when we come to faith, as we keep faith, as we observe the Lord's day. And that's a question, isn't it? Does our Sunday preach salvation to others? Does our Sunday pre-picture heaven to others? Does our rest day communicate the rest of salvation. And then we look forward to that eternal rest. So, oh, forgot to put in some slides there, did I? Yep, oh well, that was my fault, Jake. I kind of cut and pasted them all. Well, here's the answer. Where can I find rest? Rest in Jesus.