Rest for God's People (1): Coming Short of the Promised Rest (Hebrews 4:1-2) by Rev. Angus Stewart
I. The Promised Rest
II. The Sad Scenario
III. The Serious Calling
John Heys:
The very [fourth] commandment itself takes us back to the very beginning of this world when it reminds us that in six days God created the heavens and the earth and then rested the seventh day. Man was created in the very spirit of the Sabbath. God created him to rest on the seventh day. There are no afterthoughts with God. And the Sabbath surely is not one of them. What a strange situation we get according to the thinking of some. God had a Sabbath day at the very dawn of history, when He rested the seventh day. For 1500 years there is no Sabbath. From Mt. Sinai onward till the cross of Christ there is a Sabbath, which God in His grace removes for His church. Thus we continue until presently we enter into an everlasting Sabbath. Now you see it, now you do not. Now it is here, and now it is gone. And all this is attributed to the works of an unchangeable God, the I AM Who never can say I Was or I Will Be! That is not the testimony of Hebrews 4.
Let us ask, therefore, what it means to rest and to keep the Sabbath as a holy day. To begin with the latter, a holy day is a different day. Is it in your life? And the question then is not simply whether your Sabbath day is different from that of the unbelievers and ungodly. That it surely ought to be and will be, if you have the life of the Lord of the Sabbath in your soul. But the question is whether the Sabbath is different from the rest of the days of the week in your own personal life. The word holy means to be cut off, set apart. There was therefore in the tabernacle and temple a holy place and a most holy place. These were precincts set off, marked for entrance only by the priest or the high priest. The one was more holy than the other and was the holy of holies because it was set apart more specifically. Into it only the high priest might enter, and that only once a year and only with the blood of atonement, which he was to sprinkle upon the mercy seat of the ark behind the veil. God is an holy God because He is cut off from all evil, is the Light in Whom is no darkness at all. And we are a holy people because we have been separated from the world, cut off not only from our guilt, which is all removed, but especially cut off from the love and power of sin in principle as regenerated, born again Christians.
And our Sabbath must be a day that is distinct, cut off from the rest of the days of the week. And it will be if we make it the kind of rest day that God gave it to us to be. To rest is to enter into and enjoy a perfected work. One cannot find rest until all one's work is done. We really do not know here below what physical rest is. Our rest is simply a temporary cessation of work to be refreshed for more work. What we make is never perfect. So soon we have to repair it, replace parts of it, repaint it, trade it in for something newer and in better repair. But we do have a faint glimpse of what the rest that remaineth for the people of God is when we have, for the moment at least, finished a particular work and can sit down and enjoy the fruit of our hands. We toil and labour to build a house, and then we can rest from that labour and move into the home to enjoy its protection and conveniences and beauty. The housewife slaves over the hot stove and puts in many hours of preparation to the delicious meal and then sits down to rest, not simply in the sense of ceasing to cook and prepare—for this she must do and more cooking will burn and spoil the food—but to sit down and eat, and so enjoy what she has prepared. If then, our Sabbath is set apart and made to be distinct from all the days of the week, it will be exactly in that we, unhindered by the daily toils which never cease to be demanded, enter into and enjoy by faith God's finished work of salvation. It is a day of setting aside our work and concerning ourselves with God's work. It is a day of spiritual exercises. If then we fill the day with this instead of our usual physical labours, it will be a different day. And such it ought to be.
Shall we take the position that the saints from Adam through Moses' generation did not do this? And shall we say today that this is not required of us? Shall we say that we will not suffer spiritually, if this is not our life? Will a holiday actually be beneficial for US and not testify against us in the day of days? No, we say again, we are not interested in legalism, and we certainly insist that we are freed from the curse of the law and may never, no never, place ourselves under the ceremonial laws of Mt. Sinai. But even as man cannot violate the physical laws of his natural existence without suffering for it, so man cannot go contrary to the laws of his spiritual existence and enjoy the blessings of God upon him. Touch the flame, and you will suffer pain.