Take A Rest

Hebrews 4:12-16

We went to the Emerald Pointe water park in Greensboro a number of times this summer. Ainslee and Eli are really starting to love swimming and playing in the water. On some of the slides at the water park, they have a red line painted on a sign that says, “You must be this tall to ride this attraction.” On a few of them, I thought Ainslee might be tall enough so we’d go up to the sign and she’d stand against it. We were both disappointed that she wasn’t quite tall enough to ride. She asked, “Will I ever be tall enough to go on this slide?” I assured her she would…and soon…but my words didn’t do much to console her. It’s not just the water park where young kids wish they’d measured up. “Will I ever be old enough to go to public school?” “Will we ever get there?” “How much longer until we can get a dog?” “When can I date?” “When can I drive?”

It’s not only the younger that suffer from this. Don’t adults do the same thing? “Once I save enough, we’ll buy it!” yet we never seem to save quite enough, do we? “Once things slow down, then I’ll be ready” but they don’t ever slow down enough do they? “Once I lose that 20 pounds, I’ll feel much better,” (and I know about this one because I’ve had this on my list of goals that I share with the Personnel Committee for the past 4 years!). What about, “Will I ever stop hurting?” or “When will this emptiness cease?” or “Will he/she ever accept me for who I am?” or “Will he/she ever forgive me?” or “The harder I work toward getting close to God, the greater the distance between me and God becomes.”

I wonder what elusive standard of measurement you are trying to reach? What red line are you constantly walking up to, and once you get there, you find you’re not getting any closer to your goal or hope than the last time you checked? It’s draining and discouraging isn’t it to keep trying and hoping to close the gap but finding out you’re really not getting any closer.

I find in my job one of the things I constantly battle is wanting to be liked. I want you folks to like me. I want you to think I’m the best pastor that has ever walked the face of this earth. I want you to think I’m funny, handsome, intelligent, hard-working, athletic, and compassionate without limits. I want these things so much that it’s almost crippling. It may sound un-pastor-like to say this, but I wish I didn’t care what you folks think. You may want to say, “Duh! What took you so long to figure this out!” when I say this but I will never please you all as much as I’d like and that’s a hard reality for me to face. So that’s my moment of disclosure. What’s yours? What red line are you trying to reach that is a hopeless and unhealthy pursuit?

Hebrews was written to a group of people who were pursuing faith in God in the midst of some very trying circumstances. We don’t know the exact circumstances they were facing – they could be in the midst of persecution or the writer could be preparing them for persecution. We just don’t know. There was also a measure of immaturity in them because the writer says they should be on solid spiritual food by this time, but they’re still milk drinkers.[1]

It’s probably enough to say they were a very weary people. In their faith, they saw the red line, and they were getting tired of walking up and discovering they weren’t any closer than when they checked the day before. Hebrews was written to try and motivate the people. They shouldn’t give up. Keep on being faithful. Don’t drift away from Jesus.[2] These are exhortations preachers use all the time, right? And sometimes this message makes us weary too because we get the sense we need to try harder, work more, be more sacrificial. That’s not the case in Hebrews 4.

The amazing thing to me in these motivational exhortations here is the way the writer prompts the people to spiritual maturity. It’s not, “Work harder! Dig down deeper and sacrifice more!” The real message for the people is to enter the rest of God as a way to strengthen their faith. The word the Hebrews listeners needed to hear and maybe you need to hear today is: rest. At the heart of this chapter is the concept of “rest.”[3] This is a powerful message that must be faced and adopted by each generation[4] because we seem to so quickly forget its power.

The Greek word used in Hebrews 4:1 is kata,pausin (kat-ap'-ow-sin). It’s used to describe winds that are not raging, but calm.[5] It’s not a hamster on a spinning wheel getting nowhere. It’s taking a nap in a hammock, not because you’re exhausted, but because there’s a dominating contentment to life. Frederick Buechner, a pastor and writer, describes this rest as similar to going to sleep. It’s when we, “surrender and lay down our arms.” We give up “being in charge of our lives.”[6] This rest is turning ourselves over to God who will bring the most profound sense of rest we can know. Doesn’t this sound inviting? That’s the rest the Hebrews and we are invited to enter.

Most of us want to know how this kind of rest can happen in lives where the margins for error are so small. Our text today gives us some clues.

In verses 12-13, we have an answer to this question, “What does God know about you?” The answer is everything! That’s not shocking to most of us but most of us pretend that God doesn’t know everything about us. We might try and be politically correct with God, or use formal language, or hide our true feelings. Why do we do that? These verses remind us that God knows everything about us. We stand completely naked before God.

The first step in entering the rest of God is basically being honest about what God already knows about you – everything! Go ahead and be honest with God. God can take it!

The second thing about the rest we covet comes from verses 14-15. Again, there is an answer to a question. The question is, “Who is Jesus?” The answer is: He’s our great high priest who sympathizes with us. One of the central functions of the high priest was to be a bridge between the sacred and the secular. The high priest operates in the realm of God and the world we live in. When Jesus died on the cross for us, he was the high priest who offered the sacrifice for our sins, but he also was the sacrifice. As the sacrificer, he knows your sin and that you need forgiveness. As the sacrifice, he knows what you’re going through. Jesus says to us when we walk up to that red line of measurement, “Just get on my shoulders. I’ll hold you up so you measure up.”

The second thing about the rest we covet is we need to know who Jesus is. He’s our great high priest who knows what we’re going through.

Third, what should we do to enter into this rest? Put simply, we should approach God boldly. If God knows all about us, and knows what we need, then why should be we shy with God? Approach God boldly. God knows you need his rest. You know you want God’s rest. Why not rest now?

At our house, when it’s time for the kids to nap, Ainslee and Eli will ask, “Who’s doing my rest today?” and then either Diane or I will read books to them and prepare them for the rest they need. They don’t do their rest by themselves because they’re just not ready for that yet. I wonder who’s doing your rest today? Are you trying to do it yourself…and finding you never get what you need? Well, maybe you’re not ready to do your own rest. Enter into the rest of God.

Amen.

Augustine said, and I’m paraphrasing here, “God, you have made us for yourself and restless our hearts will be until we come to rest in you.”[7]

[2] Gerald L. Borchert, “A Superior Book: Hebrews,” Review & Expositor, Volume 82, Summer 1985, p. 328.

[3] Ann Hoch Cowdery, “Hebrews 4:1-13,” Interpretation, July 1994, p. 283.

[4] Hebrews 1-8, Word Biblical Commentary, Volume 47a (Dallas, TX: Word Books, 1991), p. 104.

[6] Frederick Buechner, Listening to Your Life, (San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco, 1992), pp. 279-280.

[7] Augustine: Confessions, The Library of Christian Classics, Volume VII (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1955), p. 31.