"Disobedience is Unbelief" - Hebrews Chapter 3-4 - Hebrews Series Part 9

So, just to catch the visitors up to speed, we've been looking at Hebrews for the past eight weeks and Sunday school. Today we're going to pick up the lesson again with Hebrews chapter 4, verses 1 through 10. To me, there was absolutely nothing that was simple about this chapter. When I got to this passage, I was thinking to myself, "Hebrews? Really, Jason? Hebrews? Of all the books you could have picked, you picked Hebrews?" This chapter reminded me of the old Indian adage, which says, "He got bumped from the rear, but his teeth fell out." You get hit from the hind, your teeth fell out. It's like, well, what's the connection?

How does the first half of that sentence have anything to do with the second half of that sentence? As I was studying this chapter, I was, every third verse, I felt like I was getting bumped from the rear, my teeth were falling out.

And I'm still not 100% clear about all of it, but I have made some headway. And so what I would like to do today is I would like to read through this text with you. And as you do, as we do read it, pay attention to the phrases that may seem confusing to you or maybe that don't make any sense at all.

And then I will explain what struggles that I had with the text. And then we will work together to see how much confusion we can clear up over the next half hour or so. Let's read the passage. "Therefore, since a promise remains of entering his rest, let us fear lest any of you seem to have come short of it.

For indeed the gospel was preached to us as well as to them, but the word which they heard did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in those who heard it. For we who have believed do enter that rest, as he has said, 'So I swore in my wrath that they shall not enter my rest, although the works were finished from the foundation of the world.'

For he has spoken in a certain place of a seventh day in this way, and God rested on the seventh day from all his works, and again in this place, 'They shall not enter my rest.' Since therefore it remains that some must enter it, and those to whom it was first preached did not because of disobedience. Again he designated a certain day, saying in David, 'Today,' after such a long time, as it has been said, 'Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.'

For if Joshua had given them rest, then he would not afterwards have spoken of another day. There remains therefore a rest for the people of God, for he who has entered his rest has himself also ceased from his work as God did from his." So we all struggle with different ideas in different ways. Some of you may be thinking, "Well, seems pretty straightforward to me, Jason. Where's the confusion?" If this is your stance, then great. We might need your help this morning.

I'd like to take a survey. And when I say so, everyone raise your hand and hold up fingers one through five. One meaning there is no confusion. It's crystal clear. I should take a seat and let you teach Sunday school. Five meaning you got bumped from the rear and your teeth fell out. Raise your hand.

Where are you at now? Let me just gauge where we're at. A couple twos. We got a two down here. Yeah. A couple threes and four. All right. I started off as a five. So you're all starting off ahead of where I was for sure.

So let's look at the two parts that I struggled with. Number one was, what exactly does this rest mean? Or entering into his rest? What is that? I had some ideas, but I wasn't sure. It's not really a term that we use today. No one ever says, "Hey, would you like to come over this afternoon and enter into my rest?" This idea of rest, though, is it is a, if not the, key component of the text.

This is the entire passage, and we see that rest is highlighted here seven different times within the 10 verses. So this was my first struggle. The second struggle that I had was I could not figure out what the therefores were there for. Three different therefores that I could not wrap my head around. One of them was in verse one, "Therefore, since a promise remains of entering his rest." Then in verse six, "Since therefore it remains that some must enter." And then in verse nine, "There remains therefore a rest for God's people." When I read these statements, my heart desired for them to be true. When it says, "Since therefore some must enter," I want that to be a truth claim.

I want that to be a statement that's describing my reality. Why? Even if I don't understand what it is, because I trust the scripture. And right there in verse one, I'm being told to be fearful of not entering into it. It says, "Let us fear lest any of you seem to have come short of it."

So if not entering into it is worthy of my fear, then I know that I want it. But the question still exists. What is God referring to when he speaks of this rest? And another very important question, verse six says, "Since therefore it remains that some must enter." If this is the case, then how do we enter? We're going to be answering that question today, hopefully, as well.

So we all know the therefore thing. In studying this, every time I got to these therefores, I kept going back and rereading everything leading up to that passage over and over. But each time I got to the therefore, since the promise remains, and therefore it remains that some must. Every time I got to these therefores, for the life of me, I could not understand how Paul was coming to this conclusion. I wasn't able to connect the dots. I didn't have a logical flow that was leading me to that conclusion. Let's look at verse three again. "For we who have believed do enter that rest, as he said, 'Paul's there.'" This was the verse that I think originally kept throwing me for the loop.

Verse three seems like Paul is about to clear things up for us. Look what he says. He says, "For we who have believed do enter that rest, as he has said." And when he uses the word he here, he's referring to God. So what he's saying is that for we who have believed do enter that rest, as God has said.

Now, in the very next thing that Paul is going to do is he's going to be quoting something that God said in Psalms 95. Now, call me crazy, but when I read this phrase, "as God has said," my brain was telling me that what God is about to say is going to bring clarity to what he's talking about. "For we who have believed do enter that rest, as God had said." And then what does God say? "So I swore in my wrath they should not enter my rest." What?

That's like the opposite of clearing it up for me. This is how I was reading it. "For we who have believed do enter his rest, as God has made it clear when he said, 'They shall not enter his rest.'" So I was thinking, "Paul, come on, throw me a bone here." So I decided to go see what Chrysostom could shed some light on this for me. "For we who have believed," Paul says, "do enter his rest." To show how this was evident, Paul adds the following. Okay, so Chrysostom saw the same thing.

Paul is about to show us how this is evident. As God said, "I swore in my wrath that they shall not enter my rest." And then he follows with this. "This indeed is not evidence that they shall not enter, but that they did not enter." So I said, "Thank you, Chrysostom." Here I was thinking I was losing my mind, but Chrysostom came to the same conclusion. He said, "Wait a minute, Paul. First you say you're going to make it evident, and then you give zero evidence. This is indeed not evidence that they shall enter, but they did not. What then?"

Now, Chrysostom points out the difficulty of this passage. In fact, if you go further back in his homily, he expresses in a different way just how difficult these passages are to understand when he said this. He says, "Next shows that we ought to look forward with firmness." And he proves this from the scriptures. But pay attention, because he has expressed this in a manner somewhat difficult to understand. And therefore, first we must make our own statements, then explain the whole argument, then make clear the words of the epistle. For you will no longer need us if you have fully understood the apostle.

He says that we ought to look forward to firmness, and he proves this by scripture, but be attentive, he says. Pay close attention, because he has expressed this in a manner somewhat difficult to comprehend. So after this statement, what Chrysostom does is he goes through a very lengthy explanation of this. And his explanation of it in itself was a very difficult read. I felt like the translators were having a difficult time with the passage. It was difficult. So I read it many times slowly until I actually grasped what he was trying to say. I think that I did. And so what I'm going to do today is just summarize it for you. And it all began where we left off last week.

Chrysostom tells the story of how all that God had done for the Israelites and how he refused to let them into the promised land because they had hardened their hearts. We covered that in detail last week, so we're just briefs through it today. All of the plagues of Egypt, the water turning into blood, the pestilence, the darkness, the hail, the boils on their skin, the taking of their firstborn, then those who enslaved the Israelites, released them, and at the same time handing over to them plunder and spoils because God had given them favor in the eyes of the people. And then the parting of the Red Sea, and then the rain raining from heaven, and then the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire, and then the water in the desert that came out of a rock for the Israelites, and then the snake on the pole that would heal people when they looked at them.

All of that, but when they reached the promised land, they sent in spies, and the spies reported, "God is no liar. This land is indeed full of milk and honey. It's flowing with honey. But the men, they're big and strong. After all that God had been done to them, they had no faith. And the people moaned and bellyached. And all the children of Israel complained against Moses and Aaron. And the whole congregation said to them, 'Oh, if only we had died in the land of Egypt, or if only we had died in the wilderness. Why has the Lord brought us out here to this land to fall by the sword that our wives and children should become victims?

Would it not be better for us to return to Egypt?' So they said to one another, 'Let us select a leader and return to Egypt.'" So that's kind of where we left off the story last week. But the story continues.

Finally, the generations that God said would not enter into his rest, they fell dead in the wilderness. And then Joshua is the one who leads them, the remaining Israelites, into the promised land. This is a Bible timeline. It's a massive thing. It's about seven feet by five feet. This is just a zoomed-in picture of about, you're seeing probably 15 or 20% of it here on the screen. And the way that you read this, excuse me, is at the top of the screen is the furthest back in time. And as we get closer to where we are now, it gets to the bottom of the screen.

Right here, somewhere around 1550 BC, we have the Israelites in the wilderness for 40 years. Then down here, about 400 years later, around 1150 BC, we have the time of King David. And this is around the time when King David wrote the Psalms. Well, what do the Psalms have to do with all of this? Well, the entire argument that Paul is making in Hebrews is being built off the Psalms that David wrote sometime around this time in 1150 BC. Let's look at these again.

I'm just going to read the blue parts. "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion, though for 40 years they saw what he did. That is why I was angry with that generation. So I declared on oath in my anger that they shall never enter my rest."

This was back in chapter three. And last week I told you that once we got to chapter four, we were going to constantly be sucked back into chapter three. It's going to happen a lot today. And this is actually a great example of how sometimes the chapter divisions that have been added to the Bible make it difficult to understand some things. After studying this through to the end, I think that it was a horrible idea, absolutely horrible idea, that they split chapter three and four. And that's one of the reasons why I struggled with this so much, because my brain, it just saw it as chapter four comes, it's a new thought, we're moving on to something else.

Because Paul is using these passages in the Psalms here, which he is quoting in chapter three to make his whole argument in chapter four. But the chapter divisions were creating a disconnect in my mind. And all of it hinges on this word right here, today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts. He is saying, "Do not be like your ancestors, for they hardened their hearts." And this was the very reason that they were not able to enter into his rest, which to them was the promised land, precisely because of their hardened hearts.

All right. Now, before we go any further, let's look back at our let's look back at our text and recenter ourselves. This is the whole text. I'm not going to read the whole thing, just to recap. "Since therefore the promise remains, since therefore it remains that some must enter, and there remains therefore a rest." These are the therefores that I'm trying to get clarity to. This part here, "Let us fear lest any of you seem to have come short of it." Paul is telling us that a rest of some sort still exists, and it's one that we can still enter into. How do we know this? Because he says, "Fear lest any of you come short of it."

So it must exist, and we must be able to not come short of it. Even though these passages are confusing, Paul does actually explain how he has come to this conclusion. It's just a little difficult to see. Let me help you see it. First, what Paul does is he tells the story of the Israelites falling in the desert and not entering to the first rest. And that first rest, and he tells that story there, I highlighted it in green.

Next, he moves on to this section, which we haven't talked about yet. So let's look at it together. "For he has spoken in a certain place of the seventh day in this way, and God rested on the seventh day from all his works. And again, in this place, they shall not enter my rest."

What you're going to see by the end of this is that Paul is telling the Hebrews that there is a rest that's waiting for them if they take heed to what he's telling them. For conversation's sake right now, let's just say that it's the third rest. Now, why is it the third rest and not the second rest? Because what Paul is doing here in verses four and five is he's describing the two rests that have already been that have already taken place in the scripture. "And God rested on the seventh day from all his works." This is talking about the Sabbath rest, so that's rest number one.

And then, and again, in this place, they shall not enter my rest. This is quoting the Psalms referring to the rest of the promised land, so that's rest number two. So this is where we are so far. Next, what Paul is going to do is he's going to explain how the third rest was established by God through David. Let's look at verse seven.

Again, he designates a certain day, saying in David, "Today, after such a long time as it has been said, today, if you will hear his voice, do not harden your heart." Notice this right here. After such a long time. What is this referring to? After such a long time.

This is referring to the time between their ancestors in the wilderness and when David wrote this in the Psalms. In verse two and three, we were just told the story of the ancestors. Now, in this verse seven, he's saying, "A long time after that, a long time after the Jews entered into the promised land, David is now writing this in the Psalms," where he says he, and that is God in this case, he, God, designated a certain day, calling it today.

John Chrysostom said, "Why then does he say there remains therefore a rest for the people of God?" Notice how he sums up the whole argument. First, he swore to their ancestors that they would not enter into the rest. Then, centuries later, speaking through David, he says, "Do not harden your hearts as your fathers," showing us that there is another rest. He says, "Look, all the way back here, around 1550 BC, the rest was the promised land, and the Jews could not enter it because of their hardened hearts. Finally, the carcasses of the hardened fell in the desert, then Joshua was able to lead the remaining Jews into the promised land." This took place all the way back here.

And then, 400 years later, all the way over here, David is now writing the Psalms. And he says, "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your heart." Paul says the fact that 400 years later, David is now exhorting the Jews not to harden their hearts as their ancestors did shows that there is another rest awaiting God's people.

David said they could not enter God's rest because they had hardened their hearts, but there is another rest, and you still have a chance if you do not harden your hearts. Finally, I was beginning to understand how Paul was coming to this conclusion that a rest still remains and that some must enter it.

With this as a backdrop, it became easier for me to see this when I actually read the passage. After such a long time, meaning it had been 400 years since the Jews were in the wilderness, after such a long time, he designated a certain day, calling it today.

For if Joshua had given them rest, then he would not afterwards have spoken of another day. That is, if Joshua leading them into the promised land was the beginning and the end of this rest for God's people, then God would never have spoken of another rest to David in the Psalms. Earlier in verses four and five, which were the ones I highlighted in blue, Paul pointed to the second to pointed out the two rests that had already been established in the scripture, the Sabbath rest and the promised land.

Here he is reiterating once again that the rest that he is referring to now is something different than the promised land by saying, "For in Joshua, if Joshua had given them rest, then he would not afterwards have spoken of another day."

So it's fascinating to me. When I struggle to understand these things sometimes, I read a passage and I have no clue what's going on. And then I go on a thousand-mile journey around the world, and then I end up circling right back to the passage and I realize, "Oh, it's right there the whole time."

And this resolves the second struggle that I was wrestling with. What the therefores were there for. The therefores exist because there does remain a rest for God's people, and it is one that God and it is one that God's people can enter into.

And just to show how important it is to Paul to communicate this, he repeated it three times throughout the passage. They're highlighted here. And this circles us back to the first struggle I had. What is this rest? What is this rest that we're being encouraged to enter into?

Chrysostom says, "For the promised land, for the promised land, it was not what is now being spoken of when David says these things in Psalms, for they were already in possession of this. Nor can he be speaking of the seventh day or the Sabbath rest, for surely he has not spoken about that which had taken place long before. It follows therefore that he hints of some other rest, and that is heavenly rest." And we're not going to completely dive into this next week. We'll talk we'll go into more explanation about how he came to his conclusion that this is heavenly rest, but we'll be getting into next week's lesson at that point.

And this brings us to, I would say, probably the most important question of the day. How? How do we do this? How do we enter into this rest? One more time, let's go back to chapter three. "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts. Do not harden your hearts." What does this imply? It implies that if you hear his voice, then you have a choice. You can either harden your heart or not harden your heart. It implies that if your heart is hardened, that it's your fault, that it was some choice that you made, or more likely a series of choices that you made that caused your heart to be hardened. If this is so, then a good question is, how does one's heart become hardened?

The answer to this question comes in verse 13, which says, "But exhort one another daily, while it is called today, lest any of you be hardened through what? The deceitfulness of sin." So here we see that the way that our hearts are hardened is through the deceitfulness of sin. If this is so, then the good question to ask is this, what is so dangerous about the deceitfulness of sin? Back to verse 12. "See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you have a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God." So we see that the deceitfulness of sin produces in a man a sinful heart. And a sinful heart is an unbelieving heart.

And an unbelieving heart is a heart that's turned away from the living God. And the heart that is turned away from the living God is a hardened heart. And this is what we are being exhorted the whole time not to let happen.

If this is so, then a good question is, what does this mean, an unbelieving heart? The answer to this question is just a few sentences later in verse 18, which says, "And to whom did God swear that they would never enter his rest if not to those who disobey?" So we see that they were not able to enter because of their unbelief. So here Paul ties everything back to obedience. He tells us that unbelief and disobedience, they cannot be separated. Notice that he poses the question and then he answers the question in the exact same breath. He asked in verse 18, "And to whom did God swear that they would never enter his rest if not those who disobeyed?"

The ones who did not make it in, the ones who didn't, they didn't make it in because of their disobedience. And then to show that disobedience and unbelief cannot be separated, he says, "So we see that they were able to enter because of their unbelief."

God swore that they would not enter because they disobeyed, so we see that they could not enter because of their unbelief. See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you have a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. And Paul pounds this exact same point again two more times in chapter four, both in verse six and verse 11. He says, "Since therefore it remains that some must enter in, and those to whom it was first preached did not enter because of what? Their disobedience." And then in verse 11, "Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall according to the same example of disobedience."

So it all boils down in the end to obedience. Three different times Paul tells us that that's the reason they did not enter and they could not enter because of their disobedience. Then he connects this disobedience to unbelief by saying, "So we see that they were unable to enter because of their unbelief." In other words, if they believed, they would have obeyed.

Follow me here. Why did they not enter his rest? Because of the hardness of their hearts. "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts." How does the heart become hardened? The heart becomes hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. "Exhort one another daily, lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin." What does deceitfulness of sin produce? The deceitfulness of sin produces in a man a sinful heart. See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you have a sinful, unbelieving heart. A sinful heart, what is a sinful heart? A sinful heart is an unbelieving heart. The unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. And what is an unbelieving heart?

An unbelieving heart is a disobedient heart. If your heart is hard, it's because you chose to be disobedient. If you walk away from chapters three and chapter four with nothing more than this, I will be satisfied. These passages lay out for us a clear and unmistakable path into God's rest. We have two types of people: those who have been born again and baptized and those who have not. For those who have not been born again and baptized, then these are the first steps for you into the path of God's rest: be born again and be baptized. But for those who have been born again and have been baptized and have been washed clean of every stain, for you, the path of obedience is the path into God's rest.

The path of disobedience is the path to a sinful, unbelieving, and hardened heart. And to those who choose this path, that choose disobedience, you will be just like those whose carcasses fell in the wilderness. You will not enter his rest. The path of obedience is the path of rest for God's people. So let that be our takeaway for today.

So I'll give you all a few minutes to simmer on that. And if anyone has any questions, feel free to ask. I'll do my best to explain any thought processes that I had at the top of. Yes, Paul. Yeah, I think they're a great job with that. And it kind of goes to show the little language thing because belief can sometimes be translated into faithfulness. So I think just putting in place of unbelief would be unfaithfulness or disloyal. It makes a lot more sense because it talks about two parties for God's as like somebody not being loyal or faithful, like a spouse or something like that, lead it. And so I think that that kind of helps maybe because of our able to do, we have a little more difficulty to maybe make it back then.

I agree. And this is yet another example of Paul using what Chuck Pike likes to call the Exodus map, where that's like a roadmap of our Christian journey and that we need to be faithful because we're in the wilderness. We're not in the rest yet, although some do preach that. And as a Christian, you're already there. You don't have anything to worry about. But that we have to strive to get to that promise.

Yeah. He used it in 1 Corinthians 10, where he points to it does like a bird's eye view. And in this, it's just zoomed in a little bit. So you did a great job. Thank you. Great points. I like that about the unfaithfulness being used for that word.