QA3 Rest
how do we rest as Christians?
(Questions/Answers)
Jason Procopio
Today’s question is going to be very different from the last two, because oddly (or perhaps not), one of the other main questions we’ve been asked most frequently this year centers on this question of rest. It’s almost funny that this is also one of the questions I’ve asked myself the most this year, as some of you know.
A few months ago we were at Philip and Rachel Moore’s house (Philip was our pastor before we planted Connexion), and we were just talking. They were asking how we were doing, and then how I was doing, and I was just explaining what was going on. We know them very well, so I’m always very open with them.
I had thought it was a perfectly pleasant, perfectly normal conversation. So I was pretty taken aback when Rachel looked at Philip, then looked at me, and said, “Jason, you need a break.”
I said, “Yeah, I am, we’re hoping to go to see my family for a couple weeks in July.”
And she said, “No, no—you need to take a serious break. You need to do no work for an extended period. Like a couple of months.” All the while, Philip’s just sitting next to her, nodding his head in affirmation.
It was startling, but once it was said I realized she was right.
So I talked to the elders about it, and they agreed: they could see that I’ve been exhausted, and we now have a structure that could stand my being absent for an extended period. So they have been kind enough to grant me a two-month break starting July 4th, until the end of August. (So I’m preaching next week, and then I’ll be off.) Our family will be gone for some of that time, and we’ll be here for some of it. So I’ll be here, in the church; but I won’t be working. I’ll be resting. (I just have a couple of weddings after our return from Florida, to which I committed a long time ago, and those messages are already prepared, so the actual work has already been done.)
But committing to a two-month break puts me in a strange position, because on the one hand, I know I’m not the only one close to the breaking point in terms of fatigue (which is why so many people have asked this question this year), and on the other hand, I don’t want to imagine that a prolonged break is sufficient for what we’re feeling, because it’s not.
So today’s message is the fruit of several months of thinking and praying and searching in the Word. I’ve told you before that when I preach, I am preaching first and foremost to myself; that has never been more true than it is today.
We’re going to focus today, generally, on two kinds of rest.
Human Rest
The first kind of rest, I’m just calling it “human rest.” This is ordinary rest (physical, mental and emotional) from the stress and cares of our lives. This is the kind of rest that we can find in things like vacation and naps and leisure and sleeping well.
The Bible has a lot to say about human rest. It’s actually anchored in one of the first things we see in the Bible, in Genesis chapter 2. God creates the world in six days, and after looking at all of his creation and seeing that his creation is very good, we read (Genesis 2.2):
2 And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. 3 So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.
Of course God doesn’t need rest; he doesn’t get tired. The rest he takes is an intentional ceasing of activity, and he does it, in part, to set a pattern for us, which we see later, when God establishes his covenant with his people.
When God gives the law to his people, he institutes a day of rest for them. Exodus 20.8-11:
8 “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. 11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
So one day a week, on this day called the Sabbath, the people are called to stop working, and to focus on God. This tells us a number of things.
The first is that we really do need rest. The Sabbath commandment reminds us that no matter how self-sufficient we might feel, we’re not. We need rest.
The second thing this tells us is that while we need rest, we probably don’t need quite as much as we think. God knows us better than we do, because he created us, and the pattern he set for his people was not a five-day work week, plus long weekends, plus ten weeks of vacation a year. He set up a six-day work week, with occasional feasts and festivals punctuating the rest of the year.
The third thing is that the fundamental rest God’s people need is found in him. It’s no accident that the one day of rest was also meant to be a day of worship for the people. This is why we gather together as a church to worship on Sunday: God means us to find even our ordinary, human rest in him. (We’ll come back to this.)
So this is for all of us.
I never thought I had a problem with ordinary, human rest. I’m pretty good at unplugging after I’m done working, and I take frequent breaks throughout the day: I learned from Edouard Nelson to take a nap every day (except, ironically, on Sundays, when I can’t), and most of the time, when I close my computer or leave a pastoral visit, my brain goes somewhere else. But that just makes it so that I don’t realize my need for rest until I’ve almost completely broken down.
I’m not telling you anything you don’t know: we need rest. We need ordinary, human rest. We need naps. We need breaks. We need to enjoy good times with people we love. We need the occasional vacation—or even the occasional sabbatical.
This is necessary and right: God knew it, and he told his people about this need from the very beginning. But we can sometimes apply this idea in ways that are unhealthy—so quickly, here’s what our need for rest doesn’t mean.
Our need for rest doesn’t mean using “I need rest” as an excuse for laziness.
A lot of us, under the pretext of needing rest, will allow ourselves to become passive and lazy. Any kind of work will feel like a burden to us. So we’ll depend on other people to do the hard things for us, and never stand up and make the effort to work ourselves. The Proverbs have many choice words to say about the “sluggard.”
While God does put a high premium on rest, he also puts a high premium on work. Before sin came into the world and before God instituted the Sabbath, one of the first things God did after creating the first man was that he gave him a job to do. Work, in and of itself, is a good thing, and despite what we may think, we need work every bit as much as we need rest. God is always working, and he created us to work.
Our need for rest doesn’t mean rigidly applying the one-day-a-week rule that ignores the actual state we are in.
I did this for a long time. Because God, in his wisdom, told his people to rest one day of the week, that’s what I did, because I thought, That’s apparently what people need.
But God knows that sometimes we need more, or we need help. When Moses was working his tail off, God sent him his father-in-law to tell him he can’t keep putting all this on himself; he needed to find other people to take some of the burden from him.
So sometimes we need help, and sometimes we need a break. Sometimes we need to take extended rest, or to adjust things in our lives—cut some things out of our schedule—because for any number of reasons, we need to rest, and we needn’t feel guilty about that.
Our need for rest doesn’t mean treating leisure as the goal.
Often we lump the things we like to do (our hobbies, our favorite leisure activities) into the same basket as “rest,” and there is always some overlap there. But how many of you have had the experience of being even more exhausted after vacation than you were before? Many of us will work tirelessly to get to our rest, but we’ll fill it up with so many activities that we’re unable to actually stop and rest.
Leisure isn’t necessarily rest, and above all, leisure mustn’t be the thing we pursue in itself. Or to put it another way, leisure is a support for life; it’s not the other way around.
Now we could go on a lot more about this; we could find practical tips (even in the Bible) to talk about how to rest well during the week. But here’s the question that’s always in my mind when people talk about this subject: what if, for various reasons, we’re not actually able to do all those things?
There are times in our lives when ordinary, human rest will be all but impossible. When your kids are young, for example: you finish your work at the end of the day, you come home…and then the real work begins. And even when the kids go to sleep, when they’re little they don’t always sleep well, so you don’t sleep well either.
For many of us, on top of the exhaustion that comes from work, there’s the exhaustion that comes from everywhere else: from the people we need to see, the other commitments we’ve made, the ordinary things all of us have to do like buying groceries and paying taxes and calling the plumber and everything else.
So here’s the problem—how are we to find our rest if we’re in a season of life where ordinary rest (leisure, vacation, naps, etc.) is very hard to find?
And this is actually the problem that the Bible responds to the most fully. We can find wisdom for ordinary rest in the Bible, absolutely. But if we take a step back and look at the whole of Scripture, we find that the truest rest for God’s people isn’t actually found in the Sabbath. The Sabbath is a picture, meant to point our eyes to an even greater Sabbath.
Or to put it another way: I am so incredibly thankful for the break the elders have granted me this summer. But if that wasn’t possible, it would be difficult, yes…but my deepest need would still be provided for. Even when ordinary rest is impossible, we still have our fundamental rest. So even a physically and mentally exhausted Christian can still be at rest. The one thing we truly need, we always have.
So what is this fundamental rest, and how do we access it?
fundamental Rest (Hebrews 3.7-4.16)
Go with me to the letter to the Hebrews, chapter 3. We’re actually going to read a big chunk of Scripture today, but we’re not going to go in great detail about every verse. There is one specific thing we need to draw our attention to.
In the first chapters of this letter, the author has made the case that Jesus Christ is the image of the invisible God who, by his sacrifice on the cross for our sins, has become the great High Priest of his people. If you remember, in the Law of Moses, the high priest would enter into the temple or tabernacle to make sacrifices on behalf of the people, to atone for their sins so that they could remain in the presence of God. The author says that Jesus’s sacrifice is better than these other sacrifices, because Jesus is the Son of God, so the sacrifice of his own life for ours is once and for all. And now he stands as a better High Priest: he is the one who made atonement for our sins, and who now stands in the presence of God as our advocate, so that we can be in God’s presence with him.
Then at chapter 3, verse 7, he makes a transition. He says, “Since all these things are true, there is a promise for us, and there is a call upon us.”
Let’s read—Hebrews 3.7:
7 Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says,
“Today, if you hear his voice,
8 do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion,
on the day of testing in the wilderness,
9 where your fathers put me to the test
and saw my works for forty years.
10 Therefore I was provoked with that generation,
and said, ‘They always go astray in their heart;
they have not known my ways.’
11 As I swore in my wrath,
‘They shall not enter my rest.’ ”
(He’s referring to an episode we find in Exodus 17 and Numbers 14, when the people were grumbling that God wasn’t providing for them, despite that he had actually just rescued them from slavery in Egypt. Their hearts grew rebellious toward him, so God told them they would not enter the Promised Land, but that it would be their children whom he would bring in.)
12 Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. 13 But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. 14 For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. 15 As it is said,
“Today, if you hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.”
16 For who were those who heard and yet rebelled? Was it not all those who left Egypt led by Moses? 17 And with whom was he provoked for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? 18 And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient? 19 So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief.
4.1 Therefore, while the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it. 2 For good news came to us just as to them, but the message they heard did not benefit them, because they were not united by faith with those who listened. 3 For we who have believed enter that rest, as he has said,
“As I swore in my wrath,
‘They shall not enter my rest,’ ”
although his works were finished from the foundation of the world. 4 For he has somewhere spoken of the seventh day in this way: “And God rested on the seventh day from all his works.” 5 And again in this passage he said,
“They shall not enter my rest.”
6 Since therefore it remains for some to enter it, and those who formerly received the good news failed to enter because of disobedience, 7 again he appoints a certain day, “Today,” saying through David so long afterward, in the words already quoted,
“Today, if you hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts.”
8 For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on. 9 So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, 10 for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his.
11 Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.
Let’s stop there. There’s a lot to unpack here, and we don’t have time to see all of it. But I’m sure you’ve noticed the main thing. We often say, when we’re teaching people how to read the Bible, to keep an eye out for repetition: if you see the same thing repeated more than once in a short space, that’s almost definitely the author trying to draw your attention to something important.
And in this passage, we see two phrases which are repeated three times. The first is the call God gives to the readers of this letter:
Today, if you hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts.
The second is the consequence of not answering that call:
As I swore in my wrath,
‘They shall not enter my rest.’
So these are the two things the author is trying to force our attention to; this is his point. It is possible to harden our hearts to such an extent that we do not enter the rest God has promised to his people.
Now that can sound scary to Calvinists like me, who believe that if God has given us salvation by his Holy Spirit, he will not take that salvation from us. So what does God mean when he tells us not to “harden our hearts”? What is he talking about?
He explains it, firstly, in v. 17-19.
17 And with whom was he provoked for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? 18 And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient? 19 So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief.
So the “hardening of heart” the author refers to looks like this: it is unbelief, that manifests itself in disobedience. The people didn’t believe, so they fell into disobedience.We don’t believe, and so we don’t obey.
So do you see what he’s saying? We have this promise of rest that God gives to his people, and it is first of all an eschatological promise—that is, a promise that speaks about the end of the present world, the rest we will find at Christ’s return.
But God says that this rest is for those who have faith in the finished work of Christ. And (as we see many times in the letters of James and John) this faith in Christ manifests itself in perseverance to obey God’s commands. (Not perfection, mind you: perseverance.) This promise is not for the unbelieving, who persist in sin.
So although it sounds counterintuitive, here’s what he’s saying: if you want to enter God’s rest, you will work hard to pursue obedience. V. 11:
Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.
Without this “striving”, without perseverance despite the difficulty, we will fall into disobedience, and we will not enter our rest.
But this is where this text is wonderful: the author tells us how to avoid this outcome, how to do the work, by describing the means by which God helps us to do it. And these means assure, not only our perseverance and our eternal rest…but our present rest as well.
Let’s read v. 11 again, then we’ll keep going:
11 Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. 12 For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. 13 And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.
So that’s the first means God gives us: his Word. I know that some of you aren’t big readers, so when we keep beating on this drum and insisting on the importance of reading the Bible, you get exhausted (not rested). But here is why being diligent to read and study and know and memorize and live the Word of God is essential to rest. Look at v. 14-16, which comes right after:
14 Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. 15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. 16 Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
Here is why we need the Word of God to rest: it is in the Word of God that we find Jesus Christ. It is in the Word of God that we are opened up before the scalpel of the Holy Spirit and our sin is exposed in all its ugliness, showing us our need. It is in the Word of God that we find out how we are saved from our sin, through the finished work of Jesus Christ.
This is essential.
Whether we know it or not, our sin is the main cause of unrest in our lives; it is the stress behind every other stress, the exhaustion behind every other exhaustion.
And in Christ, what do we find? We find grace. We find a high priest who is able to sympathize with our weakness.
Because he knows what it’s like. He knows how hard it is. In every respect, he has been tempted as we are.
And that’s why I said this passage doesn’t only speak about the rest that will come at the return of Christ. It is impossible to overestimate the simple, emotional rest of knowing that Christ knows what you’re going through. He’s been there. He understands.
In Christ, the most fundamental need—to be saved from our sin and reconciled to God—has been provided. The most fundamental source of stress and exhaustion in our lives has been taken away. The only thing we truly have to be worried about…we no longer have to worry about. Even if sleep is hard to come by (because of crying babies or loud neighbors or difficulties at work), we can sleep the sleep of the forgiven.
And because he is a good high priest, because he went through every temptation we do, but managed to resist that temptation until the end, he also knows how WE can resist it. He knows how to help us. He knows how to teach us obedience. It’s not easy, and it’s often painful, but it brings rest—again, ordinary, human rest.
Just as we can’t overestimate the rest that comes from knowing that Christ understands us, we can’t overestimate the simple, emotional rest that comes from a clean conscience.
Even if sleep is hard to come by, we can sleep the sleep of the just. Your life may be falling down around you…but there is inestimable confidence and peace that comes with knowing you are doing what God has called you to do—and that even on those days when you screw up…our High Priest understands, and stands ready to give mercy and grace when you need it.
As Jesus said in Matthew 11, the rest he promises us is the rest of carrying a much lighter load; it is the rest of knowing that God is in your corner, because he’s been in that corner; it is the rest of learning from him what obedience looks like, and why obedience is good. Like a cold glass of water when you’re dying of thirst.
Conclusion
This text calls us to a number of very clear responses. The first is to believe—if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts. Some of you are exhausted because you still can’t quite believe that, as Jesus said in Matthew 11, living in obedience truly is more restful than resisting him.
The second is to obey. Some of you are exhausted because you know what God calls you to do, and you’re not doing it. I know that you might think persevering in obedience, not giving in to temptation, is difficult, or even impossible. But the Holy Spirit is stronger than your sin: fighting against the Holy Spirit is far more exhausting than fighting against sin.
The third is something we read earlier, but didn’t stay at for a long time—and that is to not try to do this alone. Remember 3.12-13:
Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. 13 But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.
And 4.1:
Therefore, while the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it.
If we try to do this alone, it’s not going to work. We need one another; we need help to believe, and help to obey. No one gets left behind.
And thankfully, we are told how to encourage one another, what should be the content of our exhortations.
In the Word of God, we find our High Priest. We find the mercy of God, incarnated in Jesus Christ.
In our High Priest, we find rest today. We find the assurance that the fundamental problem of our lives has been removed, and that he has done what we are unable to do.
In his rest, we find obedience. We find the freedom and the teacher we need to learn to persevere in obedience to God’s commands. We find a clean conscience, and the spiritual and emotional rest that comes with knowing we are doing what we must do.
And in persevering in this obedience, we find the promise of perfect and eternal rest.
The call and the warning we see repeated over and over in this passage, can be—and is—reversed for us. If we do not harden our hearts, but persist in obedience to God’s commands, then we show that we are his people; and there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God.
In the Word of God, we find our High Priest. In our High Priest, we find rest today. In his rest, we find obedience. In this obedience, we find rest forever.
Brothers and sisters, let us work hard to grow in the likeness of our High Priest; and so doing, let us rest.
