You Can Miss Out On A Good Thing 3-23-25 PM
I. The availability of rest (Hebrews 4:1).
A. The New King James starts the verse this way: “Therefore, since a promise remains of entering His rest...”
B. What we should take away from this is that there is a place of rest that is available to us.
C. We need to be very cautious that we don’t miss out on it.
D. The Hebrews writer was inspired to use the word translated fear.
1. You might be thinking that the fearful are going to be cast into hell (Revelation 21:8), and that the love casts out fear (1 John 4:18).
a. Both of these are true of course.
b. Then why would we be told to fear?
2. Remember, these people were in danger of falling away from God and some may already have.
3. They had left their love behind and love can’t cast out fear if there is no love present.
4. Jesus told the Ephesians they had left their first love (Revelation 2:4).
5. Love will cast out fear but love leads to obedience (John 14:15).
6. The problem of the audience of our writer was that they were lacking in faith, leading them to leave God which is disobedience and a lack of love.
7. Our obedience to the Lord prevents a missing out on the rest of God (John 15:10).
E. We can come short of the rest of God; we can miss out on a good thing.
F. We see it all around us.
1. There are Christians we know who have left the Lord and others who are barely hanging on to the Lord.
2. These can and will miss out on the rest of God if they don’t have a fear of missing out, which will cause them to again be obedient to the Lord.
G. To be honest, there should always be a sense of dread of missing out on heaven.
H. It is available to all, but will be missed out on by those who fail to fear missing it, which leads to disobedience.
II. The basis of rest (Hebrews 4:2-7).
A. The writer again uses the example of the Israelites in the wilderness to warn us.
B. He first reminds us that faith is necessary to accept the rest.
1. The good news of Jesus was being preached and had been preached to those who received this letter, just has it has been preached to us.
2. The good news of rest had been preached to the Israelites as well.
a. He is not saying the same gospel was preached to those in the wilderness.
b. Gospel means good news and the good news of rest had been preached to them.
3. Sadly, those aged 20 and older, except for Caleb and Joshua, did not have faith in the message preached to them.
4. If we want to reach the land of rest promised to us, there must be faith in the message preached and faith, as love, leads to obedience to the message.
C. He then mentions the decree of God.
1. If God had not given a promise, then there would be nothing in which to place our faith.
a. The same for the Israelites.
b. If God had not told them about the Promised Land, there would be no reason for them to have faith.
c. However, He did, and many of them did not have faith in the message from God.
2. God had promised them and then took away the promise because of their unbelief.
3. God had spoken the promise to them but they could not enter, not because it wasn’t prepared for them, as he mentions at the end of verse 3, but because they did not have faith.
4. The rest promised was tied to the seventh day of creation.
a. God had created a wonderful place for man and wanted man to enjoy it with Him.
b. However, man sinned, and from that point forward, God’s aim has been to get His people into a place of rest with Him.
c. Those unfaithful Israelites could not enter into the land of rest because of their sin.
d. We can’t enjoy the presence of God and His blissful rest with sin in our lives.
e. They could not enjoy a physical land and we will not enjoy a spiritual land.
f. Verse 6 tells us the promise remains but they did not receive it because of disobedience.
g. We won’t either, by God’s decree.
D. If we want the rest of God, there must be immediate action on our part (Hebrews 4:7).
1. Five times in chapters 3-4, the word today is used.
2. The KJV says, “limiteth” and the NKJV says, “designates”.
3. There is a specific time we need to accept this rest and remain faithful and that is today, immediately.
E. We have way to many people who are acting haphazardly with this promise of rest.
1. We feel like we can pick and choose our times of faithfulness to God.
2. We feel like God is going to give us time and we have all of it we want.
3. We need a desperate sense of urgency in the Lord’s church and at West Walker.
4. Why are people falling away?
5. They don’t have a sense of urgency about them.
6. Tomorrow is not promised.
7. Do we think the people who died Thursday in that wreck on 20-59 thought that would be their last drive home?
8. Do we think the 29 yr old mother I mentioned a couple of weeks ago thought she would not return home from the hospital?
9. What makes us think we are any different than them?
10. We must get a sense of immediacy for the doing of God’s will or we will miss out on the rest of God as did those Israelites so long ago.
III. The nature of God’s rest (Hebrews 4:8-11).
A. We need to understand what this rest is.
1. We know it is not the rest of the Promised Land.
a. He has used this as an illustration for people that came after the giving of the Promised Land.
b. That promise has already been fulfilled (Joshua 21:43-45).
c. As verse 8 will show, this is God’s rest about which our writer is speaking.
2. It is not the sabbath day’s rest either.
a. This was given to the people under the Mosaic Law.
b. This law has been done away with in Christ (Ephesians 2:14-15).
3. This rest is heaven, God’s rest.
a. This is compared to the rest of God on the completion of creation (Hebrews 4:4).
b. It is described for us in Revelation 14:13.
B. It is not the rest into which Joshua took those second generation Israelites.
1. They still fought in that land.
2. They still battled sin in that land.
3. They still fell away from God in that land and eventually went into captivity.
C. He then tells us that there still remains a rest for God’s people.
1. Heaven is out there waiting for us.
2. We can’t give up because the danger is there of missing out on a good thing.
D. There is a spiritual place of rest awaiting us that is beyond our imaginations.
E. Because of that, we need to be diligent to enter it.
1. We need to be proactive.
2. We need to nip problems in the bud before they fully develop.
3. We need to see the problems areas in our lives and deal with them now.
4. We need to help others see the problems in their lives and help them deal with them now if they will.
F. The reason to do it now is that we can fall just like the first generation of Israelites coming out of Egypt fell.