This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

Hi, this is Pastor Tom. I want to welcome you to Hebrews chapter 4. This is our
first day of looking at this great chapter.

We're going to look at verses 1 and 2 today. And as we look at this chapter, I
think you're going to enjoy this chapter because it's a chapter that's all about
rest, real rest, soul rest, the kind of rest that makes a difference for the
rest of your life, that totally changes how you live life and how you look at
life. You might remember at the end of the last chapter we started on this, we
began a discussion of God's rest, this spiritual rest.

Now, at the simplest terms, what are we talking about when we talk about
spiritual rest? Well, physical rest means you rest from your work. You rest from
whatever you were doing during the week, on the weekend, or maybe the other way
around.

Maybe you rest on the weekend, and however it works for you schedule-wise,
you're resting from the physical activity of your work. Spiritual rest is also
to rest from your work, but it's to rest from the work of trusting in yourself.
It's to rest from the work of relying on yourself.

It's to rest into a place of trust. What does it mean to be at this place of
rest? We're going to talk about this throughout this week.

What it means is you are in God's presence, trusting God's promises. Let's look
at the first couple of verses in this chapter. "Therefore, since the promise of
entering his rest still stands, let us be careful that none of you be found to
have fallen short of it.

For we also have had the gospel preached to us just as they did, but the message
they heard was of no value to them, because those who heard did not combine it
with faith. " Now you notice the writer of Hebrews starts out by saying, "This
promise of rest still stands. " In order to understand all that's going to be
said in this chapter, you need to do so from the context of the people who first
read this.

The Holy Spirit chose to write these words to them because God knows that so
many of us face the same challenges as they did. In their case, faith was not
leading them. Fear was leading them.

It was leading them to rely on the past instead of looking towards the future.
It was leading them to think that all of God's promises were in the past, that
he didn't really have a promise for them right now. They were for somebody else,
and maybe somehow they could attach to that.

So out of fear, they wanted to retreat to the traditions of the past. They
wanted to look back to the promised land. That's what's being talked about here
when it talks about those who first heard.

The gospel that's talked about here is not the good news of Jesus. It's the good
news—gospel just means good news—it's the good news in the Old Testament
that God had provided a promised land for his people, and there were those who
did not trust it. Out of fear, they wanted to retreat to the traditions of the
past.

Fear causes us to want to retreat. You might remember that Israel, right after
they crossed over the Red Sea, through the Red Sea, they became afraid. And out
of that fear, many people wanted to go back to Egypt.

They wanted to go back to slavery. The fear in our lives is often so strong,
it'll cause us to want to go back to something that was the most hurtful thing
in our lives. That's how powerful fear can be as a motivator.

And the writer of Hebrews says to these people that he loves, "Don't let fear
control your life. Have faith. Have faith that God still has a place of rest for
his people.

" In fact, he says, "If you're going to be fearful of anything, be fearful of
not entering into that place of rest. " And what he's saying is, "Have a healthy
fear of not having faith. " You understand as you read through the Bible, there
are negative fears and there are positive fears.

Again and again, God tells us, he warns us against negative fear, a fear that's
related to our circumstances, a fear that's related to ourselves, our world,
running away from things. But there's also in the Bible a positive fear. The
Bible says we're to fear the Lord.

And here he says, "Let us be careful. " The word there, "careful," really means
fearful. It's stronger than just the word "careful.

" It means fearful that we won't fall short of it. There are some things in life
to be more afraid of than the current circumstances that I'm facing. Be afraid
of not having faith.

Now I know that's hard for some of you to hear because the word "fear" always
has negative connotations to it. But he's talking here instead about a positive
kind of attitude that says, "In a holy fear, I'm going to trust God. " Unholy
fear causes you to run away from God.

Holy fear causes you to run because you realize, "That's the only place I have
to run. " God wants to deliver us from our fears. Jesus died, remember in
chapter 2 verse 15, Jesus died to deliver those who through fear of death were
enslaved.

So he wants to deliver us from the fears that we have in this world. But the
writer of Hebrews says, "I want you to be afraid of not having faith. I want you
to be afraid of being the kind of person who lives in their fears all the rest
of their lives.

" The warning here, the deep warning that he's giving here is against unbelief.
He's saying if you don't believe, if you don't combine it with faith, then
you're always going to be in a place of fear. Now you might look at your life
and say, "Well, unbelief is not my problem.

" And I want to say to you with all humility, yes it is. And it's my problem.
It's all of our problems.

The problem we have in our life, any problem that we have in our life stems from
unbelief. The idea that I will solve my problem myself. No, you can't.

You cannot solve your problem yourself. That is unbelief, not believing that God
can solve the problem. I need God.

Everybody needs God. And in my life, if I don't come to a place of recognizing
that deep need, I will never enter into his rest. So how do you do this?

How do you enter into his rest that this chapter is talking about that we're
going to learn more and more about as we walk through this chapter? How do you
enter into this rest and then live in this place of rest? Well, we're going to
see five or six different choices that you and I can make by faith as we walk
through this chapter.

The first one is here in these verses. The first choice is you have to combine
hearing with faith. You enter in by faith and you combine hearing with faith.

Hearing without faith has no power. He says they heard, but they didn't enter
in. Why didn't they enter in?

Because they didn't combine it with faith. They heard that God has a promised
land and they were headed towards that promised land. But then they got a
negative report from some of the spies they sent into the land.

And based on that negative report, they decided, we're going to trust that
report. We're not going to trust God. We're going to trust our fears.

We're not going to trust God. So they didn't enter in. Hearing alone is not
enough.

That's what he's saying here. Do not fool yourself into thinking that just
because you've heard, that means you have faith. That's one of the big problems
we have in churches today.

People come week after week. They hear Bible study after Bible study. And we
fool ourselves.

We think, I've heard, so I must have faith. No. The choice is, what am I going
to do about what I've heard?

You have to combine what you've heard with faith. So what's God been saying to
you? What have you heard?

He talks here about the good news that they heard and he talks about the good
news that we've heard. What good news have you heard? To enter into God's place
of rest, it begins by hearing the good news that Jesus Christ gave his life for
you, that he has a new life to give to you.

That's the place it begins. You can't live in a place of rest unless you've
entered into a place of rest. And you enter into that place of rest first and
foremost and only by accepting what Jesus did for you.

You rest from your work and you accept the work that he has done. If you've
never done that, I want to lead you in a prayer, an opportunity to do that right
now. If you have, at the end of this prayer, I want to also, with all of us,
give us an opportunity to remind ourselves of the daily need for faith.

Would you pray with me and just say, Jesus Christ, I accept your gift of
forgiveness. I accept your gift of new life. I rest from my work of trying to
attain forgiveness or new life on my own, or hope I can get it if I work well
enough or good enough, and I accept it as your gift.

And in that acceptance, Lord, all of us who are yours, who have taken that path
of following you, Jesus, right now we pray that you help us to live today not by
our fears but by faith. Help us to see the fears in our lives that might be
controlling us. And as we see them, to bring them to you and ask you to begin to
change us, to transform us through your word, so that little by little, or maybe
immediately for some of us, those fears drop off.

And as they drop off, they are replaced by choices of faith. Lord, help us not
to wait until the fear goes away to make a choice of faith. Help us to make a
choice of faith even in the face of the fear, because that's what happens every
time.

Help us to make a choice of faith today, even in the face of the fear that we
have. We ask this in Jesus' name, amen. Tomorrow, we're going to see together
how God's rest empowers our rest.