It’s been said that “history repeats itself. It has to—nobody listens the first time around.” That there’s a cyclical sense to history is both observable and biblical. Solomon said, “There is nothing new under the sun” (Eccl 1:9). He also agrees that many people fail to learn from the past: “Like a dog that returns to its vomit is a fool who repeats his folly” (Prov 26:11). According to God, those who unnecessarily relive their own messes are fools. Those who seek to understand the present and anticipate the future without examining the past are fools.

The author of Hebrews doesn’t want his readers to be fools. Instead, he wants them to study their history, to remember the mess their ancestors made, and to avoid the same error. And, likewise, the Holy Spirit calls to the people of God in all eras: “Don’t let history repeat itself. Learn from past sins and, instead of forfeiting rest in unbelief, find rest in obedience.”

SERMON MANUSCRIPT 

It’s been said that, “history repeats itself. It has to—nobody listens the first time around.” 

The author of Hebrews wants his audience to listen and learn from their history. He wants them to remember the mess their ancestors made when they arrived at the Promised Land and, instead of entering and enjoying the rest it offered, disobeyed God and died in the wilderness. What a mistake. And the author turns to us and says, “Don’t let history repeat itself. Learn from it. Enter and enjoy God’s rest.”

REST REMOVED

The passage opens by looking back to a moment when rest was removed from Israel. They forfeited what could have been. The author of Hebrews quotes Psalm 95, a psalm that explores the events of Numbers 13 and 14 when “Twelve men went to spy out Canaan. (Ten were bad and two were good.) What did they see when they spied on Canaan? (Ten were bad and two were good.) Some saw giants, big and tall! Some saw grapes in clusters fall. Two saw God was in it all. (Ten were bad, two were good).”

God had led his people from Egyptian bondage to the border of a land “flowing with milk and honey,” one in which they could settle, build, grow, and live forever in peace with their God. It was the promise of true rest and it was right there!

God told Moses to send twelve scouts into the land to see what it was like, who lived there, and how they were living. When they returned, the twelve men reported the land was everything God said it was and more. But ten of them quickly added, “The people are big and strong and their cities are big and strong. We can’t do it!” [Num 14:1–2] Israel decided to return to Egypt and, when Moses and Aaron tried to reason with them, they tried to stone them to death.

At this moment, Israel was ripe for God’s discipline and, knowing this, Moses called to God for mercy. [Num 14:19–23, 28–31]

Israel forfeited the rest that could have been theirs. Abundant blessing, lasting peace, true prosperity, divine stability was all within their reach just over that border. But they made a big mistake.

And the author of Hebrews explores that mistake, highlighting the hard hearts involved. “Therefore, just as the Holy Spirit says, ‘Today if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts” (3:7–8a). 

Verse 10 adds that “they always go astray in their heart, and they did not know my ways.” Well, they did know God’s ways. They were at Sinai. They knew God’s law. But this is what a hard heart does: it makes even those who know God increasingly unresponsive to God. Consider Jesus’s disciples—Mark says he “reproached [them] for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they had not believed those who had seen him after he had risen” (Mark 16:14). 

It wasn’t only hard hearts involved in this historical mistake but willful doubt. Verses 8 and 9 call Israel’s failure, “the day of trial in the wilderness, where your fathers tried me by testing me, and saw my works for forty years.” God’s people had had front-row seats to God’s power—plagues descending, waters’ parting, manna appearing, walls falling—and, instead of responding with trust, they chose doubt. 

And this doubt led to a spiritual separation. How could it not? The author warns his readers that such an “unbelieving heart … falls away from the living God” (3:12) caused by “the deceitfulness of sin” (3:13). If one hardens their heart and willfully doubts the Lord, they should expect a relational rift, a strain on their intimacy with God.

Unsurprisingly, this all invites divine judgement. God says in verses 8 and 15, “they provoked me.” “Therefore,” he says in verses 10 and 11, “I was angry with this generation … As I swore in my wrath, ‘they shall not enter my rest.’”

A hard heart toward the Lord and a willful doubting of the Lord led to a spiritual separation from the Lord and divine judgement by the Lord. And that judgement, ultimately, was the removal of rest.  [3:16–19] 

We’ve got to be careful not to equate entering the Promised Land in Numbers with obtaining everlasting life. They’re not the same. If they are, Moses wasn’t saved because his sin prevented his entrance. The judgement that this sinful generation received was not the loss of salvation but the loss of blessing. 

Psalm 95, the passage used in Hebrews 3, makes this clear. The line in the psalm right before that which the author quotes says this: “For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand. Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as when they provoked me” (Ps 95:7). The psalmist knows these were God’s people who, in their unbelief, forfeited not the redemption they had by faith but the rest they could have had by obedience.

Have you ever struggled to obey God? To walk by faith unreservedly? Has your heart ever been hardened? Have you ever felt your relationship with the Lord muted by the world around you, the flesh within you, or the devil about you? Have you ever, when “chased by sin, torn by grief, worn by life, vexed by hell, stalked by sin, and plagued by shame” responded in a way unbecoming of one belonging to Christ? Have you ever stood with the ten spies, saying in your heart “my enemy is too big,” “my opponents are too fortified,” “my God is too powerless,” or “my Lord is too indifferent”? 

Yeah, me too. And when we do, when followers of Jesus respond to him like Israel did—in sinful disobedience—the author of Hebrews wants us to know that we’re in danger of repeating history, of having rest removed. 

REST REMAINS

But he also wants his readers to know there’s hope—that the possibility of rest remains. Look at chapter 4: “Therefore, let us fear if, while a promise remains of entering his rest, any one of you may seem to have come short of it.” Rest remains but so does the possibility of its removal. So, “let us fear!” This is serious!

Verse 3: “For we who have believed enter that rest (it’s still available!), just as he has said (and he quotes Psalm 95 again), ‘As I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter my rest,’ although his works were finished from the foundation of the world.” 

And now the author is going to prove that rest remains. [3:4–8] In the beginning, God modelled rest. Centuries later, Israel was offered rest but failed to obtain it, causing some to wonder if the offer had been cancelled. Others, knowing their history, assumed that when Joshua led the next generation into the Land, that the offer of rest had been fulfilled. So, whether cancelled or fulfilled, the promise may now seem unavailable. But the author of Hebrews points out that David wrote Psalm 95 long after all of that and he still offered rest. 

So, the author concludes: [4:9]. Israel’s failure didn’t mess it up and Joshua’s success didn’t use it up. Rest remains for God’s people. That’s us. Peace, rewards, intimacy with God, conviction, love, unity, stability; a sure hope, a clean conscience, a pure heart, a total contentment. The promise of rest remains today and into eternity. Pursue it. Chase it. Don’t repeat history and forfeit it.

My doctor asked me this week if I’d been experiencing any fatigue lately. I said, “I’m a middle-aged man with five children under twelve. I’m not sure what lack of fatigue feels like!” In fact, if I didn’t know any better I’d wonder if Hebrews was quoting my youngest, “You shall not enter rest!”

But, more seriously, we all battle a lack of rest, don’t we? Our world seems to be characterized by fear and anxiety, depression and helplessness, identity confusion and national unrest, corruption and crime, groaning and greed, instability and irritability. Have you experienced any fatigue lately? Of course you have!

Wouldn’t it be nice to face uncertainty with confidence, trials with hope, disappointments with joy, failure with perspective, and sin with victory? Wouldn’t it be nice if we could “dwell in the shelter of the Most High” (Ps 91:1)? Wouldn’t it be nice to enjoy a soul-nourishing, life-altering, eternity-shaping rest? It would and Hebrews is telling us, that rest remains available—an experience of life now that echoes into our experience of the coming kingdom. You can have it, he says!

REST REALIZED

The question is, how? We’ve seen that rest was removed and that rest remains. We close by noticing how rest is realized. And, simply put, it’s this: we enter rest through obedience! We enjoy rest through faith-fuelled submission to God. Israel blew it. They developed an “evil, unbelieving heart” (3:12), “hardened by the deceitfulness of sin” (3:13). Faithless disobedience removes rest but faithful obedience realizes rest.

Israel didn’t do what God told them to do. The question for us is: will we do what God has told us to do? The reward of rest is on the other side of obedience, on the other side of faith-fuelled labour for the Lord. [4:2] Will it be in us? The author of Hebrews says, “Learn from history!” Believe God and obey him! 

God worked for six days and rested on the seventh. So too with God’s people. We are to work for him, doing what he’s called us to do by faith, pressing on toward the rest he’s promised, the rest that is still available, the rest that sits on the other side of faithful labour. [4:10–11]

If you want true rest in this life and rewards for faithfulness in the life to come, don’t harden your heart, don’t doubt God, but do what he’s called you to do, believing he’s equipped you to do it. Grow in holiness. Kill your sin. Share the gospel. Build up the church. Serve God’s people. Raise godly children. Cultivate a godly marriage. Submit to authority. Give generously. Pray ceaselessly. Pursue Christlikeness. 

If we obey God and, by faith, take up the tasks he’s given us to do, we will enter rest. And, know that he sees all our efforts. [4:12–13] Christ sees everything, which is a comfort and a concern. He knows when I want to serve him and fall short. He knows when I just want to be seen being obedient. He sees it all. So get to work.

And, yes, it’s difficult to walk in obedience. That’s why God gave us help. [3:12–14] He’s writing to the church. “As Israel failed together you, church, must succeed together.” Make sure to encourage one another. If you want to realize rest, experience the blessings of God, you must spur one another on, beg one another to continue, implore one another to stay faithful. 

To enter and enjoy the rest that God offers by oneself is like a single athlete showing up to play a team sport at the Olympics. You will lose and it will not be close.

No believer will experience the rest that God offers to the extent they could apart from the body Christ. And the more a believer presses into a body of Christ the more they will thrive. If you want to experience the rest that remains, do not sit out, do not sit on the sidelines, do not sit on the periphery. If you do, you are voluntarily making yourself vulnerable to bing “hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.”

Entering rest through obedience is a team sport. It requires mutual exhortation, correction, and comfort. And we need it with urgency and consistency, “day after day, as long as it is still called ‘Today’” (3:13). Back in verse 7 it said, “Today if you hear his voice” and again in verse 15 and again in 4:7. Don’t wait until the new year, until you’re done school, until you’ve experienced the world, until retirement, until empty-nesting. Do it today. Obey today. Walk by faith today. Take care today. Encourage one another today.

We want to be a people who enter and enjoy rest so that we can help others enter and enjoy rest. We want rest because God wants us to have rest, Christ died to give us rest, and the Spirit came to empower us toward rest. We want to be a church family characterized by rest. And because of all of that, we want to help one another walk in faithful obedience to his good and perfect will. 

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