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Sermon for Midweek of Trinity 26
Hebrews 4:9-13 + Matthew 11:25-30
Sunday’s Scripture lessons focused our attention on the judgment that will take place when Christ returns, the Great Separation, we called it, when He will finally separate the righteous from the unrighteous, the believers from the unbelievers. We heard about the horrible fate that awaits the unbelieving and the blessed future that awaits the believing.
Our lessons this evening spur us on toward that blessed future, which is sometimes described as our eternal “rest.” Sometimes, you’ll say to a very busy, active person, “You should rest!” And they’ll reply with, “I can rest when I’m dead.” And that’s true. Or it may be true. In a sense, everyone’s body will rest in the grave. But as we heard on Sunday, for unbelievers, there will be no rest for their soul when they die, while for believers in Christ Jesus, there remains a true rest after this life, for the body and for the soul. But the only way to achieve that rest is if you rest here first. Rest now, and then you’ll rest when you’re dead, too.
In the Old Testament, after the Lord rescued Israel from slavery in Egypt, He promised to give them rest in the Promised Land. My Presence will go with you, God assured Moses, and I will give you rest—rest in the sense that they could cease from their labors, their toiling, their wandering, their battling and fighting; rest in the sense of peace and safety and contentment.
But in order for them to enter that rest, they first had to rest in God. That is, they had to rely on Him and not on themselves. They had to cease trusting in themselves and their works—much less in other gods—and seek shelter under the wings of their faithful Creator and Redeemer.
But, as you know, most of them didn’t. That entire first generation of adults who came out of Egypt were kept out of the promised rest in the Promised Land because of unbelief. As the Psalm says, Your fathers tested Me in the wilderness; they tried Me, though they saw My work. For forty years I was grieved with that generation, and said, ‘It is a people who go astray in their hearts, and they do not know My ways.’ So I swore in My wrath, ‘They shall not enter My rest.’ And they didn’t. As Paul writes about them in 1 Corinthians 10, with most of them God was not well pleased, for their bodies were scattered in the wilderness.
Still, the promised rest of the Promised Land was really a picture or a symbol of a much greater rest, the rest of the Promised Land of Paradise, the rest God has prepared for us with Him in heaven. That’s the rest God was teaching His people about in Psalm 95, speaking to the Israelites who had already entered the Promised Land. Today, if you will hear His voice: “Do not harden your hearts, as in the rebellion, as in the day of trial in the wilderness.” In other words, God still had a rest He wanted His people to enter, eternal rest and joy in His presence. And to enter that rest, they needed to live in repentance and faith. They needed to rest in God and trust in Him.
But most of them didn’t. They didn’t rest through faith; they didn’t cease from their sinning, from their impenitence, from working hard to get to heaven. They needed to rest here, rest now, and then they would have entered God’s eternal rest. But they didn’t rest here, so they didn’t enter that rest, either.
And so the writer to the Hebrews reminds his Christian readers, There remains therefore a rest for the people of God. For he who has entered His rest has himself also ceased from his works as God did from His. And then he urges us, Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall according to the same example of disobedience—the example of the Old Testament Israelites, and the Jews of Jesus’ day, too, who refused to rest from their rebellion and from relying on their own works, who refused to rest in Jesus and let Him do the work of saving them by His perfect life and by His innocent death on the cross.
Jesus made the same appeal to those who followed Him: Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Notice, He doesn’t offer His rest to those who were already resting securely in their own works and in their own righteousness. He offered it only to the weary souls who realized that their laboring and toiling couldn’t get them into heaven. To such people, Jesus offers rest. He invites us to believe in Him, to rest in Him through faith here and now, and then He promises that we will enter His eternal rest when He returns. As St. John writes in the book of Revelation, Then I heard a voice from heaven saying to me, “Write: ‘Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.’ ” “Yes,” says the Spirit, “that they may rest from their labors, and their works follow them.”
St. Augustine once wrote these beautiful words: You have made us for Yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in You. Be diligent to find your rest in God here and now, in Christ Jesus, who holds His arms open wide for you to rest in Him by faith, to receive from Him the forgiveness of sins and to live each day of your life here under the shelter of His forgiveness.
If you rest in Him now in that way, you will still have plenty of labor and toil to do before the end, because life under the sun, life in this sinful world, is labor and toil, and the Christian life is not one of sitting around doing nothing, but of serving God with your whole life. Jesus doesn’t say, “Come to Me and do nothing.” What does He say, Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.
Rest now from earning your way into heaven. Rest now by trusting in Christ. And then you will rest when you’re dead, too, in the eternal rest that awaits all who rest in Christ by faith. Amen.
