Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2090
Delivered on Lord’s Day Morning, June 16, 1889
“For we which have believed do enter into rest, as He said, As I have sworn in My wrath, if they shall enter into My rest.” Hebrews 4:3.
LAST Sabbath we meditated upon the fact that those who came out of Egypt did not enter into the rest of God. “They could not enter in because of unbelief.” Today I shall not seek so much to warn as to encourage, while we look at the way by which we can enter into the true rest. The faithful minister of God should be like the parent birds, who, when their young are old enough for flight, sometimes drive them from the nest to make them fly. And, at other times, go before them, twittering and stretching out their wings, to tempt their callow offspring to try the air.
Thus, at times, we endeavor to drive you to and at others we try to draw you to the flight of faith. Knowing the terrors of the Lord, we persuade—knowing the joys of true religion, we entreat. By all means we would induce men to quit the nest of their old trust and fly to Christ by faith. If God will bless the Word, so that you put your trust in Christ, we shall be content. No, more—our cup will run over with gratitude for your salvation.
In the text, we have a declaration of experience, “We which have believed do enter into rest,” to which is very singularly added, “As he said, As I have sworn in my wrath, if they shall enter into my rest.” The happy declaration is supported by the tremendous oath of judgment, which shut out the unbelieving race. There is usually a promise embedded in a threat, like gold in quartz—just as there is generally a threat as the reverse of the golden coin of promise. When we read, in the opening chapters of the Bible, “In the day that you eat thereof you shall surely die,” it was implied, was it not, that if they did not eat they should live?
Though that promise was not stated in words, it was implied in the threat. So here, when we read, “I have sworn in my wrath, if they shall enter into My rest,” while we are taught that some could not enter in because of unbelief, it is implied in it that Believers would enter in. Those who have faith in the Divine promise shall enter in. If unbelief shuts men out, then faith is the door of entrance to those who have it. I beg you to grasp the kernel of promise which lies whole and safe within the shell of the threat.
God swore of those unbelieving Jews that they should not enter in but He had declared that some should enter in. Therefore a promise is left which will be fulfilled in those who have faith and so are the true seed of faithful Abraham. These shall enter in. And certain of them in the text declare that they have done so—“We which have believed do enter into rest.” I venture to say that the threat in this case even gives a touch of rose color to the promise, for it runs thus, “If they shall enter into My rest.” Whereas the declaration only says, “rest”—“we which have believed do enter into rest,” the word, “My” is added. That little word is like a bright gleam amidst the blackness of the tempest. Oh, the glory of that which God calls “My rest”!
There is such a thing as the rest of God and there is such a thing as our entering into it. I call your attention to the fact that the two typical rests of the Old Testament were rests of God. And yet they were rests into which God’s people were to enter. The first rest was the rest of creation. When God had finished all His work upon this habitable globe He rested. But what follows? “He rested on the seventh day and hallowed it.” To what end? That we might rest also. “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shall you labor and do all your work—but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God.”
And therefore, because it is His Sabbath, He would have us share in it. “In it you shall not do any work.” It was a day sacred to holy rest. God will not rest alone. He will have His people in fellowship with Him. “There remains a rest to the people of God”—because God has His Sabbath. The other rest was the promised land, of which Mount Zion was chosen to be the center. We read in Psalm 132, “For the Lord has chosen Zion. He has desired it for His habitation. This is
My rest forever: here will I dwell. For I have desired it.” Where the Lord rested, there He gave His people rest. For He adds, “I will abundantly bless her provision: I will satisfy her poor with bread.”
Thus God and His Church are associated in happy fellowship. Neither the day nor the land is used as a type of rest with reference to God alone. He will have His people enter into His rest.
The true rest of God lies higher than times and places. The Lord God rests in the Person of Jesus—in Him He is well pleased. The Lord speaks of Him as, “My Elect, in whom My soul delights.” In the Person of His Son, the heart of the Father finds perpetual joy—“This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” But we also behold His Glory—“The glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” By faith we see that in Him which gives rest to our heart. Therefore was Jesus given—“This man shall be the peace.” The Lord Jesus is our true Noah, in whom we find safety and rest. He was both given in birth and given up in death to be the rest of weary souls.