Questions

1. Fill in the blanks below from Hebrews 4:8-11. For if Joshua had given them _____, God would not have spoken of another day later on. ⁹ So then, there remains a ________ rest for the people of God, ¹⁰ for whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from his works as God did from his. ¹¹ Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of ____________.
2. TRUE or FALSE: Hebrews teaches that rest is entered through faith, not works.
3. In Hebrews 4, God’s “rest” primarily refers to:
4. God stopping all activity
5. God sleeping after creation
6. God reigning as King over creation
7. God leaving creation unattended
8. The wilderness generation failed to enter God’s rest because of ______.
9. Jesus fulfills God’s rest by:
10. Teaching better moral laws
11. Replacing Moses
12. Completing the work of redemption and reigning
13. Removing human responsibility
14. TRUE or FALSE Sin’s deception is convincing us we can live independently of God.
15. Match the concept on the left with the description on the right.
16. Jesus is seated at the right hand of the Father because His work is ______.

Discussion

1. To prepare to answer this series of questions you can review this section of the message in this link Consider what it might be like (to timestamp 9:10).
2. Contrast our modern world concept of rest with that of the ancient world.
3. In terms of the rest that is defined in this message, discuss the “rest” that you place yourself in.
4. The sermon series is titled “Greater Than”; discuss the following questions in light of that theme and this link to video: God’s Rest (to timestamp 16:40).
5. How are we confronted with the similar decision as that of Adam and Eve in the garden?
6. What evidence do we see everyday of the order and function that God created?
7. Discuss how this quote from C.S. Lewis may relate to the order and function that God created: “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”
8. Discuss our human tendency to “fall” under our own understanding and our own control of the world vs submitting to God’s boundaries and God’s reign.
9. To prepare to answer this series of questions you can review this section of the message in this link: God’s Rest Foreshadowed (to timestamp 21:40).
10. What were God’s acts of deliverance that were detailed in this section of the message?
11. Why was the Promised Land not the final rest God intended?
12. How did the Promised Land echo back to the Garden of Eden?
13. How can we guard against the same patterns of doubt, complaining, or rebellion that Israel displayed?
14. Read Matthew 4:1-11 and discuss parallels and connections between the temptations in the wilderness for Israel and Jesus (Hint: use a reference Bible to make connections).
15. To prepare to answer this series of questions you can review this section of the message in this link: God’s Rest Fulfilled and Secured (to timestamp 24:55).
16. What does Pastor Winans mean when he says that we rest in God’s reign and rule by “refusing to take from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil”?
17. If you were to explain what this means to an unbeliever, what would you say? What are the steps for an unbeliever to rest in the reign of God?
18. Discuss how does we enjoy the provision of Christ’s rest today and when He comes again?
19. To prepare to answer this series of questions you can review this section of the message in this link: So as we close.
20. Pastor Winans urges us from Scripture that God’s promise of rest is for today. Does this word of urgency move us to follow the Lord’s command in Matt 28:18-20: to “go and make disciples”? Discuss how we obey this command in our lives.
21. Does the experience of Pastor Winans in this section of the message connect with you? Do you hold onto your burdens instead of giving them to the Lord? Are we abiding in Him?
22. Read Matt 11:28-30 and share what His rest has meant to your faith. 

Sermon Outline

Consider what it might be like (to timestamp 9:10) if the Lord tarries and, three thousand years from now, people in a distant future are conducting an archaeological dig in what was once known as the United States. They’re trying to understand our culture, our language, and the way we lived. Imagine them uncovering references to something called a “Super Bowl party.” What might they conclude? Perhaps they’d assume it was a yearly celebration where people gathered around a giant bowl. Or imagine them discovering terms like “cloud storage.” Would they think we somehow stored information in the sky? Or phrases like “going viral”—would they assume we celebrated the spread of disease?

The point is simple: there are many things we take for granted because we share a cultural understanding of what they mean. We know instantly what a Super Bowl party is, but thousands of years from now, that meaning could be completely lost. In much the same way, when we read the Bible, we sometimes encounter ideas that feel unfamiliar or unclear to us. We instinctively interpret them through our modern lens, but they may have been understood very differently by the original audience. To truly grasp their meaning, we often need to look back and ask, How would this have been heard then?

That’s what we want to do this morning as we consider the theme of our sermon, Rethinking Rest, because today we are talking about God’s rest. When we hear the word “rest,” we tend to think of inactivity—stopping work, taking a nap, or stepping away from effort. But in the ancient world, especially in connection with creation, rest carried a very different meaning. When someone in authority rested, it did not mean they were disengaging; it meant they were assuming rule. Rest was the posture of a king seated on the throne.

So when Scripture speaks of God entering His rest, it is not saying that God took a day off. It is saying that having completed His work of creation, He sat down to reign over what He had made in power and glory. God’s rest is His royal rule.

That brings us to the question before us today: under whose reign will you choose to live? In Hebrews chapters 3 and 4—within our larger series on Jesus being greater—we encounter a sobering warning about failing to enter God’s rest. So we must ask ourselves: are we bringing our lives under God’s rest? Are we living under His rule and authority? Or are we resisting it—seeking to live on our own terms, apart from His reign?

This morning, we will explore God’s rest as Scripture unfolds it across salvation history. Our passage in Hebrews presents it in three phases. First, we see God’s rest at creation. Second, we see God’s rest foreshadowed in the Promised Land, as Israel is delivered from Egypt and invited to enter rest under God’s rule. And finally, we see God’s rest fulfilled and secured in Christ. God’s rest at creation, promised in the land, and fully realized in Jesus—this is the rest we are invited to enter today.

God’s Rest (to timestamp 16:40)

God’s rest begins at creation. He is the Creator God, the Most High, who made the heavens and the earth. In Hebrews 4, we are invited to see God’s rest through the lens of creation itself.

Hebrews 4:4 – ⁴For he has somewhere spoken of the seventh day in this way: “And God rested on the seventh day from all his works.”

To understand the promise of rest, we first need to understand what God’s rest actually is, so that we can bring our lives under it and truly enter into it. As we said at the beginning, from the cultural perspective in which this was written, God’s rest does not mean that He took a day off. It means that God was seated—He took up His place as King. God rested by ruling and reigning over His creation. As one scholar puts it this way…

God's “rest” is maintaining the order and function that had been established. This is a much different picture than God taking a day off from work. – John Walon The Lost World of Genesis 1

Let’s remind ourselves of something. Just as the idea of a “Super Bowl” might not make sense to people three thousand years from now, Genesis 1 and 2 must be read from the perspective of the ancient Near East. When modern readers think about creation, we tend to ask material questions: How did something come from nothing? How was the physical stuff of the universe made? Those are valid questions—but they are not the questions the ancient world was primarily asking. Their concern was not material origins, but order and function. How did God bring order out of chaos so that life could flourish?

You can see this clearly in Genesis 1. Verse 1 “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”—is a summary statement of the entire chapter. Verse 2 then describes the earth as covered by waters, with the Spirit of God hovering over the surface. From a modern perspective, we might ask, Where did the water come from? Why is there water before light? But in the ancient world, waters represented chaos. The sea symbolized disorder and threat. What we are meant to see is God’s Spirit hovering over the chaos, bringing order, function, and life.

Throughout the creation account, God separates and orders. He separates day from night. He separates the waters above from the waters below. He separates land from sea. And once order is established, He fills that ordered creation with life—life in the waters, life in the skies, and life on the land. Creation is about God establishing an ordered world where life can flourish.

Then we come to the seventh day—and it is different from the other six. The first six days involve forming and filling, but the seventh day is marked by rest. And notice something else: every other day ends with the phrase “evening and morning.” Not the seventh day. The seventh day has no ending formula because God’s rest has no end. God rests not because He is tired, but because He has taken His seat as King. His rule and reign continue without interruption. There has never been a day when God was not ruling.

Having ordered creation, God plants a garden and places His image-bearing human beings within it. Adam and Eve live in God’s rest—under His reign, His rule, in a place of abundance and flourishing. But they are given a choice. Will they remain in God’s rest? Will they continue to live under His rule? That choice is presented in the form of a tree—the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The tree is a test. It asks a question: Under whose reign will you live?

Will you trust God’s wisdom and remain under His rule, or will you choose to define good and evil for yourself? Will you live within God’s rest, or step outside of it to do life your own way? Our first parents chose the latter. They step out from under God’s reign and reject His rest. And as a result, they are exiled from the garden—from the place of God’s presence and rest.

And with that in mind, the question presses in on us as well. Hebrews chapter 3 says…

Hebrews 3:12-13 – ¹²Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. ¹³But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

This matters because every day you and I stand in the place of Adam. We are faced with the same question: will I live under God’s reign and bring my life into submission to His rule, or will I step out from under it and go my own way? And when we choose the latter—when we reach for the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in our own lives—we are being deceived by sin. That is always how sin works. Its primary deception, just as it was for Adam and Eve, is this: you don’t need God. You can handle this on your own. You don’t need to live under His reign and rule.

And that deception comes to every one of us. Sin is crouching at the door; its desire is to have you. That is why we must be alert—not only for ourselves, but for one another. We are called to exhort one another every day, to speak life into the lives of our friends, our families, and our neighbors, so that none of us are hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. When people are struggling—and when we are struggling—we remind each other: bring this to God. Trust the Lord. Do not believe the lie that says, I don’t need God; I can handle this on my own.

God’s Rest Foreshadowed (to timestamp 21:40)

As our text speaks about God’s rest, it takes us back to how that rest was foreshadowed in the Promised Land. After Adam and Eve were exiled from the garden, God did not abandon His image-bearing creatures. Instead, He moved toward them in grace, beginning a plan of restoration and salvation by calling one man and his family—Abraham. That covenant promise continued through Isaac, then through Jacob, and then through Jacob’s twelve sons.

Those sons went down to Egypt, where they grew into a great nation. But they also came under the tyranny of a rival power. They were enslaved, burdened, and heavy-laden under a crushing yoke. And God saw their affliction.

So God sent them a redeemer—Moses. He called Moses by speaking from a bush that burned yet was not consumed, and He sent him back to Egypt to deliver His people. As God commissions Moses in Exodus 3, He reveals His heart for a people longing for rest, and He declares what He is about to do for them.

Exodus 3:7-8 – ⁷I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt...⁸I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey.

God says, I see My people, and I am going to deliver them. That deliverance—this redemption—is God rescuing them from the oppression they are living under, not simply to set them free, but to bring them under His lordship. In other words, He is bringing them into the rest of His reign. And this deliverance is more than freedom from human oppression. It is also freedom from spiritual oppression because the plagues are not only a judgment on Pharaoh, but a victory over the gods of Egypt. God is bringing His people out from both human and spiritual bondage so that they might belong to Him. But He also promises to bring them into another land—a land flowing with milk and honey, a land marked by abundance. And by this point in the story, that language should sound familiar. A land overflowing with abundance takes us all the way back to the Garden of Eden. The Promised Land is intentionally portrayed as a new Eden, a place where God walks with His people. This is the language of the Torah, reminding us that the Promised Land is a foreshadowing of God’s true and final rest.

The Promised Land becomes a new Eden. The Lord will walk among his people in the land, just as he walked in the garden. Like the fertile garden of Eden, the Promised Land will flow with milk and honey. – James Hamilton God’s Glory in Salvation through Judgement

To come back under the lordship of God is to have Him walk with His people, to be their God, to dwell among them, and to bring them into a place of abundance. It is a place where the curse is being undone because life outside of God’s rest is life under the curse. Genesis 3 shows us what that curse looks like. There is a curse on the woman in childbearing, and a curse on the man in his labor, where the ground itself resists him and fruit comes only through painful toil. But listen to what God promises in the Promised Land. If they will listen to His voice and obey Him, if they will not reach again for the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they will live under blessing instead of curse.

Deuteronomy 28:4,7 – ⁴Blessed shall be the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground...⁷“The Lord will cause your enemies who rise against you to be defeated before you.

This language should make you stop and think about the curse—because what exactly is the curse?

Genesis 3:16-19 – ¹⁶I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing...Cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life...till you return to the ground.

If God’s people will listen to His voice in the place of blessing and enter into His rest, they will experience the blessing of His presence and the undoing of the curse that comes from being separated from that rest. But here’s the problem—did they listen? When they entered the Promised Land, did they truly turn away from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? No. They kept taking. And that is exactly why the writer of Hebrews says this:

Hebrews 4:8 – ⁸For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on.

The point is that the Promised Land was never the final destination. It was a foreshadowing of a rest that would be finally fulfilled and secured in Jesus.

God’s Rest Fulfilled and Secured (to timestamp 24:55)

God’s rest—His reign and His dwelling place—is foreshadowed in Joshua. And it’s no accident that Joshua’s name is Yeshua. Can you think of another Yeshua who leads God’s people into the true Promised Land? That Yeshua is Jesus. He is the greater Joshua, the greater Yeshua, the One who secures and fulfills God’s rest once and for all.

What do we mean by that? God’s rest is His reign and rule. To live in the blessing of that reign—to flourish in His presence and enjoy life with Him—requires righteousness. It means listening to His voice. It means refusing to take from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, refusing to step out of God’s rest and insist on doing life our own way.

And here’s the honest question: has anyone done that perfectly? The answer is no. On our own, none of us deserves God’s rest. Left to ourselves, we would all be driven east of Eden, shut out from God’s presence, with the way back closed. That is true of everyone—except One.

There is One who listened perfectly to the Father’s voice. One who lived in perfect righteousness. And that One laid down His perfectly righteous life for us. Every time we take from that tree—every time we say, I’ve got this, I don’t need God—that guilt was laid upon Jesus. And when we believe in Him, He becomes the tree of life for us. Through His life, His death, and His resurrection, Jesus has secured our salvation and entered into His rest.

Now think about that. How can we say that Jesus has entered His rest? In creation, God brought order out of chaos and then rested, reigning over the world He had made. In the same way, Jesus completed His work by overcoming every force of chaos—sin, death, and evil itself. He was raised from the dead, He ascended, and He is now seated at the right hand of the Majesty on high. He is seated because His work is finished, and He is reigning.

Just as God completed His work and rested, Christ completed His work and entered His rest. He now reigns over the new creation. And when He returns, He will bring that reign in its fullness. Then we will fully enter into His rest—into a world with no more death, no more pain, no more mourning, no more crying, no more sickness. The old order of things will pass away.

Even now, we enter that rest provisionally as we are united to Him by faith. And one day, we will enter it completely, forever, in the rest of Christ.

So as we close, I want to leave you with two words. First, this text is a warning. Hebrews says,

Hebrews 4:1-2 – ¹Therefore, while the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it. ²For good news came to us just as to them, but the message they heard did not benefit them, because they were not united by faith with those who Obeyed.

The good news came to the wilderness generation just as it has come to us—but it did not benefit them because it was not united with faith. They heard the message, but they did not believe it. And earlier we’re told plainly: they were not able to enter God’s rest because of unbelief.

Hebrews 3:19 – ¹⁹So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief.

That warning is for anyone here this morning—or anyone watching—who is hearing the message of salvation. You are hearing that salvation is found in Christ alone. That we are saved not by our effort, but by believing in the finished work of Jesus on the cross. To believe in Him means to turn from sin, to submit to Him as Lord, to become His disciple, to be delivered from oppression so that we might belong to Him.

But some hear that message and say, “I’m fine. Christianity is good. It teaches morals. It makes people better citizens. Jesus is a good moral teacher.” And if that’s you, hear this clearly: the promise of rest is the promise of salvation. Christianity is not about bad people becoming better people. It is not primarily about producing good citizens or offering life tips or moral improvement. It is about dead people being made alive. It is about dying to yourself and being united to Christ in His death so that you might be united to Him in His life.

The warning is this: the promise of rest still stands—but it stands today. Tomorrow is not promised. Today is the day of salvation. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. Turn from your sin. Trust Him. Follow Him while the promise still stands.

The second word is for those who have believed in Christ. Our opening question was this: Under whose reign are you living? Jesus says,

Matthew 11:28-30 – ²⁸Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. ²⁹Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me...³⁰For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

I’ll be honest with you—this text has been confronting for me this week. The past couple of weeks in my own life haven’t been great. Nothing dramatic, just a pile of things—annoying things, painful things, heavy things. And as I sat with this passage, I had to ask myself: What difference is the reign of Christ making right now?

And if I’m honest, I realized I hadn’t been coming to Him. I had been standing in front of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, saying, I can handle this. I’ll carry this myself. And what came with that was heaviness—emotional weight, exhaustion, restlessness. Not because God had failed, but because I wasn’t coming to Him.

Jesus says, “Come to Me.” And when we come, we take what is burdening us and bring it under His lordship. We say, Lord, this is Yours. This anxiety is Yours. This situation is Yours. I bring it under Your reign. I bring it under Your rest.

I found myself doing something simple—almost physical—on my morning walks. Each time a burden came to mind, I would just say, This is Yours. This is Yours. And you know what? Nothing magically disappeared. The problems didn’t vanish overnight. But everything changed. Because I wasn’t carrying it alone anymore.

So as we close: if you do not know Christ, hear the warning. Believe on Him today—and everything will change, because you will become a new creation. And if you belong to Christ but you are burdened, exhausted, or heavy-laden, bring those things under His reign. Come to Him. His yoke is easy. His burden is light. And when you come under His rest—everything changes.