This week, as I was working on Sunday’s message, “Our Rest”
based on Hebrews 4:1-13, my mind wandered back to 1975 and a living room in
Bethesda, Maryland. It was the home of a good friend named John whose parents
had invited several of us to dinner with a professor of church history from
Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary. Now at that time none of us around the
table had any plans of going to seminary. In fact, none of us knew that the
professor would be there. All any of us knew was that we wanted to hang with
John, and the rite of passage was coming to a Sunday evening dinner with his parents.
Until this week I hadn’t thought about that dinner in years,
but it’s one I’ll never forget. It isn’t the food that makes that night
memorable. It isn’t the hospitality. It isn’t what Dr. Lovelace had to say.
What makes it one of those memorable moments is what I saw Dr. Lovelace doing
prior to the meal. As we sat around the living room talking, Dr. Lovelace was
in the same room relaxing. He was reading The
Washington Post and playing the piano at the same time! I’ve never seen
anyone do that before or since. With The
Washington Post editorial page spread out in front of him on the baby grand
piano, he played Bach, Beethoven and the works of other classical composers. Have
you ever seen anyone read the paper and play the piano at the same time? It seems
inconceivable that someone could relax in that way.
A few years after that meal he authored a book that has been
a “go-to” for Christian leaders for the last forty years. It’s titled, The Dynamics of Spiritual Life: An
Evangelical Theology of Renewal. In it, Lovelace makes a statement that
completely relates to what we are going to be studying this week. He says, “If
we start each day with our personal security not resting on the accepting love
of God and the sacrifice of Christ, but on our present achievements, such
arguments will not quiet the human conscience and so we are inevitably moved to
either discouragement and apathy or to a self-righteousness or some form of idolatry
that tries to falsify the record to achieve some sense of peace. But the faith
that is able to warm itself at the fire of God’s love and what Jesus has done
for us instead of having to steal love from all these other sources will find
the very root of it.”
We’re in our third week of this series “Full Disclosure –
Hebrews”. Remember the audience. They are Jewish believers. Many of whom are
former Jewish priests who are asking the question all of us ask in the midst of
our pain: “If God loves me so much, why is my life so hard?” And the answer is
to fix our eyes on Jesus. You know what happens when you do that? You begin to
see Jesus in all His beauty. You begin to see some of the amazing facets of His
beauty and how each one of them corresponds to our deepest needs. And this week
we will see Him as “Our Rest”.
A few weeks ago Chris Ansell preached on Sabbath rest. But
this week we go in a different direction. We go where the preacher takes us in
Hebrews 4:1-13 to find Jesus as our deepest Rest.
In preparation for Sunday’s message you may wish to consider
the following:
- How formative is Psalm 95 to the preacher and his message?
- How is the Lord’s warning in Deuteronomy 8 heeded by the 4th Commandment?
- How is our quest for significance and worth altered by rest?
- In these thirteen verses the preacher speaks of several kinds of rest. Can you identify them?
- On what grounds did God rest on the seventh day? In other words, why did He rest?
- Do you agree with this statement? “Our deep sense of restlessness comes from our insatiable desire to prove ourselves.” Why or why not?
- How do you think verses 12 & 13 fit with all the preacher is saying about rest?
- Where is the rest in verse 13?
- The preacher is clearly harkening back to Genesis 3 in verse 13. Why? What can we learn about rest from Adam and Eve and their hiding?
- The word “exposed” means “to be laid open.” Here the preacher is pointing directly to Jesus. How? How is Jesus our deepest Rest?
