Work to Rest

Hebrews 4:9-11

When you enter into the rest of God, you cease from your own works (Hebrews 4:10), in the same manner that God ceased from His own works on the 7th day, and rested. Entering into that rest is one of the hardest things that the believer will ever do, for we are hard wired due to our first father Adam, to “do”, and not to rest.

Adam’s sin in the Garden brought sweat to the brow and a curse to man that he would live by the sweat of his face all of his life. Where Adam had simply tended to the Garden prior to the fall, he now had to work the land to bring forth fruit. When Jesus travailed in His own Garden, prior to the cross, He sweat as it were great drops of blood. The mingling of the precious blood of the Savior with the sweat of the curse would forever free man from having to live by his work again. Any man who accepts Christ by faith can enter into the rest that Jesus paid such a steep price to achieve.

Now this certainly does not mean that man can quit his job and lay on the couch all day and Christ will provide. If a man does not work, he does not eat (2 Thessalonians 3:10), but it does mean that Christ has redeemed us from being a slave to our work. In fact, the work that is encouraged in Hebrews 4 is the constant labor, to stop laboring!

Hebrews 4 is the “rest” chapter, with the word being used some 9 times in that chapter alone. The framework is built around the children of Israel failing to enter into the rest of the Promised Land when 10 spies said that they couldn’t take it. Paul says that they failed to enter into rest because of “unbelief” (Hebrews 4:6), and that there is a better rest than the Promised Land anyhow, since David prophesied of a day of rest after Joshua had crossed the Jordan (4:5-8).

If they failed because of unbelief, then we fail because of the same thing. We must labor to enter into the finished work of Christ, not by our works; for that shows that we do not believe that it truly is a “finished work”. We must stop trying to achieve satisfaction in the Spirit by our own efforts. These efforts, while genuine, only show that we are trusting in our own ability to save, and not fully trusting in His ability.

God’s work of creation was a perfect work, as everything that God does is. Only when His work was completely finished, and that work was deemed “good”, could God rest on the 7th day. Christ’s work of redemption was a perfect work as well. Only when He said, “It is finished” could Jesus hang His head and “give up the ghost”. While all other priests never sat down (there were no chairs in the tabernacle), our High Priest Jesus has sit down at the right hand of the Father, and is resting in His finished work. We have been saved so that we can “sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:6).

Believer, rest in His finished work today. May your only spiritual labor today be the labor that enters into rest. Have faith in His finished work and sit together with Him in every area of your life.