Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - The Rest-Giver

Episode Date: January 6, 2025

Hebrews is written to first-century, urban people who are so weary with troubles and difficulties that they’re in danger of giving up. What do they need?  It’s pretty obvious from this passage what the writer is trying to get across: because eight times in eleven verses we see the word “rest.” It’s not just a crucial message for them, but for us too. We live in a culture that’s probably more in need of this message than any other culture in history.  This passage shows us 1) the importance of rest, 2) the two levels of rest, 3) the ordeal you need to go through in order to get rest, and 4) the author of rest. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on February 20, 2005. Series: Christ: Our Treasury (The Book of Hebrews). Scripture: Hebrews 4:1-13. Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

This is Gospel in Life. The book of Hebrews was written to a group of people who were so exhausted by the sufferings of life that they were shaken to the core and were about to give up. In today's message, learn what the writer of Hebrews teaches to help keep them going. After you listen, we invite you to go online to GospelinLife.com and sign up for our email updates. When you sign up, you'll receive our quarterly newsletter with articles about Gospel-Changed Lives as well

as other valuable Gospel-Centered resources. Subscribe today at GospelInLife.com. The scripture is from Hebrews chapter 4 verses 1 through 13. Therefore, since the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us be careful that none of you be found to have fallen short of it. For we've also had the gospel preached to us just as they did, but the message they heard was of no value to them because those who heard did not combine it with faith. Now we who have believed enter that rest. Just as God has said, so I declare on oath in my anger, they shall never enter my rest." And yet his work has been finished since the creation of the world.

For somewhere he has spoken about the seventh day in these words, and on the seventh day God rested from all his work. And again in the passage above he says, they shall never enter my rest. It still remains that some will enter that rest and those who formerly had the gospel preached to them did not go in because of their disobedience. Therefore God again set a certain day calling it today when a long time later he spoke through David, as was said before, today. If you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts. For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken later about another day. There remains then

a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For anyone who enters God's rest also rests from his own work, just as God did from his. Let us therefore make every effort to enter that rest so that no one will fall by following their example of disobedience. For the Word of God is living and active, sharper than any double-edged sword. It penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joint and marrow. It judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.

Nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account. This is God's word. And looking at the book of Hebrews, we said that Hebrews is written to first century urban people who are so weary with troubles and difficulties that they are in danger of giving up. So what do they need? It's pretty obvious from this passage what the writer is trying to get across because eight times in 11 verses we see the word rest. And it's not just crucial for them, because we live in a culture that's probably more

in need of this message than any culture in history. Let's take a look at what this passage says about rest. We're gonna see here the importance of rest, the two levels of rest, the ordeal you need to go through in order to get to rest, and the author of rest. The importance of it, the levels of it, the ordeal of it, and the author of it. The importance of it. It's interesting, here in verse three we have a quotation from Psalm 95 where it says, as God has said, so I declared on oath in my anger, they shall never enter my rest.

That comes from Psalm 95 and it's recounting the time in the wilderness when the children of Israel had been delivered from Egypt and they're on their way to Canaan and they began to turn away from God, incredibly ungrateful. What's the worst possible punishment for that? The worst possible punishment, like I could imagine, is no rest, which means that rest is fundamental to our human condition,

fundamental to human life, joy, fulfillment. A couple years ago, a woman named Judith Shulovitz, who writes often for the New York Times, wrote an interesting article in which she recounted that she had a religious Jewish upbringing, but she rebelled against it. And then she found as time went on, she was especially, excuse me, rebelled against the detailed Sabbath observances,

so she got rid of that. But then she found as time went on, there was a problem, and she writes this. My mood would darken every weekend until by Saturday afternoon I'd be unresponsive and morose. My normal leisure routines left me nonetheless feeling impossibly restless. Then I began to do something that as a teenager

profoundly put off by her religious education, I could never have imagined wanting to do. I began dropping in on a nearby synagogue. Finally I developed a theory for my condition. I was suffering from the lack of Sabbath rest. There is ample evidence that our relationship to work is seriously out of whack. So let me argue on behalf of an institution that had kept workaholism in reasonable check for thousands and thousands of years. Now Sabbath rest, resting, is one

of the Ten Commandments. Now you realize what that means? A society that encourages overwork is as brutalizing as depersonalizing and as dehumanizing as a society that encourages stealing, adultery, killing. It's in the same list. Overwork is in the same list with those things. And Judith Shulavist, it's found herself sucked into the great, most workaholic culture in history and living in New York City, the capital of the most workaholic culture in history. And as a result, she was struggling because she realized our, as she said, you heard me read it, our relationship with work is seriously out of whack. Now why is it?

Why is it possible, I mean, you know, you could argue who needs to, that we as a society are the most overworked? That we have more of a, we're a more workaholic society than anyone's ever produced in history. I mean, whether that's true or not, who knows, but it's bad. Why?

Now there's two reasons given, a lot of people talk about it, and the two reasons that are given, I think they're both right, they're both true. The first one is a technological reason. Technology means that our work is more accessible to us and we are more accessible to our work all the time, so this is like no escape.

And technology's also meant the world has shrunk. And therefore, whatever product you're producing, you're competing with almost everybody else in the world to produce that product. And for all those sorts of reasons, technology has actually made work much more domineering and dominant in our lives. But there's also a cultural explanation.

In traditional societies, you got your identity and your value from being part of a family or a community. In other words, you got your identity and your value from being a son or a daughter, a husband or wife, a neighbor, part of a family or a community. We, however, live in a culture that is the most individualistic in history. We have freed people from assigned social roles so that

we can be who we want to be. But what that means now is your value and your identity is something you must earn. You have to achieve it. It happens through individual achievement. In our society, you can't feel good about yourself because you're somebody's son or somebody's daughter or somebody's father or mother or,

that's not how it happens. You have to get out there and you do it and that means our relationship with work is completely changed. At one time, work was just a way in which we got our family ahead. But now, even family is a way for us to have individual achievement your work is the way in which you get your value now It's the way in which you get your worth

By how much money you make or by the social class that your work propels you into or by your particular accomplishments and as a result We are tired There has never been a more workaholic culture in history. Not only that, things are reversed when it comes to work and family. As I said, it used to be your family was helped by individual effort. Now, family is a means to individual achievement.

Judith Shulovitz, just today in the New York Times Magazine, has written a really interesting example of this. She's talking about parenting and she says this, parents no longer set up metal swing sets in corners of their backyard. They hire professionals to erect sprawling wooden castles that consume half the lawn. Parents line up at 5 a.m. to get slots in just the right neighborhood preschool and bring their children to specialists upon noticing the slightest delay in speech or motor coordination. To maximize their children's developmental capacity, they flash baby Einstein cards at their three-month-olds. I'd never heard of these, but Kathy said, oh, yeah. This is the important point. In a society

that measures status now in achievement, in grades, awards, brand name colleges, the scramble for advantage is bound to propel us into over-parenting. Over-parenting, however, is closely linked to overwork, and it's harder to opt out than you think. For now, we use our children to jockey for our individual status. Everything is reversed.

It used to be, you know, I worked in order to get my family ahead. Now, I use my family in order for me to get the individual status because that's why we are the most weary society in history. Why we are the most workaholic society in history. Why even when we try to stop and we lay down our work for a day.

There's a voice inside that says, you're getting behind, you're getting behind, you're getting behind. We are in trouble. There's never been a society in which there was more deep restlessness, in which there was more deep weariness. And there's also, because I live in New York City, there's never a preacher who more needs to listen to his own sermon. Now, importance. Secondly, the second thing we

learn here is the two levels of rest. One of the things that's so hard about this passage, did you not notice it was almost impossible to follow its train of thought when you just listened to it read. You have to sit down and look at it almost verse by verse and the reason for that, and it's deliberate, is that the author is using the word rest, not univocally but equivocally, and for in very, very different ways.

In fact, every sentence, the word rest is used in a very different, though interrelated way, with the sentence before. And if you wanna be able to untangle it, you need to take a look at the different ways in which the word rest is used in a very different, though in a related way, with the sentence before. And if you want to be able to untangle it, you need to take a look at the different ways in which the word rest is being used. Let's take a look at a couple of them.

That'll also show us that there's more than one way to understand rest. First of all, the first way the word rest is used is the rest of the promised land. So in verse three, where it says, I declared on my oath, on oath and my anger, they shall never enter my rest. That's God warning the children of Israel

in the wilderness that if you keep rebelling like this, you're never gonna see the promised land. Canaan was a place of rest. Now why call getting to Canaan rest? It's physical rest, it's social rest. See, the children of Israel were slaves and they were being brought out of Egypt. Now when they were in Egypt, they were being worked into the ground and God says in Deuteronomy 15, this is an extremely illuminating verse,

he says, remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the Lord your God brought you out with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. in Egypt and that the Lord your God brought you out with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the Lord your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day. God says when you rest it's a declaration of freedom and anyone who overworks is a slave. When you rest, when you put your work down, you are saying, I am not a cog in a machine, I am not a slave to the materialistic society in which I live, I am not a slave to the identity system of my society, I am not a slave to the identity

that my society demands of me, and rather, I am declaring my freedom of my identity in God. I am not a slave. When you rest, when you truly rest, it's a revolutionary act. And by bringing the children of Israel out of slavery to the social and the wealth system of Egypt into a land where they could rest,

where they could put limits around their work, we understand that rest is a declaration of freedom. And that's the first way the word rest is used. Now the second way the word rest is used is when it refers back to God's rest from his work at the beginning of time. So you notice in verse three, four, five, it says, and yet God's work has been finished

since the creation of the world. For somewhere he has spoken about the seventh day in these words, and on the seventh day God rested from all his work. Now, we know when you go back to the book of Genesis 1 and 2 that God created the world and then we're told God rested from his work. Now that immediately is helpful because it throws into relief that there's a lot going on in this word rest. Because as soon as you think of the idea of God resting,

you begin to realize God can't get tired the way we do. How could God rest from his work? Does he get weary? Does he get physically weary? Does he get emotionally weary? I mean, you know, you can't even pump. You can't pump or hammer a nail without after a few minutes stopping. You have to rest. We physically

have to rest, just so we can keep on going. But God's not in that condition. So what in the world does it mean when it says that God rested from his work? And if you go back to the context, because this is quoting from Genesis 2, 2, if you go back to the context of that verse, you'll see it says that what it means when it says God rested, it means he was satisfied with what he was doing. He said it was good. He said it is finished. He was able to lay it down because he was pleased with what he was doing, and he was satisfied with what he was doing, and he was satisfied with what he had done, and that's what it means to rest,

to truly lay something down. Now, notice what we're seeing. There are two levels of rest. Just as sleep will not really refresh you at night, if you don't have some deep sleep, rapid eye deep sleep, rapid eye movement sleep, right? So external rest, physical, emotional rest from your labor is not all you need.

There needs to be a deep inner rest. And that's what you've gotta have. And no amount of vacations can cure your restlessness if you don't learn how to get to that. Now Judith Shulevitz is really, really good at describing this too. Very, very good because let me go on with that, this is not what she said yesterday about parenting, this is what she said two years ago in this article about the Sabbath. And she says, most people believe all you have to do to stop working is not work.

The inventors of the Sabbath understood, though, that it was a much more complicated undertaking to rest. You cannot downshift casually and easily. This is why the Puritan and Jewish Sabbaths were so exactingly intentional. Even our secular leisure activities cannot do for us what Sabbath rituals can do,

for religious rituals do not exist just to promote togetherness. They are designed to convey to us a certain story about who we are. The story told by the Sabbath is that of creation. God rested and we rest in order to honor the image of the divine in us, to remind us that there is more to us than our work.

And here's this, the machinery of self-censorship, the machinery of self-censorship must shut down too, in order to rest. Stilling the eternal inner murmur of self-reproach. Now that's it, there it is. Now you see what she's saying? She says it's one thing to stop your physically rest, you know, just stop your labor.

She was doing that in her secular leisure activities. But she realized that the deep inner rest is an absolute, is being at rest with who you are. The deep rest that enables you to put down your work and walk away from it is to be completely at rest with who you are, It's an inner thing. She calls it, she says what we got to get rid of is the restlessness, which is the eternal murmur of self-reproach.

Eternal, she used, I like that word because it means she sees it's a spiritual issue. But what's the murmur of self-reproach? The deep restlessness that we've got to find some cure for is the need to prove ourselves, is an unhappiness with who we are, is a feeling like I'm not okay, I'm not acceptable, and we're working and working and working and working to try to prove ourselves to ourselves, to others, and if you're religious to God.

And that's the deep restlessness that we've gotta get a cure for. Or put it another way, that's the work underneath all the work that all the vacations in the world can't cure. That's the restlessness underneath the weariness that has got to be dealt with or we're gonna die. No matter how good the work is, no matter how well we're doing it, we're going

to die. Unless we can get rest from that, we are a slave to our social systems, we're a slave to the expectations of others, we're a slave to our own ridiculous expectations, we're slaves. So how do we get it? Now there's a third kind of rest that's mentioned here. I told you when you read through, it's very, very, very difficult to notice. The word rest is actually used deliberately in a different way in virtually every verse. But if you go back up to verse two and three, we read this. For we also have this had had the gospel preached to us just as they did, but the message they heard was of no value to them because those who heard did

not combine it with faith. Now, we who have believed, enter that rest. Present tense, believing the gospel, brings you into that rest. One of the things that's so interesting about the argument here, you can see it down in verse 8, is to say that there's a deeper rest that you can only get to through the gospel, which is the rest we really need. See, down in verse eight it says, if Joshua had given them rest,

God would not have spoken later about another day. Now, the reasoning here is this, Joshua got the children of Israel into the promised land. That was physical rest, that was social rest, that was social justice, that was wonderful. Not unimportant at all. And yet God continues to warn them in, say, Psalm 95, many years later, that you still can miss the deep rest,

the cosmic rest, and therefore there's still a rest. A rest beyond the physical, a rest beyond the social. It's deep, and it can only be gotten through believing the gospel. We all long for a home, for a place where we can truly flourish and belong. In One with My Lord, a new book by Sam Albury, he shows how the Bible promises that there is a place like that for all of us, but it doesn't have a zip code. Instead, the key to home and the very heartbeat of the Christian faith itself

is that we find ourselves in Christ. For the New Testament writers, this phrase was so important that instead of using the term Christian, they referred to followers of Jesus as those who are in Christ. Jesus is not only our savior, Lord, teacher, and friend, He is also our home and our location.

Each chapter of One with My Lord is short enough to be read as a devotional, and in it, Albury examines what being in Christ means, giving us a fresh lens to view the gospel and all that it means for our hope, purpose, and identity. We believe this new book will help you grow in your relationship with Christ. To request your copy of One with My Lord, visit GospelAndLife.com. That's GospelAndLife.com. Now here's Tim Keller with the remainder of today's teaching. Now, all right, you say then, great, how do we do that?

Let's continue. The third thing we learn in this text is that there is a horrible ordeal we're going to have to go through if we're ever going to get into this deep rest. Yes, at the very bottom, at the very bottom of the page, verse 12 and 13, these are somewhat famous verses. I've known them for years and I've preached on them in the past, but I had never realized until I actually studied them

in getting ready for this this message how horribly threatening they are and they don't seem to fit at all with the rest of the passage the rest of the passage is about peace relax relax peace and then suddenly verse 12 and 13 you see what it says first of all verse 12 says that the Word of God the the scripture, is like an incredibly sharp sword. It cuts through everything. It penetrates through everything.

And it will get all the way down to the place where it will show you your real motivations, the real reason you do everything. And when you get down to that level, verse 13 says, you will feel utterly naked before God. Now notice how interesting that is. It says when that you get down there you will feel defenseless. You will feel stripped. And then it says you will feel that everything has been uncovered and laid bare. Now this word uncovered is a word that literally means naked. It literally means it. It means without a garment on, without a stitch on. What an awful statement. What is this doing here? Talking, connected to this whole idea about rest. It's an ordeal you're going to have to go through.

It's talking about the fact that you will never get into deep rest unless you come to grips with the experience of spiritual nakedness. Now when it talks about nakedness like this, it's clearly not talking about physical nakedness, it's a spiritual nakedness that the word of God can reveal. It's hearkening back to Genesis again. I mean everything practically in the book of Hebrews hearkens back to the Hebrew scriptures. And when you get back to Genesis 3, we're told that Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden originally were naked and it wasn't a problem. It says they were naked and unashamed at

the end of chapter 2. It says they were naked and there was no, they weren't threatened by it, there was no problem with it, and you know why? They were absolutely at rest with who they were. They were absolutely satisfied with who they were. They saw who they were and it was good. So they had it, they had it, they had the rest. They were absolutely at rest with who they were. But the minute, Genesis 3 tells us the minute we,

because that's what it's talking about, the minute we turn from God, the minute we decided to be our own saviors and our own lords, at the deepest level, we know whether we want to believe it or not, whether it's conscious or not, at the deepest level, all human beings know that they are radically unfit to be saviors and lords.

We are radically incapable of that. We're unfit for be saviors and lords. We are radically, you know, incapable of that. We're unfit for the job. And as a result, we experience, and Adam and Eve experienced, a sense of inadequacy, a sense of not being right, a sense of not being acceptable, a deep feeling of spiritual nakedness, and they immediately begin to hide from God in the trees. And they immediately begin to cover from God in the trees. And they immediately begin to cover up from each other with fig leaves. And unless you recognize that the experience

of spiritual nakedness, of feeling like I'm not okay, that I've gotta do something to prove it that I'm okay, I've gotta do something to cover it, something to assure myself and other people that I'm okay, you won't understand your drivenness, you won't understand your restlessness. It has to be revealed to you, you have to cover it, something to assure myself and other people that I'm okay, you won't understand your drivenness, you won't understand your restlessness. It has to be revealed to you, you have to see it, even though it's a horrible ordeal to have to see it.

Franz Kafka, The Trial, you know, a book that an awful lot of people still have to read in college, and it's about Joseph Kay, who one day wakes up and finds that he's been arrested for something and he's never told what's wrong, never told what he's arrested for. And at first he thinks, oh, this is, there must be a rational explanation. But the more he tries to extricate himself and make it right, the more trouble he gets into with the law. And though he never finds

out what's wrong, in the end he's killed. Now what the, now what the Cliff Notes say about the book, and a lot of you have read the cliff notes about the book, is that this is a parable of our contemporary situation. What is it? We think there's a rational explanation for everything. We don't necessarily believe in God. We certainly don't believe in hell. We don't believe in sin.

We don't believe in guilt. And yet, there's a voice inside us telling us there's something wrong. There's a voice inside us telling us there's something wrong. There's a voice inside of all of us telling, calling us fools, telling us we're cowards, telling us there's something wrong with us, that we're not acceptable. Oh, we call it complexes maybe, used to anyway, that our parents didn't raise us right or we call it, we call it that society hasn't treated us right. We have all kinds of explanations but we can't get rid of it.

There must be a rational explanation. We don't believe in sin, we don't believe in guilt, but down deep inside, we know there's something wrong with us and we are driven. And we're covering. Why do you, why do some of you, why could some of you never even imagine dating somebody who wasn't really good looking? Why is it some of you can't imagine not being really good looking. Why is it some of you can't imagine

not being really good looking? Why is it some of you are working and working and working and you say if I just get to that level then I'll be all right and yet you get there and you're not all right? Why are you such perfection? What is all this? These are fig leaves.

Do you not know? Do you see it? Until you recognize what the deep restlessness is, is you're covering something, you know there's something wrong with you. That's why you're working so hard. And not until you see that can you understand verse 10. See the Gospel, the biblical Gospel,

helps you understand this in this term. Look at verse 10. It says, it remains therefore a rest for the people of God. Anyone who enters God's rest also rests from his own work, just as God did from his. Now, that's interesting. Would that sound like St. Paul? Yes, it does.

And right off the bat, we say, well, wait a minute here. What's wrong with work? We were, by the way, we're going through the book of Proverbs earlier in the year. What's wrong with work? If you work at your job that's good. If you work hard to love people that's good. And it's hard work to love people. If you work hard to be a good person that's good. And it's hard work to be a good person. Why should we need rest from that kind of work? And Saint Paul's answer is, there's nothing wrong with work.

What's wrong is the reason for our work. What's wrong is when our work is self-justifying. When the reason we're being kind to people is so we can be absolutely sure we're okay. When the reason we're trying to be good is so that we can say, now people have to treat us good and God has to bless us. When the reason we're working is to get a feeling like I'm alright. That's self-justifying work and that will

kill you because you will never, ever, ever, ever be satisfied. When the things you're doing, when the reason you're doing these things is so you can feel good about yourself and look yourself in the face and in the mirror and see other people and get respect of other people and get God to bless you. When your work is self-justifying, you'll never be able to lay it down and say, it is good, it is finished, never. There's always flaws on it and not only that, at some deep subliminal level, everyone who knows that they're being so unselfish and caring for the poor and giving your money away

and helping people so that you can feel good about yourself, not because you already know who you are, but so that you can get some kind of self-image that you construct of being a good person, you know that all your unselfishness is selfish. You know that all your loving of other people is really loving yourself. And you'll never be able to lay it down. Ever.

And this is the reason why my old teacher, Don Gerstner, used to say, the thing that's really separating you from God and rest is not so much your sins, but your damnable good works. Do you know what he's saying? He says, of course you should repent for the things that are wrong. Go ahead, repent for the things that are wrong, but guess what? Pharisees repent for things that they do wrong,

and they're still Pharisees. They're still looking down at people. They're still always insecure. They're still anxious. They're still criticizing everybody, cutting everybody down so they can feel better about themselves. It's not the way to rest, the way to God,

is not basically, the real problem is not basically repenting for what you're doing wrong. It's repent for the reason you're doing everything right. The way to rest, the way to God is not basically, the real problem is not basically repenting for what you're doing wrong. It's repent for the reason you're doing everything right. It's not so much your sins separating you from God and from rest, it's your damnable good works. You need rest in those works. You need to rest from those works.

It doesn't mean you stop doing them. It means you utterly change. See, if you just repent of your sins a lot of people say I'm going to become a Christian I'm going to repent of my sins good. Do it sins are bad stop But just repenting of what you do wrong does not get at the deep structure of self-justifying work in your heart That's really destroying you Don't you realize that if you've been a secular person working like crazy and you say, oh gosh, I need to have this spiritual rest,

I need to get in with God, I'm gonna study my Bible, and I'm gonna go to church, and I'm gonna clean up my life, you're gonna be more tired. It's just the same thing. It's just a religious form of self-justification. It's just the same thing. I have no idea, and you and I don't have any idea, that the Chariots of Fire movie,

we have no idea if Harold Abrams and Eric Liddell were really like this historically. They were historic figures, they really did both run in the Olympics. We have no idea really what they were truly like, because when you watch a movie, who knows how fictionalized it is. But in the movie, Harold Abrams says,

I'm running the 100 yard dash because when that gun goes off I have 10 seconds to justify myself. He says, I'm working hard so I can feel good about who I am. But Eric Little says, God made me fast and when I run I feel his pleasure. He doesn't say I earn his pleasure. He says, he says I'm trying to please the God who loves me and delights in me and has given me this. One man running in order to be sure who he is, the other man running because he knows who he is, and as a result, the one man,

there are two men working hard, but one man always weary even when he's resting, and the other man always resting even when he's resting, and the other man, always resting even when he's working. Which do you want to be? Well you say, how do I get there? And there's a last point. And the last point is, the author of rest. Verse 13 has a second word in it

that is really pretty striking, and kind of scary. Notice it says, everything is uncovered, and laid bare before the eyes of him to which we must give account. First of all I mentioned uncovered is the word for naked but that second word which is called laid bare that is a great failure of the translation but Craig Kester in this really really fascinating and excellent new commentary on Hebrews in the Anchor Bible series, says that this word, trachalysdami, and you see the word trachy in there, had a very specific meaning.

This second word meant to stretch the neck back, bend the neck back so you could cut it and kill. And because verse 12 has the image of the sword in it, that's definitely the grisly metaphor that the author has in mind. And it was always used to sacrifice animals. That's how you sacrificed animals at the temple, was you pulled back their neck and you slit them.

And you know what this is saying? I mean, this is a far more threatening couple of verses than I ever thought over the years. I've known him for years. Here's what it's saying. You know, Francis Schaeffer used to say this, that if everybody had a little tape recorder, an invisible tape recorder around their neck

their entire lives, and all it ever did was record when you told somebody else, you ought. It only recorded the things that you say were the standards for human behavior. Not God's standards, not Mohammed, not Buddha, you. On judgment day, what if God says, he takes off the tape recorder, he sets it down, he says, I want you to know, I'm gonna be really fair

about this as judge of the world. I'm not gonna judge you by my standards or Buddha's standards or the Ten Commandments, I'm simply gonna judge you by your standards of human behavior that you laid on everyone else the rest of all of your life. Not a single person would pass that test. Not a single person would pass that test. How much less would we pass this test?

If there really is a God, and you know, every person with a heart looks out at the injustice of the world and hopes there's a God who eventually will put everything right, but if there is a God of justice we're all going to be cut off. And yet the very next verse, now I didn't print it because it comes next week and because every single person including me has always understood that verse 14 starts another section of

Hebrews, but you know what verse 14 says He is a high priest Go to him and He will give you grace and mercy in time of need Well now wait a minute verse 12 and 13 says that according to Simple justice we're going to be cut off. And suddenly verse 14, 15, and 16 talks about the merciful high priest. Ah, but there's the answer. We are not going to be the sacrifice because he was the sacrifice. Jesus was cut

off from the land of the living, as Isaiah said. Jesus was radically stripped naked on the cross. He was literally stripped naked on the cross. They cast lots for his garment. He was stripped naked so we could be clothed with the glove and glory of God. Jesus experienced radical restlessness, cosmic restlessness. On the cross, he's, my God, my God, why has thou forsaken me? He was cut off from the source of eternal rest. He was thrown into absolute, he was hell, in hell. He was thrown into absolute cosmic restlessness. He was so that we could have rest.

He was a sacrifice so we wouldn't be sacrificed. He was cut off so we could be brought in. He was stripped naked so we could be clothed. And when he died, he said, it is finished. What's finished? The work that every human heart is trying to do. The self-justifying work, he says, I've done it. How can you lay down your work and walk away from it?

Because you're absolutely sure about who you are, and you know you're delighted in by the only set of eyes in the universe to which you have to give an account. I don't know any other way except this way because Jesus Christ in Matthew 11 says, come to me and I will give you rest. He doesn't say come to that.

He doesn't say if you work hard enough and you do a good enough job then, no of course because you'd never be done, that work is never done, come to me. I don't know if you believe in Jesus. I don't know if you believe that he's done this for you. But I urge you to do everything you possibly can to find out a way to do it.

Because how else are you gonna find this deep rest? How else are you gonna be able to really lay down your work and walk away from it unless at the deepest recesses of your heart you've laid your deadly doing down, down at Jesus' feet, and you stand in him and him alone, gloriously complete? How else are you going to know that you're loved? How else are you going to know you're so valuable and so cared for that you don't have to earn it through all this rest, this work?

How else are you going to know unless you see that he's done this for you? See, I don't know if you believe this yet, but I urge you to try because this is the way to rest. And one last thing. What I love about verse 11 is it indicates that there's actually something in the future. See, in verse 3 it says, now we who have believed the gospel enter that rest. But down in verse 11 it says, let us therefore make every effort to enter that rest.

Now verse three, it's a present tense. When I believe the gospel, I get it. But verse 11 indicates that it's in the future, and of course it is. Because the full rest, of course, is the new heavens and new earth, wherein dwells righteousness, the ultimate promised land. But I think it's also saying, you know,

you never get all the rest, you have to keep going back to it all the time. You have to keep going back to the gospel to get rest. You know what it's like to be in a house that's really cold? You know, if you're sitting by a wonderful, beautiful, bright fire, the rest of the house could be getting really cold and you don't even know it. Now when you walk away from the fire into the rest of the house, you, bright fire. The rest of the house could be getting really cold and you don't even know it. Now when you walk away from the fire

and to the rest of the house, you're suddenly freezing, what are you gonna do? Well some of us just start to jump around. Of course if you're really active, you get a certain amount of warmth, but that never really helps. You ought to go back to the fire if you want to write or if you want to do some kind of work.

I find this, that the gospel is like a fire in my life and sometimes other things in my life You know the rest of the house gets kind of cold that is to say when I and I have a lot of self-justifying Self-justification still in my heart like you do I mean the natural default mode of the human heart is to forget the gospel and go back to self-justification Now you kind of mask that when things are going well in your life But as soon as you have a failure as soon as you have a failure, as soon as you have some criticism, or as soon as something goes wrong in your life, you know what, I'll tell you what I do, I start making longer lists.

Well, I got to get to a lot of other things, and I can do this, and I can do this, and I start working longer hours. I'm running around and jumping around, I should go back to the fire, and remind myself of who I am, and Richard Loveless puts it like this, 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 either to discouragement and apathy

or to a self-righteousness or some form of idolatry which tries to falsify the record to achieve some sense of peace. But the faith, the gospel faith that is able to warm itself at the fire of God's love and of what Jesus has done for us, instead of having to steal love and self-acceptance from all these other sources, is the very root of peace. Go to the fire. Get close. It's merry, it's bright. Warm yourself at it.

And you can face anything. And then you can lay your work down. Let us pray. Thank you Father for giving us these great truths and this great analysis. Thank you that your word, your gospel can show us the foundations of our lives and reveal the roots of our motives and why we are doing what we're doing and help us to take this analysis, this diagnosis, and take the prescription, which is the love of God in Christ, his death on the cross on our behalf, and the gospel.

Give us the deep rest that comes from knowing that. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Thanks for listening to today's teaching. It's our prayer that you were encouraged by it and that it equips you to know more about God's Word. You can find more resources from Tim Keller at GospelInLife.com. Just subscribe to the Gospel in Life newsletter to receive free articles, sermons, devotionals, and other resources. Again, it's all at GospelInLife.com. You can also stay connected with us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter.

Today's sermon was recorded in 2005. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel in Life podcast were preached from 1989 to 2017 while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.