One of God's greatest gifts to us. We're going to be starting in Hebrews chapter four in your New Testament. We'll take a tour through a couple of places. At the beginning of Genesis, we'll go to Joshua and then Nehemiah. So a lot of scriptures.

Let's go. While I'm turning to Hebrews chapter four, which I marked it. So it's right there. There's this little just kind of brief recap to show you where we've been the last couple weeks. We've been in this Sabbath rest series looking at what the Sabbath initially was, what God had done, how he had set it up to be.

We saw in the first week that Jesus was lord of the Sabbath, he said, and he showed us that everything talked about in the Old Testament was either fulfilled in him. In other words, it came to its completion in his life and ministry, or he interpreted the Old Testament laws in light of that. So in other words, when we read the Old Testament, if people say, oh, well, you need to follow the commandments or you need to follow these laws in the Bible, I like to say, well, how do you determine that? How do you determine whether we live according to these laws and rules or not? And what we do is we look at the life of Jesus and how he taught about these things, and we see whether those were fulfilled in him.

In other words, did they find the ultimate understanding of that law and the ultimate completion in him? Or like, for instance, the sacrificial system is no longer necessary, not because the jewish temple was destroyed in the year 70 AD, but because Jesus was the ultimate sacrifice for our sins. And through that we find both forgiveness and new life. So that sacrificial system was fulfilled in Jesus. And then also we see that Jesus fulfills many different things, and one of which is he fulfills the Sabbath.

And we'll look at that today, that he is the ultimate Sabbath rest in our lives. That's what we're going. That's our ultimate conclusion today. So the road journey, the roadmap, the journey that we take today is fleshing that out and showing us how that's the case, because you can just say, okay, Pastor Nick, great, Jesus is our Sabbath rest. And I would hope you would ask the question, how?

Like, what does that mean? And so that's the question we're going to attempt to answer today. But if you're looking at the Old Testament and looking at the rules, the laws, the commandments, you need to either find out if they were fulfilled in Christ or if he taught them in a new way. For instance, Jesus said things like, you've heard that have said, love youre neighbor and hate your enemy, but I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who are persecuted, who are persecuting you. I mean, he also said things like, you've heard that it was said, don't murder someone.

And we're like, I'm one for one on that, you know, doing great. But then he says, if you've had these, like, hateful, angry thoughts against somebody, you probably had murder in your heart. Murder starts in the heart. He talks about adultery. He's like, there's a commandment that says, don't commit adultery.

You know, God does care about our sexual ethic. And yet he said, the thing is, it's not just like if you actually went through with that fleshly act. It started with lust in the heart. No adultery starts except in the heart. And then it moves to the flesh and into that nature, that act.

And so Jesus is saying, like, understand that law in light of how he teaches it and how he lived in a holy and righteous way. So those are just some of the things that we see Jesus interpreting or fulfilling those old laws and commands. And so we today are not under that covenant that the jewish people were under. They were under the covenant of the law. God had said, you do these things, I will do these things.

And God said, I will keep my end of the bargain regardless of if you break your end of the bargain. You guys might break all of our, your side of the covenant, all these laws and commands, but God himself will still be faithful to provide, to protect, to care for them. He did say, however, that there would be consequences for the Israelite, the jewish people, if they failed to do it. It didn't mean that God didn't fulfill his end of the bargain. In fact, he did.

He said, if you do break this covenant, then the pestilence, famine, plague your enemies. All these things will come against you. And ultimately, if you fail to keep these things, especially one of those, was their Sabbath keeping. Not just the seven day Sabbath, but the 7th year Sabbath that the land was supposed to have its rest. They failed to do that.

And so God warned them through his word, through the prophets, and he said, eventually you will be exiled from the land. I'll have an invading army come in. They will conquer you. I will not save you from them. Even though I was able to bring you into this land to drive out all the nations before you, I will not save you from this.

Your enemies will come. They will fight against you, overtake you and remove you from the land. And the land will have its Sabbath rests that you have withheld from it. So for 70 years the land had a rest while they were exiled into a foreign territory. So Jesus is the ultimate fulfillment of that Sabbath.

Rest is what we're looking at today. Last week we looked at how Sabbath was first, a gift that God had given at the time of creation. He blessed the 7th day on it. He rested from all his labors. And we're going to look at today in our scripture, in Hebrews, how when it says that God rested from all he had done, that everything he had done was completed, then all of his work was finished.

But when mankind sinned and when mankind worked against God, then at that point there was some toil or labor that came into place and that our work began. But Jesus would ultimately end that work. We're gonna look at that. I know it's a little bit interesting, a little bit weird. The idea though, that the Sabbath was both a command or a gift and also a blessing, is that God will bless you when you work six days rather than seven.

His point is, you're not a machine. You can't just like keep going constantly and expect to be productive. That, that if you work six days and give the 7th as a day of rest before the Lord, that he blesses, that he blesses those six days more than if you were working seven days. It's the same principle as tithing. For instance, God says, I've given you everything you have.

It's all a blessing. And so when you take a portion of that 10%, a tithe or a tent, and you give that to God, it's not that God needs it. He said, if I was hungry, I wouldn't tell you. He says, I have cattle on a thousand hills. In other words, I'm like the best rancher ever, I guess.

You know, like for an agrarian society, raising animals, that's a lot of cattle. And God's saying like, you think you're, you know, you rich guys think you're big, you know, you billionaires today, you know, buying, buying all these companies, building rocket ships, I mean, it seems like the thing to do if you're a billionaire. Like we're either building a submersible that imploded or we're building rocket ships that explode. I mean, that's just, they get excited about these things because once you have a billion dollars, what else are you going to do? God's like, are you kidding me?

That's nothing you know, I've got rockets at a thousand launch pads or whatever. I don't know what the modern metaphor would be, but he's basically saying, I've got more than you can ever imagine. I don't need your money. Recognize that I am the one that blessed you with what you have. So when I request of you to give back 10%, what I'm saying is I can bless you to do more with that 90% when you recognize where it came from than what you can do with 100%.

Don't try to hang on to that 10%. Thinking, I need everything I have. That's tough in this economy, right? Like, I'm looking at my bank account, I'm looking at my credit card bill, I'm looking at all these things, and I'm like, I never wanted to be in debt, but I'm thinking, like, I got to put something on here every now and then, and eventually I'll pay it off. That's not a good way to live.

I know that. And yet sometimes we're like, well, the car's got to get fixed. You know, the things happen. You know, we got to eat all these things. And so it's like God's saying, even when it's that tight, don't start thinking, I can't afford to give back to God.

He wants us to recognize that all of it is a gift from him and that he can do more on our 90% than we can do on 100. Same principle between tithing and Sabbath resting. And so that's what we looked at last week, was that it was both a gift and a command, but that God blesses the observance of Sabbath keeping. So today we're looking at how Jesus is a Sabbath rest, and we're going to be looking in Hebrews chapter four. I'm going to read verses one through twelve.

It's quite a bit, and I promise you, it's confusing. And so, any questions you have, the good news is two things. One, we have Sunday school class after this where we can talk about it. Two, we've been going through a study on the book of Hebrews on Wednesdays at 11:00 at the pastor's Bible study. And I couldn't have planned this, but we are all set to be in Hebrews chapter four this Wednesday at 11:00 so it's like we got all this time to talk about it, so it's good times.

So, Hebrews chapter four, verse one, one through twelve. Is that what I said? One through twelve? Yeah. I went back and forth on how many verses to include.

They're all good, but had to limit it somewhere. Okay. Therefore we must be wary that while the promises of entering his rest remains open, none of you may seem to have come short of it. For we had good news proclaimed to us just as they did. But the message they heard did them no good, since they did not join in with those who heard it in faith.

For we who have believed enter that rest. As he has said, I swore in my anger, they will never enter that rest. And yet gods works were accomplished from the foundation of the world. For he has spoken somewhere about the 7th day. In this God rested on the 7th day from all his works.

But to repeat the text cited earlier, they will never enter my rest. Therefore it remains for some to enter it. Yet those to whom it was previously proclaimed did not enter because of disobedience. So God again ordains a certain day called today, speaking through David after so long a time as in the words quoted, o that today you would listen as he speaks and do not harden your hearts. For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken afterward about another day.

Consequently, a Sabbath rest remains for the people of God. For the one who enters God's rest has also rested from his works, just as God did from his own works. Thus we must make every effort to enter the rest, so that no. 1 may fall by following the same pattern of disobedience. For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any double edged sword.

It pierces even to the point of dividing soul from spirit and joints from marrow. It is able to judge the desires and thoughts of the heart. I think one of the key verses here is verse ten, where it says that the one who enters God's rest has also rested from his works, just as God did from his own works. You see, we don't earn our salvation. There is nothing you can do to merit or earn your salvation.

Now, I particularly am fond of what we might call a merit based economy. Like, you know, you work, you get paid. I understand there's exceptions to that rule. I understand there are people who physically can't work mentally, have issues with that saying, like, oh, well, then you're going hungry. No, there needs to be a system in place that handles those situations.

But in general, you provide something of value, you receive something of value. I like that. I like the idea that if I want to go crazy and work constantly and half kill myself doing it, that I do get financially rewarded from that. I believe that a society where everything is just provided for free to you, makes people dependent and lazy. And I don't think that it works very well.

Historically, we've seen that that fails every time. Every country that has tried that type of financial system in their country fails. It always turns to a gun pointed at you and forcing you to do things that you don't want to do. It doesn't work. We have problems with the way we have our system, too.

We have too many people deciding it should be a different way. We can't seem to agree on it, and we've got problems. I admit that and acknowledge that. But when it comes to our salvation, when it comes to having a new life that God offers to us, you don't earn it. You don't work for it to receive it.

You see, it's not merit based. God gives you salvation. You can't do anything to earn that or to be worthy of that. You're worthy of it simply because God loves you. You're worthy of it because you are a son or daughter of the high king of heaven, and he has decided to redeem you, to restore you, to save you from your sin, and to give you freedom and rest in Jesus Christ.

There are steps or things that God has called us to do. For instance, next week we're going to have a few people being baptized. Baptism is a command of Jesus Christ. If anybody wants to be baptized, and you haven't been, or maybe you were as a little child and you don't remember it and you would like to again, you can feel free to talk to me about that, be happy to add you to that list, and we'll talk about it this week. But baptism is one of the things that Jesus commanded us to do, and yet your salvation does not depend on it.

It doesn't rest on that. And yet it's something Jesus told us to do as part of our walk with him. It's another thing that we think, like, well, maybe I have to do that. You know, we can read in, like, the book called James. It was written by a guy named James.

And he says, like, he says, hey, you know, if you think that you have, you know, a faith that doesn't require any good works, I'm telling you, your faith is dead. Because of your faith. You do good things because of your faith. You work to, to help share this good news with other people. Because of this faith, you will do things to help pull other people out of the pit that they are in.

I was reminded of that yesterday when I saw somebody literally trying to steal our neighbor's trash can across the street here, which shouldn't be a big deal because, like, the city owns them, and so it's not really hurting me or them, but just the principle of it. I'm like, don't take that trash can. And then I recognized they were in a hard time. They were trying to carry a heavy bag full of something or another, and they were trying to get home, and they were just looking for a way to get it there. And I was like, I could just leave what I'm doing here and get in my truck and take them home, which I did.

And Amy was walking over, so we both got in the truck, and then I realized I hadn't eaten today. I'm like, well, let's go to McDonald's real quick, and I'll buy you breakfast, and we'll have a good time. So we got to knowing them just a little bit and talking with them and just kind of finding out where they're coming from. There was nothing about my eternal security, my eternal salvation, that mattered whether I did that or not. But because of my faith in Jesus Christ, knowing that when I was in a place of desperate need, he reached out to save me, that I realized these people now, it's not their eternal salvation.

Was that question in this moment? It was just literally, I wanted to help them get home. And so I said, I'll do what I can in this moment. It was real simple, and it didn't really. Well, I mean, it cost me a few bucks at McDonald's, which is way more expensive than it needs to be these days.

But anyway, like, I don't understand these things, but whatever, you know, so. But we had a good time with them. It was well worth it. But it's because of my faith in God that I do these things, and yet I'm not earning salvation. It doesn't earn me bonus points with God.

It doesn't get me anywhere. So we don't earn our salvation. And this Hebrews 410 tells us that God has already, like, he has wrested from his works. In other words, he has finished it. He has completed the work of salvation for us all the way back from creation when he rested on that Sabbath day.

He said, I've done it all. It's all done elsewhere in the scriptures. It tells us that the plan of Jesus to die on the cross for us was also hatched out from the dawn of creation. In other words, this was always God's plan, was to provide salvation for his people. So we look for our rest in Jesus Christ.

Now, going back, and you got to understand, the book of Hebrews was written to a jewish hebrew audience. It was written to hebrew people. So they understood the entire history of the jewish people. And as they looked at that, what they would have said is that there was one pivotal moment that they believed they, as a people, really received their rest. It wasn't when Moses led them out of slavery in Egypt, although that's definitely a lot easier, you know, being, like, camping for a long time versus being a slave, we can agree to that.

But they were in the wilderness for 40 years and they were not at rest there. In fact, there was a whole generation of people that didn't have faith in God and his promises at that point. And they said, hey, they sent twelve spies into the promised land, one from every one of the twelve tribes, and they went into this land to scope it out, and they found all this, like, great fruit and just beautiful land that would support what they needed. And they said, oh, it's a great place, except there's really tall people there. I mean, they called them giants, but, like, let's boil it down.

They're like, there's some tall people there. We don't know if we can do it, you know? And it's like God said, he's got you. He led you out of Egypt. You saw the plagues, you saw the things that he did.

He parted the Red Sea, and you walked through on dry ground. And now you're thinking, he can't help you with some tall people. Like, come on, guys, you know, we can do this. So there's two guys, Joshua and Caleb, and they're the only two guys that are faithful. And they're like, hey, we can do this.

We can make it there. And the rest of them said no. And they swayed the will of the people to say, no, we're not going to go into that place. And so God swore that that generation of people that didn't have faith in him would not enter into God's rest. That's what it was talking about here in Hebrews, chapter four, that God swore that they wouldn't enter his rest.

And so there's a moment where they think, okay, this is the point of entering God's rest. And so we'll look at that in a couple minutes in Joshua, chapter 21. But first, I want to go to two sections in Genesis. I want to show you what this rest didn't look like or where it started, where we weren't at rest. Cause we need to understand this.

If we really want to understand Sabbath rest in Genesis chapter three. You've probably heard of this thing called the fall of mankind. It's where God had created this beautiful garden. It's like an orchard of Eden. It's this beautiful place, and God gives them everything they need for life.

But then there's also this serpent that's slithering around in there, and he convinces the first people that they should go ahead and disobey what God has told them, and that they would do what they wanted to do. And they sinned against God. That was the initial sin, and that was the point where things went wrong. And so what God says to them in Genesis 317 19, God turns to Adam, and he said, because you have obeyed your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, that you must not eat from it. Cursed is the ground, thanks to you, in painful toil.

You will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, but you will eat the grain of the field, and by the sweat of your brow, you will eat food until you return to the ground, for out of it you are taken, for you are dust, and to dust you will return. So what's happening here is God has created this paradise for them to live in. He's provided everything they need. The climate's perfect.

The food is great. All the animals lived at peace with them. There was no animosity between humans and, and what we might call predatory animals. Everything was great because God had provided for this. It was a balance of harmony.

That was part of how he had created this earth to be. But when they, yes, it is worthy of praising God, because we're looking forward to the day when Jesus returns and renews all things and creates that paradise once again. But in the meantime, between that first couple pages and last couple pages of our scriptures, we live in that, in that middle point of time where we're looking to enter fully into God's rest. And where it started was when they said, you know what? Instead of doing it God's way, we want to do it our way.

That serpent told them, Satan, as we think of him. He says, you know what? What God's told you is because he doesn't want you to know some hidden, secret knowledge. That secret knowledge is that he knows when you eat of this fruit that he told you not to eat, from that you will become like God yourself. You'll become like a God, and you will be able to decide for yourself between what is good and what is evil.

In other words, you'll be able to take things, and you'll be able to sort them and say, I'll sort this one into the evil category, this one into the good category. And as you do that, you kind of make up your decisions on your own. Rather than allowing God to show you what is good and what is evil, you decide for yourselves as human beings what is good and evil. In that sense, you become like a goddess unto yourself. And so what God did was he said, now, notice he never cursed people.

He never did anything to curse them, but he did curse the soil, and he drove them out of that perfect paradise, Garden of Eden. And he says, now, instead of eating the fruit from these trees that I gave you, now you're going to have to till the soil. You're going to have to plant crops. You're going to have to grow them by the sweat of your brow. It will produce its food, and you'll eat that.

You'll eat the grain of the field. You'll eat the crops that you grow from the soil rather than from this orchard of trees that I have given you to live in. When I hear that, I think they lived in this nice, shaded paradise. Now they're out in the sun all day. For me, like, as a guy that did landscaping and lawn mowing and all this stuff for a bunch of years, I'm like, oh, any chance I get to be in the shade, I take it, because I've been burned by the sun a lot.

You know, like, I've been out in the sun so much, I'm like, oh, can we go stand in the shade? That's right over here. If somebody's talking to me, I just. I'd rather be in the shade. And now it's like God kicked them out of the shady garden and into the sunlight.

You know, it's the worst. I love looking at the sun. I just sometimes want to be in the shade. And now they're out there tilling the soil, tilling the fields, working. The fields are working against them.

The soil's working against them. Thorns and thistles are being produced and all these things. And so we look at that and we say, this is not rest. This is work. This is described by God as labor and toil that would continue until we look at Genesis 528 just a couple pages later.

This is that section that most people skip over because it's called a genealogy. It says, this guy was born. He lived this many years. He had a son or two. He lived a bunch of more years, and then he died.

And people say, I don't want to read those parts, but look at verses 28 through 32. Genesis, Genesis 538-2832. There's this guy named Lamech. Now, there's two different lamechs. One that comes from the line of the wicked man Cain, who killed his brother.

This is a different Lamech, who comes from the family line of Adam and Eve's third son, named Seth. And Seth was the godly line of people that Noah was born to. And we're going to see that here. When Lamech had lived 182 years, he had a son, and he named him Noah, saying, this one will bring us comfort from all our labor and the painful toil our hands because of the ground the Lord has cursed. Lamech lived 595 years after he became the father of Noah, and he had other sons and daughters.

The entire lifetime of Lamech was 777 years, and then he died after Noah was 500 years old. He became the father of shem, ham, and Japheth. Would anybody like to guess whether Lamech's idea came true? That Noah was the one that gave them rest from their toil and labor from the ground that God had cursed. You've heard the stories of Noah.

No. No. Everybody gets wiped out. God says the only thoughts of mankind's hearts is only evil all the time. Genesis, I think six six says that.

It's like everything in our hearts was just constantly, how can we do more evil than we've already been doing? How can we jump into sin farther than we already have? How can we get more people wrapped up into our evil, wicked ways? How can we invent new ways of doing the evil we're already doing? Does this sound like today again?

Does it sound like we've gotten to that point again? It seems like every evil thing that's always been in the hearts of mankind, now we have a higher technological way of accomplishing it. If you want to abuse a person, there's all kinds of tech that can help you do that. The drug cartels from Mexico have apps that they operate through. You can order drugs on the Internet and get it faster than you can order a sandwich from Grubhub, like, you can.

I haven't done that. I haven't checked it out. Like, I've just been told that, you know, so I can't verify that it's true. Although I did see somebody the other day. I think Ed was with me hanging out here, but somebody pulled out of that side road over here, and they had a little, like, an ammo can sitting on top of their toolbox on their truck, and it fell off, and.

And it had some weed in it, you know? So I'm like, I'm just gonna take that straight to the dumpster. I should have dumped it out and kept the ammo can. It was pretty cool, but I just threw it straight in the dumpster. Cause I didn't want to, like, literally be caught red handed.

But anyway, I just kind of threw it there. I'm like, I don't need this, you know? And so it was just like, that's a pretty quick delivery, you know, that I wasn't even looking for. But this is the world in which we live. You can literally order up drugs on an app and get them brought to you.

We're looking to find faster ways to do the things that we've always been doing as humanity. And I don't just mean, like, getting weed delivered. I mean, we're talking, like, fentanyl and stuff that people are dying from every day, and they're ordering it up on an app. Like, you might order a pizza delivery. See, the thoughts of our hearts is constantly, how can we get further into the mess that we're already in?

Meanwhile, God's saying, I'm working to redeem you from that and to give you the life that I actually created for you to live. So Lamech thought that his son would be the one, that in his days, he would bring relief from the toil, from the ground that God had cursed. It wouldn't be for quite a few centuries later that one of Noah's descendants would finally do that. Jesus Christ. But in the middle of that, we turn to Joshua.

And Joshua. I told you, we're gonna be all over the place. Joshua 21, we're painting a little roadmap here in Joshua 21, just a couple verses, verses 43 through 45. It's at the end of the chapter. This is after the Israelites have fought their way into the land that he's promised them.

They've crossed over the Jordan river. They've fought the battle of Jericho, which required no tools or weapons except them marching around it on seven different days. On the 7th day, they marched seven times. They shouted really loud, and the walls of the city fell inward. And they were able to take that city, put it to the sword.

I guess they had to find some swords to do that because they didn't start out with them. Isn't it funny how God provides? Anyway, in Joshua 21 43 45, they fought all these battles, and now it says, the Lord gave israel all the land that he had solemnly promised to their ancestors, by the way, that goes all the way back to Abraham, and they conquered it, and they lived in it. The lord made them secure in the fulfillment that he had solemnly promised their ancestors. None of their enemies could assist them.

Not one of the lord's faithful promises to the family of Israel was left unfulfilled. Everyone was realized. You see, he said that he had brought them rest. You know, the funny thing is, this translation doesn't use that word, but it says that he had brought them the rest that he had promised them. It looks like this moment, like the toil that they got embroiled in from the garden of Eden that they've been living, that Lamech thought his son Noah would bring relief from that, and they thought that Moses was the leader of that, but it wasn't Moses.

Now they're looking at Joshua, and he leads them in battle as their leader. The successor of Moses leads them in, and he takes them into this land. And when they finally settle down, it looks like there's peace on all sides, and it appears that they finally have rest. It's like when you move into a new house and there's some work that needs to be done to update it, and you do all that, and you move all your stuff in, and you get all the last boxes unpacked, and you sit down on a couch or your easy chair. You maybe turn on a tv or just sit there with a book, and you finally say, I'm home.

I can rest. That's what they thought was the case. But you see, just a few hundred years later, I'd already talked to you earlier today about the exile that had happened. They had been carried off into, first Assyria, and then the assyrian empire was overtaken by the Babylonians. And so for 70 years, the people of Israel were exiled from their homeland, and they were living in a foreign country until God graciously brought them back.

But at the end of that story, that story is told at length in Ezra and Nehemiah. We're going to look at the end of Nehemiah. This is one of my favorite chapters in the Bible, or Nehemiah, chapter 13, starting in verse 15, is Nehemiah speaking. He says, in those days, I saw people in Judah remember this. They've already been in exile.

Supposedly, this is the great. Like, this is a good reset moment for them to get everything right, you know, to really obey God and to follow his ways really well, Nehemiah had come. He'd helped rebuild the walls of the city, rebuild the temple, kind of shored back up and rebuilt. And then he went away for 13 years. Because he was a servant of the king in Babylon.

He comes back after being gone 13 years, and this is what he finds. I saw people in Judah treading the wine presses on the Sabbath, bringing in heaps of grain and loading them onto donkeys, along with wine, grapes, figs and all kinds of loads. And bringing them to Jerusalem on the Sabbath day. So I warned them on that day that they sold these provisions. The people of Tyre, or Tyre, who had already lived there.

Were bringing Fish and all kinds of merchandise. And were selling it on the Sabbath to the people of Judah. And in Jerusalem of all places. So I registered a complaint with the nobles of Judah, saying to them, what is this evil thing that you are doing profaning the Sabbath day? Is this the way your ancestors acted, causing our God to bring on them and on the city all this misfortune?

And now you are causing even more wrath on Israel, profaning the Sabbath like this. So when the evening shadows began to fall on the gates of Jerusalem before the Sabbath, by the way, their day started the evening before. So what he's saying is, as soon as it's getting dark, that means Sabbath is about to start. So he says, when these shadows began before the Sabbath, I ordered the doors to be closed. The doors of the city.

I further directed that they were not to be opened again until after the Sabbath. I positioned some of my young men at the gates so that no load could enter on the Sabbath day. The people who are trading and selling all kinds of merchandise. Spent the night outside Jerusalem once or twice. But I warned them and said, why do you spend the night by the wall?

If you repeat this, I will forcibly remove you. So from that time on, they did not show up on the Sabbath. Then I directed the Levites to purify themselves and come and guard the gates. In order to keep the Sabbath day holy. Now, here's why I love this.

Listen to what he says. For this, please remember me, oh, my God, and have pity on me. In keeping with your great love. And then there's another time, just a couple verses later. This is why.

It's one of my favorite sections. You guys are gonna love this. Maybe you won't. I don't know. He gets so frustrated and angry with the people continuing to find new ways of sinning in the way.

Well, the old ways where they keep bringing them back in. And he says, some of them I hit, I picture with a closed fist. Some of them I cursed. Some of them I pulled their hair out. Like, he just goes crazy on these guys.

And he's like, remember me, God, for the good that I've been doing? And I'm like, oh, man, you know, is that where Jesus got the idea to get the whip in the temple, you know, and drive all these people out? He's like, I'm just living like Nehemiah did, you know? And Nehemiah is the good guy in this story. So I love it.

It's a good time, good times. Fortunately, we don't see that too much in the church today. You know, like, I think it would make the news pretty quickly if a pastor did that. But anyway, the thing is, we're not so different than them. You know, we know, like, we know what Christ has done for us.

We know the salvation that he's offered us, the rest that that gives us. And yet we keep, like, trying to go back to either following rules and laws, like legalism, like Pharisees spirit, you know, we keep trying to either do it that way or we keep going and saying, well, I have to earn my way. I have to earn my sabbath rest. And meanwhile, jesus is saying, I am your sabbath rest. I am the one that you can rest in.

Because God had already completed that from the dawning of creation. When he rested on that 7th day, it was finished when JesuS was on the crosS. And he said, it is finished. It was not a new thing that was finished at that moment. It had already been finished since the beginning of creation.

That was a fixed THIng that God planned on happening. And so when this did occur, jesus was SAYIng, now the plan that the father has set in place is finished, and it is fixed. But we saw in that scripture, in Hebrews four, that Joshua was not the one who had given them rest. And it hit me something that I knew really well, but I never put it together with this chapter. I got a little slide that's gonna help you kind of see this.

But I want you to understand what the name of Jesus really is. You see, in hebreW, jesus name would have been spelled yeshUa. There's still some people that use that because they say, well, that's the only way we should refer to him because that would have been his Hebrew name. But our scriptures were written in Greek, and they spelled it aesuous. And the english spelling of that greek word for Jesus name is Jesus.

The hebrew spelling of Yeshua, though, Joshua, in other words, Jesus is Joshua. That's really his hebrew name. The way we would transliterate that hebrew name into English. I'm not saying you got to start saying, joshua is my savior. What I am saying is that truly somebody that spoke the hebrew language would have understood the name of Jesus to be Yeshua.

They didn't have a j in Hebrew. Somehow that y was kind of pronounced a little harder, more like a j, and it became, in our transliteration, in English, Joshua instead of Yeshua and Jesus. Yeshua, our savior, shares the same name as Joshua. Some of you are thinking, I made that up. Go look it up.

I promise it's not my thing. You know, I didn't just observe that on my own. When the writer of Hebrews says they didn't enter rest from Joshua, he's talking about the guy back in the promised land. Joshua did not bring them into rest, but Yeshua, that Joshua, Jesus, our high priest, he's the one who has brought them into rest. The writer of Hebrews was writing to a hebrew audience knowing that they would understand this play on words.

And here we are, like, having to rediscover this on our own, and he's saying that Joshua couldn't do it. That wasn't the plan of God. Noah couldn't do it. It wasn't the plan of God. The plan of God to bring us that rest was his own son, Jesus Christ.

And he is the one through which we find our rest. Our toil and laboring against sin is made whole in him. He's the one that has won that battle over sin. We no longer have to labor in sin or against sin. We have to remain in Christ.

When we talk about baptism, what the scriptures actually say is that we are baptized into Christ. That that is how Christ lives in us. If you've been baptized a long time ago and your pastor at the time didn't tell you that, you can believe that now, that when you were baptized that Christ.