Introduction
1. Quote: Anne Morrow Lindbergh gives us a key insight with these words: “If anyone sets aside time for a business appointment, a trip to the hairdresser, a social engagement, or a shopping expedition, that time is accepted as inviolable. But if someone says: I cannot come because that is my hour to be alone, one is considered rude, egotistical, or strange. What a commentary on our civilization: when being alone is considered suspect; when one has to apologize for it, make excuses, hide the fact that one practices it, like a secret vice.” - Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea (New York: Pantheon Books, 1975), 50.
2. Rf- Exo. 20:8-10 “Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your god; you shall not do any work - you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns.”
3. Modern day Israel still keeps the Sabbath. Beginning on Friday night whole communities shut down.
4. Illus...From Homileticsonline: “There is a natural rhythm to life. To work without a Sabbath leads to a dysrhythmic life replete with all sorts of dysrhythmic diseases - like chronic fatigue syndrome, pain, depression and low energy. Our Sabbath-less culture suffers from “timesickness” - where we have no time to do the important things - only time for frenetic running to-and-fro.”
5. But there is something more to this Sabbath rest than just the physical.
Trans...The physical is many times a metaphor for the spiritual. The writer of Hebrews refers to the failure of the Israelites coming out of Egypt and failing in the desert.
I. An Example of Spiritual & Physical Failure
A. They started out with a great deliverance from slavery ... just as you and I start our spiritual journey with a great deliverance from the slavery of sin.
1. But they provoked God by the hardness of their hearts.
What was it that provoked God? It was their unbelief!
They had seen miracles ... they had the fire by night & the cloud by day which represented the presence of God.
Leadership was not a problem ... they had one of the best ... a prophet by the name of Moses the great lawgiver.
They had been given God’s promise and even seen His power demonstrated in their behalf.
Yet it tells us they provoked God and because of their sin of unbelief their bodies fell in the desert and they failed to complete the purpose for which God had called them out of Egypt. Their spiritual failure led to their physical death.
They were not able to enter because of their unbelief!
Trans...The author (Paul) is telling his listeners not to make the same mistake. There is a spiritual promised land for us to enter. There is a Canaan land of spiritual enjoyment, refreshment and delight. And it is ours for the taking.
B. Canaan Land Rest
1. Fear Falling Short of The Rest
Hold in high regard God’s promise!
Illus...CCN’s Great Debate / Atheism vs Christianity / The atheist had no regard for the scriptures.
There are those in the Christian community who profess Christianity but live like atheist’s.
Not necessarily immoral but unbelief.
They hear the word (God’s promises) but they fail to combine it with faith.
Cf- Hebrews 11:6 “And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.”
Word Meaning: pi,stij pistis {pis’-tis}
Meaning: 1) conviction of the truth of anything, belief; in the NT of a conviction or belief respecting man’s relationship to God and divine things, generally with the included idea of trust and holy fervor born of faith and joined with it 1a) relating to God 1a1) the conviction that God exists and is the creator and ruler of all things, the provider and bestower of eternal salvation through Christ 1b) relating to Christ 1b1) a strong and welcome conviction or belief that Jesus is the Messiah, through whom we obtain eternal salvation in the kingdom of God 1c) the religious beliefs of Christians 1d) belief with the predominate idea of trust (or confidence) whether in God or in Christ, springing from faith in the same 2) fidelity, faithfulness 2a) the character of one who can be relied on.
2. And what has God promised? Much! Let’s just consider one thing that goes along with this passage. Rest!
Chap. 4:1 tells us that “...a promise remains of entering His rest....
Who was Paul writing too? Hebrew Christians! Christians who had been delivered from the slavery of sin and brought to the entrance of the promised land!
Look at 4:7-9 “...just as has been said before, Today if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts. For if Joshua had given them rest, He would not have spoken of another day after that. There remains therefore a Sabbath rest for the people of God.”
There is the labor (or works) of trying to earn your own salvation which you ceased from when you asked Christ to forgive your sins.
There is also the labor of struggling with inward sin (sin nature) that Paul describes in Romans. There he uses the metaphor of death to illustrate a cessation of following self versus following the Holy Spirit.
Here he uses the metaphor of the Sabbath rest to illustrate the need to cross over into the Spirit-filled life.
If your saved you had to believe in the author of that salvation for forgiveness and cleansing from the guilt of sin.
Question: Do you believe that God can cleanse by the fire of the blessed Holy Spirit your inward sin nature and utterly destroy its power in you? Do you believe that the Author of your salvation would leave you in the dry desert and not take you into the land of Canaan?
Illus...Numbers 13:25-33 “The Spies Report”
“We went into the land where you sent us; and it certainly does flow with milk and honey, and this is its fruit.”
Caleb & Joshua believed God for the promised land and the rest would not believe!
Hebrews 4:9 tells us there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God.
It is a place where labor has ceased and fruit is abundant. It is a place of holy communion with the risen Savior. It is a place of nourishment on the riches of God’s manna. It is a land where the chief entertainment is the enjoyment of God’s presence that results is dedicated service, and heart felt worship and praise. Most of all it is a land of love.
Trans...Would you cease from your labors and your inward struggle with sin and come to Christ by faith and say: Lord Jesus, I believe You can do all things and I want to enter into the fullness of Your rest! Cleanse my heart, O God, and fill me with your perfect love.
Conclusion
1. Illus... “A Land of Corn & Wine” by Rev. B. Carradine
“A LAND OF CORN AND WINE”
The caption of this chapter is one of the Bible descriptions of the Land of Canaan. It is a word picture of striking loveliness, and we find ourselves gazing through the sentence at a landscape perhaps as fair and bewildering as that which Moses looked upon enthralled as he sat alone on the top of the mountain.
The first suggestion made by the word painting, “a land of corn and wine,” is that of beauty. Truly, if a man could contemplate a broad country with hill sides crowned with vineyards, and wide plains covered with corn that rippled before the eyes like an inland sea, and behold it with undelighted vision, he would be a being whose perception of form, color, lines of grace and loveliness itself had perished by the way; if indeed it had ever existed. To such a person there is nothing in a gold and scarlet sunset; nothing in a
starlighted prairie; and nothing in an outspread ocean whose every rolling billow is crested with the silver glory of a full moon. A traveler in Palestine sat on his horse at the summit of a hill, and looked upon a broad valley four or five miles in width, over fifteen in length, and that was covered with an unbroken field of wheat. As it stretched away in the dim distance it reminded him of an emerald ocean asleep. Suddenly as he was gazing with a fascinated eye upon it, the evening wind sprang up and turned the surface first into ripples, and then into waves of green that ran in every direction.
Finally forming in long regular billows they rolled up the sloping hill on the brow of which he stood, and broke at his feet, a beautiful but noiseless surf upon a silent shore. Here was beauty in full exuberant measure indeed in the vision of a sea of corn set in delightful motion by a breeze from heaven.
In like manner the blessing of holiness or full salvation is full of beauty. Its language is pure, its conduct is upright, its pleasures elevating, its pursuits noble, and the whole life full of spiritual loveliness.
No land of waving green harvests, and blushing vineyards was ever as fair to the eye, as the countenance, character and life of one who is purified by the blood of Christ, filled with the Spirit and dwelling happily and contentedly in Beulah Land.
A second teaching of the words, “A land of corn and wine,” is that of abundance.
Even more truly and remarkably is the Canaan life one of spiritual plenty. The genuinely sanctified man has no lack. The soul is continually fed and satisfied. The cup runs over. The head is anointed. He eats at a full table not only when alone, and on the street, and in the great congregation, but in the presence of his enemies.
Spiritual famine is gone. The cribs and barns are full. He has corn to give away. People are welcome to come with their sacks, he will fill them and put a silver cup in the bag on top of it all.
Such a soul cannot be starved out by ceremonies, ritualism and dry preaching. The manna has been carried in behind the veil, put in the golden pot and is sweet and ready for use all the time. The garden is watered in time of drouth; the palm tree flourishes in a desert; the cedar waves on top of a rocky Lebanon.
A third feature of the Canaan life bound up in the caption of the article is that of gladness.
The Scripture says, “And wine that cheereth the heart of man.” In other words, the Holy Ghost takes the stimulating, exhilarating, warming effect of wine to describe the rich and overflowing gladness of the sanctified life. The very transport of the spirit, the abiding quality of a joy that is pure, unselfish, noble and heavenly, is bound to excite attention, and hold the gaze
with a fascinated approval.
A fourth meaning buried in the words is the evenly and properly balanced life, suggested in the verbal combination “corn and wine.” It is most blessed and profitable to have both in the soul and in the life.
Blessed is the man who possesses the corn and wine combination; who has character and emotion, principle and feeling, can pray and pay, glow and grow, shout as loud as God wants him, and yet live a life fully and truly up to the measure of his loudest shout.
And happy the church and community who have in their midst a people of God who are so genuinely and symmetrically redeemed, so fully and completely saved, that the contemplation of their consistent and beautiful lives is as pleasant and delightful to the spiritual vision, and even more so, than a view of a wide landscape awave with green corn, and adorned with vineyards loaded down with red and purple grapes.
“I am walking today in the sweet Beulah Land;
I have crossed to the sunny side,
I am washed in the blood, and my soul is made white,
And I know I am sanctified.
I am now going on to explore Beulah Land,
‘Tis the gift of my Lord to me;
I am tasting its joys, I am walking in light,
And the face of my Savior I see.”
