Therefore, while the promise of entering His rest still stands, let us be careful that none of you be deemed to have fallen short of it.Let’s fear therefore, lest perhaps anyone of you should seem to have come short of a promise of entering into his rest.Let us therefore fear, lest, a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it.Let us fear therefore, lest haply, a promise being left of entering into his rest, any one of you should seem to have come short of it.
4 sermons cite this verse
… and the new earth. Let me give you a little homework assignment for later, maybe tonight or later this week. Look at Hebrews chapter 4 verses 1 to 11. And you'll notice in the writer of Hebrews as he talks about rest, it's a rest spoken of not merely as physical rest to be enjoyed one day out of seven. He's talking more there about a resting place, a resting place which was prefigured by the promised land in the Old Testament. And if we know anything about the promised land, it is a provisional place of rest. It's pointing forward as we read the whole of our bodies, the whole of our Bibles, it's pointing forward to a worldwide domain of rest, the new heavens and the new earth. And there's this wonderful line in Hebrews 4, so then there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. There remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. What's in view there is not so much a Sabbath day as a Sabbath place, a resting place, just as that was prefigured in Canaan, the promised land, so we're moving toward a place that will be a place of rest, that will no longer have all the cacophony surrounding us, which agitates us and keeps us in many ways from rest. …
… take care brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart leading you to fall away. So some people drift, some people fall away from the living God. Hebrews 4.1, while the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it. They just didn't make it. They quit somewhere before the finish line. Hebrews 10.25, let us not neglect to meet together as is the habit of some. That's one of the ways that we fail to finish the race. Hebrews 10.39, as the writer understands that they're facing persecution. Some of them are put in imprisonment. Some of them are facing shame and mockery for the name of Christ. He says, we are not of those who shrink back and are not destroyed. We don't flinch. Somebody comes at you with a fist and does one of these things and, ha-ha, made you flinch. Well, yeah, I don't like to be punched. Shrink back. They're shrinking back in the face of persecution. It's like you might be tempted to shrink back. No one else in my family is a Christian. Some parts of the world, you'll be disowned. There are Christians this morning facing threats on their lives. They've had churches burn down. They've had loved ones slaughtered. Most of us will face far less than that, but it hurts. …
Finally the Apostle says, "and joint heirs with Christ." It always adds to our enjoyment of any pleasure if we have someone whom we greatly love to share it with us. Then how much more shall we enjoy our heavenly inheritance because we are to occupy it with Christ Jesus, our Lord and Savior, to whose Incarnation, life, death, Resurrection and intercession we are indebted for it all! Oh, who would not be a child of God, to have such bliss forever and to enjoy it in such blessed Company? Yet is there anyone here who despises his inheritance? Is there anyone here like Esau, "who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright," and who, "afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, was rejected: for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears"? Is there someone here who was once a professor of religion, who has gone back to the world in the hope of getting a better living or a little praise among men? Poor Soul, pour Soul, how I pity you! But, O child of God, have you been kept faithful even to this hour? Then let Naboth rather than Esau be your model! Ahab offered Naboth a better vineyard than his own, or the worth of it in money if he would sell it, but he would neither exchange nor sell his inheritance even though his refusal to do so cost him his life— and it would be better for us to die a thousand deaths than to think of parting with our heavenly inheritance! Happily, if we are really the children of God, He who has, by His Grace, made us His children, will keep us His children! And He will both keep us for the inheritance and keep the inheritance for us! …
It is one promise of the covenant of grace, that the saints shall keep God’s commandments. Ezek. xi. 19, 20.—Yet that is no argument that they have no need to take care to keep these commandments, or to do their duty. So the promise of God, that the saints shall persevere in holiness, is no argument that it is not necessary that they should take heed lest they fall away. Therefore the Scriptures abundantly warn men to watch over themselves diligently, and to give earnest heed lest they fall away. 1 Cor. xvi. 13. “Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong.” 1 Cor. x. 12. “Let him that thinketh he standeth, take heed lest he fall.” Heb. iii. 12-14. “Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God; but exhort one another daily, while it is called to-day, lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. For we are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast unto the end.” Heb. iv. 1. “Let us therefore fear, lest a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it.” 2 Pet. iii. 17.“Ye therefore, beloved, seeing ye know these things before, beware lest ye also being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own stedfastness.” 2 John 8. “Look to yourselves, that we lose not those things which we have wrought, but that we receive a full reward.”—Thus you see how earnestly the Scriptures press on Christians exhortations to take diligent heed to themselves that they fall not away. And certainly these cautions are not without reason. …