Jesus Is Greater | Don't Quit

I hope that you are well this morning.

If we haven't haven't met or had a chance to have a conversation,

my name is Josh. I have the joy of serving as

pastor here at the Garden Church, and I am excited this

morning to be continuing this series through the book of

Hebrews. Hebrews is one of my very

favorite books in all of Scripture.

It's complicated, it's dense, it's theological, but it also

has so much wisdom and grace for us today, and I'm excited to be

continuing our series. This morning.

We're going to be taking on chapters 3 and four and looking

particularly at the warning passages of he of, of Hebrews

this week. The big idea, if I were going to

summarize it into a couple of words, would simply be don't

quit. Don't quit.

Simple enough. And you know, I don't.

As I was reflecting on this this week, I don't imagine that any

of us sets out on our spiritual journey planning to just throw

in the towel. None of us dive in expecting to

to kind of fall by the wayside. But I think it's also true that

many of us can look back to a season in our life, to a

different moment when we we maybe prayed passionately or

sang joyfully or or dug into the scriptures eagerly in a way

that's different from what's true today.

Some of us have had an experience that somewhere along

the way of our spiritual journey, something happened and

we began to pull back in some way.

I know there have been moments in my own spiritual journey

where this has been true. Not at that.

Despite what I would prefer or you might think, it hasn't

always been up and to the right. There have been moments where I

took a step forward and then moments where I took a step

back. And, and one of those moments

when I, I took a step back had to do with sharing my faith with

sharing my faith with others earlier on in my faith journey.

My faith was incredible important to me as it as it is

today. And I, I was so aware of the way

in which Jesus had brought healing and unforgiveness,

transformation and goodness to me.

I just, I wanted everyone I knew and even people that I didn't

know to have that same experience.

I remember vividly sitting on the train sometimes and, and as

I would watch the windows pass by, especially at night when you

ever look out and see the city with just the windows ablaze

from hundreds or thousands of apartments.

And, and I remember wondering, like, do those people know

Jesus? Like, have they encountered his

love? Like what's, what is faith look

like for them? What do they know about him?

And I had a real passion for, for helping more people come to

faith. And this passion, this longing

showed up in my everyday practices.

I remember one thing that I did for for a number of years was

anytime I was out to eat at a restaurant, when the server

would take our order, I would say, hey, it's my custom to kind

of pray for my food before the meal.

Is there anything that I could pray for you about?

And, and very, very often that led to just deep heartfelt

conversations where people would share things that they were

going through or struggling with and, and we would have these

moments of prayer together. And then there was another

season that came a little bit later where there was some

friction, like some things hit in different ways that they

caused me to begin to pull back. I remember vividly, I was in JP

at a restaurant, same thing as always.

The server took my order. I said, hey, is there anything

that I could pray for you about? And I just, you know, the guy

looked like he'd been punched in the gut.

He just bristled. No, he kind of barked at me.

And then the whole rest of the meal was a little bit

uncomfortable. I was like, is my food going to

get spit in? Like, what's going on here?

Obviously, this person did not appreciate my question.

This is just one instance. I had dozens and dozens of these

conversations, but there was something about that experience

that kind of made me take a step back.

I started to become more cautious.

There were other things too, but over a period of time, this

posture where I was constantly kind of opening up spiritual

questions and conversations and and, and bringing parts of my

own faith life into dialogue with people who were far from

God. That kind of kind of waned for a

season. And I remember really vividly,

it kind of came into my awareness.

The shift that had occurred, something that had kind of

happened more gradually wasn't super conscious when I had a

conversation with a really close non Christian friend who

basically told Ally and myself, She said, you know, I've noticed

that you don't ever talk about your faith around me.

And we have these other mutual friends.

I know they're Christian too, and they're constantly kind of

bringing up their faith or kind of talking about it in passing.

And you don't ever do that. And she she was kind of like

irritated, almost hurt. She said, hey, I care about you.

I care about what's true in your life.

I'm not like asking you to evangelize me or something.

But but it seems to me that you're withholding this whole

part of your life that I know is deeply important to you.

And I feel like I'm missing out on something.

What gifts? And in that moment, first of

all, I was just incredibly moved by her care and and and value

for the friendship and all the different parts of our

relationship. But more so, I felt honestly

really convicted. I started to ask my like, what

did happen? Like how, how did I get here to

this point where something that had felt so natural, such a a

value started to shift in in chapters 3 and four of the

Hebrews, the Epistle to the Hebrews, we find the writer is

addressing something of a similar dynamic.

As we discussed last week, that the audience of this letter are

are Jewish Christians. These are people who grew up

attending synagogue and studying Torah and following the law of

Moses. They had, of course, come to a

believe that Jesus was the long-awaited Jewish Messiah that

they had been waiting for. And they were stoked.

They jumped into faith wholeheartedly and with great

enthusiasm and zeal. But then as we continue to look

at this letter and notice the different parts of it, it

becomes very clear, especially from some things later that we

see in Chapter 10, that they had hit some obstacles.

They had initially started out with this great fire and then

there was some friction. In Hebrews chapter 10, we read

Hebrews 10 · chapter mention

that that they had had an experience in verse 25 where

some of them had had kind of stopped meeting together.

And this came because they had endured, the text tells us,

public reproach and suffering. They had been shamed for their

faith. Some of them, we find, had had

their property seized. Others had even gone to prison

for their faith. There had been some real

persecution, some friction which hit this initially fiery and

zealous faith. And it caused them to fade a

bit, to take a step back. The the pressure of of a society

which didn't agree with their views, didn't believe the same

things that they did. And, and often where when they

were vocal or outspoken or direct about their faith, they

actually experienced social prices began to wear on them.

Now, they weren't renouncing Jesus outright.

They weren't denying Christ, but they were definitely

recalibrating things to see if they could just reduce the cost

of following him. They'd stopped gathering with

other Christians. They, they began to wonder,

like, maybe we could just kind of, you know, privately follow

Jesus without really talking about it publicly.

And while their exact situation is different from ours, I

believe this pattern, this same dynamic is alive and well in the

21st century in our zip code. The writer of the Hebrews speaks

with urgency in chapters 3 and four, He addresses this

challenge with a pretty fierce exhortation.

He tells them to persevere, to keep going, to not quit.

And to do so, he uses an illustration that would have

been burned into his reader's cultural memory.

He references the the story from Toran and articulated in Psalm

95 to to talk about the story of how their ancestors, the

Israelites, faded in the wilderness and now their

community had been rescued or liberated, as you'll remember,

from Egypt. They've been brought out of

slavery. They've been sustained by the

hand of God, but as they walked through the wilderness, they got

to this place of promise, this land that God was leading them

to, the land of Abraham, the land of their forefathers.

And right on the precipice, just as they were about to cross the

threshold and enter in, they stopped.

They turned around, see the scouts had come back and and

named, hey, there are giants in the land ahead.

The cities are fortified like this is not going to be an easy

thing. There's going to be risk

involved. There's going to be cost

involved. And at that decisive moment,

they they looked at the giants and forgot the deliverer.

They stopped short of entering into the promise.

This is what he's referring to when he quotes Psalm 35 or 95

rather saying do not harden your hearts as you did in the

rebellion during the time of testing in the wilderness where

your ancestors tested and tried me though for 30-40 years, they

saw what I did. I declared an oath in my anger.

They shall never enter my rest. These believers had seen what

God had done. They had experience of God

delivering them, but then when it came to a decisive moment,

they they pulled back. They decided to settle for the

safety of the wilderness. Some of the Union began

clamoring for the old days of slavery in Egypt rather than

pushing through and entering in to rest.

And the consequences that we see here in chapter 3, the writer

records were grim. They heard his voice, but they

hardened their hearts. He writes in verse 15.

And as a result, in verse 19, we read that their bodies perished

in the wilderness. They were not able to enter

because of their unbelief. In 1975, Kodak was synonymous

with photography. Over 70% of all cameras made,

over 80% of all film that was on the market was produced by this

one single company. And with an R&D budget that was

in the hundreds of millions of dollars, they were on the

cutting edge, poised to enter the future.

And that's when a young engineer at Kodak, in an attempt to

develop a new light sensing chip, built the first ever

digital camera. Now this prototype all the way

back in 1975 was not yet production ready.

And admittedly it was large and clunky.

It was cobbled together from projector lenses and spare

parts. It only had this tiny 100 by 100

grainy black and white screen that wasn't very good.

But even then, it was clear, digital is the future.

This is where things going. This is going to become the

technology that leaves the dark rooms in the dust.

But the path forward was uncertain.

Kodak had the budget to chase it.

They had the talent to chase it. But would they?

The technology that needed to be developed didn't exist yet.

How good with the quality really be?

Could it be small and expensive enough to fit in your pocket?

Who would even want pictures on a screen?

These were some of the conversations that the managers

had. And so, partly because of the

uncertainty, partly because of the questions about how it might

cannibalize their very successive film business,

holding this technology in their hand, this invention that was

the breakthrough to the future, they put it on the shelf.

They chose to dig into the things that were directly in

front of them. They shelved the idea.

Of course, today, Kodak still exists.

They are a quirky outlier that licenses a few pieces of tech

and has an exactly 0% market share.

They missed the moment the future arrived without them.

Not because they weren't there, not because they weren't poised

to succeed, but because when they arrived at the decisive

moment, instead of pushing forward, they pulled back.

And this pattern isn't just ancient history.

It isn't just something that happened with Jewish believers

in the 1st century or ancient Israel long ago.

I think it's happening right now today.

Maybe you've even experienced the same pattern show up in your

life, like you jump into community and Oh my gosh, what a

joy. Like you feel seen and

connected, like you belong to something that is is greater and

and beautiful. And then you find out that

community is made of other humans.

Somebody disappoints you. You get to know somebody and you

find out that they like see the world really differently than

you do. There's some unspoken

expectations. Somebody lets you down.

Somebody shows up in a way that you read is judgmental.

Ouch. And so it's so easy, right, to

just take a step back, to pull back.

Maybe you've been trying to date in a way that honors and is

shaped by your faith. But there's a wasteland out

there, right? The pool feels small.

The apps are exhausting. And then you meet somebody and

they're great, They're charming, they're kind, but they're not a

follower of Jesus. So you start to negotiate like,

the loneliness is real. Does this make sense?

Maybe I could make it work. Maybe like I just need to go

back and revise my list of what's really important.

Maybe you're trying to practice Sabbath in a city that just runs

on hustle and ambition and, and you try to carve out that space

and your coworkers like literally laugh at you.

People keep putting things on your calendar and assigning

projects that are going to be due the next week.

You feel behind by noon. Maybe you step into leadership

with integrity and pay the costs.

You try to forgive somebody who really hurt you and find out

just how difficult that is. Fire, friction, fade.

It is so easy to hit the pain of life, the, the wounds of life,

the, the, the challenges of following Jesus and, and to just

like the temptation that we see here in the 1st century to say,

I'm not going to abandon my faith, but maybe I'll just turn

the dial down a bit. Like maybe, maybe I'm just going

to accommodate to see if I can be a little bit more like other

people. Maybe I can just sort this out

in a way where the costs aren't so painful.

Friends, have your has your faith this morning begun to fade

in some way? Most of the Christians I know

who have have have slid kind of back into an apathetic state,

did not get there because they hated God.

Often times it wasn't even a singular decisive no moment.

They haven't renounced their faith.

It's more like quiet quitting. It's just accommodation, a step

back and then to protective cynicism, a bit of syncretism,

Jesus plus the city's operating gods of, of comfort and status,

of productivity and autonomy. We get disappointed and so we

stop hoping, we get hurt. And so we stop opening up.

We get exhausted. And so we stop trusting or

asking for help. We, we get shamed.

And so we stop taking risks, we get scared.

And so we just, we reach for that which is the visible,

familiar, manageable, our survival strategies.

This, I believe, is the hardening that that the writer

of Hebrews here is warning against.

Friends, don't allow your heart to be hard.

If we miss out on, or if we allow our fire to fade, we can

miss out on the rest that God offers us.

In chapter 4, the author points forward towards what is possible

if the Hebrews do in fact, persevere.

He's not just saying don't quit. He's saying, hey, if you keep

going, you have the ability to access something incredible.

And, and in this chapter, he, he articulates it's, it's kind of

delicate. It's quite of intricate.

The three kinds of rest that are at play here as he invites his

audience in verse #1 of Chapter 4.

Since the promise of entering his rest stands, let us be

careful that none of you be found to have fallen short of

it. The first kind of rest that he's

talking about is the kind that we've already talked about here.

It's it's the rest of the land Canaan rest, if you will, the

the rest involved in a physical geography that the people of

Israel in the in the Old Testament came up to and and

initially turned back from failing to access the rest that

was promised by God. But eventually Joshua did lead a

later generation into the land. So if that was all we were

talking about here, you would think, got it, people of God

have achieved rest box checked mission success.

But the writer of Hebrews says not so fast.

In verse 7, he quotes Psalm 95, written by David, which happened

centuries after Israel settles in the land.

And David here is saying today, if you hear his voice, do not

harden it, harden your hearts. In other words, even after this

rest of the land has been achieved, there is still another

kind of rest available. To explain that, he points to a

second kind of rest, Sabbath rest, which we see here in verse

#4. All the way back to Genesis we

remember that on the 7th day God rested from all his works.

He entered into Shabbat to Sabbath and then set up a

pattern for his people that we too might on the 7th day rest

from work and enter into his presence.

This was built into the very fabric of creation that the the

the the way in which our weeks are set up a moment to rest.

And it wasn't simply about a pause from exhaustion, but but

the deep settledness of things being as they ought to be.

But the author also points us forward in verse 9 to a future

rest, a rest that is still even now open, available and

enterable by the people of God. Verse 9 says there remains a

Sabbath rest for the people of God.

The door has not closed. And in this case he's pointing

not only to the weekly practice of Sabbath, but he's also

talking about that future age, that space when we will be with

God and all will be right, where Shalom will characterize the

world. Here's the writers logic.

If rest were fully achieved in Canaan, David wouldn't be

inviting people into it. Which means that God has always

been offering something bigger than a land place.

He's been offering a person himself a future.

So what does it look like to actually enter this rest?

What are, what are we talking about?

For those of us who may not be that familiar even with a, a

practice of Sabbath, I mean, I, I think what a lot of us think

about rest, we think about PTO. We think about a vacation with a

swim up bar. Maybe we think about a nap,

right? And I am not against any of

those things. I'd just like to go on the

record saying I'm pro nap. OK, Like these are good things,

awesome things, yes, but but this, this vision that I think

we have culturally falls deeply short of what it is that God is

describing when he talks about Sabbath.

Sabbath is is a picture of what's coming, and it's an

invitation to live in the reality of the future, in the

present. Mark Buchanan talks about it

this way. He describes Sabbath as the one

day when we stop trying to make something of ourselves.

Not the reward for a productive week, but rather a declaration.

And here's what makes Sabbath so subversive.

Sabbath doesn't begin after you've finished your To Do List.

It doesn't arrive after all the books are closed, everything is

clean, everything is sorted. Sabbath comes whether you're

ready for it or not and invites you to stop even when the work

isn't done. Especially when the work isn't

done because as Ritual Otis talks about, like the work is

never finished. How many of you can relate to

that? Like the work is never finished.

There is always more to do, and yet once a week we carve out

this space to actually pause even in the incompleteness, to

recharge, to enter in, to have a slow meal with people we love,

to take a walk without a destination, to light a candle

for no reason other than to to welcome and remember the

presence of God. These are not like indulgences.

These are are practices that help to rewire and repattern our

soul on the schedule of the Kingdom.

They invite us into the rest of God that that isn't something

that we have to work our way into or fight our way into, but

something that we from Him receive not in a place, but in a

person. This is what the rest of God

feels like, Settled trust in His presence.

Life without the burden of proving our own worthiness.

Freedom from frantic striving. The exhale of someone who just

knows that they are loved. A reminder that we don't have to

carry the weight of the world. That we are worthy of delight,

of joy, of knowing that we are enough because of what Jesus has

done. Of entering into a space of rest

with our souls, with our bodies, with our nervous system no

longer ruled by the taskmasters of Egypt, but by the grace of

God. And this friends, is an

incredible gift. And also, I can say somebody who

often struggles to receive this gift, that it's hard.

Maybe you know this for yourself as well.

Because so often the ways that we operate on that we believe

are, are our pathways to accessing rest look like working

more, doing more, pushing harder, going faster, trying to

reach for other things. And so to actually enter into

rest that isn't manufactured by us but is received from God is

very counter intuitive. In fact, it can feel scary.

Does anybody else know what I'm talking about here?

This is the kind of rest that we are invited into.

Look, I know some of us have experienced this deeply.

Some of us, this feels fleeting. Some of us are like, I have no

idea what you're talking about right now.

So I want to take a moment just to pause and to actually attempt

to create for just one moment an experience of rest.

Go ahead and and just in your body, I'm going to slow down my

talking. I'm going to slow down this

moment. And I want you to just get

comfortable in a posture that feels good to you.

Like lean back in your chair, perhaps put your feet on the

ground, whatever. Whatever is comfortable for you,

for your body. Notice right now if you are

carrying tension in your body somewhere.

Maybe your jaw is clenched. You don't even notice it until

you pay attention. Maybe your your shoulders are

just tight. Maybe your gut is tight.

You don't have to fix it right now.

Just just name it and try to gently bring calmness and rest

to that space in your physical body.

And then as we, as we breathe, as we pause, I want you to to

not only hear, but to, to really try to open yourself up for just

this one moment to this invitation that you don't have

to save yourself. You don't have to prove

yourself. The world is not going to fall

apart if you don't check your phone right now.

Just whisper this prayer as you breathe in and breathe out.

God, I trust you help me receive rest.

So you breathe in. God I trust you help me receive

rest. Again, God, I trust you.

Help me receive rest. I want to invite you to just pay

attention to what this feels like in your body.

How long has it been since you've actually just been still

in the presence of God? You've allowed your body, your

soul, to come into the present moment and to notice what's

real. Friends, this morning, the

invitation for us, just as it was for the original audience of

this letter, was to enter into the rest of God.

And the key here is that the rest is it's not just a place,

it's not just a destination, it's a person.

Going back to the very opening of chapter 3, the first thing

that the writer here does is he says, fix your eyes on Jesus.

Look to him, look to him. See, Jesus is the place where we

can access rest. His argument at the beginning of

the chapter is that because Jesus has been faithful, you can

enter into rest, you can trust him, you can receive from him.

Jesus has already created Shalom, we just have to to

access it by believing. The writer is clear here,

though, that we do have a part. Don't fall short, he says.

Let us make every effort, he says in verse 11, to enter that

rest. It kind of sounds paradoxical,

doesn't it? Like make every effort to enter

rest? Like what are we resting?

Are we striving? What's happening?

But I think the key here is that entering rest isn't isn't

earning rest. It's more like receiving a gift

that has already been placed in your hands, that has already

been one for us, and then and then holding on to it.

Not drifting, not not dropping it to chase other things.

And persevering, in this case, I think, can look different when

when I think about persevering, the first place my mind goes is,

is grit, trying harder, muscling up, focusing, hitting that

willpower button and pushing the lever as far as I can.

But I wonder if very often the key to our perseverance isn't

isn't just trying harder, but it's actually attending to some

of these wounds that are keeping us stuck.

See for the the people of Israel long ago as they prepared to

face down giants for their for the folks in the 1st century

that this epistle is written to, they had some wounds they hit

some friction along the way that caused that initial fire to

fade. So I wonder what that looks like

for you. Like is there a place in your

life where you know that there's something that's unresolved?

Like maybe for you, that the the the problem in maintaining that

energy, that fire, that vibrancy is the fact that we haven't yet

figured out how to like navigate conflict with that person who

created the Ouch. Like we don't know how to

forgive or how to hold a boundary.

Maybe we were actually deeply disappointed by someone or even

by God and we haven't yet learned how to grieve, how to

process it, how to enter into lament and and stay connected to

Jesus even in it. Friends, persevering in our

faith, maintaining our vigor, pressing through entering into

race, into interest isn't just about training.

It's not just about intensity. It's also about the things that

addressing the drags on our soul, that slow us down, that

pull us away, that keep us from continuing on.

What does that look like for you?

Having a hard conversation, doing some forgiveness works.

This is not weakness. It's actually how we get our

legs back under us so that we continue to run, so that as

chapter 3 and verse 14, we're exhorted at that as we have come

to share in Christ. If indeed we hold our original

conviction firmly to the very end.

It's not about doing it perfectly.

It's about continuing to show up.

And so as we continue this morning and and enter into a

time of reflection and response, I just want to ask like, where's

the rub this morning for you as you think about your faith

journey, whether you're at the very beginning of it, maybe you

haven't even taken a first step of faith or you've been on the

journey for a while. And honestly, you're pretty

clear that you've taken somebody shots along the way.

A lot like this first community that we read about here in

Hebrews. What would it mean for you not

to not to lose that love, to stay connected to that

transformational encounter with Jesus that had changed your life

or or promises to change your life?

Friends, what would it look like to really enter in accessing

faithfulness by way of faith? Jesus is the model.

He is the example. If we fix our eyes on Him and

follow Him, we will experience that Sabbath rest, that Shalom

that exists only in His presence.