Surrender Brings Rest

By Wayne Barber

The author of Hebrews is deeply concerned that the believers to whom he is writing might slide into the slippery slope of unbelief and therefore miss out on the rest that only comes from trusting Christ and His Word.

He says in Hebrews 3:7-8a, “Therefore, just as the Holy Spirit says, ‘Today if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts.”

He is afraid that when they hear His voice (not the preacher’s voice, not the speaker’s voice, but God’s voice) and they understand what He is saying that they would not surrender to it out of total trust and love. True obedience is the consequence of a surrendered and yielded heart. 

There is such a huge difference between surrender and the attitude of commitment. Commitment might yield obedience on the outside but on the inside one might still have a hardened and self-determined heart.

The story is told of a naughty little girl whose mother sent her upstairs into her own room and told her to get into the closet and close the door. The mom said “I’ll be there in a minute.” When she got to the closet, the little girl was standing spiteful in the closet. Her mom said, “What have you done?”  The little girl said “I’ve spit on your clothes, I’ve spit on your shoes, I’ve spit on your floor, and I’m standing here waiting on more spit.”

That’s the way some so-called believers view obedience—the mechanical reaction to something instead of the surrendered yielded heart of love wanting to do what the Master tells us. 

The author of Hebrews doesn’t want his audience of Jewish believers to do what their ancestors did, when they heard but turned a deaf ear to what God was saying. It cost them dearly. Unbelief is the lack of surrender and trust in what God is saying. In using Psalm 95, the author references one particular instance to show what unbelief looks like.

“Do not harden your hearts” uses the word skleruno for “harden”, describing a process over time. It’s similar to the drifting he refers to in chapter 2 when he told readers to be careful to pay much closer attention to what they’d heard lest they drift away from it. Hardening your heart is more of a subtle attitude of stubborn refusal to believe God. 

The Greek text really comes across more as “Do not be hardening your hearts.” This either indicates that they were in the process of hardening their hearts or that this was a warning to the effect of “Don’t you dare start.” Psalm 95 refers to a specific time in the wilderness when Israel ran out of drinking water and provoked God. They were always complaining and grumbling and they revealed their hardened heart by blaming Moses and demanding that God give them water. Verse 8 continues, “When they provoked Me in the day of trial.” The phrase “the day of trial” describes their whole time in the wilderness. But, the day that they provoked God was citing only one instance.  When we refuse to yield to Christ in our lives we provoke God.

The word “provoked” is the word parapikrasmos, meaning a bitter provocation, to the point of exasperation. This story is revealed in Exodus 17:2-7, “Therefore the people quarreled with Moses and said, ‘Give us water that we may drink.’ And Moses said to them, ‘Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?’ But the people thirsted there for water; and they grumbled against Moses and said, ‘Why, now, have you brought us up from Egypt, to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?’ So Moses cried out to the Lord, saying, ‘What shall I do to this people? A little more and they will stone me.’ Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Pass before the people and take with you some of the elders of Israel; and take in your hand your staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb; and you shall strike the rock, and water will come out of it, that the people may drink.’ And Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel. He named the place Massah and Meribah because of the quarrel of the sons of Israel, and because they tested the Lord, saying, ‘Is the Lord among us, or not?’”

So, in verse 8 the author points to a specific situation during their time of their testing in the wilderness when Israel refused to believe God and grumbled against Him.  The phrase “Is the Lord among us, or not?” so identifies ours and their blatant cry of unbelief. It is this unbelief that causes us to be refused our rest in Christ just as their unbelief caused them to miss their rest in the land of Canaan. 

Let me ask you a question. Are you grumbling against God, obeying only with a heart that is hard on the inside? Have you not softened to His voice? Then, I can tell you one thing about you—that you have no rest in your spirit and you are full of anxiety and fear. Enter into your rest in Christ by bowing and surrendering your heart to Him!

We’ve all been there, and we should know by now that the flesh will not ever give us the rest that we can only find in Him. Whatever is going on in your life may not change but Christ will so change you from the inside out that you will never be the same.  Enter your rest! It’s yours in Christ. He freely offers it to you if you will just yield to Him.

Wayne Barber is senior pastor of Hoffmantown Church in Albuquerque, New Mexico

Pulpit Helps Magazine, a ministry of AMG International, is the pastor’s one-stop-shop for tools to effectively serve a congregation. Founded in 1975 by Dr. Spiros Zodhiates, Pulpit Helps is dedicated to the mission of equipping our readers with a greater understanding of the words of Scripture so that they can adequately fulfill their calling as Christ’s ambassadors. It is to that end that we provide sermon starters, bulletin inserts, illustrations and quality articles on preaching, counseling, Christian living, and more.