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This past weekend was stressful, hectic, and exhausting.

I worked from 8am to 11pm Saturday and Sunday (with a few nice breaks) setting up for Compass Bible Church’s Fall Fest.

You think that’s a brutal shift?

I had it easy.

Some of my friends on the Facilities Team worked  from 7pm Saturday to 9am Monday morning. They stayed overnight at the Fall Fest site two nights in a row. Talk about being exhausted!

And mind you, this wasn’t “sitting behind a counter taking orders” work; this was full on manual labor. We lifted platforms, moved coolers, set up tents, and constructed cement-filled buckets (which were actually fun to make). We had cuts, bruises, swollen ankles, and headaches.

Two words would sum up how we felt after working our shifts: “Nap Time”.

We wanted to lie down, put our heads on top of pillows, and crash. We yearned for our rest.

But as nice as a cold pillow and a comfy bed would be after a long weekend of work, there is a much more satisfying rest that the Bible outlines for us in the book of Hebrews.

Hebrews 4:9-10 tells us that

“…there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his.”

If we are the people of God, bought by the blood of Jesus Christ, there remains for us a Sabbath rest. This rest is much more than a physical rest, it is an eternal, spiritual rest; it is, as verse 10 tells us, the rest of God.

Just as God rested from His work of creation on the seventh day, so we too will rest from our work here on this earth when we go to be with Him.

Our bones will ache no more, our headaches will be permanently done away with, our droopy eyes will never shut themselves in sleep.

Let me ask you, do you get more excited about going to sleep after a long day at school than you do about meeting your Lord and Savior and resting with your Creator forever and ever?

Do you wake up looking forward to the time when you can kick back at the end of the day and watch television, rather than looking forward to when you will see Jesus Christ face to face?

If you’re anything like me, the unfortunate answer to both of those questions is sometimes “Yes”.

Why is it this way? I think a huge reason (at least for me) why we aren’t always looking forward to our everlasting rest is because we are truly ignorant of how awesome our heavenly rest will be.

The book of Hebrews is very clear that our rest with God, our eternal stay in heaven, will be much better than any rest that we will have here on earth.

Hebrews 4:10 tells us that we will rest from our works, that is, we will never have to toil and work like we have in this life again. This rest isn’t a temporary, eight-hour break from 10pm to 6am. It is an eternal and perfect rest. The pains of homework, tests, and studying will be gone. The long, eight-hour shifts at work will vanish.

Our eternal rest isn’t in our houses either, nor is it in a five-star, beachfront hotel. It’s in a far better place, as Hebrews 12:22-24 tells us.

“But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.”

When we reach our rest we will come to:

- the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem (also called New Jerusalem)

- innumerable angels in festal gathering (a gathering infinitely better than the one at Fall Fest, as incredible as it was)

- the assembly of the firstborn enrolled in heaven (all Christians from all of time)

- a judge who is God of all

- the spirits of the righteous made perfect (most likely the saints who died before Christ came, see Hebrews 11)

- last but not least, the Lord Jesus Christ, the mediator of the new covenant, who shed His blood for the sins of mankind

This picture that the author of Hebrews gives should get us absolutely stoked for heaven! This heavenly rest absolutely blows any type of rest here on earth completely out of the water.

Rather than getting excited for sleep, we as the people of God need to get excited about our heavenly rest. We need to live each day hoping and praying for the time when we will return to the Lord.

May you and I seek the things not of this world, but rather the things of the kingdom of God. May we not be satisfied in the fleeting pleasures of this life, but instead glory and boast and find joy in the God whose rest we will enter when we go to meet Him.

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