Jesus said, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest (Matt. 11:28). For those who are cast down in the despair of man’s working for rest, the infirmity of our flesh, the text quoted above is almost unbelievable. How can this be? Rest for the weary and heavy laden? Peace with God?
I will attempt to demonstrate two opposing doctrines regarding the means of receiving rest, covenant fellowship with God, and therefore the experience of salvation. One doctrine by the then Rev. Ronald Van Overloop, which doctrine is deeply entrenched in the Protestant Reformed Churches, is the experience of salvation (covenant fellowship) in the way of obedience to the law, by grace, of course. This way of obedience is the labor of man.
Labor! Labor! Labor!
Mixing man’s labor with grace and faith does not make this doctrine orthodox. It is the same doctrine of conditional covenant fellowship that the then Reverend Van Overloop taught openly, and it is theology that has never been condemned in the Protestant Reformed Churches.
The other doctrine of receiving rest, covenant fellowship with God, and therefore the experience of salvation is the truth of scripture and the Reformed creeds, that is, the doctrine of salvation by faith alone without regard to man’s works. This is the doctrine that Rev. Herman Hoeksema preached and taught throughout his ministry.
On November 15, 2020, the then Rev. Ronald Van Overloop preached a sermon titled “Calling toward Remaining Canaanites.” In this sermon he thrashed the sheep of Jesus Christ with the law of God for their salvation with no hope of the rest proposed. This sermon was the end of a Christless, election-less, comfortless, and hopeless series of sermons on Joshua and Israel’s conquest of Canaan. Ronald Van Overloop should have taken heed to Psalm 44:1–8, which is the Holy Spirit’s explanation of Israel’s conquest of Canaan:
1. We have heard with our ears, O God, our fathers have told us, what work thou didst in their days, in the times of old.
2. How thou didst drive out the heathen with thy hand, and plantedst them; how thou didst afflict the people, and cast them out.
3. For they got not the land in possession by their own sword, neither did their own arm save them: but thy right hand, and thine arm, and the light of thy countenance, because thou hadst a favour unto them.
4. Thou art my King, O God: command deliverances for Jacob.
5. Through thee will we push down our enemies: through thy name will we tread them under that rise up against us.
6. For I will not trust in my bow, neither shall my sword save me.
7. But thou hast saved us from our enemies, and hast put them to shame that hated us.
8. In God we boast all the day long, and praise thy name for ever. (Ps. 44:1–8, emphasis added)
The whole series of sermons on Joshua and Israel’s conquest of Canaan was an abominable affront to God and a denial of God’s sovereignty.
That November 15, 2020, sermon, among others, was protested to the consistory of Grace Protestant Reformed Church. The protest was met with what seemed like a fruitless outcome, but God’s word will not return to him void and will accomplish what God pleases. Before the consistory of Grace church even received the protest, the elders silently took the “Calling toward Remaining Canaanites” sermon off SermonAudio because the consistory had received so many “complaints” about the sermon. The other sermons in the series remained online, and the theology of those sermons certainly remains firmly entrenched in the Protestant Reformed Churches, so much so that it is profitable to critique the false theology of the “Calling toward Remaining Canaanites” sermon and to proclaim the truth over against it.
That sermon had more false doctrine in it than what is refuted in this short article, and the sermon sent the listeners down so many rabbit holes that the main topic was obscured; but the main doctrine of the sermon was that Israel and the next generation of Israelites were given responsibilities as means to enter into the rest of Canaan. The false doctrine in the sermon was not that God’s people have callings in the covenant of grace: loving God with all their hearts, minds, souls, and strength and loving their neighbors as themselves—obedience as a fruit of faith. But the false doctrine in the sermon was that it taught that the Israelites’ obedience—and by specific application, our obedience—was the means that God used to bring his people into the rest of Canaan, a type of the rest of heaven, the perfect tabernacle of God with men.
To serve his devilish doctrine, Van Overloop quoted from Deuteronomy 10 (the giving of the law to Moses) and Hebrews 4:11: “Let us labour therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief.” He quoted from Deuteronomy 10 to show that the responsibility of the people of Israel was to keep God’s commandments; and by quoting Hebrews 4:11, he connected the responsibility of keeping the commandments with the labor that enters into the rest. And he even called man’s obedience to the commandments the means of entering into the rest.
The primary focus that we want to take before us this evening is the responsibilities, the calling, that God gave to Joshua and the children of Israel, really the children of Israel not just Joshua, towards those remaining Canaanites. God will not leave him free of the responsibilities to serve God, but now in a different way.
This is an orthodox statement taken by itself to explain the theme, but we will see how Van Overloop developed this to make the obedience of man the way or the means alongside God’s work to accomplish salvation. Joshua was advanced in age, but according to the sermon, he could not be free of responsibilities. Oh, no! So Van Overloop preached a graciousness of God that supposedly took into account Joshua’s advanced age: God gave to Joshua age-specific responsibilities (conditions) that Joshua was able to perform. From cradle to grave, Joshua and the Israelites were not free to serve God.
After quoting Deuteronomy 10 and especially verses 12–13: “Fear the Lord thy God…walk in all his ways…love him…serve the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul…keep the commandments of the Lord, and his statutes, which I command you this day,” Van Overloop preached this:
God’s sovereignty, man’s responsibility.
God’s gifts and Christ’s merits does not exclude God’s use of means, does not exclude God’s gift of the use of the means of our obedience.
One more time: God’s gifts and Christ’s merits does not exclude God’s sovereign use of the means of our obedience. So as the inspired word in Hebrews 4:11 says, “Labour…to enter into the rest, lest [ye] fall…[in] unbelief.” Labor to enter into the rest, lest ye fall in unbelief, Hebrews 4:11. And that labor is what is identified in Deuteronomy 10:12: keep my commandments. God’s sovereignty never removes responsibility because responsibility is determined by God’s commandments.
After that, still more from the sermon: “So God sovereignly uses human responsibility—a responsibility that is determined by his commandments.”
As laid out previously in Sword and Shield, this sermon continued with one of the clearest statements of two-track theology that has ever been preached in the Protestant Reformed Churches since 1953. The whole sermon—and the prevailing theology in the Protestant Reformed Churches that teaches that the blessings of God are given in the way of man’s obedience—was the two-track theology and the synergistic doctrine of God and man working together by grace to accomplish God’s purpose.
And more from the sermon:
It was through Christ, who strengthened me. Not me. It was through Christ. And yet God commanded; I performed a duty. Two rails. They go side by side. In the wisdom of God, his sovereignty, our responsibility. And it’s all grace, and nothing but grace.
For Ronald Van Overloop and the elders at Grace church, the obedience of the believer is a rail that the believer rides to heaven along with Christ.
Ronald Van Overloop and the elders at Grace church said that obedience is “all grace.” This grace—which enables the works of the believer—is not sovereign grace but must be some other grace that is available, for in the sermon God’s sovereignty sat on the other rail. This is not Reformed, for Reformed doctrine is that all men and all of their working are hemmed in by the sovereignty of God. And instead of grace being God’s unmerited favor and the power by which God sovereignly saves his people and works in them all of their salvation and all of their thankful obedience as fruit of that salvation, grace in the sermon was God’s use of the Israelites’ imperfect obedience as a means to give them the rest of Canaan or to give them their salvation. So the believer’s salvation is dependent on his obedience as a condition. Joshua and the Israelites were not free to serve God in the rest, but they were given responsibilities to keep the commandments for entering into the rest.
The doctrine that God enables man to keep the commandments in order for man to enter the rest is hopeless, comfortless, damnable doctrine. There is no hope in it because there is no Christ in it. Is rest in the way of our obedience? Is our obedience the means to enter into covenant fellowship with God? That is exactly what the sermon taught, and that is exactly the conditional theology of the Protestant Reformed Churches today. It is a great grief to me.
So the question is, what is the truth? The burden of this short article is to attempt to explain the truth of our fellowship with God, stated as “that rest” in Hebrews 4:11.
Rest, to state it simply, is the fellowship of God. God is a God of rest. He rests in all of his perfectly accomplished work from all eternity in the perfect, triune fellowship of the Father, through the Son, and in the Holy Spirit. Rest is entering into the “perfect enjoyment of a perfectly finished work. That is rest. That is the rest of God.”1 God is a God of infinite, holy, pure activity (labor) in the perfect freedom of his eternally accomplished purpose.
God…with all his being, with all his mind and will and spiritual being, he always works to the extent of his being…He is infinite…activity. God never rests in the sense of ceasing from work. In himself…he is a God of activity.2
Eternally God works, and eternally his work is finished and perfect.
In his counsel…he beholds all the work, and it stands before him from eternity, and he rejoices in that work. That is election; that is reprobation; that is redemption; that is perfection. Don’t you see that? In his counsel he forevermore rejoices in his glorified elect people.3
Rest for man is only in God. God reveals that rest; and as a fruit of election, God causes his people to enter into that rest, into perfect fellowship with the triune God as God’s friend-servants. Rest is being of God’s party. Rest is knowing the one, true God and all of his goodness, graciousness, and mercy as he has revealed himself in Jesus Christ.
Contrast this with the labor of man to enter into the rest! The labor of man to enter rest is the endless toil of man, including the labor of the Christian man, in an attempt to save himself or to stay in God’s favor by keeping the commandments.
Labor!
There is no rest for man in his labor.
Labor! Labor!
The whole world of man labors under this bondage to save himself. There is no hope in the labor of man. There is no spiritual rest for man in his labor.
Labor! Labor! Labor!
Labor is all man can do. But man cannot enter the rest with his labor. There is no sabbath rest for man. A man will labor six days and never enter the seventh day of sabbath rest. Indeed, man cannot enter the rest. There is only bondage left for man. Man is full of unrest. All of his laboring serves sin, Satan, the world, and man’s own sinful flesh. It is the labor of vanity. It is the labor of antichrist.
The world of man can only follow the six and never, never reach the seven. Labor, labor and toil and toil and sorrow without rest. That is the man of sin—666—labor without rest. The week without the sabbath that is characteristic of the whole world. Because the sabbath is lost.4
Herman Hoeksema aptly summarized the labor of man for salvation in Reformed Dogmatics, and I quote at length:
That the number 666 has a symbolic meaning is even more to be expected because it occurs in the book of Revelation. If we apply the rule that most aspects of Revelation are symbolic, we find that six is the number of the earthly creation with a view to time. Four is the number of the earth with a view to its extent or scope. Scripture speaks of the four winds and of the four corners of the earth. Six is the number of the earth and of all earthly things from the viewpoint of their development in time. It is the number of creation week. It is the number of our week of toil and labor without the sabbath. It clearly represents the idea of labor without rest, of effort that is not crowned, of exertion that ends in ultimate failure, of time without eternity. It is the number of vanity of vanities: it is all vanity. The number six, therefore, stands for all the efforts of man in time to find rest in earthly things.
That the number six is repeated three times and multiplied by ten and ten times ten indicates the completeness of man’s effort to bring the things of this world to their highest possible development, for the number ten always indicates a fullness. The number’s repetition and multiplication also indicate that man strives repeatedly in the course of history to reach the rest, to establish the ideal situation in the kingdom of man. But repeatedly he fails, for he is mere man. The number of man is always six. To the number seven, the final sabbath, the true rest, he never attains. Antichrist is from below. His efforts are always limited by the number six and are therefore doomed to fail.5
Here in this quote is the explanation of the organic development of sin by man in this world to its final culmination in the man of sin. We do not enter into the rest of God’s fellowship by the keeping of the law with our efforts (responsibilities), which are determined by the commandments, as Van Overloop taught. Man is a slave to sin, and he serves sin in everything he does. Vanity of vanities. The labor of man is the building of the kingdom of antichrist, from which we as elect children of the promise have been freed. We do not work side by side with God, by grace, to enter into the rest. No! That is only more bondage.
Our works can never be the means that God uses to bring us into the rest because even our best works are imperfect. Our God is a just God, who demands perfect obedience—the perfect obedience of Jesus Christ. Teaching works as the means to enter the rest is a corruption of God’s justice. We reject the error of those
who teach that the new covenant of grace, which God the Father, through the mediation of the death of Christ, made with man, does not herein consist that we by faith, inasmuch as it accepts the merits of Christ, are justified before God and saved, but in the fact that God, having revoked the demand of perfect obedience of the law, regards faith itself and the obedience of faith, although imperfect, as the perfect obedience of the law, and does esteem it worthy of the reward of eternal life through grace.
Rejection: For these contradict the Scriptures: Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood (Rom. 3:24, 25). And these proclaim, as did the wicked Socinus, a new and strange justification of man before God, against the consensus of the whole church. (Canons of Dordt 2, error and rejection 4, in Confessions and Church Order, 165)
We reject the error of those
who teach that the perseverance of the true believers is not a fruit of election, or a gift of God gained by the death of Christ, but a condition of the new covenant, which (as they declare) man before his decisive election and justification must fulfill through his free will.
Rejection: For the Holy Scripture testifies that this follows out of election, and is given the elect in virtue of the death, the resurrection, and intercession of Christ: But the elect obtained it and the rest were hardened (Rom. 11:7). Likewise: He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not also with him freely give us all things? Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth; who is he that condemneth? It is Christ Jesus that died, yea rather, that was raised from the dead, who is at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? (Rom. 8:32–35). (Canons of Dordt 5, error and rejection 1, in Confessions and Church Order, 176)
How then do we enter into the rest of God? In other words, how do we enter into perfect fellowship with the holy God?
Christ’s own words in John 14:6: “I am the way [to God the Father, to fellowship with God, and to everlasting glory], the truth, and the life [and you and your obedience are not the way].”
Our salvation is wholly by promise (Christ), by God’s revealing himself and not by man’s labor. “For he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his” (Heb. 4:10). Glory be God!
God spoke to Moses by promise in the tabernacle when Israel was at Mount Sinai: “My presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest” (Ex. 33:14, emphasis added). All the while Joshua observed God speaking “unto his friend” Moses (v. 11). God said, “I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before thee; and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will shew mercy on whom I will shew mercy” (v. 19). As a type of Christ, Joshua pointed to the way of rest, Christ. God led his people into the rest through Christ. The Israelites were given faith, and they entered into the rest of God by that free gift of election. The covenant blessings are by promise. Entering into rest is by Christ.
God through Jesus Christ entered into the kingdom of unrest, taking on himself the curse by taking on our sinful flesh, perfectly doing the will of God and meriting rest for his elect. Jesus Christ labored to enter the rest, and in perfect rest he labored, and he gives his rest as a free and sovereign gift of election by grace through faith. The labor of Hebrews 4:11 is the labor of faith! Faith enters into the rest (vv. 2–3) because faith clings to Christ, his work, and his merits. Faith is the engrafting into the body of the perfect mediator, who took on our curse and unrest. Unbelief does not enter in; reprobate man does not enter in. Is not that what is being made plain in all of Hebrews 4? Hebrews 3:18–19 explain to the Jews of the day that the reprobate Israelites fell in the wilderness and did not enter into the promised land, and this was shown by their unbelief. Man cannot enter into the rest except by faith—not by man’s obedience, nor by man’s act of believing! The fact that a man enters into rest is explained by the free election of the sovereign God. This explains how filthy sinners enter into perfect, covenant fellowship with the holy God. They are cleansed in the blood of Christ, eternally, as a free and sovereign choice by the holy God. Not by works! Our works, even our best works, are all filthy and are covered by the blood of the eternal Lamb of God, Jesus Christ. Our works are fruits and only fruits. We do good works because we were brought into the rest (covenant fellowship), and good works are never the way, the means, or mixed with faith unto that covenant fellowship (salvation).
We believe that our salvation consists in the remission of our sins for Jesus Christ’s sake, and that therein our righteousness before God is implied: as David and Paul teach us, declaring this to be the happiness of man, that God imputes righteousness to him without works. And the same apostle saith that we are justified freely by His grace, through the redemption which is in Jesus Christ.
And therefore we always hold fast this foundation, ascribing all the glory to God, humbling ourselves before Him, and acknowledging ourselves to be such as we really are, without presuming to trust in any thing in ourselves, or in any merit of ours, relying and resting upon the obedience of Christ crucified alone, which becomes ours when we believe in Him. This is sufficient to cover all our iniquities, and to give us confidence in approaching to God; freeing the conscience of fear, terror and dread. (Belgic Confession 23, in Confessions and Church Order, 51–52)
We believe that this true faith, being wrought in man by the hearing of the Word of God and the operation of the Holy Ghost, doth regenerate and make him a new man, causing him to live a new life, and freeing him from the bondage of sin…
We are beholden to God for the good works we do, and not He to us, since it is He that worketh in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure…
Moreover, though we do good works, we do not found our salvation upon them…Thus, then, we would always be in doubt, tossed to and fro without any certainty, and our poor consciences continually vexed, if they relied not on the merits of the suffering and death of our Savior. (Belgic Confession 24, in Confessions and Church Order, 52–55)
Hear from Hoeksema again,
God enters into his rest. And he does that, beloved, through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Through Jesus Christ, our Lord, God enters into his rest. That is the sabbath. For Christ came, beloved; and Christ is God himself, God in the flesh. And he came to us and entered into our unrest. God did, through Jesus Christ, our Lord. We were in unrest. Christ took our unrest upon his mighty shoulders. He did that when he became flesh. Christmas, beloved, Christmas. There Christ came under the law and under the curse, and he took the law and the curse upon himself. And with that law and the curse upon his mighty shoulders, he walked the way of perfect obedience unto the Father. He entered into our curse; and bearing the curse, he entered into our death.
Oh, God in Jesus Christ labored and toiled as no man ever saw anyone toil before. God revealed our toil in Jesus Christ, our Lord. So he toiled and labored, that in Gethsemane he crawled as a worm and no man. And on the cross he finally cried out, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Christ in our unrest, under our toil, under our curse.
And he entered into his rest. When the labor was finished, Christ entered into his rest. God entered into the rest through Jesus Christ, our Lord, in the resurrection…In the resurrection day when Christ arose from the dead, Christ and God through him, who raised Christ from the dead, entered into the rest, that is, the perfect peace, the perfect covenant, the perfect fellowship, the perfect heavenly covenant, the tabernacle of God with man. Christ did…
Therefore Christ…after he entered through death and through the grave into his rest…said to us and…says to us now, “Come unto me, all ye that are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest”—rest—sabbatic rest. For, beloved, Christ entered into his rest at the head of his people, at the head of his whole church. He did not enter into his rest for his own sake, but as he took our sins and our iniquities upon himself, as he took our unrest upon himself, so he entered with our unrest into his rest, so that our sins and iniquities and the curse of God upon him and therefore upon his church are no more. They are gone, forevermore gone! And therefore, Christ can say to us, at the head of his people, at the head of his church, “Come unto me, and I will give you rest. It is finished.”
And, beloved, now we enter into the rest of God only by faith. Don’t you see? That is faith. Faith is not work. Faith is exactly the opposite of work. Faith is the confidence and the knowledge that the work is finished. It is finished. As Christ said on the cross, “It is finished”; and as God testified in his resurrection, “It is finished, completely finished,” so we by faith enter into a perfectly finished work. That is our sabbath. The work is finished. We don’t have to work. We cannot work. The work is completed, and by faith we enter into the finished work of Jesus Christ, our Lord.
And that finished work is the perfection of the covenant of God, so that now we enter into God’s fellowship, not at the end of six days of labor but at the beginning. We rest first, and then we labor. Not the week is first, and the sabbath follows; but the sabbath is first, and the week follows. Not labor, that is, not labor until the work is finished but labor by faith, labor by faith, to enter into rest that is already finished.6
Today, according to God’s sovereign counsel, we live with a totally depraved flesh full of unrest in a world of unrest. We lie in the midst of death, and death is unrest. Our doubts and fears are born of the infirmity of that sinful flesh. Do you not feel that? Over against this infirmity is the reality that Christ gives us rest (covenant fellowship) as a free gift by the preaching of the gospel. The rest that we have in principle now is seated in our hearts by faith through the Holy Spirit. The kingdom of heaven has come. That rest is sure, the final rest of heaven. “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him” (1 Cor. 2:9). The rest of heaven is ours. And we have the surety of it already now by the operation of the Holy Spirit, the kingdom of heaven seated in our hearts. Is this truth not freeing? Live in that freedom. Joy in the rest of the sure and total victory; labor by faith to enter into the rest!
If you are interested in listening to Herman Hoeksema’s sermon on Lord’s Day 38, please visit here.