Are you in the kingdom? Have you been changed radically, tremendously by the Lord, so that you love him and you are all for him? Do you really know Christ? Do you act like a believer? Do you think like a believer? Or do act like an unconverted person? You are peevish, you lose your temper, you put worldly things first: home and furniture and acquisitions are much more important to you than serving the Lord or studying his word. Some people, I imagine go home, even from church and watch secular entertainment on the television. The television is never off. They cannot live without it: this is their highest pleasure. Worship is almost a chore, a duty, so now they are immediately back into the hands of the world. Have your tastes not been changed? Do you pray like a true believer, who is in communion with God? Do you pray privately and often, even throughout the day, bringing your needs to him and praising him and thanking him, and interceding for others? Is Christ all to you, do you want to do his bidding? These are the signs of being somebody who's entered into that rest.
What a fall: to have a profession of faith, to imagine or assume that you know the Lord, and yet you have never really found him; you are still living largely for this world; you are not committed to him. The day will come when there be a terrible fall, maybe at the end of life when you discover you are lost and under the judgement of God: what a terrible thing. All one's life there has been a light sense of God but no real communion with him. Then comes the end and the dismay and the terror: ‘I am one of those condemned ones. I must be banished from the presence of God.’
If you are a Christian, you need to remember your early days as a believer. Remember how it was when you discovered the wonder of redemption, and you were born again, and you saw so clearly that now you needed to be obedient of the Lord. You understood what consecration was, you wanted to be all for him, and you questioned everything you did: ‘Is this biblical? Is this right?’ You were very conscientious. If only we could keep hold of that! Yet we go on; we become experienced in the Christian life; we buy expensive things so freely without ever asking, ‘Is this actually justified?’ Is this right for me?’ We change jobs maybe sometimes, without even asking the Lord. We have lost that early spirit. That's what this exhortation is about. Let us be diligent, urgent, always conscientious, always sincere, checking up on ourselves constantly. If you have entered into it, you want to be ready to enter into the greater part of it. This is only the introduction. All the blessings we have are only just the introductory phase, the downpayment, the earnest of our inheritance. We are soon to enter in to the fullness of that rest: the total deliverance from every taint of sin, and the entry into great wonders.
Some people say very foolishly, ‘You’ve hit the nail on the head, but only half of what you say is right’. They call themselves Christian evangelists, and they say, ‘You read Hebrews 4 and similar passages in the gospel of John and it only says, ‘Believe’; it doesn't say, ‘Repent’. Hebrews 4 is talking all about believing. They were lost because they did not believe, so all you have got to do is believe. I believe in Jesus Christ; I believe he was the Son of God; therefore I must be saved. But you have added on repentance’, they complain. Oh no, the Bible has added on repentance. The Bible always puts faith, belief and repentance together, hand in hand; it does not separate them.