““Strive to Enter That Rest””

Sunday, June 22, 2025

We’ve recently considered the first three chapters of Hebrews. The first chapter asserted that Christ is better than angels; the second made the somewhat obvious observation that he’s better than we are, too—but also that his similarity to us makes him the ideal mediator between us and God. In the third chapter the author began by extending the comparison to Moses, but his method of doing so seemed to take a rapid left turn, into a detailed exegesis of the final section of Psalm 95, making an allegory between the rebellious Israelites, and the Jewish Christians of the author’s own time, who were in danger of repeating their ancestors’ mistake—rebellion growing out of “an evil, unbelieving heart” (He 3.12). As the previous installment predicted, chapter 4 will go even further in applying the ancient Psalm to today’s Christians.

Therefore, while the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it.

(Hebrews 4.1)

Already by this point, the author’s original audience would have been cocking their heads and raising eyebrows. A nice rhetorical tidbit that makes little impression on today’s listeners introduces this chapter. Steeped as we are in two thousand years of Christian thought and tradition, we consider heaven and hell to be basic knowledge, needing little or no explanation. Not so, for the first generations of Christians, for whom “eternal judgment” was an “elementary doctrine” (6.1-2), but whose notion of how exactly that judgment will be carried out, was less clearly defined. So for the author to assert that this promise of “rest” directly applied to his audience of Christians would be a significant leap, one requiring explanation. The author feels this obligation, and so he clarifies:

For good news came to us just as to them, but the message they heard did not benefit them, because they were not united by faith with those who listened. For we who have believed enter that rest, as he has said,

“As I swore in my wrath,

                        ‘They shall not enter my rest,’”

although his works were finished from the foundation of the world. For he has somewhere spoken of the seventh day in this way: “And God rested on the seventh day from all his works.” And again in this passage he said,

        “They shall not enter my rest.”

(Hebrews 4.2-5)

First, he draws the comparison between ancient Israel and God’s people of the author’s own day. Both received a sort of gospel (“good news,” v2), their response to which led either to “benefit” or to “wrath,” depending on whether the hearers believed and complied—the main point of the previous chapter. Then, he makes two subtle points by repeating the Psalm’s final line.

The first point is that the “rest” denied to the audience’s forefathers was not really the promised land, although that was the earthly focus at the time (cf. Jos 22.4 et al.). Rather, it was God’s rest, which most naturally refers to the first Sabbath, following six days of creation in the opening chapters of Genesis. That is truly a rest worth entering!

The second point is even more subtle. In recounting their forefathers’ rebellion and punishment, we might have expected the much later psalmist to say on God’s behalf, “they did not enter my rest.” Yet both the future tense “shall,” and the psalmist’s use of a long-dead generation’s penalty to admonish his own, later audience, indicate that the door to this “rest” has not been closed off! Our author develops this point in the next section as well:

Since therefore it remains for some to enter it, and those who formerly received the good news failed to enter because of disobedience, again he appoints a certain day, “Today,” saying through David so long afterward, in the words already quoted,

“Today, if you hear his voice,

                        do not harden your hearts.”

For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on. So then, 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.

(Hebrews 4.6-10)

Although none of this seems particularly controversial to Christians today, the author of Hebrews did not consider these points to be widely accepted among his initial audience. His argument seems a bit repetitive and overly thorough to us, but that’s because he was introducing a new concept at the time—not that an eternal reward or penalty awaits each of us, which was already accepted, as we discussed above; but rather that Psalm 95 testifies about that reward, and that its warning applies equally in our time, as in David’s. This is why he follows this lengthy exegesis with a statement about God’s word that we typically extract from its context:

For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.

(Hebrews 4.12-13)

In speaking of “the word of God,” partly he’s referring to the “message” of v2, which “did not benefit” Israel’s rebellious forefathers; but mostly he wants Christians to recognize that the Old Testament Scriptures are just as much alive and effective now, as in the days of Moses and David! We must heed them. In the case of Psalm 95, that means guarding against hardened and erring hearts, which will soon overflow into rebellion, inviting wrath. Fleeing this bad example,

Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.

(Hebrews 4.11)

Jeremy Nettles

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