Hebrews 4 · Passage · Rest
The Sabbath Rest That Remains
The passage follows the letter's comparison of Jesus with Moses in Hebrews 3:1 to 6.
Psalm 95 opens with a call to sing for joy to the LORD and closes with His oath that a generation would never enter His rest.
There remains, then, a Sabbath rest for the people of God.
- The passage
- Hebrews 3:7 to 19, Hebrews 4:1 to 13
- Book
- Hebrews
- Hold in memory
- Hebrews 4:9, Hebrews 4:12
Summary
Hebrews 3:7 to 4:13 is an exposition of Psalm 95:7 to 11, the psalm's call to hear God's voice today and its oath that the rebels would never enter His rest. The writer reads the psalm as an offer still open to his own readers. The rest he means is God's own, which God has kept since He finished the work of creation, and the people of God enter it by faith.
- The generation that came out of Egypt was unable to enter the land because of unbelief (Hebrews 3:19).
- God offered the rest again through David long after Joshua had led Israel into the land (Hebrews 4:7 to 8).
- Hebrews calls the rest that remains a Sabbath rest, because whoever enters it rests from his work as God rested from His (Hebrews 4:9 to 10).
- The passage closes on the word of God, which judges the thoughts and intentions of every heart (Hebrews 4:12 to 13).
Today, If You Hear His Voice
Hebrews opens the passage with the last five verses of Psalm 95.
The Sabbath Rest That Remains studies Hebrews 3:7 to 4:13 and the rest the passage says God still holds out to His people. It belongs to the value of rest, because the passage names that rest and the way into it.
The question the study answers is what rest remains for the people of God and who enters it. The answer runs through the psalm at the head of the passage and the generation that fell in the wilderness. It then turns to the rests the passage sets side by side and to the Greek word the writer chooses at Hebrews 4:9.
Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says: “Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts, as you did in the rebellion, in the day of testing in the wilderness, where your fathers tested and tried Me, and for forty years saw My works. Therefore I was angry with that generation, and I said, ‘Their hearts are always going astray, and they have not known My ways.’ So I swore on oath in My anger, ‘They shall never enter My rest.’”These verses stand first because every later step of the passage expounds a line of the psalm they quote.
The psalm names the places of Israel's testing, Meribah and Massah (Psalm 95:8). Exodus 17:7 says that the Israelites quarreled there and tested the LORD. Hebrews 3:8 gives the meaning of the two names, rebellion and testing, in place of the names themselves.
Three Rests in Hebrews 3 and 4
The argument of the passage turns on which rest the psalm means.
Hebrews reads the rest of the psalm as God's own rest, still open after the conquest.
| Rest | Old Testament text | The Berean words | What Hebrews draws from it |
|---|---|---|---|
| God's rest at creation | Genesis 2:2 | "He rested from all His work" | This is the rest the oath of Psalm 95 calls My rest (Hebrews 4:4 to 5). |
| Rest in the land | Joshua 21:44 | "gave them rest on every side" | If the conquest had given the rest the psalm means, the psalm would not have offered it again (Hebrews 4:8). |
| The rest that remains | Psalm 95:7 | "Today, if you hear His voice" | Its call comes to whoever hears it on the day called Today (Hebrews 4:6 to 7). |
The Generation That Fell in the Wilderness
Hebrews asks who heard God's voice and rebelled, and answers from the book of Numbers.
See to it, brothers, that none of you has a wicked heart of unbelief that turns away from the living God. But exhort one another daily, as long as it is called today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.The writer turns the psalm into a charge, and the psalm's today becomes every day on which the readers can still exhort one another.
For who were the ones who heard and rebelled? Were they not all those Moses led out of Egypt? And with whom was God angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? And to whom did He swear that they would never enter His rest? Was it not to those who disobeyed? So we see that it was because of their unbelief that they were unable to enter.The three questions of these verses name the people of the psalm and give the cause of their failure.
The oath Psalm 95:11 recalls stands in Numbers 14:22 to 23. There the LORD swore of the men who had tested Him, "not one will ever see the land that I swore to give their fathers."
We Who Have Believed Enter That Rest
Hebrews 4:1 to 5 sets the promise that still stands beside God's rest at creation.
Therefore, while the promise of entering His rest still stands, let us be careful that none of you be deemed to have fallen short of it. For we also received the good news just as they did; but the message they heard was of no value to them, since they did not share the faith of those who comprehended it.These verses apply the psalm to the readers, who have heard good news as Israel did and must meet it with faith.
A sixteenth-century reader of the letter took the warning of Hebrews 4:1 as a word about grace refused.
“By saying Lest we be disappointed of the promise left us, he intimates that no one comes short of it except he who by rejecting grace has first renounced the promise; for God is so far from repenting to do us good that he ceases not to bestow his gifts except when we despise his calling.”
John Calvin · Commentaries · on Hebrews 4:1Reformed
For somewhere He has spoken about the seventh day in this manner: “And on the seventh day God rested from all His works.”This verse stands at the hinge of the argument, between the psalm and the conclusion of Hebrews 4:9.
The verb of Hebrews 4:3, eiserchometha, is a present indicative in the Greek, we enter.
Genesis 1:1 to 2:3 tells the whole week that ends there.
The Rest Joshua Gave
Joshua led Israel into the land that Moses had promised as a place of rest.
“Remember what Moses the servant of the LORD commanded you when he said, ‘The LORD your God will give you rest, and He will give you this land.’Moses tied the promised rest to the gift of the land, the land the generation of Numbers 14 lost and their children took under Joshua.
Hebrews 4:8 names Joshua with the Greek Iesous (G2424), the same name the New Testament gives to Jesus. The King James Version therefore has Jesus in place of Joshua in this verse.
Albert Barnes, in his Notes, Explanatory and Practical (1832 to 1869), explained that "Jesus" is "the Greek mode of writing" Joshua and that "there can be no doubt that Joshua is here intended".
A Sabbath Rest Remains
The writer changes his word for rest at Hebrews 4:9 and then says what the rest is.
Through Hebrews 3 and 4 the writer's word for rest is katapausis (G2663), which stands eight times in the two chapters and once more in the New Testament, at Acts 7:49. At Hebrews 4:9 he writes sabbatismos (G4520), a word that stands nowhere else in the Bible.
John Chrysostom, in his sixth homily on Hebrews, said that the writer chose the word "calling the kingdom 'Sabbath-keeping,' by the appropriate name".
For whoever enters God’s rest also rests from his own work, just as God did from His.This verse stands after Hebrews 4:9 because it gives the reason for the word sabbatismos.
Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will fall by following the same pattern of disobedience.The verse turns the argument into the charge the whole passage was written to give.
The verb of Hebrews 4:11 is spoudasomen, let us be diligent.
Two Questions on the Rest
Readers differ on when the rest is entered and on what it means for the weekly day.
When believers enter the restCharles Spurgeon; John Wesley
Charles Spurgeon, in his sermon The Believer's Present Rest (1909), held that believers enter the rest in this life, and said of Hebrews 4:3, "We 'do enter into rest,' even in this present life!"
John Wesley, in his Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament (1755), took the rest of Hebrews 4:3 to be "The eternal rest in heaven."
Against the first reading, Hebrews 4:1 and Hebrews 4:11 still speak of a promise to be entered and warn against falling short of it. Against the second, Spurgeon pointed out that the text says believers enter the rest and does not say that they shall enter it.
What Hebrews 4:9 means for keeping the SabbathJamieson, Fausset and Brown; Adam Clarke
Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, in their Commentary Critical and Explanatory (1871), wrote that Hebrews 4:9 "indirectly establishes the obligation of the Sabbath still; for the type continues until the antitype supersedes it".
Adam Clarke, in his Commentary on the Bible, read the rest of Hebrews 4:9 as "another rest, a state of blessedness, for the people of God". He took it to be the blessings of the Gospel and the glory to come, and he set it apart from the rest of the weekly day.
Against the first reading, Colossians 2:16 to 17 counts a Sabbath among the things that are "a shadow of the things to come". Against the second, the fourth commandment grounds the day in God's own rest at creation (Exodus 20:11).
The Word That Judges
The passage ends with the voice of God that the psalm told its hearers to heed.
For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it pierces even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow. It judges the thoughts and intentions of the heart. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight; everything is uncovered and exposed before the eyes of Him to whom we must give account.The writer sets the living word beside the oath of the psalm, since the voice that offers the rest also judges every heart.
Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to what we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who was tempted in every way that we are, yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.These verses stand here because the letter's next subject, the high priest, follows directly on the warning.
In the Greek, Hebrews 4:12 opens with zon, living, so the first word said of the word of God is that it lives. The voice that offered rest to the wilderness generation and judged its unbelief is the voice the readers now hear.
Sources
Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.
- The Holy Bible, King James Version (1611), Hebrews 4:8.
- STEP Bible, Translators Amalgamated Greek New Testament, the tagged Greek text (Tyndale House, Cambridge), CC BY 4.0.
- STEP Bible TBESG lexicon of Extended Strongs for Greek (Tyndale House, Cambridge), CC BY 4.0, based on Abbott-Smith, Manual Greek Lexicon of the New Testament (1922)
- Albert Barnes, Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (1832 to 1869), on Hebrews 4:8.
- John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Epistle to the Hebrews, Homily 6, on Hebrews 4:9 (407), in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, first series, volume 14, edited by Philip Schaff (Edinburgh: T&T Clark; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans)
- John Calvin, Commentaries on the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Hebrews (1554), translated and edited by John Owen, on Hebrews 4:1.
- Charles Spurgeon, The Believer's Present Rest, Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Sermon No. 3169 (1909), on Hebrews 4:3.
- Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible (1832), on Hebrews 4:9.
- John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament (1755), on Hebrews 4:3.
- Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset and David Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871), on Hebrews 4:9.
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