Part 3: Jesus’ Rest is Better Than All the Rest

Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of the person of Christ from Hebrews 3:7-4:13.

So that you know where we’re going this evening, in this first hour, Jesus’ Rest is Better than all the Rest. Then in the second hour, Jesus’ Priesthood is Better than Aaron’s. First, then, chapter 3, verse 1 to chapter 4, verse 13, although we’ll focus most of our attention on 3:7 to 4:13.

Advertise on TGC

“Therefore, holy brothers, who share in the heavenly calling, fix your thoughts on Jesus, the apostle and high priest whom we confess. He was faithful to the one who appointed him, just as Moses was faithful in all God’s house. Jesus has been found worthy of greater honor than Moses, just as the builder of a house has greater honor than the house itself.

For every house is built by someone, but God is the builder of everything. Moses was faithful as a servant in all God’s house, testifying to what would be said in the future. But Christ is faithful as a son over God’s house. And we are his house, if we hold on to our courage and the hope of which we boast.

So, as the Holy Spirit says: ‘Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion, during the time of testing in the desert, where your fathers tested and tried me and for forty years saw what I did. That is why I was angry with that generation, and I said, “Their hearts are always going astray, and they have not known my ways.” So I declared on oath in my anger, “They shall never enter my rest.” ’

See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. We have come to share in Christ if we hold firmly till the end the confidence we had at first. As has just been said: ‘Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion.’

Who were they who heard and rebelled? Were they not all those Moses led out of Egypt? And with whom was he angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the desert? And to whom did God swear that they would never enter his rest if not to those who disobeyed? So we see that they were not able to enter, because of their unbelief.

Therefore, since the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us be careful that none of you be found to have fallen short of it. For we also have had the gospel preached to us, just as they did; but the message they heard was of no value to them, because those who heard did not combine it with faith. Now we who have believed enter that rest, just as God has said, ‘So I declared on oath in my anger, “They shall never enter my rest.” ’

And yet his work has been finished since the creation of the world. For somewhere he has spoken about the seventh day in these words: ‘And on the seventh day God rested from all his work.’ And again in the passage above he says, ‘They shall never enter my rest.’ It still remains that some will enter that rest, and those who formerly had the gospel preached to them did not go in, because of their disobedience.

Therefore God again set a certain day, calling it Today, when a long time later he spoke through David, as was said before: ‘Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.’ For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken later about another day. There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from his own work, just as God did from his.

Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will fall by following their example of disobedience. For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.”

This is the Word of the Lord.

Jesus is better. Already the author of Hebrews has sounded this note in powerful ways. In particular, Jesus is immeasurably better than the angels, according to chapters 1 and 2. But chapters 1 and 2 have also introduced us, albeit still in a somewhat muted way, to the dimension of time, of redemptive history.

Jesus is not only superior to the angels in an absolute sense, at any period of history. No matter what time you’re talking about, he’s absolutely and essentially superior to the angels, but also, we are told, in the opening verses, if you please, that Jesus’ revelation in these last days (there’s the temporal element) is superior to the revelation given in the past, the opening phrase, “… in the past to our forefathers …” That is what sets up the warning of chapter 2, verses 1–4.

If they faced terrible judgment, how much worse will our judgment be if we neglect so much superior a revelation? And that again introduces this time distinction. That means that Jesus’ salvation, his revelation, his covenant are in certain respects superior to the Mosaic salvation revelation covenant. Hence, the form of this comparison, “how shall we escape if we ignore such a great salvation?” Do you see? Then the covenantal language begins to be introduced from now on.

In short, not only is Jesus essentially superior to angels across all time, but what he brings in this time is superior to what was brought in a former time. That means that Jesus’ salvation, revelation, and covenant are in certain respects superior to the Mosaic salvation, revelation, and covenant. That, of course, means that sooner or later Moses and his covenant must be introduced. That is what is going on in chapter 3.

Once again, the author deploys a very smooth transition. “Therefore, holy brothers, who share in the heavenly calling, fix your thoughts on Jesus, the apostle and high priest whom we confess.” This is the first time that the author addresses them in the second person. Up to now it has always been we; now he addresses them directly.

He calls them “holy brothers,” and this of course, is picking up the language of chapter 2, verse 11: “Both the one who makes men holy …” Namely, Jesus. “… and those who are made holy …” So he addresses them now as holy brothers. The same sort of language is picked up in principle. They’re the consecrated ones in chapter 2, verses 12, 13, and 17.

So here they share, we are told, in the heavenly calling. “Therefore, holy brothers who share in the heavenly calling …” Well, already in chapter 2, verse 5, we are told that it was not to angels that God has subjected the world to come, the heavenly world to come, as we saw last night or as chapter 12 puts it, “We are gathered together around this heavenly Jerusalem already.” So we share already in this around Jesus who has gone on ahead.

Therefore, granted the importance of Jesus in chapters 1 and 2, the exhortation is natural. “… fix your thoughts on Jesus …” You holy brothers who share in the heavenly calling. “… the apostle and high priest …” High priest seems obvious from the previous verses. He’s some kind of mediator. That will be unpacked in following verses, but why apostle? What is meant here?

Of the varied answers that have been given to that question, I think the best is this: Whenever high priest occurs in the epistle to the Hebrews, never very far away is the Day of Atonement. The Day of Atonement always stands in the background somewhere. The high priest was viewed as a fully-accredited representative from God, the shaliach, which is regularly rendered, apostle. God’s representative, God’s sent one, God’s apostle. Thus, the notion of apostleship in Day of Atonement terms and high priest overlap greatly.

Apostle is not a technical term that always has exactly the same force in the New Testament. Sometimes it simply means a representative. Sometimes it means one of the Twelve. Sometimes it’s expanded beyond that, and in this case, it seems to me, the language is drawn directly from Old Testament shaliach passages; that is, God’s duly appointed representative who is functioning, then, as priest.

Now Jesus in that sense, then, is our apostle and high priest, the apostle and high priest whom we confess. Now that all the attention is focused squarely on Jesus, the author brings Moses alongside for a sort of comparative evaluation. This is broken into two parts. First, a comparison in chapter 3, verse 2, and then a contrast in chapter 3, verses 3–6.

1. The comparison (verse 2)

Many points of comparison could have been listed. Meekness, for example. Moses is called the meekest man who ever lived according to Numbers, chapter 12. Jesus comes along centuries later and says, “I am meek and lowly of heart.” Matthew 11. Or their respective prophetic roles: Deuteronomy 34:10, Deuteronomy 18:18. Jesus himself is called prophet, for example. John 6:14.

Their functions, their roles as mediators, in the context that would have made a very good basis for comparison, wouldn’t it? Deuteronomy 5:5 versus 1 Timothy 2:5. But Hebrews here focuses on only one point of comparison … just one. Namely, their respective faithfulness. Jesus was faithful to the one who appointed him just as Moses was faithful in all God’s house.

Perhaps the Old Testament passage in mind was Numbers 12, verses 6 and following:

God says, “When a prophet of the LORD is among you, I reveal myself to him in visions, I speak to him in dreams. But this is not true of my servant Moses; he is faithful in all my house. With him I speak face to face, clearly and not in riddles …” In other words, the faithfulness of Moses walking with God meant that he became a kind of pipeline for God’s revelation that was stripped of the riddle or the merely visionary or the like.

It was in more concrete terms so faithful was this man, Moses. Oh, we can all remember the time when he failed, but nevertheless, he was a remarkably faithful man. The writer here stresses only his faithfulness and points out that he was faithful, and Jesus is faithful, too. Interestingly enough, there are other passages that draw comparisons between Jesus and other people, both positive.

For example, in Matthew, chapter 11, in comparing Jesus and John the Baptist, Jesus himself says that wisdom is justified in both her children. The idea is that John came as an ascetic and he warned about judgment to come and he was faithful in what he did. Jesus comes along and he is known as a bit of a party type and friend of prostitutes, and actually, he has been known to take a few himself. He is faithful in all of his house, too.

So there are different roles, sometimes, assigned to various figures who are introduced by God himself into the whole stream of redemptive history, and Moses, with one or two regrettable exceptions, was a profoundly faithful man. And Jesus was faithful. It’s almost as if the author of the epistle to the Hebrews, knowing how important Moses is to his readers, wants to say something profoundly important and true about Moses and even dare to draw comparison between Moses and Jesus.

There is a place for seeing the other person’s perspective and granting what is good about it before one, nevertheless, has to draw lines in the sand and make distinctions. This, now, the author proceeds to do by introducing contrasts.

2. The contrast

Again, many points could have been introduced, but in verses 3–6, two points are made, but they are points of devastating importance. First, the distinction between Creator and creature and, second, the distinction between son and servant.

A) The distinction between Creator and creature (verses 3–4)

“Jesus has been found worthy of greater honor than Moses, just as the builder of a house has greater honor than the house itself.” House, here, clearly not in the sense of a chunk of masonry or two by fours with appropriate studs and foundations and the like, but rather, household, not only dynasty, but an entire household. The argument is made that Jesus is the builder of this household while Moses, himself, is not the builder.

This presupposes Jesus’ preexistence. In case there’s any doubt about what is being claimed, the starker analogy is drawn. Every house is built by someone, but God is the builder of everything. The peculiar way in which Jesus is greater than Moses is the peculiar way in which God is the Creator of all things. He is the sovereign. That shouldn’t be too surprising after we’ve read the introduction, which has said, “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being …” and, moreover, through him God made the universe. (Chapter 1, verses 2–3)

In that sense, no human being can finally, if he is only a human being, compete with this God, this God-man, this Jesus, who is the builder, the Creator, God’s own agent in creation. Of course, in the larger argument of Hebrews, that is a warning against any Jewish Christians or proselyte Christians who are now in danger of somehow elevating Moses almost to the place of Jesus again. It just doesn’t seem very sensible in the light of Jesus’ unambiguous superiority.

B) The distinction drawn between son and servant.

“Moses was faithful as a servant in all God’s house, testifying to what would be said in the future.” Already there is a hint of where the author is going in the argument. If you read Moses’ writings properly, they are pointing forward beyond Moses. Moses was faithful predominantly in this business of testifying to what would still come in the future.

“But Christ is faithful as a son over God’s house.” Now I would dearly love to unpack those things, but that’s just my introduction. We’re coming now to the text itself that we’re going to focus on this evening. The passage ends with this crucial exhortation, 6b, “And we are his house, if we hold on to our courage and the hope of which we boast.”

Keep that passage in mind, but we shall think about its meaning a little later on when we look at verse 14. Now what this transitional paragraph introduces, then, is not only that Jesus is better than Moses (it says that), but that a faithful reading of the Old Testament itself drives the reader to the conclusion that the Old Testament itself was pointing beyond the Mosaic covenant to something greater.

That brings us, then, to our passage and our theme. The author proceeds with several arguments.

1. The argument from Psalm 95

This takes us from chapter 3, verse 7, to the first part of chapter 4, verse 3a. We can break this argument from Psalm 95 down into four parts: the Old Testament text itself, the immediate exhortation it offers, the painful example it provides, and the prospect it holds out.

A) The Old Testament Text itself

Verses 7–11. This is simply quoting Psalm 95:7–8: “So, as the Holy Spirit says: ‘Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion.’ ” Begin with the word so. So here is making a connection at two levels. It’s making a connection with verse 6b.

“And we are his house, if we hold on to our courage and the hope of which we boast. So as the Holy Spirit says, ‘Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion.’ ” In one sense, there is merely a very simple straightforward ethical continuity. Scripture tells us to be persevering … not to give up, not to quit, not to harden our hearts.

But at the same time, the so is justifying the argument that Jesus is better in the entire preceding paragraph. “So let me show you now the theological reasoning from Old Testament text itself,” the author says. So Jesus really is better, and that “so” thus introduces the whole argument all the way down to 4:13, as we’ll see.

The time of the rebellion, of course, is referring to the events at Kadesh-Barnea. When the people approached the Promised Land from the south for the first time and they sent in the spies and 10 of the 12 came back with a negative report. God had promised that he would open up the land for them. This was the God, after all, who had opened up the sea. It was the God who had provided the plagues. So this God, now, was not going to be able to handle 6-foot 5-inch types?

The whole thing on the face of it was a wee bit silly, but nevertheless, the people were so frightened and gave such a nasty report that instead of trusting God, they trusted the accumulated judgment of the majority of the spies, and as a result, fell under God’s judgment. Really, it was unbelief, as verse 19 says; that is, they didn’t believe what God had said. That’s what the trouble was.

But the point here is the “today” in verse 7. “Today, if you hear his voice …” and the promise of entering “my rest.” (Verse 11) Those are the crucial words that the author is going to exegete for us in the following passages. He’s read the text, and he has asked, “Granted that this is the Word of God, what is the significance of “today”? What is the significance of “They shall never enter my rest”?

He is doing his exegesis, and he wants to convince us that if you understand this passage from Psalm 95 correctly, which itself is referring to what God said at the time of Kadesh-Barnea, you are driven to some deep conclusions you must not duck. Now that’s the Old Testament text itself. He has not yet told us what he’s going to do with these points, but I flag them now so that you will see them as they emerge in the text.

B) The immediate exhortation it offers

There is a deeper theological argument that’s coming up, but before he gets there, the author takes it as a kind of immediate hortatory passage, a passage of exhortation right to begin with. “See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart.” In other words, there are some passages of Scripture that give you some warning, some encouragement, at in some ways a superficial level, but nevertheless, a deeply moral level, even while they’re also saying something about the whole stream of thought in redemptive history.

After all, doesn’t Paul in 1 Corinthians 10 say that one of the functions of the Old Testament narratives was for our warning, for our encouragement? It tells us what not to do and what to do. I worry sometimes about these expositions of the Old Testament, these “Life of David” expositions and these “Life of Abraham” expositions and “Life of Elijah” expositions. Some preachers go through them, and basically they say, “This king was a good king; therefore, be good. This king was a bad king; therefore, don’t be bad,” and that’s all they say.

But before we become too cynical, it is important to say that is a useful thing to say. It may not be the only thing to say, but it is one useful thing to say, and it’s the first thing the author says here. “Before we get into the deeper points of the today and the my rest and what’s going on, it is a moral exhortation. Pay attention.”

“See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today …” In that sense, the today can be taken at a very superficial face value. Well, it’s today, and there’s a danger of falling aside. Don’t fall aside today, as long as it’s today, which goes on for quite a long time. As long as it’s today, don’t harden your heart. “… so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.”

In fact, there is a theological point to this insistence on the importance of continuity of perseverance. It is found in verse 14. “We have come to share in Christ if we hold firmly till the end the confidence we had at first.” Now if I understand this passage aright, it is almost giving us a definition of what valid faith looks like. This is telling us that valid faith, by definition, perseveres. By definition: “We have come to share in Christ if we hold firmly till the end the confidence we had at first.”

That’s a fairly common thought in the New Testament, actually. Thus, when some approach Jesus and they’re called his disciples, nevertheless, Jesus can turn to them and say in John, chapter 8, verse 31, “If you continue in my Word, then you are my disciples indeed.” That has already, in principle, been said in a briefer form in Hebrews, chapter 3, verse 6. “And we are his house, if we hold on to our courage and the hope of which we boast.”

Now of course you can read that if you want in absolutist terms, as if God has done his bit and now it’s all up to us. There’s nothing that requires that. What is required is the insistent underlining of the truth that genuine faith is characterized by perseverance, by definition. That sort of thought is also found, for example, in some of Paul’s writings. Recall what he says, for instance, in Colossians, chapter 1.

“Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation—if you continue in your faith, established and firm, not moved from the hope held out in the gospel. This is the gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant.”

Or to put the language somewhat differently, in 1 John 2:19, similarly we are told that certain people abandoned the church, that John has in mind. John says, “They went out from us, in order that it might be made clear that they were not of us. If they had been of us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that they were not of us.” The failure to persevere in that passage is precisely what signals their disqualification. In fact, their disqualification from the beginning as far as John is concerned. It’s very strong language.

Now we’ll struggle with some of these passages again tomorrow when we look at the first of the apostasy passages. We’ll look at Hebrews, chapter 6, God willing, tomorrow night. But before you read Hebrews 6, you’re supposed to read Hebrews 3. It’s the order of the chapters, you see. So it’s important to get chapter 3, verse 6 and chapter 3, verse 14 well and truly under your belt before you get to 3:6 and have a heart attack. It’s very important.

The Old Testament text itself, now the immediate exhortation. “Make sure as long as it is today that you don’t fall away. Don’t do that.” That brings us, then, to the painful example that the Old Testament text provides.

C) The painful example that the Old Testament text provides

Verses 16–19. Here the argument is very similar to that found in 1 Corinthians 10. “Who were they who heard and rebelled? Were they not all those Moses led out of Egypt?” Paul says, “They were baptized into Moses.” “And with whom was he angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the desert? And to whom did God swear that they would never enter his rest if not to those who disobeyed?”

The point the author is making by this series of rhetorical questions is that the very same people who escaped slavery by the miraculous hand of God never entered the Promised Land, the very same people. What that is doing is setting us up for a view of conversion that is a little more complex than some of us are used to where you might actually be given the grace to escape something and not yet have the grace to enter something, because that’s what happened already in the Old Testament.

By the miraculous, spectacular power of God, these people came out under Moses’ leadership. They constituted the covenant people of God, and they did escape the slavery. The slavery was no longer theirs. They vowed themselves to come under the covenant at Sinai, admittedly with some slippages here and there like the Golden Calf episode, but eventually they did swear themselves to come under the covenant, did they not? Then they come up to the Promised Land, and they don’t go in. The very same people.

Psalm 95, like many of the so-called historical psalms, not only surveys a bit of history, but surveys a bit of history in order to provide some kind of moral or theological exhortation. That’s what the historical psalms regularly do. They give you selective history, not as mere chronicling but to remind you of the facts in order to draw out certain kinds of theological and spiritual lessons.

That’s what Psalm 95 does, and now what the author does is exegete Psalm 95 and draws out those same lessons from the Exodus account through the lens of Psalm 95. This is the painful example that the psalm provides. On the other hand, and this is much more positive …

D) The prospect the psalm holds out

Now we’re just beginning to nibble at the edges of the theological implications of this psalm. “Therefore, since the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us be careful that none of you be found to have fallen short of it.” Now that is not yet worked out in detail. It will be shortly.

But the argument is this: God had promised that the people would enter into his land. In vast numbers, they did not. He promised that they would enter into his rest. In vast numbers, they did not. But here we are, centuries after those events, and God, in the time of David, is still saying, “Today, if you don’t harden your heart, you may enter into the rest.”

Implication? Entering into the Promised Land was not exhaustive of God’s promised rest. Otherwise Psalm 95 doesn’t make sense; it just doesn’t make any sense at all. What this presupposes is that there is a rest to enter into beyond entrance into the Promised Land, and the Old Testament itself says so. That’s the point.

“Therefore, since the promise of entering his rest still stands …” Now the justification for this will still be teased out a little further. “… let us be careful that none of you be found to have fallen short of it.” In other words, if the promise of entering into the rest found that some people fell away then, and now the promise of entering into rest is still with us, make sure that we don’t make the same mistakes that generation made. That’s the argument.

“For we also have had the gospel preached to us, just as they did; but the message they heard was of no value to them, because those who heard did not combine it with faith.” Now there are some very important lessons here. There is no warrant for thinking that by gospel the Old Testament believers understood all that we mean by gospel.

The point is that they had good news preached to them. The good news that God had come to redeem his covenant people, to bring them into the land flowing with mild and honey, to save them from slavery, to give them freedom, a place for corporate worship, to be his son (as we saw in a sense yesterday), but to presuppose that they had a full understanding is to go right against the evidence.

It’s true even, of course, in Jesus’ day when at Caesarea Philippi, Jesus asks his own disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” and they tell him, “Some say this and some say that,” and then he asks his own disciples, “Whom do you say that I am?” and finally Peter says, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” But Jesus says, “Blessed are you, Simon son of John, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you but my father who is in heaven.”

Even so, Peter did not understand by his confession what we mean by the same words. When we say, “Christ, the Son of the living God,” we automatically bring with the expression, crucified Messiah, Anointed One, who died and rose again. But Peter still doesn’t have any category for a crucified Messiah, because when Jesus goes on to start talking about how he must go up to Jerusalem and be handed over to the elders and the Sadducees and the chief priests and be crucified and the third day rise again, Peter doesn’t have the categories for it.

“Never, Lord!” he says, not recognizing the deep irony in his own words. How do you say, “Never, Lord”? You might say, “Never, you stupid twit,” or you might say, “Yes, sir, Lord,” but how do you say, “Never, Lord”? He receives one of the sharpest rebukes that anybody receives in the whole New Testament.

Then, of course, when you come up to the cross itself, and Jesus is now hanging on the cross, do you find the disciples hidden in an upper room saying, “Yes! I can hardly wait till Sunday”? At this point, they don’t have a clue what the gospel is in all of its fulfillment. They don’t understand yet.

So we must not read the Bible anachronistically. These people had good news told to them. They had the gospel preached to them, and we have had the gospel preached to us. Now what the connection is between those two gospels is still being unpacked by the book, and in some ways, of course, there are some very, very deep connections, but the point here is not to unearth exactly those connections. Not yet. That will be done shortly. The point here is that the message they heard was of no value to them, because at the end of the day they didn’t combine it with faith.

Now that introduces us, once again, to the faith theme in this book. It’s been mentioned again and again, of course. We’ve seen it in 3:19. So we see that they were not able to enter because of their unbelief. Now here, they did not combine it with faith, and eventually, as you well recall, in chapter 11, you have the whole faith chapter. Now we’re not going to get to chapter 11 in this series, so let me embark on a small excursus.

Faith means somewhat different things in different parts of the New Testament. The emphases are a little bit different from passage to passage, but with only one exception, none of them mean what anybody means in today’s Western secular world. The one overlap is where sometimes people today use the word faith to refer to religion, and sometimes the Christian religion is called the faith. “The faith that was once for all delivered to the saints,” Jude speaks of.

But when the New Testament speaks of faith in that sense, it never applies the same term to other religions. They’re mere idolatries. Whereas, our Western world, even there, speaks of the varied world faiths, for example. That’s not a New Testament way of thinking of faiths at all. Moreover, so often in today’s world, faith in some Christian circles is something that you churn yourself up in order to believe so that you can wrest some blessings from God.

Whereas, in the wider secular world, faith is roughly religious preference. “Well, you have your faith. I have my faith. We all have our faith.” It’s just merely religious preference, and it’s not tied to objective reality or to truth. Well, certainly in Paul; faith is distinguished, first of all, by the validity of its object. That’s the point. Although that is presupposed in Hebrews, it’s not quite the point here. In Hebrews, faith, by definition, perseveres. That’s the whole point of the faith chapter.

You work through the faith chapter, and you discover that in person after person after person, whether in blessing or in waiting for promise to be fulfilled or under terrible persecution, what distinguishes their faith is because they perceive what is coming, because they trust God and his Word, because they believe where things are going, therefore, they persevere. They persevere. They persevere. They persevere.

You see, in one sense, these people here, they believed God. They weren’t unbelievers. They had seen all the miracles, but they didn’t persevere. They didn’t continue, and that’s why, of course, the definition in 3:14 is so important. “We have come to share in Christ if we hold firmly till the end the confidence we had at first.”

So likewise, those who didn’t enter didn’t enter because of their unbelief (3:19), because they did not combine it with faith; that is, faith which by definition, does persevere to the end. The faith emphasis in chapter 11, although there are several subtle sub-points as well, the main faith emphasis in chapter 11 is that it is faith that perseveres. It continues to trust. It trusts and trusts and trusts. It’s of the sort that says, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust him.”

So therefore, it follows that now that we’ve had the gospel preached to us, what we must do is combine this with faith. “Now we who have believed enter that rest …” There’s that faith again. Don’t forget in the original, the verb believe and the noun faith have the same root. So it strikes you as even more forceful when you’re reading this in Greek. “Now we who had faith enter that rest, just as God has said, ‘So I declared on oath in my anger, “They shall never enter my rest.” ’ ”

2. The argument from God’s rest at creation

This occupies verse 3b to the end of 5. What the author now does is he focuses simply on the pronoun my. God declared on oath in his anger, “They shall never enter my rest.” It’s almost as if you can see the wheels going around in his head. “My rest? God needs a rest? Where does the Bible speak of God resting, for goodness’ sake?”

Then the penny drops. Why, at the very beginning God rested. That’s the first mention in Scripture of God’s rest. “And yet his work has been finished since the creation of the world. For somewhere he has spoken about the seventh day …” He can’t even remember Genesis 1 and 2 for goodness’ sake in terms of the exact reference. It’s really quite lovely, isn’t it?

“For somewhere he has spoken about the seventh day in these words: ‘And on the seventh day God rested from all his work.’ And again in the passage above he says, ‘They shall never enter my rest.’ ” So the author is going back to the front of Scripture, to the font of a biblical theme that finally runs all the way through to the book of Revelation.

When you start looking for the sinews that hold the Bible together, you discover there are about 20 main ones and quite a lot of subordinate ones, but one of the main ones is this rest theme that starts very, very early on, and it tracks out in place after place after place in Scripture. As he has hit one of these tendons that link all of things together, as he has hit it in Psalm 95, he jumps back then to Exodus and he jumps ahead to us and now he takes the biggest jump and goes all the way back to where it begins because the text itself demands it.

God speaks of “my rest.” How does God rest for goodness’ sake? Well, he rests by ending his creation. He finishes his work. He stops, and he thus, rests. Out of that, then, in Scripture come a whole lot of things. In fact, as you well know, when you get to the Decalogue, the Sabbath command is predicated on the model of what God did at creation. “Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy, for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth and … rested the seventh day.”

In other words, Sabbath is itself not founded on something external to the biblical account; it’s founded on God’s own model at creation within the biblical account itself. That’s a point that the author will himself draw out in due course. Eventually entrance into the Promised Land is seen as rest. Entrance into the Promised Land after the exile is seen as rest.

The same theme of rest is picked up as we shall see shortly in the New Testament. There is a whole continuing developing stream, and when the people of God finally do enter under the leadership of Joshua, there comes a time when they have to fight for possession of the land, and David leads them into rest. Didn’t we see that in 2 Samuel the first night, when he had rest from all his enemies round about?

Then, he wanted to proceed with the next step, and one of the things God told him was, “No, you don’t have enough rest yet. There’s going to be more struggle, and you’re going to be a man of war, but I will give you rest in the land.” Which really comes to a certain degree of fulfillment precisely in the reign of Solomon. These themes are tied together across the drama of redemptive history.

3. The argument from salvation-historical linkage of these themes

You see, what the author has done is put down a pillar, Psalm 95. He’s put down another pillar in connection with entering the Promised Land. Now he’s put down a pillar way back there at creation. Now he is going to start linking them. I’ve hinted at this already; but now he makes the links for us explicitly.

Listen to his argument in verses 6–11: “It still remains that some will enter that rest …” Since after all, God has said that there still remains a rest today, long after the entrance into the Promised Land. “… and those who formerly had the gospel preached to them did not go in, because of their disobedience.” He is merely reviewing his argument up to this point.

“Therefore God again set a certain day, calling it Today …” Now he’s focusing on this today word in the Psalm 95 quotation. “… when a long time later he spoke through David, as was said before: ‘Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.’ ” In other words, the argument turns absolutely on a certain salvation-historical reading of Scripture, reading it in sequence.

So if you come along and you follow the Wellhausen School that thinks, for example, that the Old Testament Pentateuch should be broken into J, E, D, P and, as a result, you have the D document, the so-called Deuteronomist history, written about the time of Josiah, about 4 centuries after David, you’re in big trouble.

Here, in fact, the whole integrity of the argument of the epistle to the Hebrews turns on seeing the exodus accounts written and understood before you get to David, four centuries the other way. And now he says, in effect, if God, through David, centuries later … a long time later, he points out … speaks of another today, then the entrance into the Promised Land could not have been final.

“Ah,” someone says. “Yes, but that first generation did fall away; but then, people did finally enter in 40 years later under Joshua, didn’t they?” Well, he’s thought of that. Verse 8: “For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken later …” There’s the salvation-historical reading again. “… he would not have spoken later of another day. The whole force of his argument turns on reading the Old Testament passages in their historical sequence.

“There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God …” Now he’s speaking of Sabbath-rest because he understands full well that the creation rest of God becomes the paradigm for Sabbath, but he has now linked them all together. It’s one long stream of rest, and the Sabbath-rest that he has in mind now is not found in Exodus 20 but promised in Psalm 95 and fulfilled in what is coming in Jesus.

So there remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God, and if you want to know the ultimate significance of that text in Genesis that says God rested from his works, then here it is. Here is the ultimate significance. “… for anyone who enters God’s rest …” After all, the issue is whether or not you will enter my rest. “… anyone who enters God’s rest must cease from his work, just as God did from his.”

There is typological significance to the fact that God ceased from his work. That’s what it meant for God to enter his rest, and under the Sabbath regulations, people ceased from their work, and then when the people entered the Promised Land, there was a sense in which they were going to work, yes, but no longer under the conditions of slavery, now in a land flowing with milk and honey.

That was the idea, but all of this points ultimately, the author is saying, to a deep, deep principle. If you enter into God’s rest, it will be to follow the ultimate primordial paradigm of God himself: You cease from your works. You see, all of this is worked out by simply reading the biblical texts along certain thematic lines in their biblical historical salvation-historical sequence. That’s the point. “Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will fall by following their example of disobedience.”

4. The argument from the Word of God

We’ve had the argument from Psalm 95, the argument from God’s rest at creation, the argument from salvation-historical linkage, and now the argument from the Word of God. Verses 12–13.

“For …” This is meant thus to be explanatory or exemplary in some ways. “… the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.”

At first sight we may ask how verses 12–13 fit into the flow of the argument. They are often quoted simply out of context, as they’re a nice passage about the Bible. But the connection works at several levels.

First, there is a very tight connection with verse 11. We are not to follow their example of disobedience (verse 11). They fell back. They fell by the sword of the Amalekites, which was God’s own pronouncement. That you can read in Numbers 14:43–45. Because they disregarded Moses’ warning, the Word of God, in Numbers 14:43. So don’t play around with the Word of God. God’s Word is powerful, and if you fall back into disobedience and unbelief as they did, then you stand under this Word which brings its own judgment. That’s the immediate connection.

At the same time, probably this text is also relying on the entire argument of 3:7 to 4:11. That is, the whole argument from 3:7 to 4:11 has exegeted the Old Testament passages. It has explained those Old Testament passages. In so doing, he is saying, “Thus, if you understand what the Word of God really is doing as you read it properly, you discover that it penetrates you very deeply.

It exposes all sorts of lame excuses, because this is what the Word of God is actually saying. How dare you fall away! Thus, you see, this passage becomes analogous to a warning passage like chapter 2, verses 1–4. “How shall we escape if we ignore such a great salvation?” Thus, I think that this passage should be taken as one of the sequence of warning passages.

In this light, then, we should not take verse 12 to be a defense of the trichotomist view. Are you familiar with the argument? Are human beings made up of body, soul, and spirit, three disparate forms; hence, trichotomy? Or are we made up of body and immaterial part; hence, dichotomy? Many people who defend trichotomy base their argument on this passage and one passage in 1 Thessalonians, and they argue, “You see, God’s Word at least can make a distinction all the way down to soul and spirit.”

But it’s not what the Greek actually demands. Instead of reading this to understand that the spirit penetrates to the dividing of soul and spirit from each other, the Greek can equally be understood to mean it penetrates right into soul and spirit, which are words piled one on top of another. It is very difficult reading through the New Testament to make any sort of deep distinction between soul and spirit as categories throughout the pages of the New Testament.

Don’t try to defend a trichotomist view from this passage, not least because on the face of it, we’re not talking about anthropology here. This is not a passage that’s trying to explain human nature. It’s trying to explain, rather, how God’s Word penetrates. This is a powerful image of our total exposure and defenselessness before the Word of God.

You cannot finally fool this God. His Word comes to us with both blessing in the gospel and with judgment if you combine that Word with unbelief. That pierces to the deepest levels of our being. That understanding of verse 12, then, is reinforced by verse 13. “Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.”

Let me conclude, then, with some final reflections.

1. The ultimate antitype of Sabbath is the salvation we have in Christ Jesus.

Regardless of your theology, if you are to be square with Scripture you must say, at least, this.

2. The argument is based on the Old Testament alone.

So much so that the author is saying that the Old Testament itself tells us that neither the Sabbath rest nor entrance into the Promised Land constituted the ultimate rest. They pointed beyond themselves as judged by the Old Testament texts themselves. Failure to see that in the view of the author of the epistle to the Hebrews is failure to understand the Old Testament.

Can you imagine how strong this background is, then, in understanding Jesus himself when he turns to people in his day and says, “Come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” Matthew understands, because the very next paragraph introduces the Sabbath controversies. So while they are arguing on whether it’s right or not to pluck some heads of grain, Jesus gives them the true rest. Amen.