Why Does Hebrews Cite the OT Like That? (part 2)

Listen or read the following transcripts as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of Biblical theology in this address from The Gospel Coalition Sermon Library.

This afternoon, in the first instance, I would like to direct your attention to a later pair of verses from Hebrews 1, this time Hebrews 1:8–9, but I’ll read verses 7–9.

Advertise on TGC

“In speaking of the angels he [God] says, ‘He makes his angels winds, his servants flames of fire.’ But about the Son he says, ‘Your throne, O God, will last for ever and ever, and righteousness will be the scepter of your kingdom. You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness; therefore God, your God, has set you above your companions by anointing you with the oil of joy.’ ”

Now on the very face of it, this passage has God the Father, God, addressing Jesus, the Son, as God. The text says, “But about the Son he [God] says, ‘Your throne, O God …’ ” That is, the Father addresses the Son, “Your throne, O God, will last for ever and ever.” By contrast, the angels are described as winds and flames of fire and servants and all the rest but never referred to in any sense or, still less, addressed by God as God.

Of course, that invites us to look at the Old Testament passage where these words are found originally. The passage, as you know, is Psalm 45, to which I invite you to turn. The superscription, for what it is worth, declares this to be a wedding song. On the face of it, that seems to be a very good summary. It’s worth following the flow of the thought before we come to verses 6–7, where the words quoted by Hebrews 1:8–9 are found.

The first verse is a kind of meditative introduction in which the psalmist reflects on what he is about to do. “My heart is stirred by a noble theme as I recite my words for the king; my tongue is the pen of a skillful writer.” There are other psalms with similar introspective introductions by the author. For example, Psalm 39:1–3 and Psalm 49:1–4. That’s what’s going on here.

Then in Psalm 45:2–5, the psalmist describes the king’s majesty, his moral stature. “You are the most excellent of men and your lips have been anointed with grace.” Note, then, this is the courtier, the psalmist, addressing the king. It’s important all through this psalm to remind ourselves who is speaking to whom. Here, in poetic terms, the courtier, describing himself self-referentially in verse 1, now addresses the king. He has openly said he’s reciting his verses for the king. Now he addresses the king.

“You are the most excellent of men. Your lips have been anointed with grace, since God has blessed you forever. Gird your sword upon your side, O mighty one; clothe yourself with splendor and majesty. In your majesty ride forth victoriously in behalf of truth, humility, and righteousness; let your right hand display awesome deeds. Let your sharp arrows pierce the hearts of the king’s enemies; let the nations fall beneath your feet.”

All the sorts of things you would expect in Near-Eastern courts where the courtiers are addressing the king, and not least in these sorts of psalms within Canon itself. Then in verse 6, the psalmist says, “Your throne, O God …” So the question must be asked … Does this mean the psalmist has changed his focus away from the king to address God himself? But when you read on, you discover that cannot be.

“Your throne, O God, will last for ever and ever; a scepter of justice will be the scepter of your kingdom. You love righteousness and hate wickedness; therefore God, your God, has set you above your companions.” He is still referring to God in the third person. Thus, the God whom he is addressing in verse 6 must still be the king. That is, the courtier is addressing the king as God, Elohim, a remarkable passage.

What we find, then, in verses 6–9 is the king’s person and state. “Your throne, O God, will last for ever and ever …” We’ll reflect on these words in a few moments. “… a scepter of justice will be the scepter of your kingdom.” Well, that’s tied already with the previous verses. This is addressed to the king, we’ve been told in verse 1, and in his majesty (verse 4) he’s to ride forth victoriously and with righteousness, with truth, with humility, with awesome deeds, piercing the hearts of the king’s enemies (verse 5).

So still in the domain of king dominion, “A scepter of justice will be the scepter of your kingdom. You love righteousness and hate wickedness; therefore God, your God, has set you above your companions.” In other words, this chap is the king precisely because he is so god-like in his functions. “All your robes are fragrant with myrrh and aloes and cassia; from palaces adorned with ivory the music of the strings makes you glad. Daughters of kings are among your honored women.” That is, even your courtiers are filled with the numbers of princesses.

“At your right hand is the royal bride in gold of Ophir.” Now you realize that the praise of the king is moving into the actual theme of the wedding itself. “At your right hand is this bride in gold,” proverbial for richness because it has come from Ophir. Now, transparently, verses 10–11 are addressed to the bride. It’s clear not only from the words chosen but from the change of pronouns in Hebrew.

Now the courtier has turned his attention away from the king, the groom, and to the woman, the bride. “Listen, O daughter, consider and give ear: Forget your people and your father’s house.” That is a sort of female equivalent of what you find in the creation mandate. “A man is to leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife.” So she is to forget her father’s house and cleave to her husband. Obviously, it’s not an absolute forgetting, but now her primary allegiance is to her husband, to the king.

“He is enthralled by your beauty; honor him, for he is your lord.” Not only in this marriage relationship, as Sarah calls her husband lord, but also he’s the king at the end of the day. “The Daughter of Tyre …” Proverbial for wealth. “… will come with a gift, men of wealth will seek your favor.” That is to say, “In your role as the queen, as the wife of this king, you will discover immense privileges and honors and wealth and influence, so make sure you are utterly loyal to him.”

Then you have the wedding itself depicted in verses 13 and following. “All glorious is the princess within.” Probably “within her chamber.” What you really have is the bridal train and the ceremony described here. “Her gown is interwoven with gold. In embroidered garments she is led to the king; her virgin companions …” The ancient equivalents of bridesmaids. “… follow her and are brought to you. They are led in with joy and gladness; they enter the palace of the king.” Thus the wedding is consummated.

Then the last two verses are addressed to the king. It’s not transparent in English. It is unambiguous in Hebrew. The pronouns make it clear this is now being addressed to the king again. “Your sons will take the place of your fathers.” That is, out of the marriage come sons. That’s the whole point in a royal wedding, isn’t it? It’s not just to mitigate loneliness or find some appropriate avenue for the sexual urge. Rather, in a royal wedding, you’re always concerned about the line, the dynasty.

Out of this marriage, then, “Your sons will take the place of your fathers.” That’s the whole point. The fathers die, the grandfathers die off, new sons come along, and the dynasty continues, which shows that this psalm cannot be that kind of messianic psalm that is referring exclusively to Jesus, because in this sense Jesus has no sons, no sons who replace their fathers. Not in this sense.

Out of this wedding, then, comes the continuation of the line. “You will make them princes throughout the land. I will perpetuate your memory through all generations.” That is, it’s not that you live on. Your sons live after you, and your memory is perpetuated. “I will perpetuate your memory through all generations; therefore the nations will praise you for ever and ever.”

So it really is a wedding song. It makes a certain kind of sense in its own frame of reference. It’s part of the glad heritage of the Davidic dynasty; material is being passed on and passed on and passed on. The dynasty is being preserved. But that brings us to ask some questions about some individual lines here. How is it that any Old Testament courtier could actually address a Davidic king, whether David or anybody in his train, and say that God himself is addressing the king as God?

Now strictly speaking in the psalm itself, it’s not God who is speaking. It’s the courtier. The courtier is addressing the king and says, “Your throne, O God, will be for ever and ever.” Well, first of all, it’s worth reminding ourselves that although Elohim is the common word for God, once in a while Elohim is used to refer to judges. Not very often, but it’s not unknown.

In one sense, it’s entirely appropriate, therefore, to think of the king as the judge who is God’s right hand of justice. We’ve already seen the theme of justice worked right into the piece. He is God’s son, so his justice, if he’s faithful, if he’s righteous, will be exercised in God’s name. He is God’s son exercising his justice in God’s name for the sake of God’s people. So in one sense, it makes sense.

On the other hand, all Old Testament writers and readers and certainly Christians in New Testament times understood that, at the end of the day, God himself is behind the Old Testament Scripture. So the writer to the Hebrews can elsewhere say, “As the Holy Spirit said through the mouth of …” So it’s God by his Spirit speaking through the mouth of. Or sometimes, “It is written somewhere.” Somewhere there is a text that says, understanding it’s still to be God’s speech. Or “Because God has given it, God has said these words.”

So although it’s the courtier speaking, because at the end of the day it’s Scripture, it’s God speaking. Although it is the courtier addressing the king as Elohim, if God has given the Scripture, then, in one sense, it’s God himself who is addressing the king as Elohim. That’s remarkable. This is God-sanctioned. We are to permit this sort of language precisely because, at the end of the day, this is Scripture that God himself has given.

Although, nominally, it’s the courtier who is addressing the king in these terms, if it’s Scripture, if it’s God’s Word, then God himself is sanctioning it. God himself is addressing the king as Elohim. It’s remarkable. That does not mean that either the courtier, the psalmist, or God himself refuses to make any distinction. After all, you have to read verses 6–7 together.

“Your throne, O God, will last for ever and ever; a scepter of justice will be the scepter of your kingdom. You love righteousness and hate wickedness; therefore God, your God, has set you above your companions.” It’s not as if either the courtier or God who stands behind it has forgotten, with respect to this Old Testament king, that there is God, the nonnegotiable God, the ultimate God, the God God, who stands behind the king. The king is not God in that sense.

Now you come close to this sort of tension and then actually go beyond it in the New Testament when you start thinking about how to phrase Jesus’ deity. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God …” God’s own fellow. “… and the Word was God.” God’s own self. You fall into serious error if you ever choose one of those clauses at the expense of the other.

In the passage on sonship I referred to earlier in John, chapter 5, verses 16–30, yes, Jesus says, “Whatever the Father does the Son also does.” That’s pretty comprehensive. It’s a pretty strong functional affirmation of Jesus’ deity. But he also says, “The Son only does what the Father gives him to do. He only says what the Father gives him to say.” There is also a functional subordination within the Godhead. You can’t get away from that either.

In this particular case, precisely because the king is to be the son of God, he stands for God. When he speaks, if he’s speaking rightly and fairly, if he’s teaching the covenant as he’s supposed to, if he’s exercising justice as he ought and doing so in God’s name, then there is a sense in which when he speaks, God speaks. When he exercises justice, God exercises justice. Do you know who understands that surprisingly well in the New Testament? A pagan centurion.

Do you remember the scene in Matthew 8? The centurion has a servant who’s ill. Jesus promises to come and heal him, and the centurion says, “I’m not worthy for you to come to my house. Just say the word. I understand. I myself am a man under authority. I say to one servant ‘Go’ and he goes and to another servant ‘Come’ and he comes. So also I understand you are a man under authority. Just say the word and my servant will be healed.” Jesus says, “I have not found such great faith in Israel.” Isn’t that a remarkable response? Yet it’s quite clear what Jesus is on at.

You see, this centurion understands his role in the military. He’s under a tribune, and the tribune goes all the way up, finally, to Caesar himself. So when this centurion speaks to one of the men under him and says, “Go and fetch something,” at one level, it’s just one man telling another man what to do, but in terms of the ineluctable authority, in terms of the sanctions, if the soldier does not do what he’s told, the soldier needs to understand that it’s not just centurion, the man, who is speaking but centurion, the Roman cog in the hierarchy of Roman power.

When the centurion speaks in function of his role as centurion, Rome speaks. Caesar speaks. That’s the way military discipline works. I have a son in the Marines. Those who are over him tell him what to do, and those who are under him jolly well do it. That’s the way it works. The person at the bottom end, if he doesn’t do it when it’s within the purview of what is legitimate command, at the end of the day, it’s not just my son or my son’s officer or whatever who is giving the command; it goes all the way up to the president of the United States and to Uncle Sam himself.

That Roman centurion understood those things, but as he applies them to Jesus, he is saying, in effect, “I understand that you are a man so much under the authority of God that just as when I speak Rome speaks, when you speak God speaks. So all you have to do is say the word and my servant will be healed. Because after all, when God speaks, if he declares forgiveness, then there is forgiveness. If he declares healing, there is healing. Who will be countervailing with respect to God’s authority? When you speak, God speaks.”

Now not for a moment are you to think that this centurion had figured out the Trinity, that he got all of his Christology straight. He’s thinking in functional categories. There’s no reason to think he has it all sorted out, but he has the kind of faith, nevertheless, that sees enough of who Jesus is that trying to find categories from his own experience, he understands that when Jesus speaks, God speaks.

Jesus responds with this wonderfully warm commendation. “I have not found such great faith; no, not in Israel.” In one sense, that is merely the idealization, the perfection, of what, at one level, should have been the case for all of Israel’s kings. They should have been so in tune with God, so righteous, so perfectly obedient, so at one with the will and plan of God as expressed in Scripture that never would they corrupt justice, never would they teach people other than what the law taught. They would be utterly faithful.

They were supposed to be God’s son. Isn’t that the whole point? Just as Israel as a nation was supposed to be God’s son, so the king par excellence was supposed to be God’s son. Now not with all the purviews and rights and capacities of the eternal Son, but nevertheless, functionally, that’s the way the king was supposed to operate. This psalm is an idealization of that.

The sad fact of the matter is that son after son after son betrayed his responsibilities in this regard. Even a man like David, who again and again and again is admirably described as “a man after God’s own heart,” nevertheless ends up seducing Bathsheba, trying to cover up his crime by arranging a kind of military execution through the back door, and being two-faced with the prophet Nathan. The man after God’s own heart ends up committing adultery and murder. One wonders what dear ol’ David would have done if he hadn’t been a man after God’s own heart.

Thus, even the very best and the brightest betray their heavenly Father. They don’t act like sons. But now we come to the Son par excellence, who not only as a human being perfectly obeys God but now in the perfection of his sonship can go so far as to say, “Whatever the Father does, the Son also does.” That’s why in the opening verses of Hebrews 1, likewise, we are told that this Christ is the exact representation of the Father’s being, the perfect effulgence of his glory, the exact stamp of God. That’s the whole point.

In that sense, then, Psalm 45 is addressed to a Davidic king, maybe to David himself (we can’t really know), and is addressing him on his wedding day, holding out the ideal of what the king should be, just as on our inauguration days and the like we hold out some ideal of what the president should be, but unless we’re extraordinarily naÔve, we don’t really think that presidents are perfect, and historically we know how badly these kings failed.

Yet the whole system is set up to anticipate a great Davidide who is coming in David’s line, and with all the kinds of promises we briefly looked at this morning from Isaiah 9 and Ezekiel 34 and others as well, there is an expectation that as faulty and flawed as this Davidide was, there is a greater Davidide still to come, when the words of Psalm 45 would not be extravagant, would not be misplaced, would not be betrayed by sin.

Thus, there is an assumption again of typology, a Davidic typology. If God through the courtier can speak to a Davidic king as, in some sense, God, his representative, his son, belonging to the God family of rule, how much more does it apply to the Son par excellence? In that regard, nothing is said about angels at all. Nothing.

That’s also why Hebrews 1 and 2 are more closely tied together than some people think. The traditional way of understanding Hebrews 1 and 2 is like this. In Hebrews 1, you learn that the Son is greater than the angels. In Hebrews 2, you learn that he has to become a human being. He can’t become an angel. He can’t be tied to them.

To be a savior for human beings, he must actually become a human being, so he comes to be known as one of the children of Abraham, one of the children of Adam. So you have part one and part two in the argument. He has to be greater than angels (part one) and (part two) he has to be a human being. Isn’t that the way it’s regularly understood?

Well, it’s not wrong. It just misses a significant point. The two parts are tied together, because the Son of God is the human king who rules over the affairs of God’s image bearers. That’s the very nature of what God is doing. He has come to redeem a human race. He is superior to the angels precisely because he has come as the human king to rule over them in the Davidic line.

The two parts of the argument are not two; they are part of the same. You see it as soon as you raise the question.… How is it that the eternal God has raised up a redeemer for fallen human beings and not for fallen angels? Most of the angels are ministering spirits sent to God’s people. You suddenly realize the two parts of the argument are one.

Well, that’s the first set of passages I wanted to look at with you. Now I’m going to come to two more. One we’ll deal with rather quickly and one will take quite a bit of time. The reason I’m putting them together, although superficially they sound quite different, is because there is a kind of argument that is found within these two passages that is sometimes misunderstood today. It’s a kind of argument, and I want you to see what the argument is.

In fact, it’s an argument that actually is found in Galatians and in Romans and is traceable all the way back to Jesus. It’s a kind of argument that I think we sometimes overlook. The first passage we’ll look at rather briefly. It runs from Hebrews 3:7 to 4:13. I won’t read all of this in one go, but I will pick up chunks of it. “So, as the Holy Spirit says …” I love the diversity of ways in which this author refers to the Old Testament. Here simply, “So, as the Holy Spirit says,” and now he quotes. This time he quotes a psalm, Psalm 95, verses 7–11.

“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 will never enter my rest.’ ” There’s that rest theme again.

“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 …” That’s going back to the very first word of the quotation. “Today, if you hear his voice …” As long as there’s still a today in which you have time and space for repentance, then don’t harden your heart.

So far, all you have here is moral application, but there’s more coming, and it turns, in part, on this word today, so keep it in mind. It’s why the NIV has it capitalized: to draw it to your attention, because it keeps recurring. “Encourage one another daily, as long as it is still 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.”

That’s a very important verse in understanding the theology of Hebrews. It is saying, in effect, that genuine conversion depends on perseverance. That is to say, those who are genuinely converted do persevere, by definition. “We have come to share in Christ …” That is, we have been genuinely converted. We have become Christians. “We have come to share in Christ if we hold to the very end the confidence we had at first.” That’s the way it is. The proof, in other words, of the genuineness is precisely in the perseverance.

“As has just been said: ‘Today …’ ” There’s that today again. “… if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion.” Well, let’s think about that rebellion. He says, “Who were they who heard and rebelled? Were they not all those Moses led out of Egypt?” That is, they were the people who were saved from slavery in Egypt but who did not enter the Promised Land. They were saved out of but, sadly, they were never saved into. Instead, they died in the desert.

“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.” In other words, the author makes it clear that there is a form of (I’ll use the word generically) salvation that is not salvation.

There’s a form of salvation out of that is never authenticated by getting into. You can get awfully close and be freed from all kinds of things, but if there’s no final perseverance, then where is the genuineness of it? Jesus says something similar in the parable of the soils. Some seed falls on rocky ground. In Palestine, that means on ground with just a very thin layer of topsoil and a lot of limestone bedrock underneath.

Because the soil level is so thin, the soil heats up the fastest, and the seeds in it germinate the quickest. It seems to be the most promising of all, but then the early rains stop, the latter rains don’t come for a while, and that land gets hotter and hotter and hotter. The roots go down trying to find some moisture, and at the end of the day, they hit the limestone bedrock, and that’s it. They just keel over and die.

They had seemed the most promising of the crop. They germinated fastest. They sprouted quickest. They seemed the best. That’s what Jesus says. There are some who hear the Word and immediately receive it with joy. “Yes, the Spirit is really working tonight, isn’t he?” But they turn out not to be genuine, despite all of the signs of growth and initial promise, precisely because there’s no long-term, persevering fruit bearing.

So also here. Some were saved from slavery and never entered into the Promised Land. That’s what the rebellion is about. At this point, the author is using the Old Testament narrative merely by way of moral exhortation. Let me pause for a moment there and think about that. That, I suspect, is the way most of us use the Old Testament in narrative passages. You know, these sort of “Life of Abraham” series, “Life of Moses” series, “Lives of the Kings” series.

You wander through the kings, saying, “This king was good; therefore, be good. This king was bad; therefore, don’t be bad,” this sort of moral exhortation, and that’s all it is. You go through Nehemiah, and you write a series called, “Hand Me Another Brick,” all about Christian leadership and stuff. You at least have to ask the question somewhere along the line, “Is the point of the book primarily to teach Christian leadership? Is that why it’s included in Canon? Is it included in order to provide a manual of Christian leadership?”

Even though it does certainly say some things about Christian leadership, undoubtedly, is it a book about Christian leadership? If not, what is it about? Shouldn’t you be preaching it and teaching it in such a way that it reflects what the book is primarily about? In other words, you shouldn’t go so quickly to your moral exhortation that you end up distorting something of what’s in the text itself.

As a result, some people come along and say, “Well, when you’re preaching through these lives of Abraham and lives of Daniel and lives of whatever, what you must not do is preach through them as if they’re little moral exhortations.” You know, “Don’t sleep around like David. Make sure you have the faith of Abraham. Don’t lie like Abraham. Make sure you pray like Daniel.” That’s about what you do when you preach through these Old Testament narratives.

But before you throw the baby out with the bathwater, it is important to remember the number of passages in the New Testament where the New Testament writers themselves draw moral lessons from the Old Testament narrative. That’s not all they draw. We’ll see that there’s more here in a moment. There’s a christological center. We’ll see how he gets there in a moment. Nevertheless, there is a moral lesson that’s drawn first.

The lesson is, “Don’t forget. There were some people before you who were saved from something who never got into the Promised Land because they didn’t persevere in faith. They were disobedient. So just because you’ve made some profession of faith, if there’s no genuine perseverance with you, don’t think you can escape the judgment of God. After all, God still says, ‘Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the days of the rebellion.’ ”

You find a very similar moral application from the same events in 1 Corinthians, chapter 10, verses 1–13. Of course, embedded in that passage is another very difficult christological passage about “That rock was Christ.” Nevertheless, the main point of that whole section is, “Don’t fall away as they did in those times.”

So there are some moral lessons to be learned from the Old Testament, and I don’t want to despise that for a moment. But having made those points, having drawn those moral lessons from the Old Testament account, the author now moves on with another whole argument. It’s very important to hear how he does it. Chapter 4: “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.”

What does the author mean by this? “The promise of his rest still stands.” In the following verses, he unpacks it. I don’t have time to go through those verses in detail. Let me summarize his argument and then show you certain turning points. The summary of his argument is this: Psalm 95 was written after the exodus and related events. In the exodus and related events, you had this terrible scene in the desert, the golden calf episode, the whole generation dying off.

But at the end of 40 years, eventually the remainder of the people did go into the Promised Land under Joshua. They did eventually get in there. They entered into rest. Wasn’t that the promise again and again and again? “You will enter into rest,” the rest of the land of Canaan. They did enter that rest under Joshua. Now centuries go by, and God says again in Psalm 95, “Today, if you do not harden your heart as in the days of the rebellion, you will enter into my rest.”

That presupposes that the rest the people entered into when they finally did get into the Promised Land under Joshua was not the ultimate rest. Otherwise, how could God still be saying, centuries later, when the people are in the land under a Davidic king, “Today, don’t harden your hearts as in the old times, and you will enter into my rest”? Why isn’t he saying instead, “Okay, now that you’re into my rest, don’t harden your heart, so that you can improve your rest”?

That’s not what he says. He says instead, “Don’t harden your hearts as they did today, and if you don’t, you will enter into my rest.” The necessary implication of that is that entering into the Promised Land was not entering into the final rest. There is no way of getting around that argument. None. Now we need to think about that just a bit more before we work on where else the author goes with this. This argument depends absolutely on seeing that Psalm 95 was written after the exodus and related events.

If you belong to the critical camp today, which is out there all right, which thinks that a lot of the exodus events material was actually made-up stuff about the time of Josiah or even later, then you could have Psalm 95 written first, referring to vague memories of something or redacted as part of the praises of Israel based on some traditions or whatever. Who knows? But the actual events themselves were made-up events to justify a certain theology as part of the so-called Deuteronomistic history around the time of Josiah or even later.

If that’s how you view these things, then the sequence is broken between the exodus and Psalm 95. But the validity of the argument in Psalm 95 turns absolutely on seeing that it’s referring to historic events in the past that were much earlier. “Today, don’t harden your heart as in the days of the rebellion that is already in the past, and you shall enter into my rest. Even though they entered into the rest under Joshua, in fact, it wasn’t the final rest. Now I want you to enter into my rest.”

Do you see how that must have sounded to thoughtful, pious, godly Israelites in the tenth century? Some of them would say, “Hey, I thought we were in the land of rest,” and others would say, “Well, yeah, I know it’s the land of rest, but boy, we made a hash of things. We could do with a lot more rest. What’s God promising here? What kind of rest is this?”

Then the writer to the Hebrews goes even further. He’s listening to the text all the time. He knows the psalmist has God saying in Psalm 95, “If they do not repent, if they do harden their hearts, then I have declared on oath in my anger they will never enter into my rest.” You can see the cogs going over in his brain. “My rest? God’s rest? Where does God speak of his rest?”

Then the light dawns. God’s rest is first introduced to us in Genesis 1–2. God made everything and rested. He rested from all his creation. He rested on the seventh day. Of course, that pattern from creation becomes the founding for the fourth commandment too. “Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy, for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day.”

Thus, even Sabbath is a kind of reflection of the creation order of things. So to enter into God’s rest, if it’s really going to be God’s rest, then, in some sense, you have to rest the way God rested. God rested from his work. If we are to enter into God’s rest, we’d better rest from our works the way God rested from his works.

The author has inferred all of this by simply paying attention to the text of Psalm 95. This is exegesis. Now look at the individual bits of the argument. I spell them out in a linear thought, whereas the writer of Hebrews circles around. It’s a little harder for Western minds to follow it, but as soon as you see the linear thought and then convert it into the circles, it’s pretty straightforward.

“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 good news, the gospel, preached to us, just as they did.” In their case, it was release from slavery in Egypt and promise of entering into the Promised Land, the land of rest.

“But the message they heard was of no value to them, because those who heard it did not combine it with faith.” That is, they whined and complained and murmured and actually finally ascribed even the glories of the exodus to the demonic. “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.” You’re back in Genesis 1–2.

“For somewhere he has spoken about the seventh day.” Somewhere. Don’t you love that? He doesn’t even give a proper reference. “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 into my rest.’ ” The author has my rest, God speaking, back to when God first rested, which was back at creation.

“It still remains, then, that some will enter into that rest, if, in fact, in Psalm 95, a long time after the exodus itself, God is still promising to some people on certain conditions to enter into his rest. 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.’ ”

Somebody says, “Ah, yes, yes, yes. Those in the desert fell aside. Of course they didn’t enter into the rest, but a lot of people did enter into the rest. The next generation went in finally with Joshua.” The author has already thought of that. Verse 8: “If Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken later about another day.”

That’s the point. Psalm 95 comes much, much, much later than entrance into the Promised Land when they did enter into the rest of Canaan under Joshua, yet God is still saying through David in Psalm 95, “Today, if you do not harden your heart, you will enter into my rest.” Conclusion. “There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest,” the rest of God’s own creation, God’s rest, a rest typified by the Sabbath, a rest, in some sense, typified by entrance into the Promised Land, none of which could have been final, because centuries later God is still promising rest.

“There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God, and anyone who enters God’s rest 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.” Now it’s within the chain of that argument that verses 12–13 need to be understood.

I think we often look at verses 12–13 independently as their contribution to the doctrine of Scripture, and they do make a contribution to the doctrine of Scripture. Don’t misunderstand me. Yet the author puts them here for very good reason. It is the capstone of his argument. “For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit.”

This does not necessarily mean soul from spirit, as if he holds to three separate entities. The Greek could equally mean simply it divides the soul. It divides the spirit. It probes inside. It takes you apart. “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 an account.”

In this context, then, it is not only affirming that Christ knows everything and sees everything and there’s no point trying to hide from him, he knows our thoughts, but that God’s Word is active in exposing who we are, probing our inmost thoughts. This Word of God, which, in fact, has just been described, expounded, explained …

This word regarding the exodus, this word from Psalm 95, has all been found to probe our hearts and thoughts and minds, so as we read these accounts, they come back to us today and show up our emptiness, our unbelief, our disobedience, warning us, lest we should fail to enter that rest. That word that was given to them, that word that set the captives free, that word that came again and gave a new prophetic oracle through David, promising people, “Today, if you hear his heart, you will enter into his rest …”

That word still comes back to us today and promises us a new rest, as it probes us and challenges us and takes us apart from the inside. There’s no point hiding from him. That’s what this word is doing, and that’s how you must preach the Old Testament narrative. It’s not, then, just a moral exhortation. The text is saying that Psalm 95 read in its proper historical sequence demands an eschatological explanation.

The Old Testament is not just about being faithful in the Promised Land. The Old Testament itself already announces the principial obsolescence of the Old Testament rest, the Old Testament nation. That’s not the final rest. Already in the time of David there is announcement of more rest, better rest, another rest, in which you cease from your labors and enter into God’s rest. The rest of the land merely points forward to yet more rest still to come.

Small wonder, then, that the passage we read earlier in 2 Samuel, chapter 7, begins by saying God had given his people rest as David had put down the nations, and David wants to build a temple, and then God says, “No, wait a minute. There’s more struggle yet to come. There’s more rest I have to give you. You are still going to be a bloody man. You are going to be a man of war. I will give your people more rest yet.”

Beyond that is still to come the temple, and beyond that, in the streets of Palestine one day there was heard a voice saying, “Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.” Beyond all of that is the rest described in Revelation 21–22. There is an entire pattern and sequencing that constitutes the biblical narrative, and you can only see how the pieces fit together when they are in their biblical, historical sequence.

You cannot make sense of Psalm 95 unless you see it in its sequential arrangement with the exodus. There are a lot of strands like that. One has been alluded to here on the fly. Let me just mention it and unpack it a wee bit more. Consider the temple theme. I won’t stop down at every place. There are connections the temple has with creation. I won’t even go there. It’s another great theme. If you want to follow that part, read Greg Beale’s book on the temple in the NSBT series, a very good book.

But connected already with tabernacle and the giving of the law.… What was the temple for? It was the great meeting place between God and his people. To this place the tribes were to gather three times a year for the great festivals. Later a fourth was added. This was also the place where the Passover sacrifices were offered up to remind the people that God had passed over their sons in bringing wrath upon Israel because a Passover lamb had died in the place of their sons and wrath fell on others instead.

This was the site of Yom Kippur, Day of Atonement, when a bull and a goat were sacrificed and their blood was sprinkled on the top of the ark of the covenant by the high priest in the Most Holy Place, both to pay for his sins and the sins of the people. This was the place where the glory came down. In the tabernacle, the glory at night, the cloud by day.

Once the temple was in a place, that was the way it was, day after day after day after day, reminding the people that God was in his holy temple. When the cloud lifted, it was just a tent, and at that point they could roll it all up and go off to some new place. Then they laid it down, and the glory came back. Then only the high priest could enter, just once a year, only with blood.

Eventually, the temple is built. Do you remember the great scene when glory so descends on the temple the priests have to leave? It is a way of God signaling that this now is the great meeting place between God and his people. That’s where thousands, then tens of thousands, of animals are slaughtered over the year, a courtyard of blood. For without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sin.

Then in the great vision of Ezekiel 8–9 (8–11 ultimately), Ezekiel is transported in the Spirit 700 miles from the banks of the Kebar River, where he’s already in exile, to see the horrific sins that are going on in Jerusalem. What he also sees in this particular vision is the mobile throne chariot of God, described already in chapter 1, parked, and the glory of God abandons the temple and moves to the chariot.

The chariot leaves the city, crosses the Kidron Valley, climbs the Mount of Olives, and overlooks the city. This is a dramatic visionary way of saying that God has abandoned not only Jerusalem but the temple. That means that when Nebuchadnezzar comes in four and a half years later and flattens everything, it’s not because God wasn’t strong enough to handle it. It’s because God had pronounced his judgment and had abandoned the city.

How could God do that? You could hear the voices of protest. God had declared Jerusalem would be the city of the great king. God had declared this place for his temple. How could he do that? But God had exercised his judicial rights, and Jerusalem would be flattened. Then in chapter 11, God says through Ezekiel to the remnant in a foreign land, “I will be a sanctuary to you.”

The most important thing about the temple is not where the masonry is but where God is. God can be a sanctuary to his people on the banks of the Kebar River. It doesn’t have to be in a certain hunk of masonry in Jerusalem. Then one day in the streets of Jerusalem a voice was heard again, saying, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it again.”

His enemies didn’t have a clue what he meant. His disciples didn’t have a clue what he meant. John says so. “Oh, the Master is always saying these enigmatic things, you understand. We’ll understand them someday, no doubt.” But after he had been raised from the dead, then they remembered his words, and they believed the Scriptures, we’re told.

The whole point was that Jesus himself, by his death and resurrection, by his destruction of the temple and raising it again, was becoming the temple; that is, the great meeting place between God and human beings. That’s the whole point. He becomes the place of sacrifice. He becomes the place of Christian priesthood. He becomes the place of mediation. He becomes the point of focus of praise. He becomes the great temple.

Then in derivative senses, the church is God’s temple. Read 1 Corinthians 3. The meeting place between God and human beings. In fact, in one or two passages, our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit, as in 1 Corinthians 6, where God meets the human race in me. But that’s not the end of it. In a book like Hebrews, the language of temple changes again. The temple on the ground, the temple in Jerusalem, is only a shadow. It’s only a pattern of things to come. That’s the language of Hebrews 9. We’ll get there in due course.

It’s only a shadow of the things to come, whereas, in one sense, where the bloody offering must finally be offered is before the very presence of God. Where God is, that is where the temple is. So it’s offered before the very presence of God. Then the language changes again in the Apocalypse. “I saw a new city, the New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven.” What are its dimensions? It’s a cube.

You know you’re dealing with metaphor when you describe a city as a cube. There’s only one cube in the Old Testament. Just one. It’s the Most Holy Place. It’s a way of saying that the whole New Jerusalem, where all of God’s people will be.… They are in the Most Holy Place in the very presence of God forever. They don’t need mediation anymore. They don’t need a priest to go in. They are themselves now and forever always in the very presence of the shekinah glory.

Or to change the language again, at the end of Revelation 21, the seer says what is not in heaven. “I saw no temple in that city, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple.” It’s another way of saying the same thing. You don’t need mediation anymore. The debt has been paid. The reconciliation has been effected. Our transformation has been complete. There is nothing of sin or dirt or shame that taints us in any way, shape, or form, and forever and always we are in the presence of God himself. “For the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple.”

Now all I’ve done here is followed one string through the Bible. I haven’t even stopped at all the places. I’ve only stopped at a handful. By running through some of the son language earlier, I was running through another string, and I only touched on it four or five places. By dealing with chapters 3–4, I was running through some of the rest language.

It starts at creation, it picks up the Ten Commandments, it picks up entrance into the Promised Land, it picks up Psalm 95, it picks up notions of Sabbath, it picks up Jesus, and finally it brings you to the final consummated rest. It’s another string that runs right through Scripture.

For all of the diversity of literary genres found in Scripture, for all of the diversity of times when they were written and languages in which they were written, the Bible is, in some ways, held together by about 20 of these main themes. There are scores and scores of lesser ones, but about 20 of these main themes that run right through the Scripture, picking it up in various ways with little offshoots going here and there.

So it becomes part of the preacher’s job, as you’re trying to explain the Word of God to people in your care and charge, to show them how their Bible is put together. That means that when you’re dealing with one of these texts and you butt up against one of these strings, one of these tendons, these ligaments that hold it all together …

When you butt up against one of them somewhere along the line, not every time, not every Sunday, not in every case, but sometimes along the line, you have to rapidly trace it out both ways right through the Bible so that people can see how their Bibles go together. Once they’ve seen it, that means that every time they will read anything along that string, they’ll be mentally hanging it all together again.

Now what I’m claiming is that the writer to the Hebrews understands that. He does it again and again. Here he has done it for rest. We’ll take a couple of other examples he follows through in a few moments. He does it again and again. So part of what Hebrews is doing is teaching you how to put your whole Bible together.

Passages that begin by seeming so difficult and insurmountable.… The reason they have become so difficult and insurmountable to us is precisely because we in our culture have been thinking in such atomistic categories. You start seeing this linear progression of redemptive history, seeing the strings and following them out, and you discover that the writer to the Hebrews is making eminent sense, because he’s reading the Bible in historical terms.

Let me give one example outside of Hebrews before we come back to one of the most moving of all within Hebrews. So you do not think this is merely a peculiarity of Hebrews, it’s important, for the sake of completeness, to remember that this happens in other New Testament writers as well. Remind yourself of Paul’s argument in Galatians 3.

Now in many Reformed circles, Galatians 3 is said to teach the following. Before you get the gospel preached to you, you must have the law preached to you, because the law’s function is to serve as a paidagogos to bring you to Christ. That’s what the law does. Thus, it becomes part of a certain heritage of Reformed theology, for example, amongst the Puritans, to begin with the law first. If you asked a Puritan, “What’s in the Bible?” the Puritan would respond, “Law, gospel, and illustrations of both.”

Wesley, as Packer has rather tellingly put it, even if it has a bit of a bite to it, is in some ways an inconsistent Puritan. That is, he thinks very much along Puritan categories when he comes to this particular vision of reality. In one of his letters, Wesley explains what he does when he’s going to preach the gospel in any place. He’s asked, “What do you do when you go and preach the gospel in any place?”

He says, “Well, when I come to any place, I begin with a general declaration of the love of God. Then I preach the law. To teach men and women their guilt, to make them see their need of the cross, of the gospel, I preach the law. Then when people begin to be consternated by their lostness and their need, I preach more law. When there are some people who are beginning to weep and cry to God because of the burden of their guilt as manifested by the law,” he says, I quote, “I admix a little grace.”

But still he says, “I preach law.” Then he says, “When most of the audience is convulsed in tears and self-examination and crying to God, then I preach the gospel fully and freely and broadly, showing that there is ample forgiveness in Christ Jesus, inviting men and women to come, and quickly do I admix law, lest men should presume.” That was Puritanism. That was a Puritan theory of evangelism.

Pastorally, although I would never put it quite like that today, there’s some sense to it too. You don’t ask to be saved until you know you’re lost. You don’t ask for forgiveness until you know you’re guilty. You don’t ask for integrity until you know you’re shamed. You don’t ask to be reconciled to God until you know you’re alienated.

I’ve been doing university missions for 30 years. I tell you, the hardest thing to get across in this postmodern generation is that anybody is guilty of anything, but until you get agreement on the need, you can’t possibly get agreement on the solution. People argue endlessly about atonement theories. There’s no point arguing about atonement theories until you see what the problem is. The problem is that God in his holiness stands over against us in wrath and judgment. That answers the question, then, what the solution will be.

So there’s great insight, in one sense, in the Puritan vision of things, even though the way you go about it might be a little different, and people mean different things by law. In any case, today I think a better category than law for dealing with postmoderns is idolatry. There are a lot of things that could be said along those lines. That’s not my point here.

My point, however, is that strictly speaking, that’s not what Galatians 3 says. Galatians 3, when you look at it closely, is not talking about the psychological profile of the individual as he or she comes to Christ. It’s talking, again, about redemptive history. It’s talking about the thing across time. We can get at this one through the back door. If you asked a first-century conservative Palestinian Jew how you please God, that Jew would reply, “By obeying the law.”

How did David please God? By obeying the law. How did Samuel please God? By obeying the law. How did Abraham please God? By obeying the law. Wait a minute. The law hadn’t been given in Abraham’s day. I know, but Genesis says, “Abraham obeyed all my statutes and commandments,” so he must have had a private revelation of the law. We know, after all, from the Bible that you please God by obeying the law. With faith, of course, understanding the law is given by grace, but that’s nevertheless how you please God: by obeying the law.

How did Enoch please God? By obeying the law. Wait a minute. He’s only seventh from Adam. How does Enoch have the law? Well, it says he walked with God, and we know what it means to walk with God. You walk with God by obeying the law. Now do you see what is happening here hermeneutically? The law has been elevated to the place of hermeneutical control. It’s controlling how you read the whole Old Testament.

Along comes Paul, now that he’s a Christian, and says, “No, no, no. You’re misreading the text. Don’t you see what the issue is here? Read it in a salvation-historical way. Read it sequentially. Then what you discover is Abraham believed God, and he was justified, and that was before the law was given. In fact, God gave him a promise that in him and in his seed all of the nations of the earth would be blessed.” It’s all worked out in Galatians 3.

The law coming along centuries later cannot annul that promise. In other words, God has given his promise, and God’s promise is God’s promise, whether you have the law or not. The law can’t annul the promise, and the promise is that through Abraham’s seed, a man who is justified by grace through faith, all of the nations of the earth would be blessed. “Well then, what’s the point of the law?” Paul asks rhetorically.

Well, if you put all of his writings together, there are quite a lot of different components to Paul’s understanding of what the law’s purpose was, but what he focuses on here is it was given on account of transgressions. In the context, that almost certainly means to make transgression appear as transgression. Because of the ugliness of the rebellion that was transparently there, he now wanted to put a fence around it, so that it was not simply rebelling against God, idolatry in that fundamental sense; it was actually transgressing what God had prescribed or proscribed.

Thus, it tended to hem the people in, as well, in Paul’s thought, as providing a forward-looking pattern to the solutions that would come. It’s why elsewhere Paul can say that Christ is our Passover. The law has this sort of prophetic function as well, this anticipatory function, looking ahead. Thus, he says, the law becomes our schoolmaster to lead us to Christ.

Now he’s not talking individualistically and personally here. He’s saying across the centuries, that’s what it becomes. Across the pattern of redemptive history, that’s what it becomes. It finally leads us to Christ, so that when you come to the period of the end of the minority of the covenant people of God, in the fullness of time, God sends forth his Son, born of a virgin.

Now although his argument is, thus, redemptive historical, it nevertheless presupposes that the reason God does it this way is precisely because that’s a lesson we have to learn before Christ comes. Insofar as today we have so many bone-ignorant people around who don’t know anything about God’s law or transgression or curse or punishment, there is a sense in which you have to go back to understanding things the way Wesley and the Puritans did to help people understand what they’re going to be saved from before they will actually call to be saved.

So there is some psychological application that is relevant, but in terms of the actual structure of the argument in Galatians 3, the argument is salvation historical, and it turns entirely on sequence. If with a great many contemporary Old Testament critics you hold that the patriarchal narratives, the Abraham story, is written much, much, much later …

The whole Danish school, for example, is in that camp. Much, much, much later. And in any case, it’s only myth; it has no real validation. Then the various things about the law, which they already have, very late themselves, that they are not written after a historical Abraham to whom certain promises are given.… Then the whole argument of Galatians 3 falls apart. It doesn’t work.

Look at this from one more perspective. The first Christians had as a Bible exactly what their non-converted Jewish friends had. They had what we call the Old Testament. So the question becomes.… How do Christians use the Old Testament differently from the way non-Christian Jews use the Old Testament? I mean, they still have the Old Testament. Same text.

We sometimes spend today in our technical, scholarly circles a lot of time proving that the appropriation techniques Paul uses or Matthew uses or Jesus uses or Hebrews uses to handle a text really has precise analogues with Jewish usage. We have names for these things. They’re the certain kinds of middot. Some Jewish scholars had seven middot. Others had 13 middot. They all have names. The kal v’homer rule, which is just the same as an a fortiori argument in Latin, from the lesser to the greater, and so on.

There are rules for all of these kinds of things, and you can see as they go down, they use the same sorts of rules. They appropriate the text the same sort of way, just like the Jewish world. But it doesn’t ask the fundamental question. If they’re handling the Scriptures at the picky level, exactly like unconverted Jews in the first century, why do they come out with such a different answer? Because they do. Or to put the matter in a personal fashion, what changes in Paul’s hermeneutics from before the Damascus road to after the Damascus road? That’s the question to ask.

Now there are two or three things that change. In this three-lecture series I can’t go through them all, but one of them is the one we’ve stumbled across here. Paul has learned to read the Old Testament salvation historically. That is, he has learned to read it in its historical sequence. He no longer permits the law, the covenant of Moses, to have a hegemonic control over the whole. He no longer allows it to have a hermeneutical control over the whole.

He reads the law in its historical sequence, and then the law can’t overthrow the promise to Abraham. It can’t overthrow the Abrahamic covenant, and it can’t overthrow the account of creation. He’s reading the whole thing now along a certain salvation historical line, exegetically, in terms of biblical theology, in terms of driving you to promises that are ultimately fulfilled in Christ Jesus. That changes everything.