Articles, Bible studies, and sermons that contain Hebrews 4:1:
Hebrews 4:1-2
If everything is already predetermined, why should we fear? The answer is, everything is not predetermined. He is not willing that we should perish, but we are told to fear, lest we fall short or even seem to fall short.
The lesson here is taken from the children of Israel. God willed to give them the land of Canaan He promised to their fathers. However, many of the people chose to die in the wilderness through their disobedience.
They did not have to die there. He was fully willing to take them into the Promised Land at the end of the second year, but they chose otherwise. They chose to disobey and not go in at His command because they lacked faith.
Because they lacked faith they feared the people of the land and decided that it was too fearful to go in there. Their fear worked against them. As a result, God judged what they did and said that they would all die in the wilderness, and they would not go into the land until that generation that disobeyed died.
As it more literally says here, their bodies were strewn from one end of the wilderness to the other, because they chose to die in the wilderness. The lesson to us, at least in terms of this particular subject of predestination, is though God has willed that we have eternal life, and God has willed that we be in the Kingdom of God, we also have free moral agency. Therefore we must fear about the kind of choices we are making, because every act is not predetermined.
Only the end result has been willed that this is the way that God wants it to be. Of course there are some that He undoubtedly calls, maybe all of us for that matter, to fulfill certain responsibilities within the body of Christ looking forward to the Kingdom of God. His preparation then through that is to prepare us for that.
He spends the time that we are walking through the wilderness, as it were, preparing us for that. The children of Israel died because they chose to sin with the golden calf, to rebel with Korah against Moses, to commit fornication with the daughters of Moab. God did not predestine that they do those things.
That was their choice. If God permits something, we should not assume that God predestined it. If He permits something to happen in your life, you should not presume that He predestined it.
He certainly did permit it. The Bible does not support such a view. At best, it only indicates that He decided to use such a circumstance to see what we would do with it, not that He willed it.
God always has alternatives. If we chose to go one way rather than the other, well He switches to plan B, and maybe we make a detour until He gets us back on track again. So we make it hard on ourselves.
Consider these people who saw a multitude of miracles done by God through His servant Moses and on occasion through Aaron. They experienced the water in Egypt turning to blood, the hopping frogs all over the place, that eerie penetrating darkness that pervaded all of the land, and then the division between Goshen and Egypt where they were spared from the plagues that came upon Egypt. They knew that there was something working in their lives.
They experienced it when the bugs were all over Egypt but not in the land of Goshen, when the hail fell and burned on the ground burning up all the wood in Egypt yet it did not happen in Goshen, and on the Passover night when the firstborn of Egypt were killed but the firstborn of Israel were not killed because the blood was on the doorposts and the lintel. They spoiled the Egyptians and went out as God parted the Red Sea right before their eyes where all the Egyptian army died. They spent forty years when God day after day gave them manna from heaven, saw the water coming like a river out of solid rock, and saw quail being blown toward them practically hip-high on the ground so that they had all the meat that they could possibly eat.
They saw the glory of God descending on Mount Sinai, felt the earth shake under their feet, saw the mountain of fire, and saw the glory of God come down on the tabernacle after it was built. Yet every single one of them except for two men and their families perished. These people never saw God in those works.
What they physically saw did not produce spiritual faith which enables one to see God because there has to be a voluntary response by the one given the ability to see. The Christian has the responsibility of responding to God's calling by acts of faith. The apostle is reminding these people of the deadly seriousness of their situation.
God's calling is not indiscriminately mimeographed for all who might chance to see or read. Your calling is a personal invitation that has been addressed to you. The warning is that since ancient Israel did not enter into God's rest someone else will because God will carry through with His purpose.
The Christian therefore ought not to think that there is automatic acceptance. One needs to very seriously consider Israel in the wilderness who heard the message but did not respond. Their failure to respond is variously called hardness of heart, unbelief, or disobedience.
Even though each one of these is distinctively different they are all in this context synonyms of one another. This occurred because Israel kept wanting to go back to Egypt. They were looking at all of the events through Egyptian-trained eyes and minds.
Therefore, since a promise remains of entering His rest, the way is open into the Kingdom of God. Salvation is still an option that can be chosen. Let us fear lest any seem to have come short of it.
The Greek word translated fear is phobia, which can easily be translated as let us be sore afraid. Hydrophobia means fear of water, claustrophobia means fear of cramped spaces, and agoraphobia means fear of open places. These illustrate how we normally run away from what we fear.
Yet this book teaches us to run toward the One whom we should fear above all things. Paul exhorts listeners not to be complacent about their calling and relationship with God. Failure to reach the Kingdom of God is life's supreme disaster.
If aware of losing most valuable possessions, action would follow from fear of loss. This is happening in Hebrews, urging people to press on. Fear is a motive for strenuous effort, motivating action and reaction.
Fear causes reaction to avoid unpleasant things and save life. In a jungle near a lion at dusk, every sense would be attuned, ready to react for survival. Reaction is proportional to fear's intensity, with greater fear leading to greater effort.
In God's case, He wants reaction to avoid unpleasantness, enriching and saving lives. Without fearful reaction, sin and God's holiness lead to loss of life. God desires reaction by considering Him, His Son, His purpose, and sin every day in all circumstances.
Practice this until His way is ingrained, habitual, written in hearts, lived by nature.
Israel failed because they did not accept what they heard in faith. Therefore they did not submit in obedience to God. They never came to love Him. They never came to know Him.
The ones with the greatest faith are the ones who know God best, because they are continually working to develop their relationship with Him by talking with Him, letting Him talk to us through study, yielding to Him, living in conformity to His way. That is what Enoch did. That is why he stood out.
It says, right on the heels of the fact that he walked with God, that God took him, and he was not. This is an indicator of who is going to the Place of Safety, for those who walk with Him like Enoch walked, who was taken away from the trouble, that he should not see the kind of violent death that otherwise would have come upon him. God took him out of it and placed him in another area, and he lived out his life in peace, and he died a normal death.
Faith is the single most important aspect to Passover, because everything else is built upon, founded upon, anchored to our faith in God and the depth of our relationship with Him. Israel knew that God existed, but that knowledge never carried through into their daily life in living trust. It was business as usual, even though they were separated from Egypt, and thus it is clear why Israel failed.
There is a direct connection between knowing God and submitting to Him, because to know Him is to love Him, and we submit to those we love.
The basic reason that Israel failed is given in Hebrews 4:1-2. The basic reason is because they did not believe God. They did not have faith. They lived by sight. They did not have the Spirit to really live by faith so they could not relate to what they were going through.
They could not relate to what the nation was going through, they could not relate to why they had famines, economic problems, violence in the street, and so on. We can relate to those things and the only reason we can relate to them properly and not simply be aware that they are there, the world is aware that they are there but they cannot relate to it. You and I can relate it to God's purpose, you and I can truly relate it to sin, you and I can relate it to satan the devil. So God has given us an advantage there.
We can make proper relationships about what is going on in the world, because we can see these things being fulfilled. We can live by faith. Because of the Israelite's condition, they could not translate what they were experiencing into a cooperative way of life that would produce mankind's fondest hopes and dreams. They always had the idea of letting someone else do it, let someone else take care of it.
We have to understand that it is our responsibility to take care of our part, and then anywhere else that we can assist, fine. God puts a priority there. The brethren come first, then to the world.
There is why Israel failed. Their faith broke down. Did Adam and Eve's faith break down? They saw God. They talked to Him. They heard Him command what they should do. And yet their belief, their trust in Him, dissolved under the deception of satan the devil.
The Israelites who left Egypt saw multitudes of plagues. They saw multitudes of miracles. They saw a nation devastated. They saw water split through an ocean or sea. They saw God feed them for forty years. And yet, as Paul says in another place, their carcasses were strewn from one end to the other.
Now we know why. Their faith dissolved. It disappeared. They stopped believing what God said and what God did. Everything of God that has been manifested through Jesus all of the works, everything that He said, everything that He did up to and including the crucifixion and resurrection, everything has been done by God to produce faith. This is the way God is working.
This is the work of God that you believe. And not fail like Adam and Eve did. And not fail like the Israelites did. God does not want our faith to dissolve where we disbelieve what He says. This is the God who gave those Ten Commandments. In each case, those people believed that they knew better than God.
A promise remains of entering His rest, but Israel failed to enter because the gospel preached to them did not profit, as it was not mixed with faith. This parallels the emancipation of American slaves, who were freed but not equipped to compete fully in society due to lingering scars and lacks. Similarly, those liberated from spiritual Egypt are free and covered by the blood of Jesus Christ, with God's spirit given, yet they are not yet at the level God desires for inheriting the land.
Israel experienced God's power in their liberation after centuries in bondage, evident to all, but they were unskilled in belief and thus failed. Even though freed, they retained a slave mentality, having shed physical chains but not mental shackles. It is impossible to think they disbelieved God's existence, given His demonstrations, but their disbelief was at a higher level, failing to submit as millions today believe in God yet do not submit.
That belief is low-level, shown by lives not trembling before God as demons do. There are levels of faith, one merely acknowledging God's existence as a launching pad, another required for salvation with greater capacity. Israel heard the word but it profited nothing without faith mixed in.
God's experience with Israel is very helpful towards understanding this. Slavery in Egypt represents the world, and Pharaoh represents Satan. Leaving Egypt symbolizes what justification accomplishes in God's spiritual plan. It frees them from bondage. God's working with them did not end there.
He revealed His law to them and then commanded them to choose to live by it. They had to endure a forty-year pilgrimage, enduring many trials along the way, before they finally were delivered into their inheritance and the Promised Land. That represented salvation. Many perished along the way because they did not live by faith as shown by their disobedience to His revealed law.
Why would he say that to us if everything was just hunky-dory, if once you were justified, that was all you had to be concerned about? Let us Christians therefore fear, lest a promise being left us of entering into His rest, any of you should seem to come short of it. The gospel was preached to us as well as to them, but the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it. Justification is not salvation. Justification has a measure of deliverance, but there is a ways to go before we are fully delivered.
God's experience with Israel is very helpful towards understanding this. Slavery in Egypt represents the world, and leaving Egypt symbolizes what justification accomplishes in God's spiritual plan. It frees them from bondage.
God's working with them did not end there. He revealed His law to them and commanded them to choose to live by it. They had to endure a forty-year pilgrimage, enduring many trials along the way, before they finally were delivered into their inheritance and the Promised Land.
That represented salvation. Many perished along the way because they did not live by faith as shown by their disobedience to His revealed law. Justification is not salvation.
Justification has a measure of deliverance, but there is a ways to go before we are fully delivered. He questions why the writer would tell Christians to fear if everything was fine once justified. Christians should fear lest any come short of entering into His rest.
The gospel was preached to us as well as to them. But the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it.
They provoked Him in the wilderness and grieved Him in the desert by turning back and tempting God, thus limiting the Holy One of Israel. The word provoke means to rebel against, and they rebelled against Him often in the wilderness, resulting in them limiting God. The word limited comes from a root that means a mark, practically applying as a boundary.
Because they lived by sight and lacked a close relationship with God, they limited Him in their life experiences. They put a boundary on God, virtually saying to Him, this far and no farther. Though they did not hog-tie Him, that was the practical result of their relationship.
In practical fact, their lack of faith and fear of God led to failure in using God's sovereignty and His willingness to help His people. They mentally drew lines, concluding God would not or could not provide for them. Thus they chose their own solutions, resulting in death.
Hebrews 4:1-2 indicates that what killed them was their lack of faith. They limited God. Jesus questioned why they called Him Lord but did not do what He said.
Israel's major problem was that they walked through the wilderness by sight. We understand that God was not trying to convert them at that time, and we can look back and learn from that situation. He did it for us. He was not punishing them because they were unconverted; He was leaving this example for you and me so we would understand that we are not to do what they did.
He gave us their bad example, and then He gave us good examples in others, as well. Probably the primary example among men born by natural processes was the father of the faithful, Abraham. What set Abraham apart from everybody else up to that time was that he walked by faith, not knowing where he was going. As such, then, he became father of the faith-full.
He is the progenitor; he is the primary example among men; he is the father of those who are living by faith. He is the father of those who are full of faith. God showed us another example in that trek through the wilderness, in that the spiritual trek that we are taking our pilgrimage is going to have certain characteristics.
Let us therefore fear, meaning let us be extremely careful, lest a promise being left us of entering into His rest, any of you should seem to come short of it. For unto us was the gospel preached, as well as unto them, but the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it. So do not be complacent.
There is real danger that the promise to enter into His Kingdom still stands. The parallel to what Paul wrote here, the parallel to you and me, is that just being in the church, the equivalent there was the Israelites who were in the wilderness, they were in the congregation in the wilderness. So the parallel to you and me is that just being in the church does not mean the promise of being in His rest is fulfilled.
Rest means more than being in the church. Being in the church is just the beginning, a very important part of our lives. So the rest that he is speaking of here still lies ahead of us in the Kingdom of God. What we have here in the church is just a tiny foreshadow of what is yet to come.
Paul sums up why Israel failed in Hebrews 4:1-2. The basic reason is they did not exercise their faith in God. Physically, they had everything they needed to make the right choices. But without the Spirit of God, that one ingredient that God withheld from them, but which you and I now have, they could not do it. God did it that way so that you and I would understand that.
Those Israelites were in no way inferior to you and me, physically. They were every bit as intelligent, and maybe more so. They were every bit as strong physically, and probably more so. And they utterly failed because they did not have the Spirit of God. Now, God has eliminated that in the New Covenant, a covenant with better promises.
So, you can see the pressure is on you and me now. This is it. We might even say the handwriting is on the wall for us. I do not mean to make that oppressive, but I do mean to make it serious. We are having our judgment, the judgment is now on the household of God.
This is the very area in which the Israelites fell short. They would not trust God on a daily basis, and this is why it so frequently makes mention of their discontentment. They grew impatient, griped, got frustrated, and rebelled in the wilderness all because of their lack of faith.
The bottom-line issue in our life is faith. Love is undoubtedly the greatest of God's attributes, but that love will not be operative in us unless it is preceded by faith. It is the precursor, the foundation, and what supports the relationship with God.
The growth of true love has a starting point, and faith in God is that point. The admonishment here is to be concerned that this does not happen to us. God's promises hold true for us because God never changes in His character or His purpose, and His promises are still valid and open to us, so what remains is for us to believe them and to use them.
Let us therefore fear, lest a promise being left us of entering into His rest, any should seem to come short of it. For unto us was the gospel preached, as well as unto them, but the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it. So do not be complacent.
There is real danger that the promise to enter into His Kingdom still stands. The parallel to us is that just being in the church, like the Israelites who were in the congregation in the wilderness, does not mean the promise of being in His rest is fulfilled. Rest means more than being in the church.
Being in the church is just the beginning, a very important part of our lives. The rest that He is speaking of here still lies ahead of us in the Kingdom of God. What we have here in the church is just a tiny foreshadow of what is yet to come.
The journey through the wilderness typifies sanctification, while leaving Egypt represents redemption or justification, and entering the Promised Land symbolizes salvation. Sanctification took the longest time in this process. The Israelites left Egypt triumphantly, feeling free and optimistic.
However, in the wilderness they faced crying, hunger, pain, fear, and their greatest tests, and there they failed. Hebrews 4:1-2 makes it clear that they failed because their faith broke down during sanctification. They could not endure to the end, and their bodies were strewn across the wilderness.
Being freed from Egypt pictures justification, but much more followed. They had to walk for roughly forty years before reaching the Promised Land. Thus, leaving Egypt was only the beginning.
They believed in the beginning, but their faith did not grow. Their faith did not endure. It did not last.
The problem was not with God. It was with the people. They did not have the kind of faith that would enable them to keep, to uphold, and to do the terms of the covenant that they willingly, enthusiastically, excitably, agreeably entered into.
That is the one that they thought was going to be in their best interests. Something happened between Sinai and Canaan. Their faith broke down.
They could not enter in because of unbelief. Unbelief produces disobedience. They did not keep their word.
Israel lost their faith, which they had at the beginning. The result was disobedience. The result was the breaking of their part of the terms of the covenant.
Paul's exhortation is very urgent and very sobering. The stakes are so much higher for us. Once we are talking about spiritual Israel and spiritual matters, we are talking about eternal life at stake. If we express the same attitudes and actions as the Israelites did with the knowledge and the calling that we have, the effect is so much worse.
Hebrews 4:1 says that we should be terrified of falling short of God's Kingdom. Let us therefore fear of not entering into that rest, because if we do not, that is it. This section says pretty much the same thing that Paul said in Hebrews 3 and 4.
Paul said the same thing in Hebrews 4:1-2. Israel saw all of those miracles when they were coming out of Egypt, yet they failed because they did not have faith. A miracle will not produce a saving faith. If a person does not believe the Word of God, it will not change his conduct except momentarily. You can see that very clearly in the example of Israel in the Old Testament.
God is looking for faith and trust in Him over the expanse of one's life. For that kind of faith, one needs the Spirit of God and the Word of God, and not a momentary surge of awe in some miraculous occurrence.
We find in the book of Hebrews why Israel failed in the wilderness. The gospel was preached unto them, and they rejected it. It did not do them any good, because what they heard was not mixed with faith. They did not believe it. If you do not believe it, you cannot follow it; and if you cannot follow it, you cannot live it.
It was not in their heart. They had other treasures. Those people whom Jesus was speaking to in John 6 had other treasures. Jesus could tell. They wanted to fill their bellies. They were not laboring for the meat that endures forever.
Paul used a Greek phrase indicating that the bodies of the Israelites were strewn from one end of the wilderness to the other, like bleached bones in pictures of the Old West. These were the Israelites who fell by the wayside, who did not keep plodding along, who lost their faith in God and in God's servant Moses. The result was rebellion and sin; they did not remain faithful to the purpose for which they were brought out, so they died. This is a stunning witness and a powerful warning to those whom God has called out, to take God's Word seriously.
This section in Hebrews 4 is a continuation of the thought from chapter 3, serving as a conclusion and admonition. Because of what happened to the Israelites as recorded in chapter 3, Paul instructs to fear lest any seem to come short of entering His rest. Peter and Paul agree on this point. It takes the fear of God to make it all the way. One does not drop it on the wayside because of something better like love; they work together. That word fear means exactly what it does; it means to be afraid.
The promise of entering His rest remains unfulfilled by the Israelites. They did not fulfill it under Joshua, as the nation declined spiritually after his death. Everyone did what was right in their own eyes without a king or central authority to guide them.
It was not fulfilled in David's time either, roughly 300 years after Joshua. The apostle writes this because God's promise has not been fulfilled in any other time. It still remains open, to be fulfilled by the church.
The Sabbath looks forward to a future rest. When Jesus Christ was raised from the dead, He entered His rest. Christ was resurrected on the Sabbath, when the wavesheaf was cut. These events tie together. By a resurrection from the dead, we inherit and fully enter the Kingdom of God, which we could call the World Tomorrow.
The children of Israel in the wilderness had their bodies strewn from one end to the other because they did not believe the words of God that came through His servant Moses. Their real loss of life in the wilderness was caused by their lack of faith. That was the real problem.
