Please turn to Hebrews 4. I would like to read the first 10 verses so we get the gist of this. Paul is warning these Hebrews that their lackadaisical attitude could easily get them into trouble with God, and this is the tack that he takes:
Now, remember, the works that God did was making the physical creation of the earth. This is a hint that when those who enter the rest of God, they are going to cease with their physical labors and there is something better in the rest of God that they will be doing.
The Israelites' unbelief and rebellion had kept them from the goal. God was leading them to His rest. God was leading them to the Promised Land, which is a clear reference to the Kingdom of God, that is, His nation. He was to rule over them as King. But they did not. They failed to do what God had told them to do. They failed to follow God and they all died in the wilderness.
Back in Hebrews 3, right in the last few verses, it tells us essentially that their corpses were strewn in the wilderness because of their sin. They could not enter His rest. So the rest, he says, remains unfulfilled. If Joshua did not bring them into the rest, then there must be a rest in the future.
In verses 3-4, he refers to creation and to God's rest on the seventh day in creating the Sabbath. Now this is proof, if you will, that the rest that Paul is suggesting is not ‘repose' because God is never weary. He does not need to rest to become reinvigorated and reenergized. So the rest he was referring to in that is something different from repose. It is something different from ‘anapausis.' It is not a physical, reclined rest of that sort. He is talking about a different kind of rest.
We saw that God stopped His creative efforts on the physical earth and then He ceased working, to set us an example of how to keep the Sabbath. That is what we went through when we went through Exodus 20, Genesis 2, and Isaiah 58 - that we stop doing those physical things that we normally do and we do something else. So Paul is implying, by going to these examples, that the future rest (the one we are working toward, the one that we still have before us as a goal) is a lot like God's rest on the seventh day of creation, that our rests (God's rest) is a ceasing. It is a stopping. It is an ending of something.
Now, in verse 9, as I mentioned before, we have the other rest - the sabbatismos. This is actually, as far as we know, a Pauline coined word, that he kind of just made it up. He turned the Hebrew sabbath into a Greek noun. This does a couple of things.
It links the weekly Sabbath with the future rest of God, that in our keeping of the Sabbath every week we are prefiguring the rest of God of the future.
It also characterizes the future rest of God (or we could call it maybe the Millennium or the Kingdom of God) as a time of cessation from certain activities, as on the weekly Sabbath (we cease certain activities). Well, in the Millennium, there is going to be a stoppage, a ceasing of certain activities. And, then, because we have stopped doing these certain activities, we can then do the godly activities in imitation of God. We stop doing those physical things and start doing a lot of spiritual things.
Thus Paul clues us in on the goal of the millennial period. The goal of the millennial period is to change the focus of the entire world from doing its ungodly carnal activities in rebellion against God - that is our works, the works of humanity. We are going to cease doing those things and we are going to turn to doing godly, positive, eternal works out of love for God and out of love for fellow man.
Before Christ comes, the whole world, as we know, is under the sway of Satan the Devil and they are doing the things that he wants us to do. When Christ comes, He puts Satan away; we are going to cease doing all those bad things that Satan wanted us to do; and now we are going to turn our attention fully to God and the world is going to begin … . . .
Let us go to Hebrews 4. This section has two points that I want to make here.
Now, what are the two points? The first is a long-ranged point, and the second is a short-ranged point.
1. The long-ranged point is that we need to be diligent to enter the rest that is the Kingdom ofGod. That is the rest we are looking for. That is when God will cease from His spiritual labors, when we have come into His rest in the Kingdom.
2. The short-ranged point is in verse 9: There remains therefore a rest for the people of God. That word rest is sabbatismos - the Sabbath rest. In fact there is another translation that says: We must therefore keep the Sabbath as the people of God. (I am not saying that is right or wrong; but it seems a good translation to me.) But the point I am getting at is that the Sabbath is a type of GOD's rest.
We have a weekly, twenty-four hour period of time when we can be still. God gives us one day in seven as an opportunity to be still and come to know Him. That is one of the reasons that we have the Sabbath day. People of God need this one day - to pull out of the world, to take it easy, to get out of the rat race, and to get into communion with God. We need to use this time, on the Sabbath day: to get into the right attitude, to see godly reasoning, to receive instruction, to see God at work, and to get to know Him. (Those are the five points that I just mentioned a few minutes ago.)
We have the Sabbath day to be still; but it is not just limited to the Sabbath day. Those of us, who are lucky, find time during the week (and, during the year) when we can be still. This time of the year is one when we need it the most. That is, to be still before the Passover - to get our minds in the right attitude and get the right instruction so that we are in the proper way of thinking (in the proper mode) for the Passover and the holy days.
It is not restricted just to now. Also before Trumpets and Atonement, and the Feast, is another time when it would be good for us to find a time of stillness. Any time, when we are in need of self-evaluation, is a time when it is best to be still.
Now this is a very theologically rich passage, but the essential truth, here, is that God's rest - the Kingdom of God - is still before us. We have not entered it yet. The only One who has entered God's rest is Jesus Christ. And it is kind of interesting that He has not stopped working because we have not entered that rest yet.
However, Paul gives a very stern warning here. He says that what befell the Israelites in the wilderness (and they fell by the tens of thousands, through sins of various sorts through their wilderness trek) that same fate could befall us also. The lesson here is that if we want to enter God's rest, of which the Sabbath is a type, of which the Promised Land was a type, we have to continue walking, and we have to continue working to overcome sin. We have not yet entered God's rest. Have you noticed?
So our work, as verse 10 says, has not yet ceased. The work is not over until we enter the rest. God worked six days, and He rested on the seventh, and hallowed it for us, to give us right there in the second chapter of the Bible what He wants us to do.
So Paul's advice, keep up the good work all the way into the Kingdom of God.
We are told that we are to be partakers of Christ, and that entails if we hold to the beginning of our confidence with the foundation, as I mentioned. We are told not to neglect our salvation or let this world take your crown. We must not allow our hearts to become hardened. He tells us that we should not be like those that came out of Egypt. They saw the miracles of God and the awesome power of God, and then rebelled against Him and troubled Him forty years and died short of the rest that was set aside for them.
Our journey, brethren, is to the Kingdom of God and our rest is the Kingdom of God. Who is it that could not enter that rest? Those who hardened their hearts.
The apostle Paul knew that he was on a journey, and that he had two hearts, or two ways of living, in him. One of these hearts was to fight against and the other was to fight for.
You might wonder why this happened on the Sabbath. What is the significance of this being done on the Sabbath? It is the Sabbath that commemorates God, our Creator. This is the same God who rested on the seventh day of creation. This is Jesus Christ - the Word of God!
The word sabbath, in Hebrew, even means rest. That is the basic idea of the Sabbath - it is a rest. It looks back on creation. Now to what does this rest, the Sabbath, look forward to?
Now what happened when Jesus Christ was raised from the dead? He entered His rest! And guess when Christ was resurrected? On the Sabbath, when the wavesheaf was cut!
They all tie together. So by a resurrection from the dead, we inherit and fully enter the Kingdom of God. We could call it the World Tomorrow, or maybe a few other terms may come to mind.
This is sabbatismos. He is combining the idea of the rest of God with the Sabbath itself. So we get a double-pronged conclusion here from Paul, that not only do the people of God need to keep the Sabbath, but that there is a rest coming that the Sabbath represents.
