Please understand, brethren, the same thing has happened to you and to me. God has two programs going on at the same time. Hebrews 4 is written to assure you that the rest still lies ahead! It has not been given yet. (I mean the one that really counts.) And so he says:
This is the only place in the chapter where that [Greek word] is used.
There remains therefore, brethren, a keeping of the Sabbathis what he said. That is, a keeping of the rest. We are seeing a spiritual aspect of the Sabbath. The weekly Sabbath is a type of the fulfillment of the promises to Abraham.
I want you to listen to Alan Knight, the author of Primitive Christianity in Crisis. I want you to listen to this paraphrase that he made of this paragraph here in Hebrews 4. He shortened it with very interesting and succinct statements. It is so understandable.
Do not lose faith in God's promise of kingdom rest. Do not turn back as your forefathers did. Christian salvation is a continuation of the kingdom promises first made to Israel, all of which were in place from before the world began and are symbolized by God's rest on the seventh day of creation.
That is why we are today to continue observing the weekly Sabbath as Christians. Sabbath observance continues because our kingdom and its rest are yet to come.
If the kingdom promise and God's rest had been completely fulfilled by ancient Israel, then there would be no more Sabbath observance.
Therefore, press forward in continued obedience and persevere in faith. And, as you need to gather every Sabbath, be encouraged by this sign God has given us of the certainty of the coming of His kingdom rest.
So the whole point of Hebrews 3 and 4 is that the rest has not happened yet. It still lies ahead. Today, brethren, if you will hear His voice, David said.
Now, I want you to consider these important aspects of the weekly Sabbath:
1. The Sabbath memorializes when God ceased from His work that first week.
I want you to understand that the word Sabbath does not mean rest. Sabbath means stop! That is what God did. On the seventh day, He stopped what He was doing on the other six days. Rest is the result of stopping. But, in an argument over the Sabbath, Jesus said, My Father works, and I work.
You see God stopped, we will say, 'the physical reconstruction of the world destroyed by Satan and his demons' in His preparations for mankind and that part of His purpose. So He stopped that, but the spiritual work went right on. This is why Jesus said that the priests are blameless when they do God's spiritual work on the Sabbath.
2. The Sabbath is a sign of the fact that God's entire plan of kingdom rest was complete, and ready to be carried out, from the foundation of the world.
3. The Sabbath celebrates the physical creation.
4. The Sabbath typifies the Millennium, when Israel will be restored to its inheritance and thus able to worship God as He commanded - as they earlier neglected to do.
5. The Sabbath typifies the eternal kingdom rest of the children of God born into His Family and prepared to rule under Jesus Christ.
Thus, New Covenant salvation is a sabbatarian promise, wrapped in sabbatarian symbolism, and accompanied by sabbatarian institutions that serve to remind us to keep focused on God's promises.
6. Weekly Sabbath observance is a key ingredient towards keeping our eyes toward the kingdom promise.
Especially verse 10 argues that Sabbath observance is a sign of entering into the eternal spiritual Kingdom of God. Thus, Sabbath observance celebrates both the physical and spiritual creation - because when the physical ended, the spiritual began.
7.Sabbath keeping is the sign that identifies God's people to Him, and Him to them.
And so, in Hebrews 3:15: While it is said, Today if you will hear His voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation...so that we do not fall in the same way Israel did.
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 … . . .
Who's it going to be fulfilled by? Paul's hoping that it's going to be fulfilled by these people who were drifting away. That is, be fulfilled by the church. The promise of entering into that Sabbath rest has not yet been fulfilled.
What did he just say there? Have we entered into that rest? We have NOT entered into it yet. It hasn't occurred. So, what rest is God talking about here? He's talking about the Kingdom of God, which still lies before us. Now, look at the instruction.
We've seen the Sabbath, now, in several different lights. First of all, it commemorates the completion of the Creation Week. God is Creator. Then, in Deuteronomy, we see that it commemorates redemption. We find in the things that we see of Jesus in the Gospels - Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John - we see Him acting upon, not the Creation motif, but acting upon the redemption motif.
God has gotten us out of Egypt; now, how do we use the Sabbath? So He magnifies it, by showing that we should use the Sabbath in terms of a redemption motif. We might almost say that the first thing we need to make sure is that we are free and that we stay free. Therefore, we have to strive to do what? Keep the Sabbath! And the third lesson, then, is that it prefigures a time yet future when the people of God enjoy the rest.
So, now we see the Sabbath doing what?
These three areas are the perimeters within which Sabbath use and obedience fall. For there remains yet a keeping of the Sabbath. We won't go into this, but it is really beautiful. That is, what it shows in the Greek here - which, incidentally, is probably the most beautiful Greek in the whole Bible. It is really beautifully written. It shows that Sabbath rest has already begun IF we are striving to use it right. We have already begun to enter into it.
If a person works on the Sabbath, have they entered into it? Obviously not! I'm talking about working and earning a living.
This thing that I just mentioned ties very closely to the term eternal life in the Bible. And eternal life, we find (shown by Jesus Christ), is not merely a period in which there is extended life. That is, life without end. But, to God, eternal life also includes the quality of life being lived. It would be no good to have eternal life if we had to live it like a demon. But eternal life is only good when it is lived as God lives it.
Now, are you starting to live like God? IF you have begun to live like God lives - having His attitude, doing the things that He does in terms of what Christ has showed us - THEN you have begun to enter into eternal life. Therefore, you are already beginning to enter into THE REST. It's a beautiful picture!
The point to these people, to whom this was written, is that the children of Israel did NOT enter into God's rest because they didn't hear God's Word and obey. The illustration is the Sabbath - for the breaking of which both Israel and Judah (as Ezekiel and Jeremiah show) went into captivity. What is so interesting here is that this is written to the First Century church, and it is introduced as an illustration of what they are to do with their lives.
Think about this. If the Sabbath had been done away, the illustration was useless. For those who can think, this is one of the strongest proofs in the entire New Testament that the First Century church - the church of the apostles - were still keeping the Sabbath. And reinforcing its keeping by using it as an illustration of the very Kingdom of God - the rest into which we will enter. Far be it from the apostles to say that it was done away. That's ridiculous. Maybe the spiritually blinded can't see that; but we should be able to see that, and see that clearly.
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.
The apostle is writing that we can actually begin to have a foretaste of the rest that is coming. His rest is the Kingdom of God; not just the Millennium. It is that times of refreshment. And so, we can have a small foretaste of it. We cannot enter into its fullness because that is not going to occur until Jesus Christ returns.
We can exercise our faith now, yield to His Word, and use the gifts that He has made available to us. And if we do, that foretaste will be produced.
He tells us in John 10 that He came so that we could have life and have it more abundantly. There is no reason we cannot exercise ourselves to make every effort to do that here so that we can ensure that we will leave the Feast of Tabernacles having experienced a small foretaste of what it is going to be like in the Kingdom of God.
It can be done. God does not give us impossible things to do. If He says that we can have that foretaste, we can already enter into it, to a limited degree, we can do it. And if we do, we are going to go home knowing that we have had the best feast we ever had.
And so that responsibility is on us. Let us try to make sure that we do what we can to make this one super-sensational, spiritual Feast.
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.
Finally, at the end, they used the right word. That is very important!
For he who has entered His rest - God's rest is what he is saying here. You who have entered God's rest have also ceased from your works.
God's rest is the future time of the thousand-year reign of Christ. And when we enter that rest, we will have ceased from our works, as God ceased from his works.
Now we are getting into the Millennium. But, before we do that, I want to say this as an addition:
When God stopped His creative efforts in making the physical earth, and all that is in it, He rested. He stopped. He ceased working. And what that did was it set us an example, as it said in Exodus 20:11, that we are to cease working, just as God ceased from working. He was telling us in His own actions how we are to keep the Sabbath day.
Paul is saying that the future rest of God is a lot like the Sabbath. There is a link here between God's rest, and the Sabbath day and the example God set at creation.
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.
