Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Hebrews 4:9

There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God.

9. There remaineth therefore a rest ] Since the word used for “rest” is here a different word ( sabbatismos) from that which has been used through the earlier part of the argument ( katapausis), it is a pity that King Jameses translators, who indulge in so many needless variations, did not here introduce a necessary change of rendering. The word means “ a Sabbath rest,” and supplies an important link in the argument by pointing to the fact that “the rest” which the Author has in view is God’s rest, a far higher conception of rest than any of which Canaan could be an adequate type. The Sabbath, which in 2Ma 15:1 is called “the Day of Rest” ( katapausis), is a nearer type of Heaven than Canaan. Dr Kay supposes that there is an allusion to Joshua’s first Sabbatic year, when “the land had rest from war” (Jos 14:15), and adds that Psalms 92-104 have a Sabbatic character, and that Psalms 92 is headed “a song for the sabbath day.”

Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

There remaineth, therefore, a rest – This is the conclusion to which the apostle comes. The meaning is this, that according to the Scriptures there is now a promise of rest made to the people of God. It did not pertain merely to those who were called to go to the promised land, nor to those who lived in the time of David, but it is still true that the promise of rest pertains to all the people of God of every generation. The reasoning by which the apostle comes to this conclusion is briefly this:

1. That there was a rest – called the rest of God – spoken of in the earliest period of the world – implying that God meant that it should be enjoyed.

(2)That the Israelites, to whom the promise was made, failed of obtaining what was promised by their unbelief.

(3)That God intended that some should enter into his rest – since it would not be provided in vain.

(4)That long after the Israelites had fallen in the wilderness, we find the same reference to a rest which David in his time exhorts those whom he addressed to endeavor to obtain.

(5)That if all that had been meant by the word rest, and by the promise, had been accomplished when Joshua conducted the Israelites to the land of Canaan, we should not have heard another day spoken of when it was possible to forfeit that rest by unbelief.

It followed, therefore, that there was something besides that; something that pertained to all the people of God to which the name rest might still be given, and which they were exhorted still to obtain. The word rest in this verse – sabbatismos – Sabbatism, in the margin is rendered keeping of a Sabbath. It is a different word from sabbaton – the Sabbath; and it occurs nowhere else in the New Testament, and is not found in the Septuagint. It properly means a keeping Sabbath from sabbatizo – to keep Sabbath. This word, not used in the New Testament, occurs frequently in the Septuagint; Exo 16:30; Lev 23:32; Lev 26:35; 2Ch 36:21; and in 3 Esdr. 1:58; 2 Macc. 6:6. It differs from the word Sabbath. That denotes the time – the day; this, the keeping, or observance of it; the festival. It means here a resting, or an observance of sacred repose – and refers undoubtedly to heaven, as a place of eternal rest with God. It cannot mean the rest in the land of Canaan – for the drift of the writer is to prove that that is not intended. It cannot mean the Sabbath, properly so called – for then the writer would have employed the usual word sabbaton – Sabbath. It cannot mean the Christian Sabbath – for the object is not to prove that there is such a day to be observed, and his reasoning about being excluded from it by unbelief and by hardening the heart would be irrelevant. It must mean, therefore, heaven – the world of spiritual and eternal rest; and the assertion is, that there is such a resting, or keeping of a Sabbath in heaven for the people of God. Hence, learn:

(1) That heaven is a place of cessation from wearisome toil. It is to be like the rest which God had after the work of creation (Heb 4:4, note), and of which that was the type and emblem. There will be employment there, but it will be without fatigue; there will be the occupation of the mind, and of whatever powers we may possess, but without weariness. Here we are often worn down and exhausted. The body sinks under continued toil, and fails into the grave. There the slave will rest from his toil; the man here oppressed and broken down by anxious care will cease from his labors. We know but little of heaven; but we know that a large part of what now oppresses and crushes the frame will not exist there. Slavery will be unknown; the anxious care for support will be unknown, and all the exhaustion which proceeds from the love of gain, and from ambition, will be unknown. In the wearisome toils of life, then, let us look forward to the rest that remains in heaven, and as the laborer looks to the shades of the evening, or to the Sabbath as a period of rest, so let us look to heaven as the place of eternal repose.

(2) Heaven will be like a Sabbath. The best description of it is to say it is an eternal Sabbath. Take the Sabbath on earth when best observed, and extend the idea to eternity, and let there be separated all idea of imperfection from its observance, and that would be heaven. The Sabbath is holy; so is heaven. It is a period of worship; so is heaven. It is for praise and for the contemplation of heavenly truth; so is heaven. The Sabbath is appointed that we may lay aside worldly cares and anxieties for a little season here; heaven that we may lay them aside forever.

(3) The Sabbath here should be like heaven. It is designed to be its type and emblem. So far as the circumstances of the case will allow, it should be just like heaven. There should be the same employments; the same joys; the same communion with God. One of the best rules for employing the Sabbath aright is, to think what heaven will be, and then to endeavor to spend it in the same way. One day in seven at least should remind us of what heaven is to be; and that day may be, and should be, the most happy of the seven.

(4) They who do not love the Sabbath on earth, are not prepared for heaven. If it is to them a day of tediousness; if its hours move heavily; if they have no delight in its sacred employments, what would an eternity of such days be? How would they be passed? Nothing can be clearer than that if we have no such happiness in a season of holy rest, and in holy employments here, we are wholly unprepared for heaven. To the Christian it is the subject of the highest joy in anticipation that heaven is to be one long unbroken sabbath – an eternity of successive Sabbath hours. But what to a sinner could be a more repulsive and gloomy prospect than such an eternal Sabbath?

(5) If this be so, then what a melancholy view is furnished as to the actual preparation of the great mass of people for heaven! How is the Sabbath now spent? In idleness; in business; in traveling; in hunting and fishing; in light reading and conversation; in sleep; in visiting; in riding, walking, lounging, ennui; – in revelry and dissipation; in any and every way except the right way; in every way except in holy communion with God. What would the race be if once transported to heaven as they are! What a prospect would it be to this multitude to have to spend an eternity which would be but a prolongation of the Sabbath of holiness!

(6) Let those who love the Sabbath rejoice in the prospect of eternal rest in heaven. In our labor let us look to that world where wearisome toil is unknown; in our afflictions, let us look to that world where tears never fall; and when our hearts are pained by the violation of the Sabbath all around us, let us look to that blessed world where such violation will cease forever. It is not far distant. A few steps will bring us there. Of any Christian it may be said that perhaps his next Sabbath will be spent in heaven – near the throne of God.

Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible

Heb 4:9

There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God

The rest for Gods people

I.

THE PERSONS FOR WHOM THIS REST IS DESIGNED. The people of God.

1. By their eternal election of the Father (Rom 11:5).

2. By complete and final redemption (Joh 1:29).

3. By perfect righteousness imputed (Isa 45:24-25).

4. By the renewing of the Holy Ghost (Col 3:10).

II. THE MANIFESTED DIFFERENCE IN GODS PEOPLE FROM THE REPROBATE, AFTER THEY ARE CONVERTED TO GOD BY THE HOLY GHOST.

1. in a deep sense of divine things (1Co 2:10).

2. Of their miserable state as sinners (Luk 5:31).

3. Of creature-insufficiency (Isa 64:6).

4. Of Christs fulness (Php 3:8).

5. In a change of will and purpose (Son 1:4).

6. A cordial covenanting with Christ (Jer 50:5).

7. Persevering grace (Mic 7:8).

III. THE EXCELLENT NATURE OF THIS REST. ITS excellency is beyond the power of language to describe.

1. Purchased rest (Eph 1:14).

2. Gratuitous rest (Isa 55:1).

3. Peculiar rest (Joh 14:22).

4. Divine rest (Rev 21:23).

5. Seasonable rest (Gal 6:9).

6. Suitable rest (Joh 14:2).

7. Perfect rest (Rev 21:4).

8. Eternal rest (1Pe 5:10).

9. Of body and soul (1Co 15:57).

It is a rest from pain, sorrow, disappointment, persecution, sin, lust, and infirmity; a rest of peace, joy, love, knowledge, freedom, and a rest in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. (T. B. Baker.)

Earnests of ultimate rest

The earnests of this rest which are given to the saints in the present dispensation. There is a threefold earnest–an earnest of joy, an earnest of holiness, and an earnest of power. This threefold earnest corresponds with the character of the inheritance itself–it is an inheritance of joy, an inheritance of holiness, and an inheritance of power, of dominion. The earnest corresponds with the blessings to be enjoyed; the earnest corresponds with the salvation to be enjoyed. Now, what is the salvation to be enjoyed? Salvation menus the recovery of all we lost in Adam in a more glorious way than he had it. What did we lose in Adam? We lost the presence of God first; we lost the image of God secondly; and we lost the power of exercising dominion under God. These three things we lost in Adam; these three things we gain in Christ. We shall have the joy of God, going into His presence where there is fulness of joy. We shall have the likeness of God–we shall awake, and shall be satisfied when we awake in His likeness; we shall be conformed to Him who is the image of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change our vile bodies, and fashion them after His own glorious body–we shall see Him as He is. We shall have dominion; for the saints shall reign with Christ; the bridegroom and the bride shall reign together. (N. Armstrong.)

The connection between the Sabbath of earth and the engagements of heaven

Heaven may be denominated a Sabbath, if the following reflections be seriously considered.

1. It may be so called for its repose. An eternal rest! Oh, happy thought, amidst the toils of the wilderness, amidst the fears with which we are now agitated, that we shall soon find rest; like the coming of eventide to the labourer, like the appearance of home to the traveller as he is advancing to repose amidst his household, so shall heaven be to the soul!

2. Heaven may well be called an eternal Sabbath for its sanctity. Holiness is its character, not holiness which arises merely from the absence of sin, but holiness which is inherent; that holiness whereby we are prepared in all we do, and all we enjoy, to possess more and more felicity, in proportion as we accomplish more and more the will of the great Creator so that we are absolutely a living sacrifice to God throughout ceaseless ages.

3. Heaven may be denominated an eternal Sabbath for its services.

4. Heaven may be called an eternal Sabbath for its society. Never would the Church of Christ realise a fulness of fellowship but for the engagements of the Sabbath.

5. Heaven may be called an eternal Sabbath for its delights.

6. Heaven may be called an eternal Sabbath because of the termination of all secular eras and events. Just as the Sabbath crowns and hallows the week, so heaven comes at the close of time to crown and hallow the whole.

7. Heaven may be called an eternal Sabbath for the perpetual commemoration of the history of all things. (R. S. McAll, LL. D.)

The rest of Gods people

I. IT IS A FUTURE REST. It is not on this side the grave. This–it is emphatically said–this is not your rest. Ye have not yet come to the rest and to the inheritance which the Lord your God giveth you. We must go over Jordan–we must cross the river of death before we can reach our home. But till then, while we continue in the world, it is vain and fruitless to expect rest. There may be seasons of refreshment: pauses, like the Sabbaths pause, for recruiting our tired spirits; but these seasons and pauses are but for an instant. Work–work of one kind or other presses upon us, and we cannot, if we would, be long at rest.

II. HEAVEN, whatever other notions we may have about it, WILL BE, BEFORE ALL THINGS, A PLACE TO REST. (R. D. B. Rawnsley, M. A.)

The rest of the saints

Scripture allows us to know so much of the future state as to satisfy us that it is a state of continual exalted employment.

I. They rest FROM THE TOILS AND PURSUITS OF THE PRESENT LIFE. Toils and pursuits of various kinds, and in different degrees, necessarily occupy much of our attention. We are animated with a strong desire of preserving ourselves and those who depend upon us in life and comfort, hence much labour and exertion fall to the lot of the generality of mankind; it is also a part of the curse denounced against our apostate race: In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread. Of the small proportion of men who do not procure their subsistence by bodily labour, exertion of another kind is required; they have to undergo the labours of the mind, study, and reflection, and extensive research in managing the religious and the civil concerns of their fellow-creatures. To those who exert themselves vigorously and conscientiously in the one or the other of these kinds of labour, it is no unpleasant view of heaven that it yields a relief from such toils and pursuits.

II. In heaven there is rest FROM THE TROUBLES OF LIFE. These are inseparable from our present condition, being the natural and penal consequences of sin. Although affliction cometh net forth of the dust, neither doth trouble spring out of the ground, yet man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward. It arises from what we feel in ourselves, from disease, and pain, and weakness, and from the fear of death; it arises also from our connection with fellow-creatures: those with whom we are united by the most tender and endearing ties are subject, like ourselves, to a variety of distresses. How soothing in such situations the belief, the hope, and the prospect of that rest which remaineth for the people of God–a state where disease and pain are wholly unknown, or remembered as former things which have passed away; a land, the inhabitants whereof shall no more say, I am sick; and where those whom death had separated shall meet to part no more!

III. There remaineth a rest to the people of God FROM SIN AND TEMPTATION. The former views which have been presented of this rest may engage the attention and please the imagination of all men, Whatever be their slate and character. It is natural to human beings to desire exemption from toil and from trouble. Too many, it is feared, wish for heaven chiefly or wholly on these accounts; they have little or no desire of heaven as a deliverance from sin and from temptations to sin; they are the justified and sanctified alone who delight chiefly in this view of a future state. Besides this painful contest with inward corruption, there is also a conflict to be maintained with Satan, the great spiritual adversary. The world also in which they live, both the men of the world and the things that are in the world, present many powerful temptations; snares beset them on every side; prosperity and adversity have each their several dangers to Christians. It is, therefore, to them the most pleasing view of heaven that it is a rest from sin and from all temptations to sin. (J. Burns, D. D.)

Rest

Have we not all seen a Sunday which was a Sunday indeed–a day of calm and of cheerfulness, a day of thankful repose, a day of quiet devotion, a day in which God was present as the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort? Witness, you who have known such a day yourselves or seen it in another, what a look it wore I how bright it was with a light not of this world I how it seemed at once to refresh and to invigorate, to soothe without relaxing and to animate without exciting, every part of that complex being which man is! And then say to yourselves, Such, even such, only tenfold more perfect and more glorious, is the rest which remaineth in heaven for the people of God! No day of wearisome forms, of gloomy bondage and austere observance, of lifeless monotonous worship, or listless irksome vacancy, but one instinct with peace, with life, and with happiness. There remaineth a rest–a rest like the most delightful of Sabbaths, even because it is long waited for, and because, when it comes, it is a day better than a thousand.

I. A rest FROM what?

I. From our own works. Ye who have known what it was to have reached the end of a six days or a six months toil, and to awaken the next morning to the rest of an earthly Sabbath, where there was no duty before you for twelve hours but that of thanking and praising God, and enjoying to the full His gifts and His revelations–judge ye what that morning will be when you awake in heaven, never again to toil unto weariness!

2. But who has not felt that there is a weariness far greater than that of simple work, and, by consequence, a rest far more desirable than that from mere labour? In heaven there will be rest from all anxiety and care.

3. And shall I mention yet another weariness of life, one which besets in these days some of every condition and every rank of men? I speak of doubt–of religious doubt–doubt as to the reality of truth, or doubt as to its application to ourselves. Of all the joys of the first morning of heaven, to many souls in our generation, surely this will be the greatest–that doubt is no more; that Christ Himself is there, seen face to face, and the truth which was dim upon earth is there irradiated by His presence.

4. Lastly, the rest which remaineth is a rest from sin. Grieved and wearied with the burden of our sins: that is the account which we all give of ourselves when we kneel at Christs holy table. Wherever Christ is sought in humble faith, the pilgrims burden unties itself at the sight of the Cross, and falls off from him, to his great comfort. But old infirmities continue, and lead to new transgressions. Only in heaven will the power of sin be ended.

II. Rest IN what?

1. In thankfulness. Dangers escaped–infirmities healed–sins forgiven–sorrows cheered on earth or explained in heaven–an arresting,controlling, guiding, and supporting hand, now believed and then seen to have been over us all our life long–the forbearance of God–the map of our pilgrimage, inward and outward, at last spread out before us, and the light of heaven thrown upon its windings and its wanderings; in all this there will be matter for an eternity of thankfulness.

2. In occupation.

3. In contemplation. The contemplation of God Himself. The understanding, as never before, of His works, of His ways, of His perfections.

4. In Christs presence. This completes, this embraces all heaven. (Dean Vaughan.)

Heavenly rest

I. I shall try to EXHIBIT the rest of heaven; and in doing so I shall exhibit it, first by way of contrast, and then by way of comparison.

1. The rest of the righteous in glory is now to be contrasted with certain other things.

(1) We will contrast it with the best estate of the worldling and the sinner. The worldling, when his corn and his wine are increased, has a glad eve and a joyous heart: but even then he has the direful thought that he may soon leave his wealth. Not so the righteous man: he has obtained an inheritance which is undefiled, and that fadeth not away.

(2):Now let me put it in more pleasing contrast. I shall contrast the rest of the believer above with the miserable estate of the believer sometimes here below. Christians have their sorrows. Suns have their spots, skies have their clouds, and Christians have their sorrows too. But oh! how different will the state of the righteous be up there, from the state of the believer here! Sheathed is the sword, the banner is furled, the fight is over, the victory won; and they rest from their labours. Here, too, the Christian is always sailing onward, he is always in motion, he feels that he has not yet attained. Like Paul, he can say, Forgetting the things that are behind, I press forward to that which is before. But there his weary head shall be crowned with unfading light. There the ship that has been speeding onward shall furl its sails in the port of eternal bliss. Here, too, the believer is often the subject of doubt and fear. Hill Difficulty often affrights him; going down into the valley of humiliation is often troublesome work to him; but there, there are no hills to climb, no dragons to fight, no foes to conquer, no dangers to dread. Ready-to-halt, when he dies, will bury his crutches, and Feeble-mind will leave his feebleness behind him: Fearing will never fear again; poor Doubtingheart will learn confidently to believe. Oh, joy above all joys! Here, too, on earth, the Christian has to suffer; here he has the aching head and the pained body. Or if his body be sound, yet what suffering he has in his mind! Conflicts between depravity and gross temptations from the evil one, assaults of hell, perpetual attacks of divers kinds from the world, the flesh, and the devil. But there, no aching head, no weary heart; old age shall find itself endowed with perpetual youth; there the infirmities of the flesh shall be left behind, given to the worm and devoured by corruption. There, too, they shall be free from persecution. Here Sicilian Vespers, and St. Bartholomew, and Smithfield are well-known words; but there shall be none to taunt them with a cruel word, or touch them with a cruel hand. There emperors and kings are not known, and those who had power to torture them cease to be. They are in the society of saints; they shall be free from all the idle converse of the wicked, and from their cruel jeers set free for ever. Alas! in this mortal state the child of God is also subject to sin; even he faileth in his duty and wandereth from his God; even he doth not walk in all the law of his God blameless, though he desireth to do it. And last of all, here, the child of God has to wet the cold ashes of his relatives with tears; here he has to bid adieu to all that is lovely and fair of mortal race. But there never once shall be heard the toll of the funeral bell.

2. And now I shall try very briefly to exhibit this contrast in the way of comparison. The Christian hath some rest here, but nothing compared with the rest which is to come.

(1) There is the rest of the Church. The Church-member at the Lords table has a sweet enjoyment of rest in fellowship with the saints; but ah! up there the rest of Church fellowship far surpasses anything that is known here; for there are no divisions there, no angry words, no harsh thoughts of one another, no bickerings about doctrine, no fightings about practice.

(2) There is, again, a rest of faith which a Christian enjoys; a sweet rest. Many of us have known it. We have known what it is, when the billows of trouble have run high, to hide ourselves in the breast of Christ and feel secure. But the rest up there is better still, more unruffled, more sweet, more perfectly calm, more enduring, and more lasting than even the rest of faith.

(3) And, again, the Christian sometimes has the blessed rest of communion. There are happy moments when he puts his head on the Saviours breast–when, like John, he feels that he is close to the Saviours heart, andthere he sleeps.

II. I am to endeavour to EXTOL this rest, as I have tried to EXHIBIT it. Oh! for the lip of angel to talk now of the bliss of the sanctified and of the rest of Gods people I

1. It is a perfect rest. They are wholly at rest in heaven.

2. Again, it is a seasonable rest.

3. This rest ought to be extolled because it is eternal.

4. And then, lastly, this glorious rest is to be best of all commended for its certainty.

There remaineth a rest to the people of God. Doubting one, thou hast often said, I fear I shall never enter heaven. Fear not; all the people of God shall enter there; there is no fear about it. I love the quaint saying of a dying man, who exclaimed, I have no fear of going home; I have sent all before me; Gods finger is on the latch of my door and I am ready for Him to enter. But, said one, are you not afraid lest you should miss your inheritance? Nay, said he, nay; there is one crown in heaven that the angel Gabriel could not wear; it will fit no head but mine. There is one throne in heaven that Paul the apostle could not fill; it was made for me, and I shall have it. There is one dish at the banquet that I must eat, or else it will be untasted, for God has set it apart for me. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Divine rest

I. WHAT MAN SUPREMELY NEEDS IS NOT REST FROM WORK BUT REST FROM CARE.

1. What is care? It is the experience of the man who is bent on being his own providence; who takes on himself the whole responsibility, not of the conduct of life only, but of the conditions and results which are absolutely beyond his power of regulation, and which God keeps calmly under His own hand.

2. This rest from care has been the great aim and desire of man through all his generations. The problem of mans higher life has always been how to secure emancipation.

3. But the sad part of the matter is, that man does not and cannot rest in mere renunciations and denials. There is a question in the background which has its origin in every conscience. How, on this principle, can the worlds business be carried on? No! there is no rest for the human spirit in this burying the head in the sand when troubles throng around.

II. THE ONLY POSSIBLE REST FOR MAN IS THE REST THAT HE FINDS IN GOD.

1. The lowest, but by no means the least burdensome and distracting class of our cares concerns the great bread-and-cheese question and its surroundings.

2. A nobler form of care is that which has to do with persons, that which springs out of our affections, sympathies and loves.

3. The same faith lifts the burden from the heart of the Christian lover of mankind. In truth we are always calling for the twelve legions of angels to finish the work swiftly and usher in Messiahs reign. And God answers, Patience, and points us to the redemptive purpose which stamped its impress on the first page of revelation and sets its seal on the last; and bids us wait His time. The man who trusts most perfectly, works most heartily. Christ, while He lifts the burdens, braces the energies, inspires the will, and parades all the faculties of man in their noblest form for service. The man who believes, understands perfectly that the most strenuous use of all the powers of his being is one of the high conditions by which God is seeking to work out blessing for him self, for his dear ones, and for the great world. (Jr. Baldwin Brown, B. A.)

The true rest of heaven

Our notions of bodily rest rarely extend beyond mere cessation from muscular exertion. Our ideas also of mental rest are commonly limited to a similar period put to the labours of the mind. It is easy, and perhaps not always displeasing, to apply similar expectations to spiritual as well as bodily and mental relaxation, and to regard the promised Sabbath in heaven as a complete termination of every spiritual effort. Hope is a work; faith is a work; love we look upon as an emotion. The two former will not be called into action in the mansions of eternity. The latter, we are apt to conceive, will fill our breast with infused delight. There are indeed agreeable views of the saints everlasting rest; but are they also in accordance with the revelations of Scripture? You will find not: you will see that the people of God in an after-state will truly rest from their pilgrimage through this weary world; but from the worship of God His saints will rest no more; with kindred spirits they will day and night for ever cry, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts, who wert, and art, and art to come. Now, while heaven is the abode of love, that love will have utterance; while the object of our love and gratitude and joy is before the glorified, the tongue of love and gratitude and joy will never fail. No rest for happiness; no rest for worship, no more than we should desire new a rest from breathing. And we have glimpses here of the true character of happy rest. Were the father of a family to return to his home after a tedious and toilsome journey and long absence, and instantly, without saluting wife or children, to cast himself upon his bed and fall asleep, this would be rest certainly, but of what a low, animal character I And were another father under like Circumstances to embrace wife and children with fondest affections, and to assemble them around him to narrate the adventures he had met with, and ask of them a similar return, whether, think you, would be the preferable rest? I anticipate but one answer. But it may be said that extreme fatigue might overcome even the strongest regard, and that the most loving parent might be unable to enjoy the society of his household. Do you suppose that this, which is quite in accordance with earthly experience, could be so in heaven? Would God receive us into those blessed abodes, and leave us destitute of the faculty of enjoying them? You well know that that would be far from Him. No; they who are brought into that future world will be gifted with every capacity suitable to the most perfect use of it. And as this life is a training for the next–a probation wherein is practised the conduct and temper which shall endure for ever–does it not follow that you should now cultivate those habits and feelings which alone will find admittance there? (J. S. Knox, M. A.)

The rest of Gods people in heaven

1. We shall rest from the labours of our calling, wherewith we arc turmoiled. The husbandman shall follow the plough no longer, the weaver shall sit no longer in the cold in his loom, the clothier not ride up and down in the ram, frost and snow, about his wool and cloth; the preacher shall no longer be turning over books and taking pains in his study and pulpit; we shall ride no more to market to buy corn, to make provision for our houses; we shall no longer take thought for ourselves, our wives and children; we shall have all things provided to our hands, and eat of the hidden manna and of the tree of life in the paradise of God for ever.

2. We shall rest even from the works of religion, which are now chariots to carry us to heaven. We shall no longer be turning over the Bible in our houses, catechising and instructing of our families; no more go many a mile in the dirt and wind to the church, shall no more be praying with cries, sighs, and tears; thanksgiving shall remain in heaven. It shall be all our work to be praising of God, but petitions shall then cease; no need of the ship when we be in heaven.

3. We shall rest from the works of sin; here in many things we sin all. Noah is sometimes overtaken with wine, David falls into adultery and murder, Peter into the denial of Christ, Paul and Barnabas are at jars between themselves. The good that we would do, that do we not, and the evil we would not, that do we. Sin makes us to cry out like tired porters, O miserable men that we are, &e. Then we shall rest from all sin, and be like the angels in heaven for ever.

4. We shall rest from all the crosses and calamities of this life.

5. We shall rest from death. It is a work to die; it is a main enemy with whom we struggle. But then this last enemy shall be put under our feet, death shall be swallowed up into victory. O what an excellent rest is this I (W. Jones, D.D.)

The world not a fit place for rest

1. This world is not a fit place, nor this life a fit time to enjoy such a rest as is reserved in heaven.

2. Rest here would glue our hearts too much to this world, and make us say, It is good to be here (Mat 17:4). It would slack our longing desire after Christ in heaven. Death would be more irksome, and heaven the less welcome.

3. There would be no proof or trial of our spiritual armour, and of the several graces of God bestowed on us.

4. Gods providence, prudence, power, mercy and other like properties could not be so well discerned if here we enjoyed that rest. (W. Gouge.)

Rest elsewhere

Rest elsewhere, was the motto of Philip de Marnix, Lord Sainte-Aldegonde, one of the most efficient leaders in that great Netherlands revolt against despotism in the sixteenth century which supplied material for perhaps the most momentous chapter in the civil and religious history of the world. For a man such as he, living in such a time, no motto could well mean more. A friend of freedom and of truth, in that age, could never hope to find rest in this world. A good motto, also, is it for the Christian worker. When there is so much to be done, who would be inactive here? Weary not in well doing. There is rest elsewhere. Retire not from your labour. Work on! There will be rest hereafter.

Rest in eternity

Arnaulds (of the Port Royal Society), remarkable reply to Nicolle, when they were hunted from place to place, can never be forgotten. Arnauld wished Nicolle to assist him in a new work, when the latter observed, We are now old, is it not time to rest? Rest! returned Arnauld; have we not all eternity to rest in?

The weariness of life

For the young, this is fresh, beautiful, sunlit life; to the old, it is often what Talleyrand found it, who in the journal of his eighty-third birthday wrote, Life is a long fatigue. Weary eyes droop, weary shoulders bend, weary hands tremble, weary feet drag heavily along, weary brows burn, weary hearts faint everywhere. The primary cause of the universal weariness is universal sin. The needle forced from its centre is in a state of tremulous motion; man wandered from his God is in a state of weariness. Though now on the way back, he will never be perfectly at rest until finally at home. (C. Stanford, D. D.)

The final Sabbath

The final Sabbath will not, therefore, be realised till time is swallowed up of eternity, and mortality of life. It will be the eternal conclusion of the week of time, as seven is the numeric symbol of perfection and rest. (F. Delitzsch.)

Rest in heaven

Once I dreamed of being transported to heaven; and being surprised to find myself so calm and tranquil in the midst of my happiness, I inquired the cause. The reply was, When you were on earth, you resembled a bottle but partly filled with water, which was agitated by the least motion,–now you are like the same bottle filled to the brim, which cannot be disturbed. (E. Payson, D. D.)

Image of heaven

A sorrowing mother, bending over her dying child, was trying to soothe it by talking about heaven. She spoke of the glory there, of the brightness, of the shining countenances of the angels; but a little voice stopped her, saying, I should not like to be there, mother, for the light hurts my eyes. Then she changed her word-picture, and spoke of the songs above, of the harpers, of the voice of many waters, of the new song which they sang before the throne; but the child said, Mother, I cannot bear any noise. Grieved and disappointed at her failure, she took the little one in her arms with all the tenderness of a mothers love. Then, as the little sufferer lay there, near to all it loved best in the world, conscious only of the nearness of love and care, the whisper came, Mother, if heaven is like this, may Jesus take me there! (Baxendales Anecdotes.)

Heaven the place to rest in

The earth is our workhouse, but heaven is our storehouse. This is a place to run in, and that is a place to rest in. (T. Secker.)

The work over

Mr. Mead, an aged Christian, when asked how he did, answered, I am going home as fast as I can, as every honest man ought to do when his days work is over; and I bless God I have a good home to go to.

The people of God

The people of God

I. THE GREAT FACT WHICH IS HERE IMPLIED. That God has a people–a people who are peculiarly His own and devoted to His service.

1. Let us look into the past history of the Church. What illustrious examples of faith, and piety, and real devotedness to God do we discover!

2. In the present day there ate many such.

3. If we look at prophecy, we shall find that the number of Gods people are numerous indeed.

II. SOME TRIALS IN THEIR CHARACTER.

1. The real servant of God, to whatever community or church he may belong, is deeply convinced of the value and importance of personal religion.

2. The true servant of God renounces self and all else as a ground of dependence in the sight of God, and depends entirely on the atonement, sacrifice, blood, and righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ.

3. He cultivates universal holiness of heart and life.

III. THE FUTURE DELIGHTFUL AND GLORIOUS PROSPECTS OF THE TRUE CHRISTIAN. Lessons:

1. The awful state of those who do not come up to this character.

2. How great are the obligations of real Christians to serve God.

3. How amiable is the character of the real Christian! (D. Ruell, M. A.)

The people of God

All nations in the world are His people by creation, but these are His people by adoption.

1. Every people is gathered together by some means or other; a people is a collection of many men. So we that are the people of God, are gathered together with the trumpet of the Word.

2. A people gathered together must have laws to rule them by, otherwise they will soon be out of order, otherwise they will range beyond limits, even so Gods people have Gods laws set down in His Word.

3. Every people must have a king or ruler. Even so the ruler of Gods people is Jesus Christ.

4. A people must have some country to dwell in. So the country where this people dwell is the Church militant in this life, and triumphant in the life to come.

5. All people are distinguished by some outward habit and attire. So Gods people have the sacraments to distinguish them. Baptism is Christs mark, and the Holy Supper His seal.

6. People must live in obedience to the laws of their king. (W. Jones, D. D.)

Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell

Verse 9. There, remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God.] It was not,

1. The rest of the Sabbath; it was not,

2. The rest in the promised land,

for the psalmist wrote long after the days of Joshua; therefore there is another rest, a state of blessedness, for the people of God; and this is the Gospel, the blessings it procures and communicates, and the eternal glory which it prepares for, and has promised to, genuine believers.

There are two words in this chapter which we indifferently translate rest, and . the first signifying a cessation from labour, so that the weary body is rested and refreshed; the second meaning, not only a rest from labour, but a religious rest; sabbatismus, a rest of a sacred kind, of which both soul and body partake. This is true, whether we understand the rest as referring to Gospel blessings, or to eternal felicity, or to both.

Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible

Here the Spirit concludes from his former proofs, that there is a more excellent rest revealed to faith in the gospel, which is remaining, future, and to come, and will surely and most certainly do so; though it be behind, yet it will be enjoyed. A sabbatism, which is a state and season of a most glorious rest, {see Heb 4:10} shall be enjoyed by sincere believers, the true Israel of God, of whom he is the Proprietor, and who are for their eternal state so excellently holy, and of so Divine a nature, that he is not ashamed to be called their God. They have an entrance here into the initials of this sabbatism in internal peace, and the glorious liberty of the children of God; and by it are secured of their full possession of it in the eternal inheritance of the saints in light, Col 1:12,13; 1Pe 1:3-5; Rev 14:13.

Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole

9. thereforebecause God”speaks of another day” (see on Heb4:8).

remainethstill to berealized hereafter by the “some (who) must enter therein”(Heb 4:6), that is, “thepeople of God,” the true Israel who shall enter into God’srest (“My rest,” Heb4:3). God’s rest was a Sabbatism; so also will ours be.

a restGreek,“Sabbatism.” In time there are many Sabbaths, but thenthere shall be the enjoyment and keeping of a Sabbath-rest: oneperfect and eternal. The “rest” in Heb4:8 is Greek, “catapausis;” Hebrew,“Noah“; rest from weariness, as the ark rested onArarat after its tossings to and fro; and as Israel, under Joshua,enjoyed at last rest from war in Canaan. But the “rest” inthis Heb 4:9 is the nobler andmore exalted (Hebrew) “Sabbath” rest;literally, “cessation”: rest from work when finished(Heb 4:4), as God rested (Re16:17). The two ideas of “rest” combined, give theperfect view of the heavenly Sabbath. Rest from weariness, sorrow,and sin; and rest in the completion of God’s new creation (Re21:5). The whole renovated creation shall share in it; nothingwill there be to break the Sabbath of eternity; and the Triune Godshall rejoice in the work of His hands (Zep3:17). Moses, the representative of the law, could not leadIsrael into Canaan: the law leads us to Christ, and there its officeceases, as that of Moses on the borders of Canaan: it is Jesus, theantitype of Joshua, who leads us into the heavenly rest. This verseindirectly establishes the obligation of the Sabbath still; for thetype continues until the antitype supersedes it: so legal sacrificescontinued till the great antitypical Sacrifice superseded it, As thenthe antitypical heavenly Sabbath-rest will not be till Christ, ourGospel Joshua, comes, to usher us into it, the typical earthlySabbath must continue till then. The Jews call the future rest “theday which is all Sabbath.”

Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible

Ver. 9 There remaineth therefore a rest for the people of God.] Not all mankind; nor the people of the Jews only; rather the people of God, both Jews and Gentiles, under the New Testament; the people whom God has loved with a special love, has chose in Christ, and given to him, with whom he has made a covenant in him, and whom Christ saves from their sins, and calls by his grace; and the rest which remains for them is not a new sabbath day, but a sabbatism: and this does not so mush design eternal rest in heaven; though the Jews often call that a sabbath; the 92nd psalm they say is a psalm for the time to come, , “which is all sabbath”, and the rest of eternal life k: but rather this intends the spiritual rest believers have in Christ under the Gospel dispensation, which they now enter into, and of which the apostle had been treating; and as for the word “remaineth”, this does not denote the futurity of it, but the apostle’s inference or consequence from what he had said; and the sense is, it remains therefore, and is a certain fact, a clear consequence from what has been observed, that there is another rest distinct from God’s rest on the seventh day, and from the rest in the land of Canaan; which were both typical ones of the present rest the saints now enjoy: so the Jews call the world to come the times of the Messiah, , “the great sabbath” l.

k Misn. Tamid, c. 7. sect. 4. T. Bab. Sanhedrin, fol. 97. 1, Shirhashirim Rabba, fol. 16. 3. Massecheth Sopherim, c. 18. sect. 1. Tzeror Hammor, fol. 3. 1. l Zohar in Gen. fol. 31. 4. Shaare Orn, fol. 17. 1. Caphtor, fol. 64. 1.

Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible

A sabbath rest (). Late word from (Ex 16:30) to keep the Sabbath, apparently coined by the author (a doubtful passage in Plutarch). Here it is parallel with (cf. Re 14:13).

For the people of God ( ). Dative case of blessed personal interest to the true Israel (Ga 6:16).

Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament

There remaineth therefore a rest [ ] . Remaineth, since in the days of neither Moses, Joshua, or David was the rest appropriated. He passes over the fact that the rest had not been entered into at any later period of Israel ‘s history. Man’s portion in the divine rest inaugurated at creation has never been really appropriated : but it still remaineth. This statement is justified by the new word for “rest” which enters at this point, sabbatismov instead of katapausiv, N. T. o, o LXX, o Class., signifies a keeping Sabbath. The Sabbath rest points back to God ‘s original rest, and marks the ideal rest – the rest of perfect adjustment of all things to God, such as ensued upon the completion of his creative work, when he pronounced all things good. This falls in with the ground – thought of the Epistle, the restoration of all things to God ‘s archetype. The sin and unbelief of Israel were incompatible with that rest. It must remain unappropriated until harmony with God is restored. The Sabbath – rest is the consummation of the new creation in Christ, through whose priestly mediation reconciliation with God will come to pass.

For the people of God (tw law tou qeou). For the phrase see Rom 9:25; Rom 11:1; 1Pe 2:10. and comp. Israel of God, Gal 6:16. The true Israel, who inherit the promise by faith in Christ.

Fuente: Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament

The Believer’s Spiritual Rest in Redemption

1) “There remaineth therefore a rest,” (ara apoleipetai sabbatismos) “(There) then remains a sabbath rest,” a progressive rest from earthly cares, sorrows, tears, burdens, and temptations – this “rest” is daily offered to, and expressed by, children of God who walk in paths of obedient service to God. The voluntary yoke of Christ is easy and burden of service is light, in comparison with the walk of a child of God in disobedience, Mat 11:28-30; Jer 6:16; Jas 1:22.

2) “To the people of God,” (to lao tou theou) “To, or for, the laity (common people) of God; A child of God does not have to wait until he dies to experience heavenly soul rest – he can experience it daily in relief and release from fear of death and hell and a guilty accusing conscience, enjoying perfect peace as his mind is fixed or stayed on God, Isa 26:3; Rom 8:15; 2Ti 1:7.

Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary

3.

Conclusions from the above premises. Heb. 4:9-10.

Text

Heb. 4:9-10

Heb. 4:9 There remaineth therefore a sabbath rest for the people of God. Heb. 4:10 For he that is entered into His rest hath himself also rested from his works, as God did from His.

Paraphrase

Heb. 4:9 Therefore, seeing the Israelites did not, in Canaan, enter fully into Gods rest, the enjoyment of another rest remaineth to the people of God, in which they shall rest completely from all the troubles of this life.

Heb. 4:10 For the believer who is entered into Gods rest, hath himself also rested from his own works of trial and suffering, Rev. 14:13 like as God rested from His works of creation.

There remaineth therefore a sabbath rest for the people of God

There remaineth therefore suggests that there is something better yet to follow:

a.

Sabbath is a symbol of the rest yet to come.

b.

This is the consummation of the new creature in Christ.

c.

Jesus, Mat. 11:28-29 : Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden.

d.

Rest fulfilled in Rev. 14:13 : And I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth. Yea, saith the Spirit that they may rest from their labors, and their works do follow them. cf. Rev. 21:1-5.

Rest here is sabbath rest, a state of rest:

a.

It is not a state of inactivity, but release from the body of sin.

b.

It is rest from this body of pain, sorrow and affliction.

for the people of God

There is the very opposite of comfort and rest for those who are not Gods people. Luk. 16:24 : For I am tormented in this flame. Rev. 14:11 : And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever; and they have no rest day and night, they that worship the beast and his image and receiveth a mark . . .

For he that is entered into His rest

Who is referred to here?

a.

One view favors Christ:

1.

For this view, we have only the idea that Christ is resting from his earthly mission.

2.

Against it we have several factors:

a)

First: Christ is not resting, since He is preparing mansions, making intercession for us, etc.

b)

Second: Jesus is not mentioned here at all.

c)

Third: We are exhorted by Heb. 4:11 to enter into the rest, as though it is the Christians rest as referred to in Heb. 4:10.

b.

A second view is that it is just a general statement of man entering into rest:

1.

McKnight expresses it: For the believer who is entered into Gods rest, hath himself also rested from his works of trial and suffering.

2.

Milligan says this view is most in harmony with the context.

hath himself also rested from his works, as God did from His.

The Christian enters into a rest, just as did God when He rested:

a.

Now every saint who, like Joshua and Caleb, is faithful enters into Gods rest.

b.

As certainly as God rested, so shall we rest. His works may refer to several things:

1.

His own works that have no part in his salvation:

a.

The Jew must give up the works of the old law.

b.

The moral man must give up thinking that a moral life is able to save.

2.

That work which the child of God does in being faithful:

a.

The work of God was good, and no doubt the good work of Christian people is referred to here in the parallel.

b.

The life of self-denial comes to an end, and one enters into a rest with God.

Study Questions

604.

Is David reminding them of seeking a greater rest?

605.

What is the significance of the words a sabbath rest for the people of God?

606.

When is this period of rest?

607.

Is it a cessation of activity, or is another idea implied in our rest?

608.

If the people of God have rest, what will the others have? Cf. Luk. 16:24; Rev. 14:10.

609.

Who is the he in Heb. 4:10?

610.

Why is it not Jesus?

611.

Is Jesus resting?

612.

What are the works referred to?

Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series

(9) There remaineth therefore.Or, therefore there is (still) left: the word is the same as in Heb. 4:6. It is tacitly assumed that no subsequent fulfilment has altered the relation of the promise. Few things in the Epistle are more striking than the constant presentation of the thought that Scripture language is permanent and at all times present. The implied promise, therefore, repeated whenever the to-day is heard, must have its fulfilment. The rescued people of Israel did indeed find a rest in Canaan: the true redeemed people of God shall rest with God.

A rest.As the margin points out, the word is suddenly changed. As the rest promised to Gods people is a rest with God, it is to them a sabbath-rest. So one of the treatises of the Mishna speaks of Psalms 92 as a Psalm for the time to come, for the day which is all Sabbath, the rest belonging to the life eternal.

Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)

9. Remaineth The full conclusion given. There is a permanent rest underlying the Canaan rest, which is God’s and the believer’s rest. But, significantly, our author for the word rest, which has hitherto been , a pausing, now substitutes , sabbatismos, sabbatism, a sabbath-rest, thus finely identifying the saints everlasting rest with God’s sabbatic rest. On this Whitby gives a number of interesting extracts from the early Christian writers. “Irenaeus saith, ‘The seventh day, which was sanctified, and in which God rested from all his works, is the true sabbath of the just; in which they shall do no earthly labour.’ And Origen saith that ‘Celsus understood not the mystery of the seventh day, and the rest of God, in which all that had done their work in six, and had left nothing undone which belonged to them, should feast with God, ascending to the vision of him, and in that to the general festivity of the just and blessed.’ And again: ‘If we further inquire which are the true sabbaths, we shall find that the observation of the true sabbath reaches beyond the world; the true sabbath, in which God will rest from all his works, being the world to come, when all grief, sorrow, and sighing shall fly away, and God shall be all in all.’”

And as the early Christian writers are thus in accord with our apostle, so our apostle is in accord with the Hebrew doctors, it not being easy to say which made the earlier utterance. Says Whitby:

“Thus in their descants upon the 92d Psalm, which bears, both in the Hebrew and the Greek, this title, A Song of the Sabbath, ( ,) they say, ‘This is the age to come which is all sabbath.’ ‘The psalmist,’ saith R. Solomon Jarchi on the passage, ‘speaks of the business of the world to come, which is all sabbath.’ ‘A psalm upon the sabbath day,’ saith R. Eliezer, cap. xix, p. 42, ‘that is, upon the day that is all sabbath and rest, in the life of the world to come.’ And again, cap. xviii, p. 41, ‘The blessed Lord created seven worlds, (that is, ages,) but one of them is all sabbath and rest in life eternal.’ Where he refers to their common opinion, that the world should continue six thousand years, and then a perpetual sabbath should begin, typified by God’s resting the seventh day and blessing it. So Bereschith Rabba, ‘If we expound the seventh day of the seven thousand years, which is the world to come, the exposition is, and he blessed; because that in the seventh thousand all souls shall be bound in the bundle of life; for there shall be there the augmentation of the Holy Ghost, wherein we shall delight ourselves. And so our Rabbies, of blessed memory, have said in their commentaries, God blessed the seventh day; the Holy God blessed the world to come, which beginneth in the seven thousand of years.’ Philo is very copious in this allegory, who, disputing against those who, having learned that the written laws were , symbols of intellectual things, did upon that account neglect them, saith that though the seventh day was a document of the power of God, and of this rest of the creature, yet was not the outward rest to be cast off.”

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

‘There remains therefore a sabbath-rest for the people of God.’

That being so there therefore remains for God’s people a ‘sabbath-rest’ (sabbatismos). This is a late word from sabbatiz“ (Exo 16:30) and means here a ‘keeping of the rest as described in Genesis 2 and later symbolised in the Sabbath’. It may have been coined by the author. Here it is paralleled with katapausis (‘rest’ – compare Heb 4:1; Heb 4:3-4 etc. and Act 7:49). In Rev 14:13 a similar verb (anapauo) refers to the Christian’s ‘rest’ after death, as they leave the tribulation of the world, which is the final fulfilment of the present rest, the same verb in fact as is used in Mat 11:28-29 where it refers to present rest.

But what is this sabbath-rest (shabath means ‘to stop working’). It is another way of speaking of God’s rest on the seventh day when He ceased activity in creation, a rest also intended originally to be enjoyed by man, illustrated from the Sabbath which was based on it, which in itself was a foretaste of that rest and a guarantee that one day it would be man’s again (Exo 20:11). It is the rest of One for whom all that He wanted to do has been satisfactorily completed so that only a glorious future remains of watching over what He has made. No further works would be needed to put it right. It is the rest into which Adam entered when the world was ‘very good’ and which was marred by his disobedience. But once he had disobeyed no longer was everything ‘very good’. He was now destined to work. Works were the sign of fallen man. It is the rest now made available by the One Who became the true restored Man, the ‘second man’ (Heb 2:6-9) for those who are in Him. For with Him we are seated in heavenly places ‘in Christ’ and enjoy His triumph (Eph 2:6). We have entered into rest. We have ceased from ‘works’ (Eph 2:9). Rather do we live out His life (Gal 2:20).

Here the present tense together with ‘sabbath-rest’ clearly does mean the present, probably suggesting a present experience, although it could admittedly here be seen as simply referring to its present availability on death.

Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett

Heb 4:9. There remaineth therefore a rest The word hitherto used for rest had been , cessation from labour: here a new term is introduced , such a rest as was proper to the seventh day, on which God rested. The apostle had said, Heb 4:6 that the rest of God was left unpossessed; that generation which Joshua led into Canaan, did not then take possession of God’s rest; for God, four hundred and fifty years afterwards, speaks of his rest as still to be entered into; therefore his rest still remained for the people of God. All that is here said is, to urge the Hebrews to continue steadfast in their faith, by proving to them that the rest of God preached to us by Christ, is infinitely more advantageous, and infinitely superior to that which was promised by Moses. It was a state of perfect happiness, peace, quietness in heaven: it was such a cessation from labour, as God himself enjoyed after the creation. This rest therefore ought to be the great object of our care, the grand point to be adhered to; and the principle by which it is to be attained, is a faith firm and sure.

Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke

Heb 4:9 . Deduction from Heb 4:7-8 , and consequently return to the first half of Heb 4:6 . “Thus still remaining, still awaiting its advent, is a Sabbath rest for the people of God,” inasmuch, namely, what the author in reasoning with the Hebrews might presuppose as admitted, as from David’s time down to the present no one had entered into the of God. As Sabbatic rest the author characterizes the rest of God, in adherence to the thought of Heb 4:4 . As a type of the everlasting blessedness do the Rabbins also regard the Sabbath. Comp. e.g. Jalkut Rubeni , fol. 95. 4 : Dixerunt Isralitae: Domine totius mundi, ostende nobis exemplar mundi futuri. Respondit ipsis Deus S. B.: illud exemplar est sabbatum. R. D. Kimchi et R. Salomo in Psalms 92 .: Psalmus cantici in diem Sabbati, quod hic psalmus pertineat ad seculum futurum, quod totum sabbatum est et quies ad vitam aeternam. See Wetstein and Schttgen ad loc .

] at the beginning of a sentence is, in prose, foreign to the classics. Comp. however, Rom 10:17 ; 2Co 7:12 ; Luk 11:48 ; Winer, Gramm. , 7 Aufl. p. 519; Buttmann, Gramm. des neutest. Sprachgebr . p. 318.

The expression (from , , to observe the Sabbath, Exo 16:30 , al.) only here and with Plutarch, De Superstit. c. 3.

] to the people which appertains to God, is recognised and treated by Him as His people, since it has believingly devoted itself to Him. Comp. Gal 6:16 : .

Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary

DISCOURSE: 2283
THE REST THAT REMAINS FOR GODS PEOPLE

Heb 4:9. There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God.

THE servants of God possess many distinguished privileges. Their state in this world is far happier than that of the ungodly; but there is an infinitely richer portion reserved for them hereafter. To this David had respect in that awful denunciation [Note: Psa 95:11.], whence it appears, that though prefigured by other rests, it remains yet to be enjoyed [Note: The Apostles argument seems to be this: God instituted a day of rest in commemoration of his having ceased from his works of creation. And many centuries afterwards he promised a rest to his people in the land of Canaan. But that rest was only typical of a more glorious sabbath, of which David spake a long time after the other had been enjoyed. From hence the Apostle concludes that there must yet be a rest, or (for he changes the word which he had before used, in order more strongly to intimate the analogy between the different rests there spoken of) remaining for the people of God.].

I.

Who are the people of God?

This title cannot belong to all indiscriminately
[The greater part of the world are idolatrous heathens. The generality of those who are called Christians are ignorant of God. Impiety and profaneness abound in every place: this indisputably proves the Apostles assertion [Note: Rom 9:6.]. The sinful works of men plainly shew whose people they are [Note: 1Jn 3:8. Joh 8:44.]; nor do all who profess godliness really belong to God [Note: Rom 2:28-29. Tit 1:16.]. There are many who deceive both themselves and others [Note: Rev 3:1. Jam 1:26.].]

Those who alone have a right to it are described by God himself [Note: Php 3:3.].

They worship God in the Spirit
[It is the characteristic of Gods enemies that they neglect prayer [Note: Psa 53:4.]: nor will formal services prove us to be Gods people [Note: Mat 15:8-9.]. No worship is acceptable to him but that which is spiritual [Note: Joh 4:23-24.]. His faithful servants are importunate at the throne of grace [Note: Eph 6:18.].]

They rejoice in Christ Jesus
[They do not merely acknowledge him to be the Messiah: they make daily application to him as the only ground of their hopes. Their hearts are lifted up with devout affection towards him. They delight in him as their all-sufficient Redeemer [Note: 1Pe 1:8.].]

They have no confidence in the flesh
[They are deeply convinced that in them dwelleth no good thing. They see the folly of trusting to their own strength or wisdom [Note: Pro 3:5.]. They acquiesce fully in Solomons direction [Note: Pro 28:26.]. They look for every thing in Christ alone [Note: 1Co 1:30.].]

To these belong many glorious privileges.

II.

What is the rest which remaineth for them?

They have already in some respect entered into rest [Note: Heb 4:3.]

[They are freed from the terrors of a guilty conscience [Note: Heb 10:22.]. They feel a delight in ordinances and Sabbaths. Their minds are fully satisfied with the Gospel salvation. They experience the truth of our Lords promise [Note: Mat 11:28.].]

But the rest which awaits them is far superior to that they now possess
They will enjoy a freedom from all labours and sorrows
[They are constrained to labour as long as they are in the world. Their whole life resembles a race or warfare. They can obtain nothing without strenuous exertions [Note: Mat 11:12.]: and of necessity they are encompassed with many sorrows [Note: Act 14:22.]. But in heaven they will cease from their labours [Note: Rev 14:13.]: nor will their happiness have any intermission or alloy [Note: Rev 21:4.].]

They will be exempt from all influence of sin or temptation
[Sin now defiles their very best services. Satan is also unwearied in his endeavours to corrupt them [Note: 2Co 11:3.]. These are sources of much pain to them at present. But the souls of all in heaven are made perfect [Note: Heb 12:23.]: nor can any unclean thing enter to defile them [Note: Rev 21:27.]. Their triumph will be complete and ever-lasting [Note: Isa 60:20.].]

They will dwell in the immediate presence of their God
[Their capacity of enjoying God will be wonderfully enlarged: they will behold him not darkly, as now, but face to face [Note: 1Co 13:12.]. The Saviours glory will be the object of their devoutest admiration [Note: Joh 17:24.]. Their delight in him will surpass their present conceptions [Note: Psa 16:11.]. They shall know that their happiness will be eternal [Note: Rev 22:3-5.]. Then will every desire of their heart be fully satisfied [Note: Psa 17:15.].]

Infer
1.

How desirable is it to be numbered among Gods people!

[The rest described is the portion of them alone. God himself declares that the wicked have no part in it [Note: Isa 57:21.]: their portion will be very different [Note: Psa 11:6.], and its duration also will be endless [Note: Rev 14:11.]. Who then would not wish to be numbered with the saints? Who does not desire to participate their inheritance? But we must first be conformed to their character. We must renounce self-confidence, and believe in Christ. It was unbelief which excluded the Israelites from Canaan [Note: Heb 3:18-19.]. Let us fear lest the same evil principle rob us of the heavenly rest [Note: Heb 4:1; Heb 4:11.].]

2.

With what delight may Gods people look forward to death!

[The hour of death is often an object of terror to the godly, but it should be welcomed as a season of joy. Does not the husbandman rejoice in his wages, the mariner in his haven, the soldier in the spoils of victory? Much more should the Christian rejoice in the approach of his rest. Let us then long after it, like the holy Apostle [Note: 2Co 5:2.]; and let us labour to attain it in full confidence of success [Note: 2Co 5:6; 2Co 5:8-9.].]

Fuente: Charles Simeon’s Horae Homileticae (Old and New Testaments)

9 There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God.

Ver. 9. A rest to the people of God ] Gr. A sabbatism, an eternal rest, a sabbath that hath neither evening,Gen 2:2Gen 2:2 , nor labour, Rev 14:13 . But they shall enter into peace, rest in their beds, Isa 57:2 ; be ravished in spirit, receive the full import and purport of the weekly sabbath, rest from travail and trouble,Rev 1:10Rev 1:10 . Rev 1:2 . Of the seventh-year sabbath; for the creature, the ground shall rest from its vanity and slavery, Rom 8:20-21 . Rom 8:3 . Of the seventh seven year sabbath, the Jubilean sabbath; for their debts shall be all discharged, their mortgages released, their persons set at liberty from sin and Satan’s slavery.

Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

9 .] Consequence from the proposition in Heb 4:6 . Some must enter therein: some, that is, analogous to, inheriting the condition of and promises made to, those first, who did not enter in because of disobedience. These are now specified as ‘ the people of God ,’ cf. reff., doubtless with a reference to the true spiritual character of Israelites indeed, represented under their external name: and their rest is no longer a , but (see below) is called by a higher and nobler name. Therefore (see above) there remains (see on Heb 4:6 ; remains as yet unexhausted, unoccupied, unrealized) a keeping of sabbath (as regards the word, it is only found, besides here, in Plut. de Superstitione, c. 3, , , , , , , , . It is regularly formed from (reff.), as from . It is used here to correspond to the , specified and explained in Heb 4:4 . God’s rest was a ; so also will ours be. Thdrt. remarks: , , . . . . The idea of the rest hereafter being the antitype of the Sabbath-rest, was familiar to the Jews: see the quotations in Schttg., Wetst., and Bleek. They spoke of the tempus futurum as the “dies qui totus est sabbathum.” It is hardly probable that the sacred Writer had in his mind the object which Calvin mentions: “Non dubito quin ad Sabbathum data opera alluserit apostolus, ut Judos revocaret ab externa ejus observatione: neque enim aliter potest ejus abrogatio intelligi, quam cognito spirituali fine.” Still more alien from the sense and context is it to use this verse, as some have absurdly done, as carrying weight one way or the other in the controversy respecting the obligation of a sabbath under the Christian dispensation. The only indication it furnishes is negative: viz. that no such term as could then have been, in the minds of Christians, associated with the keeping of the Lord’s day: otherwise, being already present, it could not be said that it ) for the people of God (the well-known designation of Israel the covenant people. It occurs again, ch. Heb 11:25 . Here it is used of that veritable Israel, who inherit God’s promises by faith in Christ: cf. Gal 6:16 . So Photius: , , . ).

Heb 4:10 is taken in two ways (not to mention the untenable interpretation of Schulz, which refers to the people of God, “for, when it has entered,” &c. This would be without the article): 1. as a general axiom, justifying the use of the word above: For he that has entered into his (God’s) rest, has himself also rested from his (own) works, like as God rested from his own . This has been the usual explanation. Thl. says, , , , . This explanation labours under two difficulties: . the aorist , which thus is made into a perfect or a present. De Wette regards it as a reminiscence of the same word in Heb 4:4 ; so Delitzsch: but this is most unsatisfactory: . the double reference of , first to God, and then to the man in question, especially when God’s works are taken up by the strong term . 2. The other interpretation has been that of Owen, Alting, Stark, and more recently Ebrard, who refer to Christ: For He that entered into his (own or God’s) rest, Himself also rested from His works like as God rested from His own: and therefore, from our Forerunner having entered into this sabbatism, it is reserved for us, the people of God, to enter into it with and because of Him. Thus, as Ebrard says, Jesus is placed in the liveliest contrast to Joshua, who had not brought God’s people to their rest; and is designated as ‘That one, who entered into God’s rest.’ And to this view I own I am strongly inclined, notwithstanding the protest raised against it by Bleek, Lnemann, and Delitzsch. My reasons are, in addition to those implied above, . the form of the assertion, as regards Joshua here and Jesus in Heb 4:14 . That a contrast is intended between the who did not give them rest, and the , , seems very plain. And if so, it would be easily accounted for, that Christ should be here introduced merely under the designation of . . . . The introduction of the words , lifting out and dignifying the subject of this clause as compared with , in a way which would hardly be done, had the assertion been merely of any man generally. . Scripture analogy. This rest, into which the Lord Jesus entered, is spoken of, Isa 11:10 , , : and this work of His, in Isa 40:10 , , and by Christ Himself, Joh 9:4 , , . . The expression below, which stands harshly insulated unless it refers to the in this verse. . The whole context: see summary at ch. Heb 3:1 . Render then: For He that entered into his (either, ‘God’s;’ or more probably merely ‘his,’ reflective, as in Isa 11:10 above: see also Mat 25:21 ; Mat 25:23 , where the is ) rest, He Himself also (on this, see above) rested from his works (see above) as God from his own ( not with any distinction of kind, but used only to mark distinction of possession).

Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament

Hebrews

ENTRANCE INTO GOD’S REST

Heb 4:9-10

WE lose much of the meaning of this passage by our superficial habit of transferring it to a future state. The ground of the mistake is in the misinterpretation of that word ‘remaineth’; which is taken to point to the ‘rest,’ after the sorrows of this life are all done with. Of course there is such a rest; but if we take the context of the passage, we cannot but recognise this as the truth that is taught here, that faith, and not death, is the gate to participation in Christ’s rest – that the rest remained over after Moses and Judaism, but came into possession under and by Christ. For the main scope of the whole passage is the elucidation of one of the points in which the writer asserts the superiority of Christ to Moses, of Christianity to Judaism. That old system, says he, had in it for its very heart a promise of rest; but it had only a promise.

It could not give the thing that it held forth. It could not, by the nature of the system. It could not, as is manifest from this fact – that years after they had entered into possession of the land, years after the promise had been first given, the Psalmist represents the entrance into that rest as a privilege not yet realised, but waiting to be grasped by the men of day whose hearts were softened to hear God’s voice. David’s words clearly, to the mind of the writer of the epistle, show that Canaan was not the promised ‘rest.’ David treats it as being obtained by obedience to God’s Word; and as not yet possessed by the people, though they had the promised land. He treats it as then, in his own ‘day,’ still but a promise, and a promise which would not be fulfilled to his people if they hardened their hearts. All this carries the inference that the Mosaic system did not give the ‘rest’ which it promised. Hence, says the author of the Hebrews, that ‘rest’ held forth from the beginning, gleaming before all generations of the Jewish people, but to them only a fair vision, remains unpossessed as yet, but to be possessed. God’s word has been pledged. He has said that there shall be a share in His rest for His people. The ancient people did not get it. What then? Is God’s promise thereby cancelled? ‘They could not enter in because of unbelief,’ but the unbelief of man shall not make the faith of God without effect. Therefore, as the eternal promise has been given, and they counted themselves unworthy, the divine mercy which will find some to enter therein, and will not be balked of its purposes, turns to the Gentiles; and the ‘rest’ provided for the Jews first, but unaccepted by them, remains for all who believe to partake. And, still further, the writer establishes the principle that the rest promised to the Jew remains yet to be inherited by the Christian, on a second ground: ‘For,’ says he, in the tenth verse of the chapter, ‘for He that is entered into His rest, He also has ceased from His own works, as God did from His.’ How is that a proof? It is not a proof that there is a rest for us, if you interpret it as people generally do. But it is so if you give to it what seems to be the correct interpretation – by referring it to Christ and Christ’s heavenly condition. ‘He that has entered into His rest – that is Jesus Christ, ‘He has ceased from His own works’ – His finished work of redemption – ‘as God did from His’ His finished work of creation. And there is the great proof that there is a rest for us: not only because Judaism did not bring it, but because Christ hath gone up on high. We have a great High Priest that is passed into the heavens. Christ our Lord has entered into His rest – parallel with the divine tranquillity after Creation. And seeing that He possesses it, certainly we shall possess it if only we hold fast by Him. ‘There remains a rest’ – proved by the fact that Christ hath gone into it, and carrying the inference, ‘Let us labour, therefore, to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief.’ We find here, then, three main points. First, the divine rest, God’s and Christ’s. Secondly, this divine rest, the pattern of what our life on earth may become. And lastly, this divine rest, the prophecy of what our life in heaven shall assuredly be. I. In the first place, then, we have here the divine rest.

‘He hath ceased from His own works, as God did from His.’ The writer is drawing a parallel between God’s ceasing from His creative work and entering into that Sabbath rest when He saw everything that He had made, and behold it was very good; and Christ’s ceasing from the work of redemption, and passing into the heavens to the Sabbath of His everlasting repose. I need not dwell at any length upon a matter which, after all speech, remains for us but very dimly intelligible – the rest of God. ‘My rest’ – that rest belongs necessarily to the Divine Nature. It is the deep tranquillity of a nature self-sufficing in its infinite beauty, calm in its everlasting strength, placid in its deepest joy, still in its mightiest energy; loving without passion, willing without decision or change, acting without effort; quiet, and moving everything; making all things new, and itself everlasting; creating, and knowing no diminution by the act; annihilating, and knowing no loss though the universe were barren and unpeopled. God is, God is everywhere, God is everywhere the same, God is everywhere the same infinite, God is everywhere the same infinite love and the same infinite self- sufficiency; therefore His very Being is rest. And yet that image that rises before us, statuesque, still in its placid tranquillity, is not repellent nor cold, is no dead marble likeness of life. That great ocean of the Divine Nature which knows no storm nor billow, is yet not a tideless and stagnant sea. God is changeless and ever tranquil, and yet He loves. God is changeless and ever tranquil, and yet He wills. God is changeless and ever tranquil, and yet He acts. Mystery of mysteries, passing all understanding I And yet He says, ‘They shall enter into My rest!’ Now I believe, and I hope you believe, that the rest of Christ is like the rest of God, even in respect of this Divine and Infinite Nature. ‘He hath ceased from His works, as God did from His.’ Jesus Christ is ‘the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever.’ Whatsoever you can predicate of the settled tranquillity, and stable, necessary, essential repose of a divine nature, that you can predicate of Christ our Redeemer, of Christ the Son of God. But still further. Besides that deep and changeless repose which thus belongs to the Divine Nature, there is the other thought which perhaps comes more markedly out in the passage before us – that of a rest which is God’s tranquil ceasing from His work, because God has perfected His work. When we read in the Old Testament, that at the end of the creative act, God rested upon the Sabbath day, and blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, of course the thought that comes into view is not that of a divine nature wearied with toil and needing repose, but that of a divine nature which has fully accomplished its intent, expressed its purpose, done what it meant to do, and rests from its working Because it has embodied its ideal in its work. It is the proclamation, ‘This creation of Mine is all that I meant it to be – finished and perfect’; not the acknowledgment of an exhaustion of the creative energy which needs to reinvigorate its strength by repose after its mighty ,effort. The rest of God is the expression of the perfect divine complacency in the perfect divine work. And, in like manner, as after that creative act there came the Sabbath, when He saw that it was all very good, and the morning stars sang together for joy;-so after the mightier new-creative act of redemption, the Christ, who is divine, ceased and held His hand, not because Bethlehem and Calvary had wearied Him, not because after pain He needed rest, not because the Cross had tasked His powers, and His suffering had strained His nature; but because all that had to be done was done, and He knew it-because redemption was completed. The Sabbath on which God rested from His work, and the new Sabbath on which Christ rose from the dead, the conqueror of death, the destruction of sin, are parallel in this, that in either case the work was done, that in either case the Doer needed no repose after His finished task. And just as God, full of all the energy of being, operated unspent after creation, needed not that rest for His refreshment, but took it as the pledge and proclamation to the universe that all was done; so Christ, unwearied and unwounded from His dreadful close and sore wrestle with sin and death, sprung from the grave to the skies, and rests – proclamation and token to the world that His work is finished, that the Cross is enough for the race for ever more, that all is complete, and man’s salvation secured. As God hath ceased from His works, Christ hath ceased from His. Still further: this divine tranquility – inseparable from the Divine Nature, the token of the sufficiency and completeness of the divine work – is also a rest that is full of work. When Christ was telling the Jews the principles of the Sabbath day, He said to them: ‘My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.’ The creative act is finished and God rests; but God, in resting, works; even as God, in working, rests. Preservation is a continued creation. The energy of the divine power is as mightily at work here now sustaining us in life, as it was when He flung forth stars and systems like sparks from a forge, and willed the universe into being. God rests, and in His rest, up to the present hour and for ever, God works. And, in like manner, Christ’s work of redemption, finished upon the Cross, is perpetually going on. Christ’s glorious repose is full of energy for His people. He intercedes above. He works on them, He works through them, He works for them. The rest of God, the divine tranquillity, is full of work. There, then, is a parallel: the rest of the Father, who ceased from His work of creation, and continueth His work of preservation, is parallel with that of the Son, who ceased from His work of sacrifice, and continueth His work of intercession and of sanctifying. These two are one. ‘My rest’ is the rest of the Father in the Son, and of the Son in the Father. That still communion and that everlasting repose are a prophecy for our lives, brethren. The ancient promise, long repeated, has come sounding down through the echoing halls of the centuries, and rings in our ears as fresh as when first it was spoken, ‘There remaineth a rest for the people of God,’ they shall enter into the stillness and the secret of His tranquillity! II. Then, in the second place, the text gives us, The rest of God and of Christ as the pattern of what our earthly life may become. Like Christ, like God – can it be? It can be, with certain differences; but oh! the differences drop into insignificance when we think of the resemblances. Whether a man is capable of knowing absolute truth or not, he is capable of coming into direct and personal contact with the absolute Reality, the Truth of Truth. And whether here below we can know anything about God as He is or not, this at all events the New Testament teaches us, that we can come to be like Him – like Him in the substance of our souls; like Him – copy of His perfections; like Him – shadow and resemblance of some of His attributes. And here lies the foundation for the belief that we can ‘ enter into His rest.’ We cannot possess that changeless tranquillity which knows no variations of purpose or of desire, but we can possess the stable repose of that fixed nature which knows one object, and one alone. We cannot possess that energy which, after all work, is fresh and unbroken; but we can possess that tranquillity which in all toil is not troubled, and after all work is ready for yet greater service. We cannot possess that unwavering fire of a divine nature which burns in love without flickering, which knows without learning, which wills without irresolution and without the act of decision; but we can come to love deeply, tranquilly, perpetually, we can come to know without questioning, without doubts, without darkness, in firm confidence of stable assurance, and so know with something like the knowledge of Him who knows things as they are; and we can come to will and resolve so strongly, so fixedly, so wisely, that there shall he no change of purpose, nor any vacillation of desire. In these ways, in shadow and copy, we can resemble even the apparently incommunicable tranquillity which, like an atmosphere that knows no tempests, belongs to and encircles the throne of God. But, still further: faith, which is the means of entering into rest, will – if only you cherish it – make your life no unworthy resemblance of His who, triumphant above, works for us, and, working for us, rests from all His toil. Trust Christ! is the teaching here. Trust Christ! and a great benediction of tranquil repose comes down upon thy calm mind and upon thy settled heart. Trust Christ! and so thy soul will no longer be like ‘the sea that cannot rest,’ full of turbulent wishes, full of passionate desires that come to nothing, full of endless meanings, like the homeless ocean that is ever working and never flings up any product of its work but yeasty foam and broken weeds; – but thine heart shall become translucent and still, like some land-locked lake, where no winds rave nor tempests ruffle; and on its calm surface there shall be mirrored the clear shining of the unclouded blue, and the perpetual light of the sun that never goes down. Trust Christ! and rest is thine – rest from fear, rest from toil and trouble, rest from sorrow, rest from the tossings of thine own soul, rest from the tumults of thine own desires, rest from the stings of thine own conscience, rest from seeking to work out a righteousness of thine own. Trust Christ, cease from ‘thine own works,’ forsake thine own doings, and abjure and abandon thine own righteousness; and though God’s throne be far above thee, and the depth of that Being be incommunicable to and uncopyable by thee, yet a divine likeness of His still, and blessed, and unbroken repose shall come down and lie – a solid and substantial thing – on thy pure and calmed spirit. ‘There remaineth a rest for the people of God.’ Say then, my Lord rests and my Father: I Will trust Him; I will rest in the Lord, and He shall keep me in perfect peace, because my mind is stayed on Him. III. Finally: This divine rest is not only a pattern of what our earthly life may become, but it is a prophecy of what our heavenly life shall surely be.

I have said that the immediate reference of the passage is not to a future state. But that does not exclude the reference, unless, indeed, we suppose that the Christian’s life on earth and his condition in heaven are two utterly different things, possessing no feature in common. The Bible presents a directly reverse notion to that. Though it gives full weight to all the differences which characterise the two conditions, yet it says, There is a basis of likeness between the Christian life on earth and the Christian life in heaven, so great as that the blessings which are predicated of the one belong to the other. Only here they are in blossom, sickly often, putting out very feeble shoots and tendrils; and yonder transplanted into their right soil, and in their native air with heaven’s sun upon them, they burst into richer beauty, and bring forth fruits of immortal life. Heaven is the earthly life of a believer glorified and perfected. If here we by faith enter into the beginning of rest, yonder through death with faith, we shall enter into the perfection of it. We cannot speak wisely of that future when we speak definitely of it. All that I suggest now as taught us by this passage is, that heaven will be for us, rest in work and work that is full of rest. Our Lord’s heaven is not an idle heaven. Christ is gone up on high, having completed His work on earth, that He may carry on His work in heaven; and after the pattern and likeness of His glory and of His repose, shall be the repose and glory of the children that are with Him. He rests from His labours, and His works do follow Him. He sitteth at the right hand of God ‘expecting’ – waiting patiently and in the confidence of assured triumph, ‘till His enemies become His footstool.’ But yet the dying martyr saw his Lord standing, not sitting, ready to help, and bending over him to welcome; and though He has ascended, and left the work of spreading the gospel to be done on earth, ‘the Lord works with us’ from His throne, nor is untouched by our troubles, nor idle in our toils. All the rest of that divine tranquillity, is rest in rapid, vigorous, perpetual motion. Ay, it is just as it is with physical things: the looker-on sees the swiftest motion as the most perfect rest. The wheel revolves so fast that the eye cannot discern its movements. The cataract foaming down from the hillside, when seen from half-way across the lake, seems to stand a silent, still, icy pillar. The divine work, because it is such work, is rest – tranquil in its energy, quiet in its intensity; because so mighty, therefore so still! That is God’s heaven, Christ’s heaven. The heaven of all spiritual natures is not idleness. Man’s delight is activity. The loving heart’s delight is obedience. The saved heart’s delight is grateful service. The joys of heaven are not the joys of passive contemplation, of dreamy remembrance, of perfect repose; but they are described thus, ‘They rest not day nor night.’ ‘His servants serve Him, and see His face.’ Yes, my brother, heaven is perfect ‘rest.’ God be thanked for all the depth of unspeakable sweetness which lies in that one little word, to the ears of all the weary and the heavy laden. God be thanked, that the calm clouds which gather round the western setting sun, and stretch their unmoving loveliness in perfect repose, and are bathed through and through with unflashing and tranquil light, seem to us in our busy lives and in our hot strife like blessed prophets of our state when we, too, shall lie cradled near the everlasting, unsetting Sun, and drink in, in still beauty of perpetual contemplation, all the glory of His face, nor know any more wind and tempest, rain and change. Rest in heaven – rest in God! Yes, but work in rest! Ah, that our hearts should grow up into an energy of love of which we know nothing here, and that our hands should be swift to do service, beyond all that could be rendered on earth, – that, never wearying, we should for ever be honoured by having work that never becomes toil nor needs repose; that, ever resting, we should ever be blessed by doing service which is the expression of our loving hearts, and the offering of our grateful and greatened spirits, joyful to us and acceptable to God, – that is the true conception of ‘the rest that remaineth for the people of God.’ Heaven is waiting for us – like God’s, like Christ’s – still in all its work, active in all its repose. See to it, my friend, that your life be calm because your soul is fixed, trusting in Jesus, who alone gives rest here to the heavy laden. Then your death will be but the passing from one degree of tranquillity to another, and the calm face of the corpse, whence all the lines of sorrow and care have faded utterly away, will be but a poor emblem of the perfect stillness into which the spirit has gone. Faith is the gate to partaking in the rest of God on earth. Death with faith is the gate of entrance into the rest of God in heaven.

Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren

rest = a Rest Day. i.e. the great day of “rest” under the rule of the great “Priest (King) upon His throne”. See Zec 6:13. Greek. sabbatismos. Only here. The verb sabbatizo, to keep sabbath, occurs several times in the Septuagint

people. Greek. laos. See Act 2:47, and compare Gal 1:6, Gal 1:16.

Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics

9.] Consequence from the proposition in Heb 4:6. Some must enter therein: some, that is, analogous to, inheriting the condition of and promises made to, those first, who did not enter in because of disobedience. These are now specified as the people of God, cf. reff., doubtless with a reference to the true spiritual character of Israelites indeed, represented under their external name: and their rest is no longer a , but (see below) is called by a higher and nobler name. Therefore (see above) there remains (see on Heb 4:6; remains as yet unexhausted, unoccupied, unrealized) a keeping of sabbath (as regards the word, it is only found, besides here, in Plut. de Superstitione, c. 3, , , , , , , , . It is regularly formed from (reff.), as from . It is used here to correspond to the , specified and explained in Heb 4:4. Gods rest was a ; so also will ours be. Thdrt. remarks: , , . . . . The idea of the rest hereafter being the antitype of the Sabbath-rest, was familiar to the Jews: see the quotations in Schttg., Wetst., and Bleek. They spoke of the tempus futurum as the dies qui totus est sabbathum. It is hardly probable that the sacred Writer had in his mind the object which Calvin mentions: Non dubito quin ad Sabbathum data opera alluserit apostolus, ut Judos revocaret ab externa ejus observatione: neque enim aliter potest ejus abrogatio intelligi, quam cognito spirituali fine. Still more alien from the sense and context is it to use this verse, as some have absurdly done, as carrying weight one way or the other in the controversy respecting the obligation of a sabbath under the Christian dispensation. The only indication it furnishes is negative: viz. that no such term as could then have been, in the minds of Christians, associated with the keeping of the Lords day: otherwise, being already present, it could not be said that it ) for the people of God (the well-known designation of Israel the covenant people. It occurs again, ch. Heb 11:25. Here it is used of that veritable Israel, who inherit Gods promises by faith in Christ: cf. Gal 6:16. So Photius: , , . ).

Heb 4:10 is taken in two ways (not to mention the untenable interpretation of Schulz, which refers to the people of God, for, when it has entered, &c. This would be without the article): 1. as a general axiom, justifying the use of the word above: For he that has entered into his (Gods) rest, has himself also rested from his (own) works, like as God rested from his own. This has been the usual explanation. Thl. says, , , , . This explanation labours under two difficulties: . the aorist , which thus is made into a perfect or a present. De Wette regards it as a reminiscence of the same word in Heb 4:4; so Delitzsch: but this is most unsatisfactory: . the double reference of , first to God, and then to the man in question, especially when Gods works are taken up by the strong term . 2. The other interpretation has been that of Owen, Alting, Stark, and more recently Ebrard, who refer to Christ: For He that entered into his (own or Gods) rest, Himself also rested from His works like as God rested from His own: and therefore, from our Forerunner having entered into this sabbatism, it is reserved for us, the people of God, to enter into it with and because of Him. Thus, as Ebrard says, Jesus is placed in the liveliest contrast to Joshua, who had not brought Gods people to their rest; and is designated as That one, who entered into Gods rest. And to this view I own I am strongly inclined, notwithstanding the protest raised against it by Bleek, Lnemann, and Delitzsch. My reasons are, in addition to those implied above, . the form of the assertion, as regards Joshua here and Jesus in Heb 4:14. That a contrast is intended between the who did not give them rest, and the , , seems very plain. And if so, it would be easily accounted for, that Christ should be here introduced merely under the designation of . . . . The introduction of the words , lifting out and dignifying the subject of this clause as compared with , in a way which would hardly be done, had the assertion been merely of any man generally. . Scripture analogy. This rest, into which the Lord Jesus entered, is spoken of, Isa 11:10, , : and this work of His, in Isa 40:10, , and by Christ Himself, Joh 9:4, , . . The expression below, which stands harshly insulated unless it refers to the in this verse. . The whole context: see summary at ch. Heb 3:1. Render then: For He that entered into his (either, Gods; or more probably merely his, reflective, as in Isa 11:10 above: see also Mat 25:21; Mat 25:23, where the is ) rest, He Himself also (on this, see above) rested from his works (see above) as God from his own ( not with any distinction of kind, but used only to mark distinction of possession).

Fuente: The Greek Testament

Heb 4:9. , therefore) For this reason, because He speaks of another day.-, sabbatism, rest) The word is changed for , rest; comp. the following verse. In time there are many sabbaths; but then, there will be a sabbatism, the enjoyment of rest, one, perfect, eternal. The verbal noun is extremely emphatic: it is not met with in the LXX. There will be no elementary sabbath in heaven; because earthly labour shall have passed away: but the rest will be perpetual, which, however, itself will again have its own various modes (ways, divisions), according to the different state of the priests and of the rest of the blessed in their resurrection bodies (carnis beat), and according to the intervals of the heavenly times to which the new moons and Jewish Sabbath corresponded: Isa 66:21; Isa 66:23.- , to the people of GOD) He had said absolutely, of the people, ch. Heb 2:17, when he was treating of reconciliation: but now, when he is treating of eternal rest, he says, to the people of God, that is, to the Israel of God, as Paul speaks, Gal 6:16. He therefore specially intends the Israelites (inasmuch as he is writing to the Hebrews), and them, too, believers.

Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament

Having passed through his testimonies and arguments, the apostle in this and the following verse lays down both what he hath evinced in his whole disputation, as also the general foundation of it, in answer to the principles of his preceding discourse.

Heb 4:9. .

, itaque, igitur; the common note of inferring a conclusion from any argument, whether inartificial or artificial, of both which sorts the apostle makes use in this place. Hereby, therefore, he would mind the Hebrews to attend both to what he was about to assert, and to the dependence of it on the former testimonies and arguments that he had pleaded and vindicated.

, relinquitur, superest, it is left, it remains, it is evinced. For this word may refer unto , therefore, and be a part of the induction of the conclusion following. So the verb is to be taken impersonally, it remaineth therefore, or this is that which we have proved.In this sense is the modification of the conclusion, and is not of the substance of it, or one of the terms of the proposition. And this exposition the Syriac version follows, reading the whole words, ; Wherefore it is certain that the people of God ought to sabbatize, or keep a sabbath, This is certain, a truth that is proved and vindicated; so that the people of God may know their privilege and their duty.The Ethiopic version renders the words somewhat strangely: Is the priesthood of the people of God abrogated? that is, it is not; so that standing still in the same peculiar relation to God as they did of old, when they were a royal priesthood, they ought still to attend unto his worship, and celebrate his ordinances, the great work of the day of their rest. Or may refer unto following, and be of a neutral signification: A sabbatism or rest remaineth, There is yet another rest remaining and abiding for the people of God to enter into, besides those before mentioned and discoursed of. It remaineth; that is, God hath prepared it, promised it, and invites us to enter into it. . This word is framed by our apostle from a Hebrew original, by the addition of a Greek termination; and so becomes comprehensive of the whole sense to be expressed, which no other single word in either would do. The original of it is the Hebrew , which signifies to rest; and it is first used to express the rest of God after his works of the creation: Gen 2:2, ; And he rested (or sabbatized) on the seventh day. And this being so of old, the word is used by our apostle to show that the rest which he now asserts for the people of God is founded in the rest of God himself. If this it had not been, it might have been , a rest in general; it could not have been , a sabbatism, a sabbatizing rest, for there is no foundation for any such name or thing but in the rest of God. From the rest of God, this word came to give name unto the day of rest appointed for men, Exo 20:10-12. Because God , shabbath, rested from his works, he blessed , iom hashshabbath, the day of rest, the sabbath; which he would have us remember to keep. Now, our apostle having proved that the consideration of that original rest of God, as to its first ends and purposes, is removed, and consequently the day itself founded thereon, and another rest introduced, to be expressed in and by another day, he calls it a sabbatism, to express both the rest itself and the observation of another day likewise, as a pledge and token of that other rest of God, and of our spiritual interest therein. The word, then, doth not precisely intend either a day of rest or a spiritual rest, but the whole of our rest in God with respect unto his, and that day that is the token thereof comprised therein. [6]

[6] TRANSLATIONS. . The celebration of a Sabbath. Ebrard. A Sabbath-rest. Boothroyd, De Wette, Tholuck, Craik. A Sabbath-rest, or, in extenso, a keeping of sabbatical rest. Conybeare and Howson. A Sabbath-keeping. Scholefield. ED.

Heb 4:9. There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God.

And hereby the apostle completes the due analogy that is between the several rests of God and his people, which he hath discoursed of in this chapter. For as at the beginning of the world there was first the work of God and his rest thereon; which made way for a rest for his people in himself, and in his worship, by the contemplation of his works which he had made, and on whose finishing he rested; and a day designed, determined, blessed, and sanctified, to express that rest of God, whence mention is made of those works in the command for the observation of that day, seeing the worship of God in and on that day consisted principally in the glorifying of God by and for those works of his, as also to be a means to further men in their entrance into his eternal rest, whereunto all these things do tend; and this was the of the people of God from the foundation of the world: and as at the giving of the law there was a great work of God, and his rest thereon, in the finishing of his work and the establishing of his worship in the land of Canaan; which made way for the peoples entering into his rest in that worship and country, and had a day assigned them to express the one and the other, and to help them to enter finally into the rest of God, all which were types and shadows of the rest mentioned by David; and this was their , or sabbatizing rest: so now, under the gospel, there is a sabbatism comprehensive of all these; for there was, as we shall see, a great work of God, and a rest of his own that ensued thereon; on this is founded the promise of rest, spiritual and eternal, unto them that do believe; and the determination of a new day, expressive of the one and the other, that is, the rest of God, and our rest in him; which is the sabbatism that our apostle here affirms to remain for the people of God. And what day this is hath been declared, namely, the first day of the week.

Now, besides the evidence that ariseth from the consideration of the whole context, there are two things which make it undeniably manifest that the apostle here proves and asserts the granting of an evangelical Sabbath, or day of rest, for the worship of God to be constantly observed. This, I say, he doth, though he doth not this only, nor separately: which whilst some have aimed to prove, they have failed of their aim, not being able to maintain a Sabbath rest exclusively, in opposition either to a spiritual or eternal rest; for so it is not here considered, but only in the manner and order before laid down.

Now these are,

First, the introduction of the seventh days rest into this discourse, and the mentioning of our gospel rest by the name of a day. Unless the apostle had designed the declaration of a day of rest now under the gospel, as well as a real spiritual rest by believing, there is no tolerable reason to be given of his mentioning the works of God and his rest, and his appointment of the old Sabbath; which, without respect unto another day, doth greatly obscure and involve his whole discourse. Again; his use of this word, framed and as it were coined to this purpose, that it might both comprise the spiritual rest aimed at, and also express a Sabbath-keeping or observation. When he speaks of our rest in general, he still doth it by ; adding there was an especial day for its enjoyment. Here he introduceth , which his way of arguing would not have allowed, had he not designed to express the Christian Sabbath.

Secondly, He shows who they are to whom this sabbatism doth belong, who are to enter into this rest, to enjoy it, with all the privileges that do attend it; and these are , the people of God. Those of old to whom the rest of Canaan was proposed were the people of God, and God hath a people still; and wherever he hath so, rest is promised to them and prepared for them. These he had before described by their own grace and obedience, verse 3, We who have believed do enter into rest. Here he doth it by their relation unto God, and the privilege that depended thereon; they are the people of God that are interested in this sabbatism. And the apostle makes use of this description of them upon a double account:

1. Because their being of the people of God, that is, in covenant (for where a people is Gods people, he is their God, Hos 2:23), was the greatest and most comprehensive privilege that the Hebrews had to boast of or to trust in. This was their glory, and that which exalted them above all nations in the world. So their church pleads with respect unto all others, Isa 63:19, We are thine: thou never barest rule over them; thy name was not called on them; that is, they were never called the people of Jehovah, because never taken into covenant with him. This privilege whereunto they trusted, the apostle lets them know belongs as well to them that believe under the new testament as it did to them under the old. Abram was now become Abraham, a father of many nations. And as those who were his carnal seed of old were the people of God, so God had now a people in and of all those who were his children according to the faith. They may see, therefore, that they shall lose nothing, no privilege, by coming over to the gospel state by faith in Christ Jesus. Upon a new account they become the people of God; which interests them and their children in the covenant, with the seals and all the ordinances of it, even as formerly. For this name, people, doth not firstly respect individuals, but a collective body of men, with and in all their relations. Believers, not singly considered, but they and their seed, or their children, are this people; and where they are excluded from the initial ordinance of the covenant, I know not how believers can be called the people of God.

2. He proceeds further, and shows them that indeed this privilege is now transferred over from the old estate and Canaan rest unto them that shall and do enter into this rest of God under the gospel. Hence, instead of losing the privilege of being the people of God by faith in Christ, he lets them know that they could no longer retain it without it. If they failed herein, they would be no longer the people of God; and as a signification thereof, they would become no people at all. And so hath it fallen out with them. For ever since they ceased to be Gods people they have been no people, or enjoy no political rule and society in the world. Thus, then, there remaineth a rest (or Sabbath-keeping) for the people of God. But yet there is a considerable difficulty that ariseth against the whole design of the apostle: and this is, that this sabbatism of the people of God wanteth a due foundation in an especial work and rest of God. For as, if God had not done a new work, and rested in it, at the giving of the law and establishment of his worship, whereby a new world as it were was erected, there could have been no new rest for his people to enter into, but all must have regarded the rest that was from the foundation of the world; so, if there be not a new work and rest of God now wrought and entered into by him, there cannot be a new rest and a new day of rest for the people of God. This objection, therefore, the apostle removes, and manifests that there is a new blessed foundation of that rest which he now proposeth to the Hebrews, verse 10, as we shall see. For the present we may observe, that,

Obs. 1. Believers under the new testament have lost nothing, no privilege that was enjoyed by them under the old.

Many things they have gained, and those of unspeakable excellency, but they have lost nothing at all. Whatever they had of privilege in any ordinance, that is continued; and whatever was of burden or bondage, that is taken away. All that they had of old was on this account, that they were the people of God. To them as such did all their advantages and privileges belong. But they were yet so the people of God as to be kept like servants, under the severe discipline of the law, Gal 4:1. Into this great fountain-privilege believers under the gospel are now succeeded. And what was of servitude in reference unto the law is removed and taken away; but whatever was of advantage is continued unto them, as the people of God. This, I suppose, is unquestionable, that God making them to be his people who were not a people, would not cut them short of any privilege which belonged before to his people as such, Rom 9:25-26. Besides, the state of the gospel is an estate of more grace and favor from God than that under the law, Joh 1:17. The whole gospel is an ampliation of divine spiritual grace and favor to Gods people. So is it a better estate than that which went before, accompanied with better promises, more liberty, grace, and privileges, than it. Nothing, then, of this nature can be lost therein or thereby to believers, but all privileges at any time granted unto the people of God are made over to them that under the gospel are so. Let men but give one instance to this purpose, and not beg the matter in question, and it shall suffice. Moreover, God hath so ordered all things in the dispensation of his grace and institution of his worship, that Jesus Christ should have the pre-eminence in all. All things are gathered up unto a head in him. And is it possible that any man should be a loser by the coming of Christ, or by his own coming unto Christ? It is against the whole gospel once to imagine it in the least instance. Let it now be inquired whether it were not a great privilege of the people of God of old, that their infant seed were taken into covenant with them, and were made partakers of the initial seal thereof? Doubtless it was the greatest they enjoyed, next to the grace they received for the saving of their own souls. That it was so granted them, so esteemed by them, may be easily proved. And without this, whatever they were, they were not a people. Believers under the gospel are, as we have spoken, the people of God; and that with all sorts of advantages annexed unto that condition, above what were enjoyed by them who of old were so. How is it, then, that this people of God, made so by Jesus Christ in the gospel, should have their charter, upon its renewal, razed with a deprivation of one of their choicest rights and privileges? Assuredly it is not so. And therefore if believers are now, as the apostle says they are, the people of God, their children have a right to the initial seal of the covenant. Again,

Obs. 2. It is the people of God alone who have a right unto all the privileges of the gospel, and who in a due manner can perform all the duties of it.

The rest of the gospel and all that is comprised in it, is for them, and for them only. All others who lay hand on them, or use them are agri alieni invasores, wrongful invaders of the rights and enclosures of others; and malae fidei possessores, or do but unjustly possess what they have injuriously seized on. And the reason hereof is, because all gospel privileges are but adjuncts of and annexed unto the covenant of grace, and the administration of it. Without an interest in that covenant, none can attain the least right unto them; and this they alone have who are the people of God, for by that interest they become so. There is, therefore, great rapine and spoil committed upon the gospel and its ordinances in the world. Every one thinks he is born with a right to the chiefest of them, and cannot be excluded from them without the highest injustice. But ask some whether they are the people of God or no, and they will be ready to deride both name and thing. Custom, and an opinion received by tradition, hath put an esteem and valuation upon the enjoyment of the ordinances of the gospel. These, therefore, or their pretended right unto them, men will by no means forego, nor suffer themselves to be divested of them; but for the true, real, spiritual foundation and use of them, they are generally despised. But all may know that this is the method of the gospel, first become the people of God, by entering into covenant with him in Jesus Christ, and all other spiritual mercies will be added unto you.

Obs. 3. The people of God, as such, have work to do, and labor incumbent on them. Rest and labor are correlates; the one supposeth the other.

Affirming, therefore, that there is a rest for them, it includes in like manner that they have work to do. What this is cannot here be declared in particular: none that knows in any measure what is their condition in themselves, what their station in the world, what enemies they have to conflict withal, what duties are continually incumbent on them, but knows there is work and labor required of them. Thus our Savior expresseth his approbation of his churches by, I know thy works, and thy labor,

Rev 2:2. The people of God dwell not as Laish, in security; nor are Sybarites, spending their time in sloth, luxury, and riot: but they are an industrious, working people; and I wish that those who profess themselves to be so were less industrious in earthly things, and more in heavenly; although I must say that those who are industrious heavenwards will not be altogether negligent or slothful in their stations in this world. But Christ calls men to work, sad that our portion in this world is intermixed withal.

Obs. 4. God hath graciously given his people an entrance into rest during their state of work and labor, to sweeten it unto them, and to enable them for it.

The state of sin under the law is a state of all labor, and no rest; for there is no peace, or rest, to the wicked, saith God, Isa 57:21. The future state of glory is all of rest, all rest. The present state of believing and obedience is a mixed state, partly of labor, partly of rest: of labor in ourselves, in the world, against sin, under affliction and persecution; of rest in Christ, in his love, in his worship, and grace. And these things have a great mutual respect unto one another. Our labor makes our rest sweet, and our rest makes our labor easy. So is God pleased to fill us, and exercise us; all to prepare us duly for eternal rest with himself.

Obs. 5. Believers may and do find assured rest in a due attendance unto and performance of the duties of the gospel This is that which the apostle asserts and proves.

Obs. 6. There is a weekly sacred day of rest appointed for believers under the gospel, as will appear from the next verse.

Fuente: An Exposition of the Epistle to the Hebrews

The Gospel Sabbath

All those legal, ceremonial sabbaths of the Old Testament, all those sabbaths required by the law of God in the days of carnal, ceremonial worship, were designed to portray the glorious gospel rest found in Christ and the rest of heaven that shall follow, the sabbath into which Christ has entered and that into which all Gods elect enter when as they trust him. Ours is a sabbath without end.

The Weekly Sabbath

In the Old Testament, the Jews were required to keep a weekly sabbath day (Saturday), as a typical picture of the believers rest of faith in Christ (Exo 31:13). As the Lord God ceased from his works, when he had finished his work of creation, so the Jews were to cease from their works on the seventh day of every week. So, too, we have ceased from our works, when we trust Christ. That is what the law of the seventh day sabbath portrayed: Rest in Christ!

The Seven Year Sabbath

God also required Israel to keep a seven year sabbath, during which the ground rested from its slavery, curse, and toil, portraying that rest which shall soon come to Gods creation and his people (Exo 23:9-11; Rom 8:20-21). It is called the year of release because the bondmen were set free every seventh year (Deu 15:9; Deu 31:10). The seven year sabbath of the law pictured the new creation. When Christ comes again, he will deliver Gods creation from all the evil affects of sin, all the curse brought upon it by sin.

The Jubilee Sabbath

Then, the law required a seventh seven year sabbath. Every forty-nine years the whole land celebrated a year of jubilee (Exo 25:8-40). During that time all debts were discharged, all mortgages were canceled, all bondmen were set free, and all that had been lost was restored.

This year of jubilee is called the year of liberty (Eze 46:17). This Jubilee is that which Christ has both finished and entered into as our Savior, and that which is proclaimed in the gospel (Isa 61:1-3; Luk 4:16-21). The gospel of Christ proclaims liberty to sinners, perfect, complete, absolute, everlasting liberty! In heavenly glory, Gods elect shall forever enjoy total liberty from all sin and from all the evil consequences of sin (Rev 21:3-5; Rev 22:3-6). This is the Gospel Jubilee!

Fuente: Discovering Christ In Selected Books of the Bible

rest

Or, keeping of a sabbath.

Fuente: Scofield Reference Bible Notes

The Sabbath Rest

There remaineth therefore a sabbath rest for the people of God. For he that is entered into his rest hath himself also rested from his works, as God did from his.Heb 4:9-10.

1. Among mans deepest feelings is a longing for rest. Not deeply felt in the freshness and ardour of early life, it recurs from time to time, and grows stronger with advancing years. Nothing in life fully satisfies this longing. Labours, distresses, disappointments, anxieties never allow the desired repose. Few there are whose hearts have not sometimes echoed the Psalmists words, Oh that I had wings like a dove! for then would I fly away, and be at rest! Many since Job have felt something of his longing to be where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest.

Is there to be no satisfaction ever of this deep human craving? Holy Scripture meets it as it meets all others. It tells of a rest of God above creation from the beginning of time; it intimated mans part and interest in it by the weekly Sabbath which he was to keep with God. But this was, after all, but a symbol and earnest of something unattained. At length a fuller realization of the longed-for rest was held out to the chosen people, and the Promised Land was pictured beforehand in the colours of an earthly Paradise. Forfeited when first offered, through the peoples unworthiness (representing by a historical parable the bar to mans entrance into the eternal rest), it was attained at last. But the true rest still came not. Canaan, like the Sabbath, proved but a symbol of something unattained. Yet the old longing for rest went on, and inspired men went on proclaiming it as attainable and still to come. The irrepressible craving, the suggestive symbols, the prophetic anticipations, are all fulfilled in Christ. He, when He had passed with us through this earthly scene of labour, entered, with our nature, into that eternal rest of God, to prepare a place for us, having by His atonement removed the bar to human entrance. Through our faith in Him we are assured that our deep-seated craving for satisfaction as yet unattained, which we express by the term rest, is a true inward prophecy, and that, though we find it not here, we may through Him, if we are faithful, confidently expect it there, where beyond these voices there is peace.

2. The Hebrew Christians to whom this Epistle was addressed were familiar, as Gentiles could not be, with the observance of a weekly Sabbath or rest day: and the word Sabbatismwhich is the exact expression of the passagewould at once suggest to them the enjoyment of a holy rest. They were also familiar, as Gentiles could not be, with the designation People of God as a title of Israel; and as Christians they had learned, though slowly and with difficulty, that under the New Dispensation of grace, not Israel after the flesh, but a holy people redeemed and called out of all nations, was made nigh to God in Christ Jesus. The people of God during the present age is the Church of God. As St. Paul puts it: We are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh.

For this people a Sabbatism remains. The word remains must be construed in harmony with the strain of the Epistle, which shows that many things of the Old Covenant had waxed old and were vanishing away, but better things remained for the people or Church of God in Christ Jesus. Shadows departed, but the substances remained, and among the better things of the new day which had dawned there was the entrance on a rest surpassing in its fulness and sacredness all that was reached in the old times of Moses and Joshua, and even of David.

The text is the climax of an argument which may be set out as follows:

I.God gave the perfect pattern of rest when He rested from the work of Creation.

II.In Old Testament times man failed through unbelief to attain to the rest to which God called him.

III.Christ made good mans failure when He rested from Redemption as God did from Creation.

IV.The Gospel offers Christs rest to believers.

I

The Divine Pattern of Rest

1. The term rendered rest means literally a keeping of a Sabbath. And this refers us at once to the rest of the seventh day. When we read in the Old Testament that, at the end of the creative act, God rested on the seventh day, and blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, the thing that comes into view is not a Divine nature wearied with toil and needing repose; it is a Divine nature which has fully accomplished its intent, expressed its purpose, done what it meant to do, and rests from its working because it has embodied its ideal in its work. It is the proclamation: This creation of Mine is all that I meant it to befinished and perfect; not the acknowledgment of an exhaustion of the creative energy which needs to reinvigorate its strength by repose after its mighty effort. The rest of God is the expression of the perfect Divine complacency in the perfect Divine work.

2. The rest of God, so far from being inactivity, is full of work. When Christ was telling these Jews the principles of the Sabbath day, He said to them: My Father worketh hitherto, and I work. The creative act is finished and God rests; but God, in resting, works; even as God, in working, rests. Preservation is a continued creation. The energy of the Divine power is as mightily at work here now sustaining us in life as it was when He flung forth stars and systems like sparks from a forge, and willed the universe into being. God rests; and in His rest, up to the present hour and for ever, God works. True, He is not now sending forth, so far as we know, suns, or systems, or fresh types of being. But His power is ever at work, repairing, renewing, and sustaining the fabric of the vast machinery of the universe. No sparrow falls to the ground without Him. The cry of the young lion and the lowing of the oxen in the pastures attract His instant regard. In Him all things consist.

3. Gods rest is thus the pattern and pledge of mans rest. And when we turn to that marvellous apocalypse of the past which in so many respects answers to the apocalypse of the future given us by the Apostle John, we find that, whereas we are expressly told of the evening and morning of each of the other days of creation, there is no reference to the dawn or close of Gods rest-day; and we are left to infer that it is impervious to time, independent of duration, unlimited, and eternal; that the ages of human story are but hours in the rest-day of Jehovah; and that, in point of fact, we spend our years in the Sabbath-keeping of God. But, better than all, it would appear that we are invited to enter into it and share it; as a child living by the placid waters of a vast fresh-water lake may dip into them its cup, and drink and drink again, without making any appreciable diminution of its volume or ripple on its expanse.

It is true we cannot possess that changeless tranquillity which knows no variations of purpose or of desire, but we can possess the stable repose of that fixed nature which knows one object, and one alone. We cannot possess that energy which, after all work, is fresh and unbroken; but we can possess that tranquillity which in all toil is not troubled, and after all work is ready for double service. We cannot possess that unwavering fire of a Divine nature which burns in love without flickering, which knows without learning, which wills without irresolution and without the act of decision; but we can come to love deeply, tranquilly, perpetually; we can come to know without questioning, without doubts, without darkness, in firm confidence of stable assurance, and so know with something like the knowledge of Him who knows things as they are; and we can come to will and resolve so strongly, so fixedly, so wisely, that there shall be no change of purpose or any vacillation of desire. In these ways, in shadow and copy, we can be like even the apparently incommunicable tranquillity which, like an atmosphere that knows no tempests, belongs to and encircles the throne of God.

I hear a troubled soul say, Is it possible that I may be so delivered that the peace of God shall keep me amid sorrows, evils, and injustice? Many of Gods children do not know how much there is for them in the new covenant. There is a reserve in the trust of manythey trust their souls but not their bodies; for eternal safety but not for temporal things; for the past and for heaven. All their difficulty has reference to that short space between. If they could only put in Gods hands the piece that lies between! A wonderful deliverance! Sorrow and worry are found in two thingsnot getting your own way, and fear of futurity. A man said he had in life suffered from many troubles, but most of them never came! We must have confidence in our Fathers care and love. What a relief to your poor heart; no care, no worry! He that believeth shall not make haste. Is it possible? Yes: you may have it; may now enter in. A little child is lost in a forest; at last his father finds him and takes him by the hand. He finds rest from anxiety before he gets homeanxiety about the way home. His mind is full of other things; he has rest from the moment he puts his hand in his fathers. Put yours in your Fathers, and you shall have restin difficulties, in trials, nothing, nothing can work evil for you.1 [Note: John Brash: Memorials and Correspondence, 218.]

The Apostle clearly and largely proves unto them: That it is the end of all ceremonies and shadows to direct them to Jesus Christ the substance, and that the rest of Sabbaths and Canaan should teach them to look for a further rest, which indeed is their happiness. My text is his conclusion after divers arguments to that end, a conclusion so useful to a believer, as containing the ground of all his comforts, the end of all his duty and sufferings, the life and sum of all Gospel promises and Christian privileges, that you may easily be satisfied why I have made it the subject of my present discourse. What more welcome to men under personal afflictions, tiring duty, successions of sufferings, than rest! What more welcome news to men under public calamities, unpleasing employments, plundering losses, sad tidings, etc. (which is the common case), than this of rest! Hearers, I pray God your attention, intention of spirit, entertainment and improvement of it, be but half answerable to the verity, necessity, and excellency of this subject: and then you will have cause to bless God while you live that ever you heard it; as I have, that; ever I studied it.2 [Note: R. Baxter, The Saints Everlasting Rest, chap. i.]

II

Israels Failure to Reach Rest

The history of Israel from the beginning consists of continued renewals of the promise on the part of God and persistent rejections on the part of Israel, ending in the hardening of their hearts. Every time the promise is renewed, it is presented in a higher and more spiritual form. Every rejection inevitably leads to grosser views and more hopeless unbelief. So entirely false is the fable of the Sibyl! God does not burn some of the leaves when His promises have been rejected, and come back with fewer offers at a higher price. His method is to offer more and better on the same conditions. But it is the nature of unbelief to cause the heart to wax gross, to blind the spiritual vision, until in the end the rich spiritual promises of God and the earthly dark unbelief of the sinner stand in extremest contrast.

1. At first the promise is presented in the negative form of rest from labour. Even the Creator condescended thus to rest. But what such rest can be to God it were vain for man to try to conceive. We know that, as soon as the foundations of the world were laid and the work of creation was ended, God ceased from this form of activity. But when this negative rest had been attained, it was far from realizing Gods idea of rest either for Himself or for man. For, though these works of God, the material universe, were finished from the laying of the worlds foundations to the crowning of the edifice, God still speaks of another rest, and threatens to shut some men out for their unbelief. Our Lord told the Pharisees, whose notion of the Sabbath was the negative one, that He desired His sabbath-rest to be like that of His Father, who worketh hitherto. The Jewish Sabbath, it appears, therefore, is the most elementary form of Gods promised rest.

2. The promise is next presented as the rest of Canaan. This is a stage in advance in the development of the idea. It is not mere abstention from secular labour, and the consecration of inactivity. The rest now consists in the enjoyment of material prosperity, the proud consciousness of national power, the growth of a peculiar civilization, the rise of great men and eminent saints, and all this won by Israel under the leadership of Joshua (their Jesus, who was in this respect a type of ours). But even in this second garden of Eden, Israel did not attain to Gods rest. Worldliness became their snare. But God still called to them by the mouth of the Psalmist, long after they had entered on the possession of Canaan. This only proves that the true rest was still unattained, and Gods promise not yet fulfilled. The form which the rest of God now assumed is not expressly stated in this passage. But we have not far to go in search of it. The 1st Psalm, which is the introduction to all the Psalms, declares the blessedness of contemplation. The Sabbath is seldom mentioned by the Psalmist. Its place is taken by the sanctuary, in which rest of soul is found in meditating on Gods law and beholding the Lords beauty. The call has become urgent. To-day! It is the last invitation. It lingers in the ears in ever fainter voice of prophet after prophet, until the prophets face turns towards the east to announce the break of dawn and the coming of the perfect rest in Jesus Christ.

3. Gods promise was never fulfilled to the Israelites, because of their unbelief. But shall their unbelief make the faithfulness of God of none effect? God forbid. The gifts and calling of God are without repentance. The promise that has failed of fulfilment in the lower form must find its accomplishment in the higher. Even a prayer is the more heard for every delay. Gods mill grinds slowly, but for that reason grinds small. What is the inference? Surely it is that the sabbath-rest still remains for the true people of God. This sabbath-rest St. Paul prayed that the true Israel, who glory, not in their circumcision but in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, might receive: Peace be upon them, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God.

I have just returned from the Morning Lands of history. I have visited Rome, Athens, Constantinople, Jerusalem, Cairo, Memphis, and all these cities of the dead. Egypt is in ruins, Greece is in ruins, Rome is in ruins. Oh, what terrible evidence has passed before my own eyes, since the first of last January, that all human empires decay and die! These were the great cities of wealth, art, philosophy, commerce and empire, but they are now in ruins, which alone makes them objects of human interest to inquisitive pilgrims in these days. They all cry to me, Your rest is not in these things, your rest is not here.1 [Note: Hugh Price Hughes.]

There is a way (which the vultures eye hath not seen) in which a man may pursue what the pursuers of fame pursue, and yet find neither purgatory nor the worst alternative; but that secret path is the path of increased toil and dizzy climbing. The man who, while putting forth all his mental energy, wishes to find rest to his soul, must fight ten where the other fights only one. But with this difference, that he is sure to win. This is true. I believe some men have as truly vanquished fame, as others covetousness or pleasure. One is as hard as the other. One is as easy as the other. Religion can so lift a man up that the rain and floods cant shake his house. But even so much religion wont give a man leisure, though it gives him peace. The world cant understand the believers life. With a worldling drive is either distraction or pain or oblivion. Not so with the believer. He may be pressed out of measure beyond strength, but he is at rest. Ye shall find rest unto your souls.1 [Note: Letters of James Smetham, 166.]

III

The Rest that Christ Realized

1. Among the exegetes there is a division whether Heb 4:10 is to be understood generically: Whosoever has entered into his rest has ceased from his works, or specifically of Christ: He who entered upon Gods rest, Himself entered upon rest from His own works. Note (1) the definite phrase, He who entered (not as R.V., he that is entered); (2) the emphatic pronoun, Himself; (3) the historic tense, entered upon rest (not as R.V., hath rested); (4) the implied contrast with Joshua (Heb 5:8); (5) that otherwise there is no mention of Jesus experience or achievements between ch. Heb 3:1 and ch. Heb 4:14; and (6) that otherwise read the verse offers no logical support to Heb 4:9, but interpreted thus supplies the ground on which the sabbath-rest is offered to Christs followers. For these reasons it seems better to read the verse as stating that, just as after His work of creating the world was finished God rested from creative activity, so now that His work of redeeming the race is completed Jesus rests from redemptive activity.

After the creative act there came the Sabbath, when God ceased from His work, and pronounced it very good; so, after the redemptive act, there came the Sabbath to the Redeemer. He lay, during the seventh day, in the grave of Joseph, not because He was exhausted or inactive, but because redemption was finished, and there was no more for Him to do. He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on High; and that majestic session is a symptom neither of fatigue nor of indolence. He ever liveth to make intercession; He works with His servants, confirming their words with signs; He walks amid the seven golden candlesticks. And yet He rests as a man may rest who has arisen from his ordinary life to effect some great deed of emancipation and deliverance; but having accomplished it, returns again to the ordinary routine of his former life, glad and satisfied in His heart.

2. The rest that Jesus realized was not for Himself alone, but for all who are identified with Him in mystic fellowship. He opened the way to all believers into that rest which the generations struggled after. He could stretch forth His hands and say, Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. It is this that distinguishes Christ among the teachers, philanthropists, and deliverers of the ages, that He gives men the blessings of life and rest which they need, rather than endless prescriptions as to how such are to be obtained. In other words, He offered them His own life and peace; and thus, by making them partakers of His Divine nature and subjects of His law, He taught them to be like Himself, meek and lowly in heart, and thus to find perfect rest unto their souls. Restlessness was the direct penalty of separation from God in the first place; rest is the direct outcome of re-union with God in the person of Jesus Christ.

Yet let us draw a little nearer, and see more immediately from the pure fountain of the Scriptures what further excellences this Rest affordeth. And the Lord hide us in the clefts of the rock, and cover us with the hands of indulgent grace while we approach to take this view! And the Lord grant we may put off from our feet the shoes of unreverence and fleshly conceivings, while we stand upon this holy ground! And first, it is a most singular honour and ornament, in the style of the saints rest, to be called the purchased possession; that it is the fruit of the blood of the Son of God; yea, the chief fruit: yea, the end and perfection of all the fruits and efficacy of that blood. Surely love is the most precious ingredient in the whole composition; and of all the flowers that grow in the garden of love, can there be brought one more sweet and beautiful to the garland, than this blood? Greater love than this there is not, to lay down the life of the lover. And to have this our Redeemer ever before our eyes, and the liveliest sense and freshest remembrance of that dying, bleeding love still upon our souls, oh, how will it fill our souls with perpetual ravishments!1 [Note: R. Baxter, The Saints Everlasting Rest, chap. vii.]

Canst thou not see

That there remains another rest for thee?

Not this alone

Which comes to all His own

Which comes to all who hide

Beneath the shadow of the Crucified.

There is a rest which still He waits to give

A rest wherein we all may daily live

The rest whereby,

As in His death, by faith, we die,

So He will live in us,

And living thus

Will change our death to lifea life no longer ours,

But His, renewed with resurrection powers.

O now receive

The calm, deep peace which comes as we believe

That all the works, and zeal, and strife,

With which we sometime sought to fill our life,

Are vain and dead, at best:

Thus shalt thou understand, and enter into rest.2 [Note: E. H. Divall, A Believers Rest, 106.]

IV

The Rest that Remaineth

1. This rest is an inward and present possession. The fundamental idea of the Sabbath is rest; and this is the idea which the Apostle makes most prominent in this place, because he uses Sabbatism interchangeably with a word which signifies cessation or repose. But it can never be granted that mere physical or animal rest was the sole or even the chief thing enjoined by the Sabbath law under any dispensation. It was the rest of man in God, a rest like that of God, a rest which in mans unfallen state was enjoyed by his working on the same plan and resting in the same spirit with God, and in his fallen state could be recovered only by his return in his whole being to harmony with God and rest in Him. The only Sabbath-keeping on earth that has ever deserved the name is release from the labours and burdens of the soul, and from the labours and burdens of the body as a help to the higher rest. The true Sabbath is entering into Gods rest, into participation of His blessedness, and it draws with it the surmounting of every hindrance to this result. It is resting from everything that would hinder rest in God, and then it is the enjoying of this rest in Him.

Our experience here tells of its partial attainment. We have ourselves, not only in spiritual but in other matters, been conscious of approaching it. There have been times, rare but most enchanting, when heart and hand, thought and shaping of thought, conception and conquest, imagination and execution, have gone together, with swiftness, with splendid harmony, with joys as fresh, as young as morning. What has once been, though imperfect, in experience, may be an eternal and a perfect possession, and will be an eternal and perfect possession when we are made perfect. It is the rest of the children of God; and it is a rest which means, which indeed is, eternal work and perfect work, eternal loving and perfect loving.

If the question were raised: Is man made for toil or for rest? the answer would be a mixed and qualified one. He is appointed to toil, he is destined to rest: one is his condition, the other is his end. If man is made in Gods image, he is made to share in Gods condition: and both Christian revelation and heathen conjecture unite in conceiving of Deity as in repose, eternally acting, yet in eternal rest.1 [Note: T. T. Munger.]

2. We enter into this rest by faith and obedience.

(1) The faith by which a man possesses himself of this is not the mere acknowledgment that God is addressing him and summoning him heavenward, but the practical, obedient, venturous trust by which he mixes (v. 2) the word which he hears with his personal conscious life in its inner springs first, and then in its streams of conduct. By this trust the believer learns to desist from the fruitless labours which the guilt-stricken attempt in order to merit the pardon of their sins, to effect the cleansing of their souls, to attain to the ideal of restored character. He lives before God, and serves Him with calmer rest as his hallowed desires accord more fully with his sacred duties and these with the will of God.

Then grief expires, and pain and strife,

Tis nature all and all delight.

It is in the life of faith, when a soul learns to trust God for victory over sin, and yields itself entirely, as to its circumstances and duties, to live just where and how He wills, that it enters the rest. It lives in the promise, in the will, in the power of God. This is the rest into which it enters, not through death, but through faith, or rather, not through the death of the body, but the death to self in the death of Christ through faith. For indeed we have had good tidings preached unto us, even as also they; but the word of hearing did not profit them, because it was not united by faith with those that heard. The one reason why they did not enter Canaan was their unbelief. The land was waiting; the rest was provided; God Himself would bring them in and give them rest. One thing was lacking: they did not believe, and so did not yield themselves to God to do it for them what He had promised. Unbelief closes the heart against God, withdraws the life from Gods power; in the very nature of things unbelief renders the word of promise of none effect. A gospel of rest is preached to us as it was to them. We have in Scripture the most precious assurances of a rest for the soul to be found under the yoke of Jesus, of a peace of God which passeth all understanding, of a peace and a joy in the soul which nothing can take away. But when they are not believed they cannot be enjoyed: faith is in its very nature a resting in the promise and the promiser until He fulfil it in us. Only faith can enter into rest. The fulness of faith enters into the full rest.1 [Note: A. Murray, The Holiest of All, 144.]

(2) We must labour to enter into rest. We must will the will of God. So long as the will of God, whether in the Bible or in providence, is going in one direction and our will in another, rest is impossible. Can there be rest in an earthly household when the children are ever chafing against the regulations and control of their parents? How much less can we be at rest if we harbour an incessant spirit of insubordination and questioning, contradicting and resisting the will of God? That will must be done on earth as it is in heaven. None can stay His hand, or say, What doest Thou? It will be done with us, or in spite of us. If we resist it, the yoke against which we rebel will only rub a sore place on our skin; but we must still carry it. How much wiser, then, meekly to yield to it, and submit ourselves under the mighty hand of God, saying, Not my will, but Thine be done! The man who has learnt the secret of Christ in saying a perpetual Yes to the will of God; whose life is a strain of rich music to the theme, Even so, Father; whose will follows the current of the will of God, as the smoke from our chimneys permits itself to be wafted by the winds of autumnthat man may find rest unto his soul.

Resignation sitteth down with the lowly in the dust; it saith, I will be simple in myself, and understand, lest my understanding should exalt itself, and sin; I will lie down in the courts of my God at His feet, that I may serve my Lord in that which He commandeth me: I will know nothing myself, that the commandment of my Lord may lead and guide me, and that I may only do what God doth through me, and will have done by me: I will sleep in myself until the Lord awaken me with His Spirit, and if He will not, then will I cry out eternally in Him in silence and wait His commands.1 [Note: Jacob Behmen.]

One of her perplexities hitherto had been a doubt whether the mountains of difficulties were to be taken as occasions for submission to Gods will, or whether they were piled up in order to try her patience and her resolve, and were to be surmounted by some initiative of her own. She now began to interpret Gods will in the latter sense. I must take some things, she wrote on Whitsunday 1851, as few as I can, to enable me to live. I must take them, they will not be given me; take them in a true spirit of doing Thy will, not of snatching them for my own will. I must do without some things, as many as I can, which I could not have without causing more suffering than I am obliged to cause any way.2 [Note: Sir Edward Cook, The Life of Florence Nightingale, i. 107.]

3. This present rest of soul, realized through trust, conducts the diligent into the perfect rest wherein the Man and Leader, Christ, already dwells. This aspect of the Divine rest is exhibited in the word used first in Heb 4:9, and rendered in the Revised Version by sabbath rest. The Talmud records: The Israelites said, Lord of all the world, show us a type of the world to come. God answered them, That type is the sabbath. Augustine notices that, in Genesis, to the seventh day, the day of Gods rest, are set no limits of evening and morning. The sabbath-rest is to be perfect, endless, unchanging, indefeasible: the true and ideal rest which corresponds to what God designed for man and what man desires from God.

July 30th, 1892.Lord Northbrook, the Mondragones, and Mrs. Arkwright are with us. The first-named asked me after dinner whether I had ever heard the last words of Stonewall Jackson: Let us cross the river and rest under the shade.1 [Note: M. E. Grant Duff, Notes from a Diary, 189295, i. 77.]

Those who die in the fear of God and in the faith of Christ do not really taste death; to them there is no death, but only a change of place, a change of state; they pass at once into some new life, with all their powers, all their feelings unchanged; still the same living, thinking, active beings, which they were here on earth. I say active. Rest they may: rest they will, if they need rest. But what is the true rest? Not idleness, but peace of mind. To rest from sin, from sorrow, from fear, from doubt, from care; this is true rest. Above all, to rest from the worst weariness of allknowing ones duty, and yet not being able to do it. That is true rest; the rest of God, who works for ever, and yet is at rest for ever; as the stars over our heads move for ever, thousands of miles a day, and yet are at perfect rest, because they move orderly, harmoniously, fulfilling the law which God has given them. Perfect rest, in perfect work; that surely is the rest of blessed spirits, till the final consummation of all things, when Christ shall have made up the number of His elect.2 [Note: Charles Kingsley: Memorials and Letters, ii. 355.]

4. Through Christ the heavenly rest is as sure as it is desirable. How dim, after all, was the conception of heaven among the prophets of the Old Testament, and how it seemed sometimes to meet, and sometimes to elude, the aspirations of the psalmist. But now the sure and certain hope of heaven is a commonplace of religion which every child can tell, and it is so because we know of Christ in heaven in His true humanity, and we have His unmistakable promise, I go to prepare a place for you. Surely this is enough. We cannot know what heaven is except as the perfection of that which we have upon earth. All that we need to know is that there shall be perfect peacepeace with self, peace with men, peace with God. If ever the human imagination has dared to go beyond this in painting heaven, either to the ear or to the eye, it has always materialized and degraded the very conception of heaven itself. No, it is enough for us to know that heaven is perfect happiness because Christ is there; and to know that in His many mansions He has a place for each one of us. In that foresight there is a wonderful rest amidst all the trials and the sorrows of life. It has given peace to the sufferer in the hour of his agony: to the penitent in the weariness of his struggle; to the soul which is athirst for light in its darkness and for righteousness in the face of evil. Man, as I have said, can never rest in the present. His whole life here, we grant, is a series of hopes and disenchantments. But what matters that if there is a sure and certain hope in the hereafter? and how can that hope fail if Christ in heaven is preparing a place for us?

O birds from out the east, O birds from out the west,

Have you found that happy city in all your weary quest?

Tell me, tell me, from earths wanderings may the heart find glad surcease,

Can ye show me, as an earnest, any olive branch of peace?

I am weary of lifes troubles, of its sin and toil and care,

I am faithless, crushing in my heart so many a fruitless prayer,

O birds from out the east, O birds from out the west,

Can ye tell me of that city, the name of which is Rest?

O little birds fly east againO little birds fly west:

Ye have found no happy city in all your weary quest,

Still shall ye find no spot of rest wherever ye may stray,

And still like you the human soul must wing its weary way.

There sleepeth no such city within the wide worlds bound,

Nor hath the dreaming fancy yet its blissful portals found,

We are but children crying here upon a mothers breast,

For life and peace and blessedness, and for eternal Rest.

Bless God, I hear a still small voice above lifes clamorous din

Saying, Faint not, O weary one, thou yet mayst enter in,

That city is prepared for those who well do win the fight,

Who tread the winepress till its blood hath washed their garments white.

Within it is no darkness, nor any baleful flower

Shall there oppress thy weeping eyes with stupefying power,

It lieth calm within the light of Gods, peace-giving breast,

Its walks are called Salvation, the citys name is Rest.

The Sabbath Rest

Literature

Arnold (T.), Sermons, i. 112.

Brooke (S. A.), Short Sermons, 91.

Cairns (J.), Christ the Morning Star, 325.

Carroll (B. H.), Sermons, 444.

Edwards (T. C.), The Epistle to the Hebrews, 58.

Hunt (A. N.), Sermons for the Christian Year, iii. 147.

Kuegele (F.), Country Sermons, New Ser., i. 321.

Lee (F. G.), Miscellaneous Sermons, 277.

Maclaren (A.), Sermons Preached in Manchester, ii. 281.

Meyer (F. B.), The Way into the Holiest, 68.

Murray (A.), The Holiest of All, 151.

Oosterzee (J. J. van), The Year of Salvation, ii. 233.

Radford (J. G.), The Eternal Inheritance, 77.

Spurgeon (C. H.), New Park Street Pulpit, iii. (1857), No. 133.

Symonds (A. R.), Fifty Sermons, 244.

Christian World Pulpit, xxi. 321 (A. Barry); lvii. 184 (H. Price Hughes).

Clergymans Magazine, 3rd Ser., viii. (1894) 1.

Sunday Magazine, 1881, p. 194 (D. Fraser).

Fuente: The Great Texts of the Bible

remaineth: Heb 4:1, Heb 4:3, Heb 3:11, Isa 11:10, Isa 57:2, Isa 60:19, Isa 60:20, Rev 7:14-17, Rev 21:4

rest: or, keeping of a sabbath

people: Heb 11:25, Psa 47:9, Mat 1:21, Tit 2:14, 1Pe 2:10

Reciprocal: Exo 16:30 – General Exo 31:15 – the sabbath Exo 33:14 – rest Deu 12:9 – General Jos 11:23 – And the land Jos 19:51 – These are Jos 21:44 – General Job 3:17 – at rest Psa 92:1 – for Psa 94:13 – mayest Isa 32:18 – General Jer 31:2 – when Eze 46:1 – on the sabbath Act 9:31 – the churches 2Th 1:7 – who Heb 4:6 – it remaineth Heb 13:14 – General Rev 14:13 – Yea

Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

Heb 4:9. This verse is the climax of the reasoning in the preceding verses. There remaineth signifies that the final rest is still in the future, and that is the one which Christians are warned not to miss on account of unbelief. It may be well to observe that three rests have been discussed by Paul, and he shows that God speaks of them as “my rest.” That is because He originated them and determined the conditions affecting them. Briefly stated, the three rests are the seventh day after the creation, the national rest in Canaan, and the rest in Heaven after the judgement.

Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary

Heb 4:9. Therefore there remains (still unrealized in any rest that Israel then enjoyed) a sacred rest, a Sabbath-rest (the word is now changed), for the people of God. The name here given, the people of God, is the usual designation of the covenant people. It occurs again in Heb 11:25, and is used in its deepest sense of all who are children of God through faith (Gal 6:16). The use of the word Sabbath in this sense for the rest which God provides under the Gospel was quite familiar to the Jews. The coming kingdom of the Messiah was even called the perpetual Sabbath. Into that rest all enter who believe. Some regard this verse as completing the sentence that began in Heb 4:6. The better completion is found in Heb 4:11.

Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament

From the foregoing premises the apostle draws this conclusion, That there remaineth yet a more glorious, perfect, and complete rest, for the people of God.

Observe here, 1. Something implied, namely, That the people of God, whilst here upon earth, have works to do, and labour incumbent upon them. Rest and labour incumbent upon them. Rest and labour are correlates, the one supposes the other; the apostle affirming, that there is rest remaining for them, strongly supposes that there is labour at present belonging to them; God’s people are and industrious, working people: Christ’s present call is to service and duty.

Observe, 2. That God has already given his people a foretaste of, and some entrance into, rest, during this present state of work and labour; the better to enable them for that, and the more to sweeten that to them. The state of sin is a state of all labour, and no rest; the state of glory is all rest, and no labour; but the state of grace is a mixed state, partly of labour, and partly of rest;; of labour in respect of ourselves, in respect of the world, against sin, under affliction and persecution; but of rest in Christ, in his love, in his favour, and grace; and thus our labour makes our rest sweet, and our rest makes our labour easy.

Observe, 3. That there is reserved and laid up in heaven for all the people of God that serve him laboriously and everlasting, rest; for its quantity it is full of rest; for its quality it is unmixed rest; rest, and nothing but rest: for its duration, it is an eternal rest; the least fear of losing or leaving it, would imbitter all the joy which the saints taste in the fruition and enjoyment of it: There remaineth, or there is laid up and reserved, a rest for the people of God.

Fuente: Expository Notes with Practical Observations on the New Testament

Pursuing God’s Rest

Then, over and above the types of rest found under the old covenant, there remains a promise of God’s rest for those who are obedient ( Heb 4:9-10 ). This rest was spoken of by Jesus in Mat 11:28-30 , and is, indeed, the reason Christ came to earth. The rest has been entered into by some and those who enter do not have to worry with the labor and cares of this world any more. The idea is a rest at the completion of one’s life work ( 2Ti 4:6-8 .) Lightfoot writes, “As God in the beginning entered his sabbath, they too will enter theirs–‘that they may rest from their labors, for their deeds follow them'” ( Rev 14:13 ).

Since we know the rest does await us, we ought to work diligently to obtain it ( Heb 4:11 ; 2Pe 1:10 .) The writer urged his readers to be diligent in their pursuit of the promised rest. In using the word translated “diligent,” he was describing a hastening to do a thing and a use of all of one’s might. If we fail to give our all to attain the goal, we have the bad example of the Israelites which shows us we will fall.

Fuente: Gary Hampton Commentary on Selected Books

Heb 4:9. There remaineth therefore a rest, &c. Since neither of the two former rests is intended by David, and there was no new rest for the people to enter into in the days of David, and the psalm wherein these words are recorded is acknowledged to be prophetical of the days of the Messiah, it unavoidably follows that there is such a rest remaining; and not only a spiritual rest, in the peace and love of God, and in the enjoyment of communion with him entered into by believing in Christ, (Mat 11:28-29; Isa 32:17-18,) but an eternal rest in the heavenly world. The apostle having established this conclusion by just reasoning on the sayings of the Holy Ghost, uttered by the mouth of David, they misrepresent the state of the Israelites under the Mosaic dispensation who affirm that they had no knowledge of the immortality of the soul, nor of future retributions. They had both discovered to them in the covenant with Abraham, as recorded by Moses, and explained by the prophets. The apostle here, in this conclusion, substitutes the word , sabbatism, for the word , rest, in his premises. But both are proper, especially the word sabbatism, in this place, because, by directing us to what is said Heb 4:4, it showeth the nature of that rest which remaineth to the people of God. It will resemble the rest of the sabbath, both in its employments and enjoyments. For therein the saints shall rest from their work of trial, and from all the evils they are subject to in the present life; and shall recollect the labours they have undergone, the dangers they have escaped, and the temptations they have overcome. And by reflecting on these things, and on the method of their salvation, they shall be unspeakably happy, Rev 21:3. To this add, that being admitted into the immediate presence of God to worship, they shall, as Doddridge observes, pass a perpetual sabbath in those elevations of pure devotion, which the sublimest moments of our most sacred and happy days can teach us but imperfectly to conceive. Here it is to be remarked, that the Hebrews themselves considered the sabbath as an emblem of the heavenly rest: for St. Paul reckons sabbaths among those Jewish institutions which were shadows of good things to come, Col 2:17. Macknight.

Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Verse 9

There remaineth therefore, &c. that is, a rest is yet to come.

Fuente: Abbott’s Illustrated New Testament

The Sabbath rest in view is the rest (inheritance) that every generation of believers and every individual believer enters into when he or she, like God, faithfully finishes his or her work. That work involves continuing to trust and obey God (i.e., walking by faith daily as opposed to apostatizing). Christians will enter into our rest, if we have persevered in faith, when we receive our inheritance from Jesus Christ at His judgment seat (1Co 4:1-5; 2Co 5:9-10).

Millennial rest in the Promised Land will be the portion of Israel in the future. Walter Kaiser also interpreted the rest as future. He believed that first Israel and then all believers would fulfill this promise by possessing the Promised Land in the Millennium. [Note: Walter C. Kaiser Jr., "The Promise Theme and the Theology of Rest," Bibliotheca Sacra 130:518 (April-June 1973):149-50.] However this passage seems to be referring to eternal rest for all believers of which the Millennium is just the beginning. Israel will be the primary people God blesses and makes a blessing in the Millennium. Neither is this Sabbath rest the present rest that Christians enjoy because God has finished His work of providing salvation for us in Christ and we have entered into it by faith. That should be clear because the rest in view is still future for us (cf. Heb 4:1; Heb 4:6; Heb 4:9; Heb 4:11).

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)