Hebrews 4:1–13

4:1 The citation of Psalm 95:7–11 started with the call to hear God’s voice with tender hearts (Heb. 3:7–8) and concluded with the divine oath that banned a generation of rebels from God’s rest (3:11). These opening and closing statements have led our author to infer that the promise of entering God’s rest remained open to subsequent generations, both David’s (4:7) and ours (4:1, 3, 11). This inference is elaborated upon and supported in verses 6–7. God’s promises concerning future events—things “yet unseen” (11:1, 7)—should elicit a forward-focused faith anchored in hope.

As in 3:12–13 and again in 12:12–15, the whole congregation must “fear” and soberly embrace its corporate responsibility of mutual encouragement, lest any of its members fall short of (hystereō, “fail to reach”) the “rest” that God has promised in his presence. Those united to Christ no longer fear death (2:15) or human threats (11:27; 13:6). But to have a reverent fear of the living God (10:31; 12:21), which makes us want to please him, is completely consistent with approaching his throne of grace confidently in Jesus (4:14–16).

4:2 The hearers of Hebrews and the Israelites in the desert had in common not only that both groups heard God’s voice, but also that they both heard “good news.” For the Israelites, good news included God’s promises to Abraham (Gen. 12:1–3; 15:13–21), his announcement through Moses that he was keeping those promises (Ex. 3:16–17; 4:27–31), and especially the encouragement of Joshua and Caleb at Kadesh that the Lord would conquer Canaan’s pagan peoples and bring his people into the Promised Land (Num. 14:6–9). New covenant believers have heard even better news: the salvation spoken by the Lord Jesus and then confirmed by his apostles (Heb. 2:3–4; cf. 1:14), access to God’s presence, freedom from the fear of death, and the hope of sharing the Messiah’s crown of glory and ruling the world to come (2:5–15).

A textual variant (cf. ESV mg.) offers a slightly different explanation for why the gospel spoken to the wilderness generation did them no good; this variant could be interpreted as stating either that the message was not joined with faith in those hearers, or, more likely, that those who died in the desert were not united with those who heard the message in faith, such as Caleb and Joshua. On either reading, the point is the same: hearing God’s voice brings wrath, not benefit, to those who refuse to receive his message with submissive trust.

4:3–4 In contrast to the unbelieving rebels in the desert, “We who have believed enter that rest.” Some scholars argue that the present tense (progressive aspect) of “enter” implies that Christian believers have already left the “wilderness” in which faith is tested and have entered the “Promised Land” of God’s rest (to use the typology that Hebrews is drawing from Psalm 95).¹ Others suggest that the “already–not yet” tension in the Bible explains how Christians already experience God’s rest even though they are still summoned to “strive to enter that rest” (Heb. 4:11). Hebrews will later affirm that the church’s worship entails present participation in heavenly celebration, as we “have come . . . to . . . the heavenly Jerusalem” (12:22–24).² Nevertheless, our author presents the trials of the desert, not rest in the Promised Land, as the ancient counterpart to our present experience. “Today,” the redemptive-historical period in which God’s voice is heard amid temptations to disbelieve, precedes believers’ entrance into God’s rest.³

By characterizing the Promised Land as God’s “rest” in reference to God’s oath at Kadesh, Psalm 95 invests “rest” with spatial associations. Now our author shows that God’s rest also has a temporal dimension: it began at the birth of the cosmos, when God finished his “works.” In providence and in redemptive intervention, of course, God continues to work (Heb. 3:9; cf. John 5:17), but in terms of the original creation, God “rested . . . from all his works” on the seventh day (Heb. 4:4), delighting in what he had made. This means that God’s rest itself stretches temporally over the history of the patriarchs, Israel’s Egyptian enslavement and exodus, their forty years in the wilderness, their descendants’ occupation of the Promised Land, the days of David, and the “today” in which Hebrew Christians (and we) hear God’s voice as this sermon-letter is read.

4:5–7 The author elaborates on the reasoning behind the conclusion stated in verses 1–3, that God’s oath at Kadesh, which denied access to disobedient rebels, implies God’s promise that later generations could enter his rest if they believed and obeyed his voice “today.” Since God had been enjoying his “rest” since creation, while the wilderness generation who “formerly heard good news failed to enter because of disobedience,” God appointed another moment of opportunity, a “today,” at a much later time, the time of King David, centuries after the conquest of Canaan led by Joshua. The significance of this timing for David’s contemporaries and for later generations will be shown in verse 8.

4:8 This is the first of three instances (cf. also 7:11–19; 8:7–13) in which Hebrews argues that various OT passages (such as Psalm 95) imply the insufficiency or imperfection of tokens of God’s grace that were in place when those OT passages were given. The logic of the argument is that God would not have given the OT passages in question at all if those earlier tokens of his kindness had been adequate. Here our preacher reasons that if the “rest” Israel received through Joshua had been full and final, “God would not have spoken of another day later on.” That is, he would not have spoken as he did through David in Psalm 95, announcing the prospect of entering his rest to a generation already inhabiting the Promised Land. Our author undoubtedly knows the summation that concludes the conquest of Canaan:

Thus the LORD gave to Israel all the land that he swore to give to their fathers. . . . And the LORD gave them rest on every side just as he had sworn to their fathers. Not one of all their enemies had withstood them, for the LORD had given all their enemies into their hands. Not one word of all the good promises that the LORD had made to the house of Israel had failed; all came to pass. (Josh. 21:43–45)

Nevertheless, the fact that God spoke Psalm 95 to David’s generation, after the rest achieved through Joshua’s conquest had given way to the turmoil of the period of the judges and Saul’s monarchy, shows that “my rest” cannot be reduced to occupation of the Promised Land, or to a short-lived respite from warfare while residing in Canaan.

“Rest” returned at one point in David’s reign, for the narrator of Samuel echoes Joshua 21: “The king lived in his house and the LORD had given him rest from all his surrounding enemies” (2 Sam. 7:1). Nevertheless, for the psalm’s first audience in David’s generation, “today” and “God’s rest” still represented contrasting and successive timeframes. “Today” God’s voice was speaking, summoning hearers to embrace his promise with faith-filled hearts. The object of God’s promise was his “rest,” a future destination of unthreatened and uninterrupted communion with God, who is already resting from his creative labors. Canaan was merely a sign pointing upward and forward to the reality of God’s rest. The land promised to the patriarchs as they remained “strangers and exiles on earth” was not, after all, a homeland in this sin-sullied world but rather “a better country, that is, a heavenly one” (Heb. 11:13–16).

4:9–10 Now for a third time our author assures us of the blessedness that “remains” available to those who, in our “today,” hear God’s voice and embrace his message with forward-focused faith. The promise of entering God’s rest remains, spoken through David not only to his contemporaries but also to new covenant believers (4:1). Their entrance “remains” a real possibility, since the “today” that God appointed for our response continues into the present (4:6). Consequently, a Sabbath rest “remains” for the people of God (4:9). The Greek terms shift from the “rest” (katapausis) linking Psalm 95:11 and Genesis 2:2 to a noun (sabbatismos) not found elsewhere in biblical Greek (LXX or NT). This term is derived from a verb that means to “keep Sabbath” or “celebrate Sabbath.” This new term adds, to the motif of “rest” as cessation from labor, the new note of celebration of freedom and joyful communion with God in his rest.

This Sabbath celebration remains future for God’s people, who trek as pilgrims through the hostile and faith-challenging wilderness of this world. This future character of “rest” is the point of the general maxim of verse 10, although at first glance it seems to speak of past or present experience: “Whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works.” In other words, entering God’s rest coincides with ceasing one’s labors, in imitation of God’s cessation of his creative labors on the seventh day of Genesis 2:2. Some theologians have understood “resting from one’s works” as no longer relying on one’s own obedience, trusting instead in Christ and his all-sufficient righteousness (cf. Rom. 3:20, 28; Gal. 2:16; Phil. 3:3–9). In support, they interpret “repentance from dead works” (Heb. 6:1) as a renunciation of efforts at commandment-keeping pursued in self-reliance and self-righteousness.

For the recipients of Hebrews, however, the danger posed by Judaism was not a misplaced reliance on their own law-keeping but a misguided inclination to return to the sanctuary and sacrifices of the old covenant, abandoning Jesus and his once-for-all, conscience-purifying sacrifice. Here, the individual who rests from his works is not turning away from “works” assessed negatively. Rather, he is following God’s positive example in Genesis, which set the precedent for Israel’s weekly Sabbath observance. Resting from one’s works marks the completion of the labors of this pilgrim life, along the lines of the benediction in Revelation 14:13: “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on. . . . that they may rest from their labors, for their deeds follow them!”

4:11 Because entry into God’s rest, which brings the cessation of our labors, is yet future, the preacher appeals to that destiny to motivate strenuous exertion: “Let us therefore strive to enter that rest.” Perhaps the imagery of the Christian life as an athletic race (cf. 6:20; 12:1–3, 12–13) lies in the background of the author’s choice of the verb translated “strive” (spoudazō), which urges hearers to expend all of their reserves of spiritual energy to persevere in faith and help one another endure. Lest any of their number “fall by the same sort of disobedience” as those who died in the wilderness, the whole congregation must support its weak, wounded, and prone-to-wander members (cf. 3:12–13; 4:1; 12:12–15).

4:12–13 The exposition and application of Psalm 95, which warns against hearing God’s voice with hardened hearts, draws to a fitting close in a description of God’s word as living and effective, sharp enough to cut to the heart’s hidden depths, discerning our secret thoughts and intentions. Scripture elsewhere compares the word to a sharp sword wielded by the Lord’s servant, the divine warrior whose very name is “the word of God” (Isa. 49:2; Eph. 6:17; cf. Rev. 1:16; 2:12; 19:13–15). As the speech of the living God (Heb. 3:12; Deut. 5:26), who binds himself by swearing an oath based on his endless life (Heb. 3:11; 6:13–18; Num. 14:21–23; Gen. 22:15–18), the word itself is alive. God knows everyone through and through, and no creature is hidden from his eyes, for all lie exposed and utterly vulnerable. Therefore his word cuts us to the core.

The mention of “the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow” is intended not to draw psychological or anatomical distinctions but to dramatize the skill by which God uses his word to penetrate our apparently impenetrable recesses. The God who sees our hidden inner life (Acts 1:24; 15:8; Rom. 8:27; 1 Cor. 4:5) is a judge who will not be deceived by pious appearances (Isa. 11:3–4; John 2:23–25). Mercifully, this all-seeing divine judge has provided for guilty rebels a Great High Priest, Jesus the Son of God, who has experienced their temptations and now represents them before his throne—a throne of grace—in heaven (Heb. 4:14–16).