Let Us Enter His Rest!

Until this verse, the author has essentially given his readers a biblical theology of Israel’s disobedience. Psalm 95 anchors his biblical theology because it both rehearses the story of Israel’s disobedience and provides God’s interpretation of those events. As we have seen, Psalm 95 specifically focuses on Israel’s rebellion against God and against Moses in the wilderness—a rebellion that kept them from entering the promised land.

Moses, however, did not lead the people into the promised land. His successor Joshua did that, which is why the author introduces him in verse 8. The author has already demonstrated that Christ is superior to the angels and Moses. Now he must demonstrate that Christ is superior to Joshua.

As the writer notes, even though Joshua led the people of Israel into Canaan, he did not lead them into God’s “rest.” Even in Canaan the people of Israel continued to rebel against God. When the people of Israel journeyed across the Jordan River into the land of Canaan, they did not journey into rest; they simply moved from one place to another. Thus Psalm 95, written by David long after the events of the conquest, still speaks of a Sabbath rest that remains for the people of God.

How do we enter this Sabbath rest? The whole letter of Hebrews tells us: by believing in Jesus Christ, the Lord of the Sabbath. Joshua led Israel into the land, but Jesus leads his people into God’s true eschatological rest. Verse 10 elaborates on this. We rest from our works and enter God’s rest when we trust in Christ. We no longer have to live our lives trying to “prove” our righteousness before God. Instead, we “rest” from that labor because Christ has already proved that righteousness on our behalf.

Like John 3:16, Hebrews 4:10 powerfully captures the message of the gospel in a single verse. The gospel is not morality. The gospel is not external religion. Nor is it a seven-step program for obtaining a better life. The gospel is the message of Christ’s accomplishments on our behalf so that we might “rest” from our works by trusting in his work. When we trust in Christ’s work, we rest from trusting our own.

I have noted several times throughout this commentary how unashamedly clear the author of Hebrews is regarding his high view of Scripture. As we saw in Hebrews 3:7, the author often introduces Scripture with the words “the Holy Spirit says,” even when the Scripture he’s quoting comes from a historical person (David in this case). Such instances demonstrate that the author of Hebrews wholeheartedly believes Scripture’s ultimate origin is God himself.

Hebrews 4:7 gives us another important example of the author’s theology of Scripture. The author believes the words of Psalm 95:11 ultimately come from God, but he does not ignore the fact that they also come “through David.” Thus, the writer of Hebrews simultaneously affirms the divine and human authorship of the Bible. God speaks in Scripture, but he speaks through certain individuals. B. B. Warfield called this the “concursive” theory of inspiration (Inspiration and Authority of the Bible, 95).

The apostle Peter speaks about the divine and human authorship of Scripture in 2 Peter 1:21: “No prophecy ever came by the will of man; instead, men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” God used real, historic people with peculiar vocabularies and personalities to write the Bible, but he also providentially “carried them along” so that they would write exactly what he intended. Article VIII of the “Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy” (which makes a series of affirmations and denials about the doctrine of Scripture) states the doctrine this way: “We affirm that God in His work of inspiration utilized the distinctive personalities and literary styles of the writers whom He had chosen and prepared. We deny that God, in causing these writers to use the very words that He chose, overrode their personalities.”

Amazingly, God used the personalities, writing styles, experiences, and life situations of the human authors in order to accomplish the production of an “inscripturated” text; men, inspired by the Holy Spirit, wrote God’s Word. This does not mean the authors passively entered trances as they composed Scripture. Nor does it mean God merely dictated the words to them. The authors actively engaged in the composition process, yet God carried them along in such a way that everything they wrote was exactly what he intended; Scripture is the actual word of God.

Hebrews 4:11-13

Verse 11 introduces the “so what” of the preceding section. In light of what has preceded, “Let us then make every effort to enter that rest” (emphasis added). The accent in this verse is on the exhortation to strive for God’s rest so that the threat of falling by disobedience will not come true for these believers as it did for the wilderness generation. We must not be like the Israelites in the wilderness. We must strive to enter God’s rest. In other words, we must work at resting. This means we must work against all of our efforts to prove our righteousness. We must strive against all our efforts to justify ourselves.

One of our chief responsibilities in the Christian life is to exhort one another to faithfulness. This is one of the things we do every Sunday in corporate worship when we sit under the preaching of the Word of God. This is what we do when we sing together. This is what we do when we pray together. This is what we do when we fellowship together. We gather in corporate worship to encourage one another to be fully satisfied in Christ and in him alone, lest we fail to enter his rest.

The author also underlines the role of God’s Word in our perseverance in verses 12 and 13. The designation “word of God” requires some definition. The author uses the phrase to point to the entirety of divine revelation—both written and incarnate. Regrettably, many Christians divorce the Bible from Jesus. “I don’t need theology or the Bible, I just want Jesus,” some may say. This is a misguided assessment. Christ cannot be divorced from Scripture. Our knowledge of Jesus as the divine Son of God and his accomplishments for us only come through Scripture. We cannot have Jesus Christ apart from the witness of the Bible. The two are inseparably wedded.

The author establishes two characteristics about the Word of God in verse 12. First, the Word of God is “living and effective.” This highlights the enduring vitality of Scripture. Since God is the author of Scripture, it is not a dead book. As God lives, Scripture lives. Furthermore, as we see throughout Scripture, when God speaks, God acts. This is what is meant by the adjective effective. For example, God created the heavens and the earth with his word. Thus, Scripture, because it is God’s Word, is alive and life giving. The Bible is not a bunch of dead, lifeless words. It is the living Word of God. It accomplishes everything God wills. As the Lord says through the prophet Isaiah, “so my word that comes from my mouth will not return to me empty, but it will accomplish what I please and will prosper in what I send it to do” (Isa 55:11).

Second, the author describes Scripture as “sharper than any double-edged sword.” As a sword, Scripture is “penetrating as far as the separation of soul and spirit, joints and marrow. It is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” The description of the Bible as a sword that can pierce and divide the soul demonstrates the invasive quality of the Word. When we approach Scripture with a humble hermeneutic of submission rather than a haughty hermeneutic of suspicion, then it is not we who read Scripture, it is Scripture that reads us. Scripture untangles the human heart and unearths sin like no other book can. No other book can discern the thoughts and intentions of our hearts. Only God’s Word can do that.

Scripture is like a scalpel wielded by God to perform spiritual surgery. In conjunction with the Holy Spirit, the Word of God cuts through the sin and darkness of the human heart to restore spiritual health and vitality for Christ. Without the Word, we are as good as dead. God’s Word, however, eradicates the disease of the human heart and breathes life where there is death.

Verse 13 shifts from the Word of God to God himself, which shows the intrinsic link between God and Scripture. Just as God’s Word graciously reveals God to man, it also makes man accountable before God as Judge. When God reveals himself to us, we in turn realize that we all “are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give an account.” Scripture strips us bare before our own eyes and before the eyes of God because it exposes God’s ineffable character. As Calvin famously stated, “It is certain that man never achieves a clear knowledge of himself unless he has first looked on God’s face, and then descends from contemplating him to scrutinize himself” (Institutes, I.I.2).

God gives us the gift of Scripture so that we will not follow the example of Israel’s disobedience. The Bible is our guide to trusting God and finding full satisfaction in him. Furthermore, God has revealed the truth about Christ to us in his Word. This is why we must be students of God’s Word and maintain the centrality of its teaching. Scripture leads us to Christlikeness. If we are to become like the incarnate Word, we must study the inscripturated Word.