1 Let us, therefore, fear lest, a promise being left us of entering (coming) into his rest, any of you should seem to come short (fail) of it. 2 For unto us was the gospel preached (good news brought), as well as unto them; but the word preached did not profit (was not advantageous to) them, not being mixed (tempered together) with faith in them that heard it. 3 For we who have believed (trusted) do enter into rest, as he said, As I have sworn in my wrath, if they shall enter into my rest; although the works were finished from the foundation of the world. 4 For he spoke in a certain place (Genesis 2:2, 3) of the seventh day in this way, And God did rest the seventh day from all his works. 5 And in this place (see verse 3) again, If they shall enter into my rest. 6 Seeing, therefore, it remaineth (was reserved) that some must enter into it, and they to whom it was first (at first) preached entered not in because of unbelief, 7 Again, he limiteth a certain day, saying in David, Today, after so long a time, as it is said, Today if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts. 8 For if Joshua had given them rest, then would he not afterward have spoken of another day.
9 There remaineth, therefore, a rest (sabbath rest, keeping the sabbath) to the people of God. 10 For he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his. 11 Let us labor (be diligent, make haste), therefore, to enter into that rest, lest any man fall (fail) after the same example (pattern, copy) of unbelief. 12 For the word of God is living (quick), and powerful (effective, active) and sharper (keener) than any two-edged sword, piercing (reaching) even to the dividing asunder (division) of soul and spirit, and of the joints (where the body is joined together) and marrow (interior of the bone), and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents (meditations) of the heart. 13 Neither is there any creature that is not manifest (concealed, secret) in his sight, but all things are naked (bare, unclothed) and opened (laid bare) unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do. 14 Seeing, then, that we have a great high priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast (keep, lay hold of) our profession (confession). 15 For we have not an high priest who cannot be touched with the feeling of (can have compassion with, suffer with) our infirmities (weaknesses, diseases), but was in all points tempted (examined, assayed or proven) like (similarly) as we are, yet without sin. 16 Let us, therefore, come boldly (freely or with confidence) unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help (succor) in time of need.
1 The rest of God forfeited by ancient Israel, is still open under its higher forms, as God's Sabbatic rest to spiritual Israel. The writer admonishes his readers to take care lest they make the same mistake the Israeli's did. Because of their lack of faith they missed the Promised Land. Just as Israel did not enter the Promised Land do to their lack (hustero meaning to fall short or the come behind) of faith, the Hebrews need to understand that they must be sincere in their embracing Christianity. Church membership, baptism, good morals, etc., cannot substitute for faith or the new birth. Those twenty years old and above who came out of Egypt were not permitted to enter Canaan Land, except Joshua and Caleb. The rest (katapauseos) is the rest of salvation which results from fully trusting in the finished work of God (Hebrews 3:11, 18; 4:1; 3a, 3b, 5, 10, 11). Yeager writes, "The rest (katapausis) now is not Canaan, as it was for national Israel in the type, but the salvation rest of the believer who, trusting in Christ's finished work at Calvary, rest in full assurance of faith that he is truly saved...There is not a lick of human work, a drop of water, holy or unholy, or a dime's worth of human merit in the salvation equation. It is Christ plus and minus nothing" (pp, 151, 152). Canaan Land has never been a type of heaven, but rather a type of victorious living through Jesus Christ; however, a new thought - there is still remaining a promise of entering into His rest. Two outstanding considerations are obvious, (1) the promise of rest is still open to spiritual Israel, and (2) there is a possibility that Israel might fail to enter into this rest.
2 The Hebrews of the writer's day had been evangelized (eueggelismenoi from euaggelizo meaning to preach the good news or bring good tidings) just like the children of Israel had been evangelized. But just as the children of Israel, the gospel must be mixed (sunekerasen from sugkerannumi meaning tempered with or mixed) with faith. Ancient Israel heard only with their ears. They did not hear in faith. All of the Israelites heard the message as did the Hebrews; some believed, some did not believe because the message was not united or poured together with faith. Hearing God's word (His promises) is one thing, but accepting it by faith is a wholly different thing. "...Many are called, but few chosen" (Matthew 20:16).
3, 4 Only those who have been truly saved will enter into rest; the writer quotes from Psalm 95:11 (LXX) which reads, "So I sware in my wrath, They shall not enter into my rest." Genesis 2:2, 3, reads, "And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it, because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made." By the same token when God had finished His redemptive work on the cross, He rested and the Son is set down at the right hand of majesty on high, and He invites all mankind to join Him. To God's finished work nothing can be added; it is complete. The believer can rest in Him and do nothing to merit his salvation. God created everything He intended to create in six days and ceased from His creative work on the seventh. "Thus the rest is not something to be gained by a footsore and weary nation of pilgrims trudging through the burning sands of the Sinai desert. It is something to be accepted by faith in the proposition that all of the necessary work has already been done by God" (Yeager, p. 158). "The Sabbath was made for man not man for the Sabbath, and it might well be believed that when the work of redemption should be accomplished, the rest of God, of which it was now a blessed reminder, should fulfill it original purpose, and be a spiritual Sabbath for regenerated world. What is needed is a rest for the spirit, for mankind, forever; the rest of God, the Sabbatism of the race" (Kellar Notes, p. 18).
5 Some will believe and enter into God's eternal rest and relax, and some will not believe. The writer seems to write an unfinished sentence here, "If they shall enter into my rest." He probably means "the believer will enter into His rest." Other translations make the verse to read, "And again in the passage above he says, 'They shall never enter my rest'" (N. I. V.); Phillips, Revised Standard Version and the New English Bible agree with the above text.
6 Some of the Hebrews will enter into Canaan and some will not; it remains (apoleipetai from apoleipo meaning to remain or reserve) that those who heard the message first (proteron meaning "at first") will not enter in because of unbelief. The writer implies that the children of Israel (Moses, Caleb, Joshua and all the others) heard the promised message first. Of course Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were first in time to hear the message of promise; they were not permitted to enter the Promised Land, but they saw it through the eyes of faith. The promised rest of God thus disengages itself from the land of Canaan and links itself with the Sabbath rest of God. "The same promised rest was still open for the people of God centuries after the wilderness period, for the writer of Psalm 95 urges his contemporaries to listen to the voice of God 'today,' instead of hardening their hearts in obstinacy like their ancestors and being debarred from entering into the rest of God as they had been" (Bruce, p. 75). God's saving time is Today for any one is any generation.
7 God limited (horizei from horizo meaning to limit, determine or decree) a certain day warning David after so long a time and then the writer quotes Psalm 95 7, 8, "Today, If ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts." In this quotation lies the kernel of the argument. 'The today, if ye shall hear his voice,' implies that they do, or will again hear the same voice of promise, whence the inference that the rest of Palestine did not exhaust or fulfill it. There is a new day for the recipients of Hebrews; there is a "today" for all who will hear the gospel message. When God said, "Today," in the days of wilderness wandering, that day is past. Four hundred years later to David, God said, "Today," now that day is past for David and those who lived during his days. As the writer of Hebrews writes there is another "today" for them. Today has the same principle, but it is addressed to a different audience. The children of Israel heard it for the first time. Some will hear the message for the first time in the twenty-first century; it is "today" for us. Each generation should heed the call and not procrastinate. "Opportunity for God's rest remains, but it will not remain indefinitely. For each individual it will end before or with death; and for all mankind it will end in the Last Day. The age of grace is not forever. This is why immediate action is a basis of entering God's rest, of being saved" (MacArthur, p. 102).
8 The New King James Version translates the name Iesous Joshua which is correct. "Jesus is the Greek mode of writing Joshua, and there can be no doubt that Joshua is here intended. The object is to prove that Joshua did not give the people of God such a rest as to make it improper to speak of a 'rest' after this time" (Barnes Notes, p. 98). Many translations have Jesus, but the context demands Joshua and not Jesus; for Joshua did indeed lead the Israelites into Canaan, the Land of Promise but the conquest was incomplete. The Israelites did not drive out the pagan tribes, and they remained a source of backsliding of the Hebrews until the days of the Babylonian Captivity. Joshua 22:5 reads, "But take diligent heed to do the commandment and the law, which Moses, the servant of the Lord, charged you, to love the Lord your God, and to walk in all his ways, and to keep his commandments, and to cleave unto him, and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul." The children of Israel did not completely obey the words of Moses nor of Joshua. So Joshua did not give them complete rest; there is another rest of which Canaan rest was only a prefigure. "The people addressed in the ninety-fifth psalm were already living in the land of Canaan, as their ancestors had been for generations now...The parallel between the Old Testament 'Jesus,' who led his followers into the earthly Canaan, and Jesus the Son of God, who leads the heirs of the new covenant into their heavenly inheritance, is a prominent theme of early Christian typology" (Bruce, p. 77).
9 In this verse the writer introduces the word sabbath sabbatismos from the word sabbatizo meaning to keep the Sabbath (the seventh day of the week, a day of rest, Exodus 20:8 - 11). The word is used fifty-five times in the Gospels and nine times in the Acts of the
Apostles, and once in Colossians. The reference in Exodus 20:8 - 11 reads, "Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work; but the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God; in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates; for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day; wherefore, the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it." Under the title "The Weariness of Life," C. Stanford wrote, "For the young, this is fresh, beautiful sunlit life; to the old, it is often what Talleyrand found it, 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 center 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" (B. I. Volume LI, p. 322).
10 The Sabbath was created as a result of God's finished work in creation (Genesis 2:2, 3), and Christ's sabbath (rest) resulted from His finished work of redemption (Hebrews 1:3; Psalm 110:1). Every true believer has entered into this sabbath rest when he placed his faith and trust in God's Messiah. Nothing can be added or taken from what happened at Calvary, and in the work of our Savior the believer can be assured of a home in heaven. God's rest is a real rest, so with God's creatures who enjoy this holy Sabbatism. They rest from the toil and woe entailed by sin. Employment and activity, no matter how protracted and intense is toil. Robertson quotes Dods who said, "(the rest) is not cessation of work, but rather of the weariness and pain of toil. The writer pictures salvation as God's rest which man is to share, and God will have perfect satisfaction when man is in harmony with him (p. 362). John Newton captured a glimpse of what Sabbath rest is to be when he wrote:
Safely through another week
God has brought us on our way;
Let us now a blessing seek,
Waiting in His courts today;
Day of all the week the best,
Emblem of eternal rest.
11 "Herein is an exhortation to steadfastness in faith. The holy Sabbath rest awaits the collective people of God; but each must make good his claim by persevering to the end. The true people of God are warned against repeating the sad example of the Israelites who fell because of unbelief. Steadfastness in faith will prove that they are the true people of God" (Kellar Notes, p. 19). Unfortunately the King James Version translates the word spoudasomen labor. The same word is found in II Peter 1:10 and translated correctly "diligence". No work is involved in being saved. The word labor obscures the real meaning. The word translated fall (apeitheias from apeitheia also means) to fall down or fail. The writer admonished the Hebrews not to do as their forefathers had done; they have set a bad example (hupodeigmati from hupodeigma meaning a pattern, example or similitude). Not only should we benefit from our own mistakes, but we should benefit from the mistakes of others especially our forefathers. Seeing the mistakes of their forefathers the Hebrews should make a once-for-all choice for Christ and their new Christian faith. Yeager writes, "The man who professes to believe God's word and then doubts and disobeys it indicates that he has never really trusted God. Verses 12 and 13 warn us that we may as well be sincere, since it is impossible to fool God, and verse 14 introduces the next section of the epistle. Our Lord Jesus Who is superior to the Prophets, the angels and to Moses is also superior to Aaron. Thus He is a High Priest in whom we can place our total trust" (p. 167).
12 Behold the wonder of God's Word! It is living (zon from zao meaning alive); It is sharp (tomoteros from tomos meaning keen cutting); It is double mouthed (distomon from distomos or dia and stoma meaning two mouthed or double edged). The picture is a sword that is totally efficient; a power stroke whether from right or left, or upward or downward, like a piston in the cylinder of a steam engine which delivers power both at entry and exit. A single edged sword if effective only half of the time (Yeager, p. 168). Furthermore, the Word of God is able to pierce (diiknoumenos from diikneomai meaning to go through or pass through) to the joints (armon from armos meaning the parts of the body that are joined or fitted together) and marrow (muelon from muelos meaning the interior substance of a bone) and is a discerner (kritikos meaning able to judge or able to make objective evaluations) of the thoughts and intents (ennoion from ennoia meaning meditations) of the heart. God is qualified to understand the very meditations and thoughts of man's heart; God knows those thoughts without them being uttered audibly or under the breath. Nothing is hidden from the all-seeing eye and the all-knowing mind of God. If man needs a psychoanalysis he needs to go to the Great Psychoananalyst, Jehovah God. Jeremiah (23:29) speaks of God's Word on this wise, "Is not my word like a fire? Saith the Lord; and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces?" The Word of God is powerful; It is "'active' in the sense that it speeds to fulfill the purpose for which it had been uttered: this self-fulfilling character which it possesses is well summed up in Isaiah 55:11 where the God of Israel says 'my word...that goeth forth out of my mouth;' it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I send it" (Bruce, p. 80). The Psalmist David (139:1 - 3) wrote, "O Lord, thou hast searched me, and known me. Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising; thou understandest my thought afar off. Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways."
13 There is not a creature under God's heaven that is hidden or unexposed from His sight; God's microscope can lay bare the smallest microbe of doubt and sin. Everything is made manifest (aphanes from aphanes meaning hidden, concealed or secret), laid bare (gumna from gumnos meaning naked or unclothed) and open (tetrachelismena from trachelizo meaning to lay bare or expose) with Whom we have to do. Psalm 33:13 - 15 reads, "The Lord looketh from heaven; he beholdeth all the sons of men. From the place of his habitation he looketh upon all the inhabitants of the earth. He fashioneth their hearts alike; he considereth all their works." We are as one who is to executed, our necks (tetrachelismena from which we get our English word "trachea" - the neck where air passes to and from the lungs) are laid back and exposed to Him Who can execute His plans with us. When we think of God's all-seeing eye we are reminded of Job 26:6, "Sheol (Hell) is naked before him, and destruction hath no covering," and Proverbs 15:11. "Sheol (Hell) and destruction are before the Lord; how much more, then, the hearts of the children of men!" Psalm 139:11, 12 reads, If I say, surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me. Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee, but the night shineth as the day; the darkness and the light are both alike to thee."
14 The writer encourages his readers that we can hold fast (kratomen from krateo meaning to control or retain) our profession (omologias from omologia meaning confession or acknowledgement) because we have a High Priest Who is entered into the heavens to make intercession for His people. Of course any good Jew would understand what the duties of the high priest were under the Old Testament economy. In Leviticus 16 the duties of the High Priest are outlined in specifics. His main duty was to enter the Holy of Holies within the veil with the blood of a young bullock and a goat for a sin offering and the blood of a ram for a burnt offering to make atonement for his own sins first and then for the sins of the congregation. "Then shall he kill the goat of the sin offering, that is for the people, and bring its blood within the veil, and do with that blood as he did with the blood of the bullock, and sprinkle it upon the mercy seat, and before the mercy seat. He was to make an atonement for the holy place, because of the uncleanness of the children of Israel, and because of their transgressions in all their sins; and so shall he do for the tabernacle of the congregation, that remaineth among them in the midst of their uncleanness" (Leviticus 16:15, 16). The Lord Jesus, our High Priest has gone, not beyond a veil into an earthly Holy of Holies, but into the heavens. He has gone there only one time; one time is sufficient and He has gone there with His own blood, there to make a once-for-all Atonement for our sins. Because He had done this, the writer is admonishing us to hold fast our profession of faith because He is our Sacrifice, and He is our Intercessor.
15 Furthermore, our High Priest is one who can be touched with the feeling of (sumtathesai from sumpatheo meaning to have compassion or to sympathize with us in) our infirmities (astheneiais from astheneia meaning sicknesses, diseases or weaknesses) and was in all points tempted (pepeirasmenon from peirazo meaning to tempt, examine or assay) like (omoioteta from omoiotes meaning similarly) us yet without sin. Yeager says, "(Jesus) has been tested in every way that a nature like ours, which is also like His can be tested. His testing is consonant with ours as His nature is consonant with ours. He had real humanity as we do...Hence, all the weaknesses of real humanity - fatigue, hunger, thirst, discouragement, sadness, loneliness, disillusionment - all of these He experienced, just as we do. But unlike our human nature, His was not depraved. Hence He was never induced to evil as are we, and He committed no sin. He did not transgress His own law" (p. 175). Because Jesus experienced all that man can experience during his entire lifetime, He is able to succor or strengthen us. Our Lord must have felt what Hosea (11:8) must have felt, "How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? How shall I deliver thee, Israel? How shall I make thee as Admah? How shall I set thee as Zeboim? Mine heart is turned within me; my compassions are kindled together."
16 Because our Savior understands, we can come boldly (parresias from parresia meaning with boldness or with confidence) to the throne of grace and obtain mercy and find grace in the time of need. Our High Priest is available, He is capable of being approached and He understands our frailties. He can succor or help us in time of need (boetheian from boetheia meaning to run to our needs in the case of an emergency).
| Heb. Intro. | Heb 1 | Heb 2 | Heb 3 | Heb 4 | Heb 5 |
| Heb 6 | Heb 7 | Heb 8 | Heb 9 | Heb 10 | Heb 11 |
| Heb 12 | Heb 13 | Heb Bib |