Thoughts on Hebrews: God’s Rest, Part 1
In Chapter 3, and again in Chapter 4, the writer of Hebrews pounds Psalm 95 and the Exodus narrative into the minds of his hearers:
Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion, during the time of testing in the wilderness, where your ancestors tested and tried me, though for forty years they saw what I did. That is why I was angry with that generation; I said, ‘Their hearts are always going astray, and they have not known my ways.’ So I declared on oath in my anger, ‘They shall never enter my rest.’
Throughout these two chapters, the writer of Hebrews warns his brothers in Christ against failing to enter into God’s rest. He thrusts them into the Exodus narrative, and sets the bleached bones in the wilderness as a cautionary tale of those who would persist in unbelief, resistant to God’s overtures. The passage of time, from the first century to today, has not dulled the sharpness of that warning. We would do well the heed the warning as well. But his warning as direct and ominous as it may be, it begs the question: what is God’s rest? Or, how are we to understand, for present, what God’s rest is (so that we don’t find ourselves outside of his rest, but deep within his anger and oath instead)?
The sensitivity of the writer to see his audience’s struggle with faith (and unbelief) and to reach back to Exodus and to Psalm 95 to warn them about the allure of going back is instructive. A friend warns. Prov. 27:6. (“Faithful are the wounds of a friend; but the kisses of an enemy are profuse.”) And, encouragement can include, as it does here, a kick in the pants.
If we are honest, we would acknowledge that the pull of what we have left behind is particularly strong when life gets hard. We too sometimes need to be challenged when our flames grow dim, when our zeal for the things of the Lord abates. Hebrews does exactly that—challenges us to hold firmly fast to Jesus whatever our pressing circumstances.
Not entering into God’s rest—not taking him up on his offer of rest—proved fatal to a generation of liberated Jews in the desert. What the writer of Hebrews demands that we consider is we too may be in danger if we fail to acknowledge God’s offer of rest, and fail to enter into it. The writer doesn’t equivocate with his readers; and we should not muck about in examining our own lives.
With that bit of introduction out of the way, let’s consider the rest God intends for us to have. What is “rest,” exactly, as God frames it? Just like the writer of Hebrews turned to Scripture, so must we.
A fair place to start would be Genesis 1 and 2, where God first rests. But let me pause you there. Much of our Christian faith is grounded in, begins and ends with, Genesis 3. Sin, forgiveness of sin, remission of sin, predominate. Most folks’ faith is governed by Genesis 3, missing out on something fundamental to people of God: God’s goodness.
The Scriptures begin with God’s goodness—not with sin, man’s fall, and the great breach Adam and Eve worked in their rebellion. Your faith should not begin with that either. Remember the thrust of Jesus’s ministry was bringing many sons into glory with a heavenly Father. Sure he is a prophet, priest, and king. But in the main, he is the Beloved; he is the Son. And it is that relationship through the power and activity of the Third Person of the Trinity we have been invited in. Remember: this is eternal life, as Jesus defines it, that we might know the Father and Jesus Christ whom the Father has sent. If your testimony is limited to “he saved me from my sins,” then you know the Father and the Son very little.
What do I mean? Let’s suppose you were chock-a-block full of crimes and misdemeanors, and further suppose that you could not live long enough to serve all of those sentences, even if stacked. Imagine someone you did not know came in and took all that before a judge, and the judge said, “Fine. You can serve the sentences for the man, but know I will not stack them. You must bear all of it.” And that someone you did not know, said, “Absolutely. I will pay; and if there is anything else, I will pay that too, all of it. The judge satisfied, you are acquitted.
What now? How would you live from that point forward? If all you could attest to the balance of your life was “I was acquitted x number of years ago,” I think most people would consider the balance of your life a waste, and a failure to honor that someone whom you did not know, and a failure to honor the judge who accepted satisfaction from another. I would go so far as to call it disgraceful.
Adding to that dilemma. I want you to imagine that the someone you did not know actually knew you full well. And despite knowing all about you, wanted not only to satisfy the just demands for your crimes and misdemeanors, but also wanted to know you more, wanted to befriend you, wanted to eat with you, and wanted his father—which to your amazement was the judge who acquitted you—to be your father, that you might be whole, loved, and part of them in some remarkable way.
Imagine he said, “You don’t know me well, but I love you, I have loved, and I will love you. But you have to listen to the things I have said and walk in the ways of love I have set before you and obey the voice of your heavenly father, not as a servant, but as his child. Come. Follow me. Learn from me, and I will give you rest. My father and I will come and sit with you, and we will break bread, together, one with another, and you will live.”
What I am suggesting is this: you have to give due consideration to his motivations—the very heart that motivated him to suffer so much for your sake (and mine). Otherwise, you will greatly miss the import of the cross—true repentance is not penance as much as it is walking after him because he is lovely, and good, and true.
This is why we must always begin where he does. In Genesis, chapters 1 and 2, he begins with an incredible portrait of his goodness made material in the things we can perceive around us in creation. Let me explain the significance of the beginning of his narrative. Remember: the first audience for these words are receiving them from Moses, the author of the Torah; and they are hearing them in large measure for the first time, probably. Imagine you had been enslaved, and your people had been enslaved for centuries. You and entire nation of people were nothing more than a smoldering wick. And what do you hear: this world is invested with a purpose; it’s meaning has been authored by God himself, and its is good, all good, and even very good.
In the first chapter, God is re-orienting his called-out-ones to a non-Egyptian way of life. He had delivered them with a strong and mighty hand. He was powerful to be sure, mightier than Pharoah, his army, and the Egyptian gods. But what about his nature? Genesis 1 and 2 begin to draw their attention to his goodness. The creation story reaches its culmination with what? Rest.
Can’t you see how much a tonic that would be for a nation of recently liberated slaves? They had been hard-pressed. They were weary, and out of breath. And what does God present in his own creation narrative? The end of the narrative—that is, the end of knowing this God—is not oppression, is not more weariness, is not a waning, heavily laden life. Rather, knowing this God brings much needed rest, and times of refreshing from his hand.
The sabbath rest was made for man, as Jesus said. The sabbath reminds his people of two things: God’s great deliverance, and the promise intrinsic to that great deliverance of a new life in God’s presence. God drew near—God heard. They too would have to respond as any child would to his father’s love—by drawing near.
This reciprocal relationship of father and child informs the quality of the rest God offers—something Christ purchased for us with his blood, a true reconciliation. The sabbath is not dead letter; it’s spirit.
Before we end this first part, I want to leave you with commentary on Caleb. It’s God’s commentary, and in it we find a valid human response to God’s invitation to rest:
Not one will ever see the land that I swore to give their fathers. None of those who have treated Me with contempt will see it. But because My servant Caleb has a different spirit and has followed Me wholeheartedly, I will bring him into the land has entered, and his descendants will inherit it. See Numbers 14.
Image courtesy of Unsplash, M. Aquirre @elcuervo
