Enter God’s Rest

[Alive]

The concept of entering into God’s rest comes from Hebrews 3–4.

For he who has once entered [God’s] rest also has ceased from [the weariness and pain] of human labors, just as God rested from those labors peculiarly His own.
Hebrews 4:10

Hebrews 4:10–13 explains the nature of faith. The kind of faith that enables us to enter into God’s rest is a faith that first demands that we rest from relying on our own works.

We either trust ourselves to save ourselves, or we trust God to do that for us through the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. By failing to trust God fully in His promises, we become disobedient and fail to enter the rest that is eternal life, just as the children of Israel became disobedient when they failed to enter the Promised Land.

 

[John Evens]

Jesus is our Sabbath rest. The Hebrew word sabat, which means “to rest or stop or cease from work” goes back to Creation. After creating the heavens and the earth in six days, God “rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made.” This doesn’t mean that God was tired and needed a rest but simply that He stopped what He was doing. He ceased from His labors. This is important in understanding the establishment of the Sabbath day and the role of Christ as our Sabbath rest.

Under the Old Testament Law, the Jews were constantly “laboring” to make themselves acceptable to God. But Jesus provides a permanent rest for His people.

The sacrifice of Christ on the cross, who “after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down on the right of God.” Just as He rested after performing the ultimate sacrifice, He sat down and rested—ceased from His labor of atonement because there was nothing more to be done, ever.

 

[Soyeong]

The concept of entering into God’s rest comes from Hebrews 3–4.

For he who has once entered [God’s] rest also has ceased from [the weariness and pain] of human labors, just as God rested from those labors peculiarly His own.
Hebrews 4:10

Hebrews 4:10–13 explains the nature of faith. The kind of faith that enables us to enter into God’s rest is a faith that first demands that we rest from relying on our own works.

We either trust ourselves to save ourselves, or we trust God to do that for us through the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. By failing to trust God fully in His promises, we become disobedient and fail to enter the rest that is eternal life, just as the children of Israel became disobedient when they failed to enter the Promised Land.

In Hebrews 3:18, the Israelites did not enter into God's rest because of their disobedience, and in Ezekiel 20:13, it specifically mentions that they greatly profaned God's Sabbaths, so there is no room for someone to think that they can enter into God's rest while having the same sort of disobedience to God's law that prevented the Israelites from entering into God's rest. In Hebrews 4:9-11, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, we should rest from our works as God rested from His, and we should be careful to enter into that rest so that no one may fall away by the same sort of disobedience.

Nothing in this passage says anything about resting from relying on our works. God is trustworthy, therefore His instructions are also trustworthy (Psalms 19:7), so the way to rely on God is by obediently relying on His instructions, and it is contradictory to think that we should rely on God, but not on His instructions. In Titus 2:11-13, our salvation is described as being trained by grace to do what is godly, righteous, and good, and to renounce doing what is ungodly, so doing those works has nothing to do with trying to earn our salvation as the result, but rather God graciously teaching us to obey His law is part of His gift of salvation. Moreover, in Titus 2:14, Jesus gave himself to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people of his own possession who are zealous for doing good works, so becoming zealous for doing good works in obedience to God's law is the way to trust in what Jesus accomplished through the cross (Acts 21:20).

 

[Soyeong]

Jesus is our Sabbath rest. The Hebrew word sabat, which means “to rest or stop or cease from work” goes back to Creation. After creating the heavens and the earth in six days, God “rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made.” This doesn’t mean that God was tired and needed a rest but simply that He stopped what He was doing. He ceased from His labors. This is important in understanding the establishment of the Sabbath day and the role of Christ as our Sabbath rest.

Under the Old Testament Law, the Jews were constantly “laboring” to make themselves acceptable to God. But Jesus provides a permanent rest for His people.

The sacrifice of Christ on the cross, who “after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down on the right of God.” Just as He rested after performing the ultimate sacrifice, He sat down and rested—ceased from His labor of atonement because there was nothing more to be done, ever.

Jesus is God's word made flesh, so the position that he is our Sabbath rest is the position that following His example of embodying God's word is our Sabbath rest. In Matthew 11:28-30, Jesus was inviting people to come to him for rest and to learn from him, not inviting people to come to him for rest instead of learning from his example. Moreover, by Jesus saying that we would find rest for our souls, he was referencing Jeremiah 6:16-19, where God's law is described as the good way where we will find rest for our souls, but they didn't want to walk in it. If obedience to God's law were about laboring to make ourselves acceptable to God, then it would not be the good way where we find rest for our souls. In Titus 2:14, Jesus gave himself to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people of his own possession who are zealous for doing good works, so becoming zealous for doing good works in obedience to God's law is the way to believe in what Jesus accomplished through the cross (Acts 21:20).