The homework assignment this week is that we all read Hebrews 4:1-13 daily in an all-out attempt to understand the flow of logic and what the writer was trying to communicate in this text. The writer speaks of various ideas: rest, the Sabbath, a new day ("Today"), the failure of Joshua to give rest, and paradoxical striving after rest. I admit freely to being rather befuddled trying to pick out the logical flow of thought, and badly need help. The individual sentences and thoughts are simple enough, but how do they hang together? What reasoning animated the writer? For example, what does the seventh-day rest of God have to do with anything here? Left to my own devices, you all may not like what you get.
As you (hopefully) grow in your understanding as the week progresses, post comments on this blog entry to share with our learning community. Feel free to respectfully interact with each others' thoughts.
Now it is well known that some of you do not exactly relish the thought of homework.
YOU
ME
Here is what I think:
ReplyDeleteThe author to the Hebrews is making a case for what God called "rest" (katapausis in Greek)in Ps 95. This word is a metaphor for God's heavenly blessedness. The writer connects this rest to the Sabbath rest. This includes both God's rest from His labors (not just creation because Jesus was crucified from before the foundation of the world)and the Hebrew sabbath when they did no laborious work.
He reasons that there must still be a rest that we will enter because David used the word "today". If the rest referred to the Promised Land, then David wouldn't have used that word.
Therefore, we must be dilligent to enter into His rest because God knows our hearts and His word is a two-edged sword. No one is exempt; we are all an open book before God. Thankfully, the writer's tone changes in the next verse.
Here are my thoughts:
ReplyDeleteThe purpose of this letter is to demonstrate the superiority of the risen, glorified Christ over the law given at Sinai and all that was connected to it - angels, law-works, Levitical priesthood, animal sacrifices. These Hebrews had remained babes in Christ when they should have been growing up in Christ. "For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need some one to teach you again the first principles of God's word. You need milk, not solid food; for every one who lives on milk in unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a child." (Heb 5:12-13)
A few weeks back, we discussed avoiding a category error with regards to the rest referred to in this context (chapters 3 and 4). We talked about how it was not a type of the final dwelling place of the saints. And I think the repeated use of the word "today" reinforces the sense of this being a present "entering into rest" rather than a future one. I think the rest referred to here is a resting in the finished work of Christ on the cross (John 19:28, 30) rather than continuing in some measure of law-works in order to have a standing with God. I think it's similar to the situation with the Galatians.
The comparison with the exodus generation, I believe, is that that generation did not trust God's provision to bring them safely into the land. These Hebrews are not trusting God's provision in the finished work of Christ as being sufficient. Their actions are, in effect, denying the Gospel, and testifying to their immaturity. For as long as they are seeking to gain some measure of standing with God, or some better standing with God, they are not entering into His rest, which He provided in Christ. They have not rested from their own works. When they cease from their works, they will have entered His rest. It seems to me that it's really a mental thing. It comes down to believing that the finished work of Christ is sufficient. And I think that's why the disbelief of the exodus generation was brought up as an example.
The connection I see with the seventh-day rest of God is that God rested the on seventh day because the work was finished, which ties in with the finished work of Christ.
I believe the writer is encouraging these Hebrews to do as Paul did, of which we read in Philippians 3.