there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his… (Hebrews 4:9)

The focus of New Testament book known as ‘Hebrews’ is apostasy; specifically of those Jews who had previously made a profession that Jesus was the Messiah.  Under Roman rule, Jews and their strict observance of the Law of Moses was more than tolerated, it was facilitated.  There was no greater example of this than special dispensation to have day of rest – the concept of having a day off each week being anathema to the commercially minded Roman.

‘Rest’ translates the noun κατάπαυσις katapausis, derived from the verb katapauó, the combination of the preposition kata ‘down from’ and pauó ‘to make to cease’ or ‘hinder’.  Classically, katapausis could mean a lull, or the state of being becalmed, but in New Testament Greek it stands for repose and was used to represent the ‘inactivity’ of the Sabbath.

However, the Sabbath rest was widely misunderstood by the Jews of Jesus’ day, hence his many clashes with the Jewish authorities; take this example:

Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath.   And there was a woman who had had a disabling spirit for eighteen years. She was bent over and could not fully straighten herself.   When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said to her, ‘woman, you are freed from your disability.’ 

And he laid his hands on her, and immediately she was made straight, and she glorified God. But the ruler of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, said to the people, ‘there are six days in which work ought to be done. Come on those days and be healed, and not on the Sabbath day. 

Then the Lord answered him, ‘you hypocrites! Does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger and lead it away to water it?  And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath day?’  (Luke 13:10-16)

The Sabbath was never intended as a day of rest from God, quite the opposite, by decreeing a sabbath day, God set aside a period in which his people could concentrate on Him by refraining from mundane labour.  This was a day to do God’s bidding, align with Him and His sovereign purpose.

For, to state the obvious, if God is sovereign then all that happens is predestined, and this is concluded within the seventh day of creation:

For he has somewhere spoken of the seventh day in this way: ‘and God rested on the seventh day from all his works.’  (Hebrews 4:4)   

The Sabbath rest is therefore, instituted in this ‘Creation rest’, when all God’s work is done.  In other words, the past, present and future ‘history’ of humanity was and is set.  All people that have or will ever live do so in the unfolding of this pre-ordination.

The Hebrew Scriptures provide example, ‘for whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction’ (Romans 15:4) and the author of Hebrews evokes the lesson of the ‘Canaan rest’ that Israel was offered and rejected to stir the Jewish conscience:

For who were those who heard and yet rebelled? Was it not all those who left Egypt led by Moses? And with whom was he provoked for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness?  (Ibid 3:16-17)

The rebellion of Kadesh Barnea occurs when Joshua, Caleb and ten others return to the Israelites in the desert having spied out the promised land of Canaan.  They report that it is fruitful, ‘flowing with milk and honey’; however, it already occupied by ‘strong’ people.   While Joshua and Caleb bring a minority report on Canaan and urge the Israelites ‘to ‘go up at once and occupy it’ (Numbers 13:30) the other spies contradict them:

‘The land, through which we have gone to spy it out, is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people that we saw in it are of great height. And there we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim), and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them.’  (Ibid 13:32b-33)

Joshua and Caleb were not inherently braver, nor were they foolhardy, simply they trusted God, believing that whatever the might of the enemy, God was mightier.  

Because the Israelites side against Caleb and Joshua, and do not trust and obey God, He punishes the rebellion; forty years and an entire adult generation will pass in the wilderness. Yet, even this rebellion while punished was decreed:

For if Joshua had given them rest, (he) would not have spoken of another day later on.  (Hebrews 4:8)

‘He’ is God, but specifically the second person of the trinity, another Joshua, the Hebrew name for Jesus – and Jesus declared:

‘I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children;yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. Come to me, all who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’  (Matthew 11:25-30)

The rest then, foreshadowed and demonstrated in the Sabbath, is to enter God’s purpose and do as Jesus in obedience to his Father’s will.  And to clear, rest is not repose, but obedience.  The Sabbath rest is not resting from all labour, simply refraining from one’s personal projects, to do God’s will.

To the backsliding, the author of Hebrews adjures (referring to Kadesh Barnea):

Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. (Hebrews 4:11)

So this is the only strife one should know, to strive to fall into line with God’s plans, and this is what Paul indicates: 

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.  (Roman 8:28)

And lest we misunderstand the rest the Christ to be indolent passivity; the apostle Paul clarifies that ‘work’ is undertaken in this his rest:

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.  (Ephesians 2:10) 

The Jewish Christians were disavowing Jesus as their Messiah, so to return to their easy life, protected (ironically) from Jewish persecution by the civic privileges granted by their Roman masters.  They thought to return to Sabbath rest that Rome offered, while rejecting their own Messiah, the true ‘Lord of the Sabbath’. 

For the Gentile Christian, their example and that of their forebears at Kadesh Barnea is that Jesus would have all who follow him and break their own will if favour of him and his commandments.  In obeying Jesus, all enter his rest.  This may not seem, or even be restful, but that is the only place of security.

But the apostle Paul not only writes about this but, more powerfully, demonstrates this by submitting himself entirely to God’s will, whatever it may be.

He tells the horrified Ephesian oversees:

And now, behold, I am going to Jerusalem, constrained by the Spirit, not knowing what will happen to me there, except that the Holy Spirit testifies to me in every city that imprisonment and afflictions await me.  (Acts 20:22-23)

The apostle Paul clearly entered that Christ’s rest when he decided to end his third missionary journey and go up to Jerusalem, adding:

I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God.  (Ibid 20:24)

It was God’s purpose that Paul would continue to testify as a prisoner to kings and proconsuls, even soldiers of the Imperial Guard.  Paul had other plans, including his intention to go Spain via Rome, but God decreed he would only go as far Rome, and that in chains.  Paul entered the ‘rest’, by resting from his missionary work and by deciding to be at peace with God using him as he would – even if that meant hardship, captivity and, ultimately, martyrdom.

Unlike the Israelites, Paul (to paraphrase the apostle’s self-description, the Israelite of Israelites) did as Jesus had done in Gethsemane, and gave himself over to ‘strong’ enemies; the Asian Jews that pursued him even to Jerusalem were his giants, but he did not fail to face them; and, in so doing, Paul entered the Sabbath rest restored and redefined by Jesus as the Christ, thus providing an example to the pagan converts of Ephesus, the wider church and, also, his own people.  And this is what is meant in the head quotation:

So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God,for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his.  (Hebrews 4:9-10)