4:15 For we don’t have a high priest who can’t be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but one who has been in all points tempted like we are, yet without sin.

In the preceding verse we were urged to “hold fast [our] profession.” The reason we can do this – the reason we must do this – is because we have such a high priest.

The priests of the Old Covenant, as indeed the priests of most of the world’s religions, held themselves aloof from the people. They emphasized their separateness, their holiness. In fact there are many even within the Church today who teach that leaders should hold themselves apart from their people. Far be it from them to allow anyone to see them as having any human needs or weaknesses!

Jesus was not like that. Even though He alone, of all mankind, had the right to hold Himself apart from the rest of man, He did not do so. He chose to partake fully in humanity, laying aside everything that it meant to be God and being made like us in every way. Not only that, but He chose to come as a man at the humblest level. He was born into a family that was so poor that it could not afford the regular offering for purification after the birth, but had to bring the “poor man’s alternative” of a pair of doves or two young pigeons. (Luke 2:24, Leviticus 12:8) He lived as an ordinary man among ordinary people, sharing with them all the hardships of life in the Middle Eastern world of 2000 years ago. He knew what it felt like to be human! He knew what it was like to be poor!

He knew what it was like to be part of a despised, persecuted, downtrodden race. He could have chosen to come like Paul, a Jew who could proudly say that he had been born a Roman citizen, with all the privileges that involved. Instead, He chose to be born into a family who came from Nazareth, a town considered even by the Jews to be “the pits”. Those from Nazareth were despised even by their own people.

He also knew what it was like to be subjected to temptation. It is difficult for us to get our heads around the concept that the One Who was God in the flesh could be truly tempted, but temptation is common to the human experience, therefore the One Who was representing humanity had to experience it.

In fact, temptation was essential to the fulfillment of His mission on earth. His task was to undo what had been done by Adam. God gave man free will, and our first parents used that will to chose the devil’s way rather than God’s. Therefore the Second Adam had to also have free will – there had to be a real possibility of Him choosing other than God. And He had to freely use that will to chose God’s way rather than the devil’s. We may wrestle with the question of what would have happened if He had chosen sin, but the possibility had to be real.

If we think for a moment about just the temptations in the wilderness after His baptism, we will see how real these temptations must have been. The first one invited Him to turn stones into bread. He had been fasting for 40 days. (Note, this was a true 40-day fast; nothing passed His lips for 40 days. It was not 40 1-day fasts with a meal at the end of each day, as some people do and claim to have fasted 40 days) He was hungry, weak, and very much in need of food. Most of us could have readily justified doing this. Eating would in itself not have been sinful. He had completed His fasting time, so He would not be sinning by breaking the fast. The power of the Holy Spirit within Him had been instrumental in creating the universe – surely it would not have been sinful to use that power to create the food He needed. The temptation was real, and strong.

But He knew that the sin would not lie in the act itself, but in the motivation: a desire to justify Himself, and to become his own source of supply rather than looking to the Father as His supply. If He had done this, He would have been acting as God to Himself – the very temptation to which Adam and Eve had yielded.

Then the devil tempted Him to take the rulership of the world without having to go through the cross: “All this I will give you, if you bow down and worship me.” Looking forward through the years, knowing the physical pain, the mental and emotional anguish and humiliation, and the spiritual defilement that He would have to experience, this must have been a very real temptation indeed. Who of us would not willingly take up an offer to reach our goals without any suffering?

The last temptation was to presume upon God. The devil even used Scripture to back that one! How wrong could it be for the Christ to claim the Scripture and show Himself to be God’s beloved Son? Many would see it as simply a demonstration of faith. In fact, many have done so and learned to their great loss that God has no obligation to back presumption. We presume upon God when we tear promises out of His Word and attach them to things that He has not authorized. I think, for instance, of the young girls in the Indonesian revival who thought that, because Jesus walked on water, they should do so too. They tried to walk across a flooded river and, tragically, drowned. God had not told them to do it, and did not back their presumption.

These were by no means the only temptations that came to Jesus. Even though we are not given details of others, we can be sure that the devil was constantly attacking Him throughout His life, just as he attacks us. Temptation is common to man.

The difference is that Jesus did not at any point yield to those temptations. Sin is not a natural part of man’s make-up, but the result of our choices. Jesus made the right choices every time, and remained without sin.

Sometimes we excuse our sin by saying, “Well, I’m only human after all.” Jesus was the most fully human person who has ever lived, and He did not sin. Being human does not make us sinners; making wrong choices does.

4:14 Having then a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let’s hold tightly to our confession.

Having taken nearly two chapters to discuss first the superiority of Christ over Moses, and then the necessity for God’s people to enter His rest, the writer now jumps back to the point he started out to make at the end of chapter 2 and the beginning of chapter 3: we have a high priest.

As he will go on to show in the following chapters, however, this high priest is quite unlike, and in every way superior to, the high priests of the old dispensation. Back in 2:17 he showed that this high priest has been made like us in every way, in order to identify with us and make reconciliation for us.

Since the writer has for the last chapter and a half been laboring the point that we must not fail to enter God’s rest through disobedience and unbelief, we must at this point ask how Christ as our high priest relates to entering that rest. In 1:3 the writer told us that “when He had by Himself purged our sins, [He] sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high …”

Just as God labored in creation, then rested, so Christ labored in redemption, then rested. He has not only borne our sins, sicknesses and sorrows in His death, but in His resurrection and ascension He has entered into rest on our behalf. All the more reason why we should not fail to enter that rest for ourselves.

… who has passed through the heavens …

It is not just that Christ has returned to the position that, as God, had been His for all eternity. No, something far greater has happened: He has entered heaven as Man. He has entered heaven as our high priest. Forever more, there is a Man seated at the right hand of the Father.

Christ’s role as out high priest did not cease at His death. For all eternity, He continues to represent us to the Father. What’s more, His sacrifice is effective for all eternity. Having been offered once, it does not have to be repeated, but goes on forever providing forgiveness and reconciliation for mankind.

… let’s hold tightly to our confession.

It has been truly said that the Christian life is not just a step, but a walk. Yes, we take that first step when we repent of our sin and surrender our lives to Jesus Christ as our Lord and Saviour. We profess our belief in Him and our desire to follow and serve Him. But then we have to walk in it. We have to hold on to the things that we have said we believe, even when everything around us is pushing us in the other direction.

It is so easy to fall back into struggle; to fall back into trying to be good enough by our own strength, or to conform to some external form of legalism. It is so easy to fall into unbelief concerning the things that God has promised, or into disobedience concerning the things that He has required of us.

That’s when we need to remember our high priest: remember that He has already completed the work of redemption, as surely as God completed the work of creation; and that He is now at rest even whilst continuing His priestly role on our behalf, therefore we can rest in Him whilst allowing His Spirit to continue to work in us and through us.

4:13 There is no creature that is hidden from his sight, but all things are naked and laid open before the eyes of him to whom we must give an account.

Depending on our position in God, this is either one of the most comforting or one of the most terrifying verses in all Scripture.

If we are in Christ, having acknowledged that we are sinners who can do nothing to save ourselves, and having repented of our sins and received His grace by accepting Jesus as our Lord and Savior, then it is comfort. We can know that our deepest longings are seen by the Lord, and that He has taken note of them. Every tear that we have ever shed has been seen by Him; every tottering step that we have taken in our walk with Him has been noted. People may look at us and see only our failings and shortcomings, but God looks at our heart.

As a dramatic illustration of this, I have just finished re-reading the life story of Kathryn Kuhlman. If ever there was a woman with severe personality problems and deep emotional issues, it was she. Many people, both during her lifetime and since her death, have condemned her because they could only see the glaring faults. Yet God looked on her heart, saw a woman of faith and passion for Him, and poured out His Spirit upon her in such measure that countless people were healed in her meetings without her so much as praying for them.

We could think also of the Old Testament story of the anointing of David (1 Samuel 16). King Saul, who had been elected by the people as the king of Israel, had proven to be unfaithful to God, and the Lord had rejected him as king and assigned Samuel to go and anoint the man that He, the Lord, had chosen to replace Saul. At the direction of the Lord, Samuel went to Bethlehem, to the home of a man called Jesse who had eight sons. In turn, the first seven sons were paraded before Samuel. Each one looked the part of a king, but in every case the Lord told Samuel that this was not the one. “Look not on his countenance, or on his height: because I have refused him. For the Lord does not see as man sees; man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” Finally, when all seven had been rejected, Samuel looked around and asked if Jesse had any more sons. Well, yes, there was one more, but he was just a kid, out in the fields with the sheep. No-one could possibly consider him to be king material! Yet when they brought that kid, David, before Samuel, the Lord said, “This is the one! Anoint him.” Only God could see that David’s heart was fully after Him, whilst his brothers had other things on their minds.

For those outside of Christ, or for those who would try to give the appearance of being Christian yet whose hearts are not fully for the Lord, the story is very different. No matter how good the outward appearance may be, no matter how well they can fool some of the people some of the time, or even all of the people all of the time, they cannot fool God. With Him, there is no such thing as the “perfect crime”. He knows everything done in secret: every secret word, every secret intention, every secret thought, every secret feeling. People may think that they have been able to “get away with” their various sins on earth, but the day will come when they will stand before Him and their whole life will be opened, displayed as it were on an IMAX screen, with nothing to cover their shame.

Any sane person would surely want to be found in Christ, covered by His grace and with his or her sins hidden under the blood of Jesus.

4.12. For the word of God is living and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and is able to discern the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

At first this verse seems totally out of place in the context of the previous lengthy discussion about entering God’s peace. However, the use of the word “for” at the beginning shows that the writer clearly saw them as not only linked, but linked in a cause-and-effect relationship. This verse is particularly tied to the one before it – “Let us labor to enter … because the Word is alive and powerful.”

This is yet another warning not to miss what God has said. In the past, God declared that because His people had failed through rebellion and unbelief to enter His rest, they would now forever be cut off from entering it. Through the Psalmist, He has also said to us, “Today if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts.” And He has promised that there remains a rest for the people of God.

Putting all this together, one thing is clear: if we neglect or despise God’s Word in this matter, we can expect the same consequences as those who neglected and despised His Word in previous generations.

When I was a little girl, there was a saying about anyone whose word was considered not entirely to be trusted. Often I heard my parents say of someone (often a politician), “His promises are like pie crusts – made to be broken.” God’s Word is not like that. What God has spoken will stand. That is because His spoken Word (and, for us, His written Word), is the expression of the living Word – God the Son who became man in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ. Because God’s spoken and written Word is the expression of the living Word, it carries that same life.

And because it has life, it is powerful. When men speak, they may have the greatest of intentions, but still not have the ability to actually carry out those intentions. Or circumstances and problems may arise to hinder and prevent them following through on the things they have spoken. God’s Word is not like that. It carries with it the power to bring about the thing that is spoken. That is the great difference between prophecy and fortune telling. Fortune tellers (genuine ones) have the ability to look into the future and predict some of the things that are going to happen, but they do not have the power to actually make them happen. But when a prophet of the Lord makes a declaration in the Name of the Lord, that word actually has the power to set in motion the things predicted. That’s why one of the tests of prophecy is “does it come to pass?” If the prophecy did not have the power to set in motion the things prophesied, then it was not the Word of the Lord.

… piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit…

When we look at a person’s life and work, it can be difficult sometimes for us to tell whether they are operating out of the realm of the soul or the realm of the spirit. People may seem to be walking in righteousness, but underneath they are operating out of their own strength. They have not entered into God’s rest; they have not ceased from their own works. Of course, if we know them for long enough, and observe them closely enough, their true position will eventually become obvious, but often that time and closeness of observation is not available to us. The Word, however, has no such difficulties. We cannot escape the consequences of breaking the Word by pretending that we are not. The person who has spent his life acting like a follower of Christ, without ever having truly surrendered his life to Him, will not find admission to heaven on the basis that he looked like a Christian.

… and is able to discern the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

Doing the right things for the wrong reasons will never get us anywhere. In the Old Testament, the people of Israel were in covenant relationship with God because of His grace – He brought them into covenant because they were descendants of Abraham, and that had nothing at all to do with their efforts. He gave them the Law to show them how to live in that covenant relationship, and they were supposed to do so by faith. (Romans 9:32) Instead, they embraced the Law as something which, if they observed it correctly, would give them the right to be in relationship with God – in other words, they tried to make it a relationship of works rather than of faith and grace.

Not only in relation to God’s rest, but in all things we need to understand that God’s Word cannot be broken, nor can it be fooled by outward appearance.

4.8 For if Joshua had given them rest, he would not have spoken afterward of another day.

From the context, it is clear that the KJV is incorrect in translating “Joshua” as “Jesus” in this passage. The writer has been talking about the refusal of the people of Israel to enter the promised land under the leadership of Moses. However, the people did eventually enter the land under Joshua’s leadership. The writer wants to make it clear, however, that even in entering into the natural promise, the land of Canaan, they still had not entered into the spiritual promise of rest and provision in the Lord. Joshua led them into the promised land, but he was not able to lead them into the promise of God’s rest. It was impossible for him to do so, because they were still determined to hold to their unbelief – their deep conviction that such a rest was not available, not even possible, and that they had to achieve everything by their own efforts.

… he would not have spoken afterward of another day.

If the context had not been enough to make it clear that it is Joshua, not Jesus, to whom the writer is referring, this part of the verse would settle it. As we have already seen, the place where God speaks of another day (“Today, if you hear His voice …”) is Psalm 95:7, which was written after the time of Joshua, but long before Jesus walked on the earth. Joshua failed to bring the people into the true rest that God had promised, but there is another day, a day that was heralded by the birth of Jesus and secured by His death.

(v9) There remains therefore a Sabbath rest for the people of God. (10) For he who has entered into his rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from his.

This is the crux of what this chapter – and, to a large extent, the book of Hebrews – is about. The rest that was offered to the people of Israel is still available. That rest does not consist of a place, but of a Person. For the people of Israel, it was the Person of YHWH, Who, if they had been prepared to fully trust Him, was ready to provide for their every need, surround them with security, and lift them up as a light to the Gentiles. Their mistake was in thinking that everything rested on them, when instead they should have allowed it all to rest on Him. For Christians living under the New Covenant, it is the Person of Jesus Christ, in Whom we have available not only every natural provision, but more importantly the spiritual provision of salvation, forgiveness and right standing with God.

It is tragic, therefore, that so many Christians still think, as the Israelites did, that everything depends on them. They are so busy trying to work for God – in some cases, even trying to work for their salvation – that they have no time to be still, and allow the Holy Spirit, Who lives within them, to work in them and through them to transform them into the image of Christ and manifest His glory through them.

(v11) Let’s therefore give diligence to enter into that rest, lest anyone fall after the same example of disobedience.

This verse sounds like a contradiction in terms. Labor to enter rest? Yet if we think about it, most of us will agree that sometimes being still – really still – is harder than any work we do. We are so accustomed to filling our time, whether it be with productive work or just with the mindless entertainment of television, that being still is threatening. For some people, life is like a thin sheet of ice on top of a leaky bucket. Originally, the ice was supported by a bucket full of water, but now the water has drained away and there is nothing but that fragile layer of ice, with nothing underneath. They live at the surface level, going through the motions of Christianity, but that surface has nothing beneath it. Because they believe everything depends on them, they just don’t have the time or energy to look deeper.

We need to stop, however difficult that may be, to take time to drink from the well of life in Christ. We need to find rest in Him: not just the rest of a day or a place, but that still place deep within ourselves that fills our bucket and allows us to live and minister out of the overflow.

4:6. Seeing therefore it remains that some should enter into it, and they to whom the good news was preached before failed to enter in because of disobedience, (7) he again defines a certain day, today, saying through David so long a time afterward (just as has been said),

“Today if you will hear his voice, don’t harden your hearts.”

Today. Not tomorrow. Not next week, next month or next year. Today. The Word of God always requires that we act upon God’s promises, not that we merely think about them.

Human beings are strange creatures. Many of us choose to live either in the past or the future, rather than the present. Some people are locked to past hurts. They have never forgiven the offender, and hold their grudges tightly to themselves. As a result, bitterness has grown and festered in their hearts, till everything they do in the present is shaded with those long-gone events.

Others are locked to past failures. Whether it was a moral failure or a failure of achievement, they continue to beat themselves up over it, and refuse to believe that they could ever succeed. Their present life is shaped by that failure, and they will never allow themselves to rise above its level.

Sometimes people are even locked to the good times and successes of the past. “The Olden Days” have taken on a rosy glow – probably to a far greater extent than they had in the first place – and they just want to go back there, rather than contend with a present that can be raw and difficult. That is partly what happened with the people of Israel. Egypt had started looking really good to them. They forgot the slavery, abuse and humiliation and remembered the good things – leeks and cucumbers and garlic – and wanted to go back to what had been.

At the other extreme, some live in tomorrow, in the wonderful land of “someday”. Yes, they know what God’s Word says, and “someday” they will get around to acting upon it. There are two great problems with “tomorrow”. The first is that it never comes. It is always there, hovering just out of our reach. The day we called “tomorrow” yesterday is now today: but tomorrow has moved, it is still beyond us.

The second problem with “tomorrow” is that none of us know whether we will have it. We have no way of knowing whether we will wake up again in this life, or whether our eyes will next open in eternity. When we store our intentions in “tomorrow” or “someday”, we are storing them in a very unsafe place indeed.

Our God, on the other hand, is not bound to either yesterday or tomorrow; not to the past or to the future. He is I AM, not “I was” or “I will be”. So He says to us, Don’t put this off! Don’t just think about it! Don’t say to yourself, “Someday I will enter God’s rest.” The door is open now. The promise is given now. We have heard His voice today, therefore we need to act today. If we don’t, we will be like the Israelites, hardening our hearts against God.

4.3. For we who have believed do enter into that rest, even as he has said, “As I swore in my wrath, they will not enter into my rest;” although the works were finished from the foundation of the world. v.4 For he has said this somewhere about the seventh day, “God rested on the seventh day from all his works;” v.5 and in this place again, “They will not enter into my rest.”

The people of Israel failed to enter the natural rest that God had offered them, but more importantly they missed the spiritual rest that could have been theirs if they had truly put their faith and trust in God. Yet there is still a rest available to the people of God. The Israelites missed it through unbelief, but believers do not have to miss it.

In fact, the writer makes the point that God’s rest has always been available. God Himself rested at the completion of creation, and extended to man an invitation to join Him in that rest. The picture is not just of a day of rest, but of an enduring rest.

From our human perspective, we see God working constantly from the time of creation till the present: we see His judgments in the flood and at Babel; His guidance and provision for the Patriarchs; His deliverance in the Exodus; His discipline of His people in the wilderness wandering; His direction, judgment, protection and provision throughout the history of Israel; and most of all His revelation of Himself and the accomplishment of our salvation through the Lord Jesus Christ. And that’s without even beginning to look at His work in individual lives!

But from the perspective of God, who is eternal – who transcends time – all of it was already accomplished from the beginning of time.

We need to understand this, because it has a great bearing on our own entering into that rest. We face the same dichotomy. From where we stand, we are very much in the midst of the battle. Our Christian “walk” often feels more like an uphill march through a bramble patch on a black, rainy night wearing a fifty kilo back pack, and with an unseen enemy shooting at us from every side.

From where God stands, “It is finished!” Everything necessary for our salvation, our total victory over satan in every area, and the establishment of the Kingdom, has already been accomplished at Calvary.

For Israel, the problem was not that God’s rest was not there – it had been available from the beginning of time. They simply lacked the faith to enter into it. In the same way, God’s rest, and His victory, is available for us. We don’t have to struggle or work for it. It is already done. We are to simply enter by faith.

God is patient beyond our understanding, but He does not hold the door open forever. For the Israelites, the day came when God said, “That’s it! The opportunity of entering My rest is now gone forever.” In saying this, God was not talking about the promised land, which the people of Israel did enter after their forty-year wandering, but about the spiritual rest that they never found. The whole message of this section of the Book of Hebrews is that we should not be like them: we must be careful not to miss the rest that God offers us.

4.2 For indeed we have had good news preached to us, even as they also did, but the word they heard didn’t profit them, because it wasn’t mixed with faith by those who heard.

The King James uses the word “gospel” here, but it is not a good translation, because it implies that the people of Israel heard the Gospel as we understand it – the truth that God has provided for the forgiveness of man’s sin by sending the second Person of the Godhead to become man in the person of Jesus Christ and die a substitutionary death on behalf of all mankind. Of course, the people of Israel did not have the privilege of receiving that message. Even the prophets who spoke of the coming of Christ did not really understand what that coming would mean.

What the Israelites did have preached to them was the good news that there was a place of rest prepared for them by God: a place where they would no longer labor under the bondage that they knew in Egypt, where God would provide for them and establish them.

We have received the same good news, but for us it is about a spiritual place of rest rather than a physical country as in the case of Israel.

Good news on it’s own, however, is not enough. Good news only profits the receiver when it is accepted, believed and acted upon.

Suppose a man received a letter to say that he had inherited a million dollars from a long-lost relative whom he had never even known he had. He reads the letter and says to himself, “This is nonsense. Someone is trying to trick me. I never had an uncle, much less one that was a millionaire.” Then he scrunches the letter up and throws it in the garbage. Will the good news be any profit to him? No, he won’t be one cent richer because of it. He might as well have never received the news in the first place.

What if he reads the letter and says, “I’m not going to accept this. I’m perfectly capable of looking after my family by myself. I don’t need anybody else’s handouts.” He tears the letter up and throws it away. Again, the good news will be no profit to him at all. Even though he believed it, he refused to accept it.

Maybe he reads the letter, believes that the money is really there, and knows that he really could use a million dollars, but then he reads that the solicitor’s office, where he would have to go to collect it, is a long way away. Sadly, he throws the letter away, saying to himself, “It’s just too far to go. I don’t want to travel that far to collect this money.” The good news is still no use to him. He believes it, and he wants what is promised, but he is not prepared to take action to get it.

The writer tells us that the good news preached to the Israelites did not profit them because it was not mixed with faith. Faith is made up of these three elements: we must believe that the promise is true; we must accept that we need what is being promised; and we must take action to claim the promise as our own.

Scholars suggest that the word “mixed” as used here is referring to a process similar to what happens when food is taken into the body: it is mixed with saliva and gastric juices so that it can be absorbed and eventually become part of the body. If we were to somehow take in food without it being mixed with these juices, it would not be digested and would be no use to the body. In fact, it would quite possibly even cause damage to the body rather than helping to build it up.

Faith works the same way with the good news that is preached to us. It enables us to break it down and absorb it into our being, until eventually it becomes part of us.

Israel missed out on God’s best because they heard the good news, but did not believe it, did not accept it, and did not act upon it. They did not exercise the faith to make it their own.

4:1. Let’s fear therefore, lest perhaps anyone of you should seem to have come short of a promise of entering into his rest.

Promises are wonderful things, particularly when we know that the one who has made the promise is reliable. They offer us hope, a point of focus, something to look forward to. When they are accompanied by a condition, they can also give us a means of motivation: if I just stick to this course, I know I will receive the thing that I have been promised.

When a promise is given by someone reliable, it is far more than just wishful thinking. It carries a certainty. This will definitely happen (as long as we meet the conditions.) That is the kind of promise we have concerning God’s rest. There is no “might” or “maybe” about it. God has said unequivocally that His rest is there and available to us, if only we will meet the conditions and enter in.

The rest that is available to us in Christ is not just the rest of one day a week set aside from work. Of course, the principle that our bodies and minds were not designed to work non-stop without a rest is still true, and one day “off” in every seven is the thing that works best for us. However, the rest that God has for us is far greater than that.

It is even greater than the rest of entering into a “land of milk and honey” – a place of God’s abundant provision and blessing in the natural. Even if the people of Israel had obeyed God and gone in to take possession of the Promised Land when they first had the opportunity, that in itself was only a picture of the far greater rest that God was promising to His people.

In Christ, God offers us rest from all our own efforts: our own efforts for salvation, our own efforts for living, our own efforts for holiness. He sends us His Spirit to live within us. All we need to do is to rest in Him, and allow Him to live His life through us. He invites us to a place of absolute peace, where all our needs are supplied in Him. And because the promise comes from One who is absolutely faithful, we know that it is no mere fantasy. It is real, it is certain, and God holds out His hand inviting us to “come on in!”

Yet as much as promises are wonderful things, they can also be fearful things. Think of people you have known who, in their youth, displayed amazing promise. It was easy to look at them and see the future doctor, or statesman, or great author or architect. Loaded with natural ability and charisma, they seemed to have everything going for them.

Then something went wrong. Maybe they dropped out of school and got lost in the world of drugs. Maybe they started on the road to their future, but a couple of failures along the way knocked them off the path and they gave up. Maybe they simply made a series of wrong choices. One way or another, all that promise was never realized. And as you look at their lives today, the only thing you can think is “what a waste!” So much that could have been, but never was: not because the potential was not there, but because they had never really taken hold of that promise and determined to make it their own. As a result, both they and all those around them – and possibly, many others throughout the world – have missed out on what they could have had.

On the other hand, think of those through history who have lived up to the promise in their lives: great scientists, doctors, artists, musicians, statesmen. What if they had failed to enter into the promise that was theirs? How much poorer would the world have been without Lincoln, or Mozart, or Einstein, or Wesley?

If we fail to enter the rest that God has for us, the loss is every bit as great, both for ourselves and for those who are influenced by us. The people of Israel failed to enter because of their unbelief and disobedience. To take hold of God’s promise, and enter His rest, we simply need to reverse that: we need to believe and obey.

3:15. while it is said, “Today if you will hear his voice, don’t harden your hearts, as in the rebellion.”

Again the writer emphasizes the point made in verses 7 and 8. It is vital that his readers understand that what was true for Israel under the Old Covenant could be just as true for them under the New. God is still speaking to His people, both corporately and individually. We have the same obligation to listen and obey as Israel did. The fact that we are, as stated in the previous verse, “made partakers of Christ” only makes it more incumbent upon us that we respond to Him and live according to both His written Word and His direct word to us.

verse 16. For who, when they heard, rebelled? Wasn’t it all those who came out of Egypt led by Moses? (17) With whom was he displeased forty years? Wasn’t it with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? (18) To whom did he swear that they wouldn’t enter into his rest, but to those who were disobedient?

We find it hard to understand when a whole group of people suffers punishment because of just some of their number. I think of instances in the Old Testament when just one person sinned, and the whole of his family was killed as a result. One example that comes to mind is Achan in Joshua chapter 7. No-one in his family was even asked if they agreed with or approved of Achan’s actions – because of their association with him, they shared his fate.

In the same way, when the people of Israel chose to believe the bad report of the ten spies instead of the good report of Joshua and Caleb, not everyone in the nation agreed with that choice. Some probably looked at each other, shook their heads and said, “I can’t believe that our leaders could be that stupid!” Yet they were part of the nation as a whole, and as such had to share in the fate of the nation as a whole. In fact, even Joshua and Caleb had to wander through the wilderness with the nation of Israel for the next forty years, even though they had urged the people to faith and obedience. Those forty years could not have been easy for these two men of God. I can imagine they often looking longingly across Jordan and thinking, “If it weren’t for this lot, I’d be there now!”

The point is, our choices and our actions affect more than ourselves. Those around us will also be drawn along with us, and even if they don’t agree with our choices they may well end up sharing our fate. When we choose to disbelieve and disobey God, we set up forces that can end in tragedy for our families, our communities, and even our nations.

verse 19. We see that they weren’t able to enter in because of unbelief.

Unbelief is never a light thing. When God says something, we can either choose to believe it or call God a liar. If we choose to believe, then that belief will produce action in our lives – action that is in accordance with our belief, and that results in obedience to what God requires. If the people of Israel had really believed that God was giving them the land of Canaan, they would have entered in and conquered the land.

Unbelief, on the other hand, will also produce action – action that is in accordance with our unbelief (or our negative belief.) Because the people of Israel believed that God could not or would not do what He had promised, they were left with the question of whether they could do it themselves. Their answer was a resounding “no”, and the result was their disobedience to God.

Note that the writer does not just say that they “would not” enter because of their unbelief, but that they “could not.” When we choose to disbelieve what God says, we make obedience absolutely impossible for ourselves. Not only that, but when we disbelieve God’s promises He can withdraw those promises and make them unavailable to us.

We need to be sure that we always choose to believe what God says, and that we do not lock ourselves out of anything He promises by our unbelief and resultant disobedience.