Hebrews: Enter into God’s Rest
Hebrews 4:3-5 - Rely on Christ’s finished work, enter by faith, savor His peace, trust in His promises
“For we who have believed enter that rest, just as He has said, “As I swore in My wrath, They shall not enter My rest,” although His works were finished from the foundation of the world. For He has said somewhere concerning the seventh day: “And God rested on the seventh day from all His works”; and again in this passage, “They shall not enter My rest.””
Hebrews 4:3-5 NASB1995
I have to be honest with my readers. These verses threw me a curve ball when I first read through them again for this devotional. I am going to have to rely heavily on commentary. For example, verse 3 says “For we who have believed enter that rest, just as He has said, ‘As I swore in My wrath, They shall not enter my rest”…
HUH??? Believers have entered God’s rest, but then it says that He swore in His wrath that they shall not enter His rest? Ahhhh, first I found this explanation from the late Hugh Montefiore, an Anglican bishop, quoted in Precept Austin:
Christians possess this faith which the rejected Israelites lacked; we who have believed are entering that rest, as he has said, ‘So I vowed in my anger, They shall never enter my rest’. At their Christian initiation our author and his readers had made an act of belief and this has now become a permanent attitude of faith. Because the Israelites had lacked that faith they had been rejected; and because our writer and his readers possess that faith they are now entering that rest. Contrary to some commentators, the Greek text means neither that they are certain to enter, nor that they will enter, but that they are already in process of entering. The Christian pilgrimage is not an aimless wandering, like that of the Israelites in the desert. It is a deliberate, straight course on a well-mapped destination....Life is a hard pilgrimage, beset by temptations; but Christians have a Leader (Heb 2:10; He 12:2) Who has already gone before them (Heb 6:20) and finished the course (Heb 12:2), and at the end of the road there is rest and refreshment in the city of the living God (Heb 12:28).
This, IMHO, is a decent explanation. Perhaps a better explanation is from the reliable Charles Spurgeon:
It is by believing that we get REST—by no other means, not by scheming and plotting and planning and thinking and criticizing and judging and doubting and questioning, but by believing—the submission of the soul to God’s truth, the yielding of the heart to God’s salvation. This once done, we lie down in green pastures, and are led beside the still waters (Ps 23:1)....The believer rests from the guilt of sin because he has seen his sins laid upon Christ, his Scapegoat, and knowing well that nothing can be in two places at one time, he concludes that if sin were laid on Christ, it is not on him; and thus he rejoices in his own deliverance from sin, through its having been imputed to his glorious Substitute.
The believer in Christ Jesus sees sin effectually punished in Christ Jesus, and knowing that justice can never demand two penalties for the same crime, or two payments for the same debt, he rests perfectly at peace with regard to his past sins. He has, in the person of his Surety, endured the hell that was due on account of transgressions. Christ, by suffering in his stead, has answered all the demands of justice, and the believer’s heart is perfectly at rest. I do not say that the believer’s life is all peace, for his condition is peculiar in this way. When the children of Israel entered into Canaan, they were a portrait of a saint entering into rest. First, they had to cross the Jordan: the believer has to cross the Jordan of his sin. That is dried up, and he marches through by divine grace. Then there stand, inside the promised land, the walls of Jericho, namely, his own corruptions and his own sinful nature. It takes time to bring them to the ground, but after that, when the walls are leveled, there are Canaanites still in the land.
Canaan was not a good type of heaven, for they were always fighting in Canaan, always having to war against the adversary. That is a good type of the rest to which believers come. They do rest. They know that heaven is theirs; that they are saved; that all their troubles work for their good; that they are God’s people. Still they have to fight against sin, and that is no more inconsistent with their being at rest than it was inconsistent with the fact of the holy land belonging to the Israelites, though they had still to go on fighting against the Canaanites. That is God’s rest, the rest of a finished work, and into that rest many never enter. The work by which they might live forever, the finished work by which they might be saved, they refuse, and so they never enter into God’s rest. [items in bold were emphasized in the Precept Austin excerpt].
This is superb! We are entering into rest, yet we are still in this fallen world, with the enemy roaring at our door. We don’t get there by scheming and plotting and planning and doubting and questioning. We believe! Crossing into the promised land, we have to step into the Jordan river acknowledging our sins, then we have to confront our sinful nature in the walls at Jericho. The enemy will still be there, at least in this world.
One thing that Precept Austin noted in this commentary is the statement by Spurgeon: “he rests perfectly at peace with regard to his past sins.” The editor of Precept Austin asks this question (I didn’t include it in the commentary excerpt): ARE YOU RESTING IN REGARD TO SINS YOU HAVE COMMITTED IN THE PAST?
When we first started doing serious intercessory prayer after coming to belief, our first confessions included past sins from decades ago, including childhood. Those prayers were LONG. Developing a clean slate is always a good idea when one repents in prayer to the Creator of the Universe. It’s not just the nasty comment to another driver yesterday that should be confessed, but a new believer should also not shrug off the sins they committed in their youth or try to blanket confess them in a “Forgive me my sins” generalized statement. Once those old sins are confessed, they do not need to be brought up again and you can start concentrating on the slips and misses that you have made more recently (hopefully of less consequence).
God’s work of creation was finished at the foundation of the world, including His plan for salvation. And God rested on the seventh day. This is the rest we are invited to share with Him as believers. Does this mean we are in hammocks resting and relaxing throughout eternity and should now start imitating sloths (a cute animal unfairly maligned for being slow)? No, because I believe that eternity with God means we have infinite time, at the same time, to worship, to serve Him, to meet with saved loved ones, to participate in the unending great banquet with Jesus, and to rest! As one commentator I read said, this is not inactivity, but restful effort, secure in His promises.
Here’s more about this rest from the late John MacArthur, quoted in Precept Austin:
“The basic idea is that of ceasing from work or from any kind of action. You stop doing what you are doing. Action, labor, or exertion is over. Applied to God’s rest, it means no more self-effort as far as salvation is concerned. It means the end of trying to please God by our feeble, fleshly works. God’s perfect rest is a rest in free grace. Rest also means freedom from whatever worries or disturbs you. Some people cannot rest mentally and emotionally because they are so easily annoyed. Every little nuisance upsets them and they always feel hassled. Rest does not mean freedom from all nuisances and hassles; it means freedom from being so easily bothered by them. It means to be inwardly quiet, composed, peaceful.
To enter God’s rest means to be at peace with God, to possess the perfect peace He gives (Php 4:7). It means to be free from guilt and even unnecessary feelings of guilt (Ro 5:1, Ro 8:1). It means freedom from worry about sin, because sin is forgiven. God’s rest is the end of legalistic works and the experience of peace in the total forgiveness of God. Rest can mean to lie down, be settled, fixed, secure. There is no more shifting about in frustration from one thing to another, no more running in circles. In God’s rest we are forever established in Christ. We are freed from running from philosophy to philosophy, from religion to religion, from lifestyle to lifestyle. We are freed from being tossed about by every doctrinal wind, every idea or fad, that blows our way. In Christ, we are established, rooted, grounded, unmoveable (Col 2:7). That is the Christian’s rest. Rest involves remaining confident, keeping trust.
In other words, to rest in something or someone means to maintain our confidence in it or him. To enter God’s rest, therefore, means to enjoy the perfect, unshakable confidence of salvation in our Lord. We have no more reason to fear. We have absolute trust and confidence in God’s power and care. Rest also means to lean on. To enter into God’s rest means that for the remainder of our lives and for all eternity we can lean on God. We can be sure that He will never fail to support us. In the new relationship with God, we can depend on Him for everything and in everything—for support, for health, for strength, for all we need. It is a relationship in which we are confident and secure that we have committed our life to God and that He holds it in perfect, eternal love. It is a relationship that involves being settled and fixed. No more floating around. We know whom we have believed and we stand in Him.
The rest spoken of in Hebrews 3 and 4 includes all of these meanings. It is full, blessed, sweet, satisfying, peaceful. It is what God offers every person in Christ. It is the rest pictured and illustrated in the Canaan rest that Israel never understood and never entered into because of unbelief. And just as Israel never entered Canaan rest because of unbelief, so soul after soul since that time, and even before, has missed God’s salvation rest because of unbelief. Two other dimensions of spiritual rest will not be found in a dictionary—the Kingdom rest of the Millennium and the eternal rest of heaven. These are the ultimate expressions of the new relationship to God in Christ, the relationship that takes care of us in this life, in the Kingdom, and in heaven forever. (See Hebrews Commentary - Page 96) [bold added by Precept Austin].
This is so good. John MacArthur got his reputation as a great preacher for a reason.
Precept Austin also had this little gem using “REST” as an acronym (author unknown):
ACRONYM FOR REST
R – Rely on Christ’s finished work
E – Enter by faith, not by toil
S – Savor His presence and peace
T – Trust His promise to the end
My next devotional examines Hebrews 4:6-7 - The urgency of TODAY is once again brought forward.
Heaven on Wheels Daily Prayer:
Dear Lord - I am thankful for learning what Your rest really means. Although I am facing one of those “life annoyances” soon with eye surgery, my study of Hebrews is helping me to be secure in Your promises. Amen.
Credits and Citations:
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. www.Lockman.org
Precept Austin was accessed on 11/05/2025 to review commentary for Hebrews 4:3-5