Hebrews 4:1-11 – Exhortation #2: Make Every Effort – Must Believe To Enter His Rest

Session 8 – August 12, 2020 – Men’s Morning Hebrews Haverim

Our Men’s Haverim group is reading through and discussing the book of Hebrews during the months of August and September. For more information, see this blog post.

11 Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will perish by following their example of disobedience.

Hebrews 4:11 New International Version

Summary:

• The promise of entering His rest remains, so we need to be careful not to fall short of it.
• The Israelites fell short because they didn’t have the faith to obey.
• God entered His rest on the seventh day, after completing the task of creating all of creation.
• The promise remains, even after Joshua conquered the promised land, because David in Psalm 95:8 still referred to “Today” in appealing to for them to not harden their hearts.
• We have work to finish – as God entered His rest after completing the task of creation, there is a Sabbath-rest for the people of God, if we don’t follow the example of the disobedience of the Israelites.

Other Thoughts:

• Though our outline breaks this exhortation into three parts, the previous section on unbelief introduces the seriousness of the author’s argument of making every effort to enter God’s rest in this section, which in turn provides good context for the next section, the familiar verse on God’s word cutting like a double-edged sword (see next post).
• The section starts in v.1 by discussing the fear we should have of not entering God’s rest. In Numbers 12, the Israelites feared entering the promised land and it led to their hearts hardening and becoming disobedient.
• As in previous verses, the author uses “unbelief” and “obedience” interchangeably. Here they are driven by having fear of the wrong things – the author says we should fear not entering His rest, not how difficult it will be to complete our journey.
• We sometimes teach people to “just trust” and to “have faith” but often people facing challenges need to have a healthy fear of turning back just because they find their situation is difficult.
• The author mentions a “Sabbath-rest” in (v. 8-9), and that Joshua didn’t give the people rest as God rested from his works. We need to continue to strive toward that rest to keep from falling into disobedience (v. 11).
• Jesus tells us to make every effort to enter through the narrow door (Luke 13:24), and we’ll need to walk on the narrow path, though it’s a more difficult path, to make it into the kingdom of heaven.
• God rested when He saw that what He had created was good; we cannot rest while we see that things are bad – that people around us haven’t been obedient to the gospel!
• Are you making every effort to not fall into unbelief and disobedience so that you can enter his rest?