Hebrews 4:11

LABOUR TO REST

‘Let us labour therefore to enter into that rest.’

Hebrews 4:11

It would be hard to say whether ‘labour’ or ‘rest’ is most the key-note of the Christian religion. And the two are essentially united, for all rest presupposes labour. You cannot work for God till you rest in God. And yet to ‘rest in God’ is perhaps the highest and severest exercise of the soul of man.

There are four rests mentioned or implied in this passage to the Hebrews.

I. The first is God’s ‘rest’ from His work on the Seventh day.—‘For he spake in a certain place of the Seventh day on this wise, And God did rest the Seventh day from all His works.’ And here are given us the pledge and the first-fruit of all the ‘rest’ which should ever be in earth or heaven.

II. The second ‘rest’ is the ‘rest’ of Canaan, which the writer introduces as the illustration of the ‘rest’ of faith. For he reasons—‘Why did not all Israel enter into Canaan?’ Because of unbelief. Therefore he says, ‘Take heed lest you fail of your promised “rest” from the same cause’; for it was nothing else which kept them out of Canaan.

III. Thirdly, we come to the ‘rest’ of faith; and that is seen in the rest of Canaan.—The ‘rest’ of faith is clear, as the writer argues. Thus, five hundred years after the ‘rest’ of Canaan, he defines another day emphatically, and says, by David, ‘To-day if ye will hear His voice, harden not your hearts’ in unbelief. ‘To-day, after so long a time, to-day, if ye will hear His voice, harden not your hearts. For if Jesus (that is Joshua)—if Jesus had given them that rest’—if that rest of Joshua’s were all the rest God meant—‘He would not’—after five hundred years—‘have spoken of another day.’ What then? Beyond the rest of Eden, beyond the rest of Canaan, ‘there remaineth’—there was then, and there was to come, and there is now—‘there remaineth a rest to the people of God.’

IV. The fourth ‘rest’ is the ‘rest’ of heaven.—Whether, indeed, when the writer says, ‘There remaineth a rest, a Sabbatism for the people of God,’ he meant that beyond the ‘rest’ of Eden and beyond the ‘rest’ of Canaan there remains that other ‘rest’ of faith of which I have been speaking; or whether he means that now again to those who have already found the ‘rest’ of faith in Christ there still remains the higher rest of another life in the world to come, it is not quite certain. I incline to think that he rather intends the first. But we need scarcely make the distinction, for they are both one. The first is heaven in us, and the second is we in heaven; only, in the first, it is the ‘rest’ of the assurance of victory in a battle that is going on in a hostile field; in the second, it is that victory won in a world of love and union.

—Rev. James Vaughan.

Illustration

‘It will be a blessed “rest” when we get to heaven! It will well repay all the toil. We had “rested” before from the dominion of sin; but then we shall “rest” from its power. We had “rested” before from its victory; but then we shall “rest” from its conflict. We had “rested” before from its burden; but then we shall “rest” from its presence. We had “rested” before in Christ, for Christ; but then with Christ. It was “rest” before, but in a restless world, with a half-resting mind; but then it will be the quietness of the calm repose of a satisfied love, which breathes nothing else but the atmosphere of the stillness of heaven! But that kingdom “suffereth violence,” and “the violent take it by force.” Therefore, up, and be doing, for we go to a world where “rest” and “labour” will be one word.’