SOJOURNERS REST

SOJOURNERS REST

Tuesday, May 03, 2016

  “rest” is emphasized 10 times in 11 verses in The Letter to the Hebrews:

3:11, 18 So I [God] sware in my wrath, They shall not enter into my rest. … And to whom sware he [God] that they should not enter into his rest, but to them that believed not?

4:1, 3-5, 8-1  Let us therefore fear, lest, a promise being left us of entering into his [God’s] rest, any of you should seem to come short of it. … For we which have believed do enter into rest, as he [God] said, As I have sworn in my wrath, if they shall enter into my rest: although the works were finished from the foundation of the world. For he [God] spake in a certain place of the seventh day on this wise, And God did rest the seventh day from all his works. And in this place again, If they shall enter into my [God’s] rest. … For if Jesus [Joshua] had given them rest, then would he not afterward have spoken of another day. There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God. For he that is entered into his [God’s] rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his. Let us labour [strive] therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief.

  Please begin by reading the above Bible references in context in version of your choosing.

  Then read of the accounting of “the day of provocation” in Numbers chapters 13 and 14. See how a multitude of people that had experienced God’s miraculous care then refused to trust Him further. The result being a 40 year desert trek all the while knowing the rest they had rejected and finally dying outside of its borders.

  Now consider the literary breadth and depth of God’s Word. English versions and translations are limited in vocabulary “rest”. The Greek is much more revealing.

·         Hebrews 3:11,18; 4:1,3,5,10,11 “rest” is κατάπαυσις;’ katapausis; kat-ap'-ow-sis; reposing down, that is, (by Hebraism) abode: - rest.

·         Hebrews 4:4 & 8 “rest is καταπαύω; katapauō; kat-ap-ow'-o; to settle down, that is, (literally) to colonize, or (figuratively) to (cause to) desist: - cease, (give) rest (-rain).

·         Hebrews 4:9 “rest” is σαββατισμός; sabbatismos; sab-bat-is-mos'; a “sabbatism”, that is, (figuratively) the repose of Christianity (as a type of heaven): - rest.

  “reposing down”, relaxed position, and to “colonize”, occupy, we readily understand. “sabbatism” however is not common to our vocabulary, though it definitely should be our everyday Christian walk.

  In the OT there was a set-aside Sabbath day. In the NT we find no such calendar; godly living in all ways to be an everyday affair. It is the distinctly different practice of viewing and exercising all things every day before and unto the Lord as concisely stated in Colossians [MKJV] 3:16-17 “Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. And everything, whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by Him.”

  Now, shall we rest?

EBB4