Hebrews 4
Butler1. Let us therefore fear, lest, a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you 2 should seem to come short of it. For unto us was the gospel preached, as well as unto them: but the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that 3 heard it. For we which have believed do enter into rest, as he said, As I have sworn in my wrath, if they shall enter into my rest: although the works were finished from the founda- tion of the world. 4 For he spake in a certain place of the seventh day on this wise, And God did rest the 5 seventh day from all his works. And in this place again, If they shall enter into my rest. 6 Seeing therefore it remaineth that some must enter therein, and they to whom it was first 7 preached entered not in because of unbelief: again, he limiteth a certain day, saying in David, To day, after so long a time; as it is said, To day if ye will hear his voice, harden 8 not your hearts. For if Jesus had given them rest, then would he not afterward have spoken of another day. 9 There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God. For he that is entered into his 10 rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his. Let us labour therefore 11 to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief. For the word 12 of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the 13 thoughts and intents of the heart. Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do.
The rest of God—“My rest.” That rest belongs necessarily to the Divine Nature. It is the deep tranquillity of a nature self-sufficing in its infinite beauty, calm in its everlasting strength, placid in its deepest joy, still in its mightiest energy; loving without passion, willing without decision or change, acting without effort; quiet, and moving everything; making all things new, and itself everlasting; creating, and knowing no diminution by the act; annihilating, and knowing no loss though the universe were bar- ren and unpeopled. God is, God is everywhere, God is everywhere the same, God is everywhere the same infinite, God is everywhere the same infinite love and the same infinite self-sufficiency; therefore, his very being is rest. And yet that great ocean of the Divine Nature which knows no storm nor billow is not a tideless and stagnant sea. God is changeless and ever tranquil, and yet he loves. God is changeless and ever tranquil, and yet he wills. God is changeless and ever tranquil, and yet he acts. Mystery of mys- teries, passing all understanding!
The heaven of all spiritual natures is not idleness. Man’s delight is activity. The loving heart’s de- light is obedience. The saved heart’s delight is grateful service. The joys of heaven are not the joys of passive contemplation, of dreamy remembrance, of perfect repose; but they are described thus: “They rest not day nor night,” “his servants serve him, and see his face.” Yes, heaven is perfect “rest.” God be thanked for all the depth of unspeakable sweetness which lies in that one little word, to the ears of all the weary and the heavy laden. Rest in heaven—rest in God! Yes, but work in rest! Ah, that our hearts should grow up into an energy of love of which we know nothing here, and that our hands should be swift to do service, beyond all that could be rendered on earth—that, never wearying, we should for ever be honored by having work that never becomes toil nor needs repose; that, ever resting, we should ever be blessed by doing service which is the expression of our loving hearts, and the offering of our grate- ful and greatened spirits, joyful to us and acceptable to God—that is the true conception of “the rest that remaineth for the people of God.” Heaven is waiting for us—like God’s, like Christ’s—still in all its work, active in all its repose. See to it that your life be calm because your soul is fixed, trusting in Jesus, who alone gives rest here to the heavy laden. Then your death will be but the passing from one degree of tranquillity to another, and the calm face, whence all lines of sorrow and care have faded utterly away, will be but a poor emblem of the perfect stillness into which the spirit has gone. Faith is the gate to partaking in the rest of God on earth. Death with faith is the gate of entrance into the rest of God in heaven. A. M.
1. Since the earth has stood, the heart of many a man has been pierced through by the cutting words, “It is too late.” But who will describe the lamentation that will arise when, at the boundary line which parts time from eternity, the voice of the righteous Judge will cry, “It is too late!” Long have the wide gates of heaven stood open, and its messengers have cried at one time and another: To-day, to-day, if ye will hear his voice! Man, man, how then will it be with you, when once these gates, with appalling sound, shall be shut for eternity! But the more appalling the truth is that, at the dividing line between time and eternity, the sentence will be proclaimed, “It is too late,” so much the more consoling is the word, flowing down to us from the cross of Jesus—Sinner, while thou standest on this side the grave, it is never too late. “Therefore, let us fear,” cries an apostle to us, “lest we should slight the promise of entering into his rest, and some one of us remain behind—to-day, if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts.” Whether the voice of thy God will come to thee again and search thee out, this thou knowest not; but whatever may lie behind thee, whether nights of the darkest error, whether mountains of sin, thou distinctly hearest to-day his proclamation, “It is not too late!” A. T.
2. Not mixed with faith in them that heard. If the seed were in the ground, where it should be, instead of on it, no foot of peasant, no hungry bird could harm it; and if the Divine word were in the hearer’s heart instead of outside it, no external impression could injure or remove it. As it is, it lies at the mercy of any, even the most natural and innocent, succeeding impression. He has felt the word fall upon his heart, perchance, hard though it be; he has dimly and from afar apprehended that there is a life, a reality, in the truth of God which he has not hitherto recognized; and he has thought, as he listened, that it will be well for him to look into the matter for himself some day; but the sermon over, the organ begins to play, and the sweet innocent music with its new impressions carries off part of the impression previously made. Then follow neighborly salutes and inquiries, a pleasant walk, and the good thought is gone. The man has been so accustomed to let all kinds of impressions come and go that he feels rather relieved when this has taken flight; and so he goes on and on, meaning no harm, yet doing this great harm—that he is not only hardening his own spiritual nature and frittering away its strength, not only preparing sharp pangs for himself in the future, but helping to keep the world at a low unspiritual level of life, and hanging like a retarding clod on the chariot-wheels of the divine King. Cox.
Our Christianity has a fault that is too common: it is outward, it is plated; it is upon us, but is not in us. From that surface of our being where it stops, it has penetrated as far as our morning and evening prayers; but it has not entered everywhere into our domestic life—into the work of our retirement, into our literature, into our commerce, into our politics; it is not melted into our human existence, and therefore it has so little hold upon humanity. Monod.—If Jesus Christ himself were on earth and now preaching among us, yet might his incomparable words be unprofitable to us, not being mixed with faith in the hearers; but, where faith is, the meanest conveyance of his message, received with humility and affection, will work blessed effects. L.—It is very certain that the purer, the truer, and deeper a soul’s religious experience becomes, and the more a man distrusts and abases self and clings solely to God and his word, exalting them, the more sure and trustworthy and full of truth will be that soul’s views of religious doctrine. He who exalts the word, the word will exalt him; but he who neglects or disesteems the word, will himself go down in proportion. It is surprising what an invigorating and expanding power a great faith in God’s word exerts upon the mind; and on the other hand, a weak faith in God’s word leads to weakness, to doubt, self-confidence, and dependence upon men. G. B. C.
3. The rest, or Sabbatism, which God spoke of in the words, “If they shall enter into my rest,” did not mean entering into the promised land under Joshua, for they are said in a psalm of David long after Joshua. Therefore their fulfillment is yet to come, and the solemn threat yet endures in all its power. A.—5. The meaning of this is: God’s rest was a perfect rest; he declared his intention that his people should enjoy His rest; that intention has not yet been fulfilled; its fulfillment therefore is still to come. 6. Here it is said they entered not because of disobedience; in 3: 19, of unbelief; but this does not justify us in translating these different Greek expressions by the same English word. The rejection of the Israelites was caused both by unbelief and by disobedience, the former being the source of the latter. C.
7. How many things combine to make us lay this warning in all its seriousness to heart and conscience! Earnestly it points us to an irrevocable past, in which already so much precious time has been lost, dreamed away, trifled away, sinned away; regarding which so many voices rise to accuse us, while we can not call back one hour of the past, can not with all our tears wash out one single stain in our life’s history. But in friendlier guise, on the other hand, a blessed to-day is placed before us, in which again the glad tidings are proclaimed to us, and absolutely nothing left untried to win our hearts to heaven. Who can tell the riches of blessing which this day of salvation may bring to a soul really hungering and thirsting after righteousness? But, on the other hand, what tongue may express the peril to which that recklessness exposes us, which always counts on years, while yet we can not be sure of an hour? To an incalculable to-morrow these words of warning point significantly; but a to-morrow of mercy is nowhere promised. Van O.
8. Note particularly that the word “Jesus” should read “Joshua,” and that “he” (following) refers to God. B.
9,10. If we take the context of the passage, we can not but recognize this as the truth taught here, that faith, and not death, is the gate to participation in Christ’s rest—that the rest remained over after Moses and Judaism, but came into possession under and by Christ. For the main scope of the whole passage is the elucidation of one of the points in which the writer asserts the superiority of Christ to Moses, of Christianity to Judaism. That old system, says he, had in it for its very heart a promise of rest; but it had only a promise. It could not give the thing that it held forth. It could not, by the nature of the system. It could not, as is manifest from this fact, that years after they had entered into possession of the land, years after the promise had been first given, the psalmist represents the entrance into that rest as a privilege not yet realized, but waiting to be grasped by the men of his day whose hearts were softened to hear God’s voice. David’s words clearly, to the mind of the writer of the Epistle, show that Canaan was not the promised “rest.” David treats it as being obtained by obedience to God’s word, as not possessed by the people, though they had the promised land. He treats it as then, in his own “day,” still but a promise, and a promise which might not be fulfilled to his people if they hardened their hearts. All this carries the inference that the Mosaic system did not give the “rest” it promised. Hence, says the author of the Hebrews, that “rest” held forth from the beginning, gleaming before all generations of the Jewish people, but to them only a fair vision, remains unpossessed as yet, but to be possessed by all who believe. A. M.
9. Weariness and strife are still but the next to the last words of the story of our earthly life; the last shall be like that of Jesus, rest. Like a sunset in solemn majesty was his death; like a sunset shall be the death of each one of his followers. But we know that after the sunshine comes the shadow, after the labors of the week the Sabbath, and thus happiness is in store for us, the rest which shall come to us. There remaineth therefore a rest for the people of God, a rest won through the cross of Jesus, guaranteed through the sepulchre of Jesus. Christians, cross-bearers, go forth then boldly through the noonday and the evening of your life to meet the night! The light of faith shall not fail your sight; the star of hope is about to shine above the tomb on you; and the bond of love which knits you to the Lord, and to all who are his in heaven and earth, is stronger than death and the grave. Van O.
10. Faith, which is the means of entering into rest, will—if only you cherish it—make your life no unworthy resemblance of his who, triumphant above, works for us, and, working for us, rests from all his toil. Trust Christ! is the teaching here. Trust Christ, and a great benediction of tranquil repose comes down upon thy calm mind and upon thy settled heart. Trust Christ, and rest is thine—rest from fear, rest from toil and trouble, rest from sorrow, rest from the tossings of thine own soul, rest from the tumults of thine own desires, rest from the stings of thine own conscience, rest from the seeking to work out a righteousness of thine own. Trust Christ, cease from “thine own works,” forsake thine own doings, and abjure and abandon thine own righteousness; and though God’s throne be far above thee, and the depth of that being be incommunicable to and uncopyable by thee, yet a divine likeness of his still and blessed and unbroken repose shall come down and lie, a solid and substantial thing, on thy pure and calm spirit. A. M.
12,13. The word of God is quick. This almost obsolete Saxon word retains its old sense in certain set phrases: e. g., “cut to the quick” means cut into the live flesh. The Greek is simply living—all alive with vital energy. The word for “powerful” is the Greek for energetic, instinct with force. A “double-edged sword” is one brought to an edge on both sides of the blade. “Dividing asunder the animal life from the spiritual,” and so causing death. “Severing joints and marrow” involves dismembering the body and cutting through the solid bones to the central marrow within. These words carry out the figure of the double-edged sword, to which the word of God is compared. The word “discerner” carries the thought rather to God than to his word. Throughout verse 13 the writer speaks definitely of God—“his sight”; “him with whom we have to do.” No created being can be hidden from God’s searching eye. “All things”—all deepest thoughts and purposes of creatures made of God lie naked and opened to his eyes, before whom is our account, to whom we are supremely responsible, and before whom we must speak—as the Greek word implies—render up orally our account when he shall summon us to his bar. The Greek word for “opened” is neck-exposed, as when the head of an animal is forced back to lay the neck open for the bloody knife. H. C.
12. There is mention (Gen. 3: 24) of a sword turning every way; parallel whereto is the word of God in a wounded conscience. Man’s heart is full of windings, turnings, and doublings, to shift and shun the stroke thereof if possible; but this sword meets them wheresoever they move; it fetches
Having this penetrating and convincing efficacy, the word of the cross is capable of a most faithful and deep work in the character; no gospel therefore of temporizing mercy and slight healing, but a downright, thoroughgoing, radical, life-renewing energy—a power of God unto salvation. It bends to no false principle, deals in no mock sentiment, hides no point of exactness, spares no necessary pain. It applies to sin a surgery deep as the malady; it cuts the cancer clean out by conviction that a genuine, true healing may follow. And what shall we do but open our heart to it, counting it even good to be condemned before a salvation so thorough, so deeply grounded in the unsparing severities of truth? H. B.
14. SEEING then that we have a great high priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the 15 Son of God, let us hold fast our profession. For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, 16 yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain 1 mercy, and find grace to help in time of need. For every high priest taken from among men is ordained for men in things pertaining to God, that he may offer both gifts and sac- 2 rifices for sins: who can have compassion on the ignorant, and on them that are out of the 3 way; for that he himself also is compassed with infirmity. And by reason hereof he ought, 4 as for the people, so also for himself, to offer for sins. And no man taketh this honour 5 unto himself, but he that is called of God, as was Aaron. So also Christ glorified not him- self to be made an high priest; but he that said unto him, Thou art my Son, to day have I 6 begotten thee. As he saith also in another place, Thou art a priest for ever after the order 7 of Melchisedec. Who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and suppli- cations with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and 8 was heard in that he feared; though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things 9 which he suffered; and being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto 10 all them that obey him; called of God an high priest after the order of Melchisedec.
CHRIST is before us. Those that place their hands in his heads to the Father. “All mine,” he says, “are thine, and thine are mine.” To have faith in Christ is to be brought nigh to God. Here is the spiritual bond which unites our loftiest aspirings with heaven no less than our lowliest self-accusings. In the Mediator our hope as well as our penitence is satisfied. We are not only restored from what we have been—we are helped forward to what we would be. If our sin finds pardon, our love of excellence finds a pattern. Our whole humanity is redeemed. No thought or affection, but Christ leads, and trains, and unfolds it. And so our life at its best estate—whether that be its humiliation or its triumph, whether in the valley of dejection or on the delectable mountains where the city of God beckons us—is “hid with Christ in God.” F. D. H.
Turn your thoughts more frequently to the glorious high estate of our great High Priest. He sits on high, and is upon the council of all, who hath loved us and given himself for us; yea, who hath made our inheritance there which he purchased sure to us, taking possession for us and in our name; since he is there not only as the Son of God, but as our surety and our head; and so the believer may think himself even already possessed of this right, inasmuch as his Christ is there. The saints are glorified already in their head. Where he reigns, there I believe myself to reign, says Augustine. And consider in all thy straits and troubles, outward and inward, that they are not hid from him. He knows them and feels them, is a compassionate High Priest, and hath a gracious sense of thy frailties and griefs, fears, and temptations; and he will not suffer thee to be surcharged; but is still presenting thy estate to the Father, and using that interest and power he hath in his affection for thy good. And what wouldst thou more? Art thou one whose heart desires to rest upon him and cleave to him? Thou art knit so to him that his resurrection and glory secure thee thine: his life and thine are not two, but one life, as that of the head and members; and if he could not be overcome of death, neither canst thou. Oh! that sweet, sure word, Because I live, ye shall live also! L.
14. ONE who was “made like unto ourselves in all points” has in our view trodden the ground of earth, and has passed thence immediately and not through an immeasurable circuit, or by countless progressions, “into the heavens.” Thus we have the reason of our hope of future advancement set out in a living form in the track of our Representative from earth to heaven. What can the dying believer do, uninformed as he is of the way he is to tread—his foot advanced, though the ground on which it is next to rest is unseen—what but recur to the rudiments of his hope? What but look to the Precursor, who is also the Lord of that unseen world? I. T.
15. 16. The legal high priest carried the names of the twelve tribes on his shoulder and breastplate when, on the great day of atonement, he made his solemn entrance into the holy of holies; that while God looked upon him he might at the same time remember the tribes of Israel, accept his offering for the expiation of their guilt, and hearken to his prayers and intercession on their behalf. In like manner our great High Priest, the Lord Jesus Christ, who is gone into the heavenly sanctuary, “appears in the immediate presence of God for us,” sustaining the character of the second Adam, the head and representative of all his spiritual seed; and is raised to the highest dignity and power that he may manage their affairs to the best advantage, and effectually secure their eternal salvation. He was a sufferer himself, and knoweth the heart of a sufferer by personal experience. He was tried with temptations even as we are; and though he conquered them all, yet he had proof of the skill as well as of the malice of the tempter, and can make allowance for the disproportion betwixt himself and us. Nay, he stooped thus low, not only to make atonement for our guilt, and to open for us a passage to the mercy-seat; but that we, being assured of his perfect acquaintance with human infirmity, might have the most cheerful reliance upon his compassion and sympathy, and boldly approach the throne of grace, having such a friend to patronize us and to plead our cause. R. W.—It is a real truth that Christ’s eye, the eye of the Son of man, at the right hand of God exalted, is ever upon each of us; when we go out, when we are abroad, and when we are within doors; when we are awake or when we are asleep; when we are alone or when we are with others, Christ is ever regarding us. Think of him when we will, and also at all times when we do not think of him, still in very deed Christ is looking upon us with compassion; that is, he knows our danger, and he desires to save us. Believe this to be true, as indeed it is, and then there is a faith in each of us which will bring us to Christ, and bringing us to him in earnest, will lay hold on his salvation. T. A.
Read verse 15, “For we have not an high priest unable to sympathize with our infirmities; but rather one in all points tempted in like manner, yet without sin.” A.—To be a real comforter, a person must have profound sympathies; but profound sympathies are always in association with keen sensibilities, and keen sensibilities expose their possessor to a depth of anguish utterly unintelligible to ordinary souls. As is the capacity to be a heavenly comforter, such is the capacity to be an awful sufferer. Pulsford.—That central heart of love and pity opened itself at every point to all the forms and varieties of human woe. Its sympathy stood free from all those restraints that lie upon ours. Our ignorance, our selfishness, our coldness, our incapacity for more than a few intense affections, narrow and weaken the sympathy we feel. But he knows all, can feel for all; so that not a pang of grief wrings any human bosom but sends an answering thrill through the loving, pitying heart of our divine Redeemer. W. H.—How many forwardnesses of ours does he smother? how many indignities does he pass by? and how many affronts does he endure at our hands, because his love is invincible and his friendship unchangeable? He rates every action, every sinful infirmity, with the allowances of mercy; and never weighs the sin, but together with it he weighs the force of the inducement; how much of it is to be attributed to choice, how much to the violence of the temptation, to the stratagem of the occasion, and the yielding frailties of weak nature. R. S.
Jesus Christ sees us as we are, and he can only deal with us on a footing of reality. Some of us have felt the blessing of this. In moments of deep self-conviction, we have found the unspeakable comfort of entering just one only presence in which we are known precisely as we are, and yet are borne with. Christ can see, and yet he loves too. And the soul feels this. In hours of mirth and gladness, in days of pride and self-ignorance, we may not value Christ either for his truth or for his tenderness. But let the evil day come—it may be of disappointed ambition, it may be of sharp bereavement, it may be (worse yet to bear) of remorse and shame—then there is something, account for it as we may, which makes the soul trust and turn to the truthful and compassionate Lord; knowing before he speaks that he knows all; knowing before he speaks that he can yet abundantly pardon. V.—Oh, do not, do not keep this sacred thought of Christ’s companionship in sorrow for the larger trials of life. If the mote in the eye be large enough to annoy you, it is large enough to bring out his sympathy; and if the grief be too small for him to compassionate and share, it is too small for you to be troubled by it. If you are ashamed to apply that divine thought, “Christ bears this grief with me,” to those petty molehills that you magnify into mountains sometimes, think to yourselves that then it is a shame for you to be stumbling over them. But, on the other hand, never fear to be irreverent or too familiar in the thought that Christ is willing to bear and help you to bear, the petriest, the minutest, and most insignificant of the daily annoyances that may come to ruffle you. He will do more, he will bear it with you, for if so be that we suffer with him, he suffers with us. A. M.
Was tempted. Our Lord’s will has been to prefigure us, who are his body, in that body of his in which he has already died and risen, and ascended into heaven; that whither the head has gone before thither the members may trust to follow. Therefore he represented us in himself when he willed to be tempted by Satan. For in Christ you were tempted, since Christ had flesh for himself from you, salvation from himself for you; death for himself from you, life from himself for you; insults for himself from you, honors from himself for you; therefore temptation for himself from you, victory from himself for you. If in him we have been tempted, in him we overcome the devil. Do you observe that Christ was tempted, and not also that he conquered? Recognize yourself as tempted in him, and recognize yourself as conquering in him. Aug.—Without sin. A man who was subject, like other mortals, to every temptation to sin and still fell not, was not defiled by the slightest breath of iniquity, wandered not once in his life, not even a hair’s breadth from the path of virtue; such a man is indeed no less a wonder in the moral world than one raised from the grave and lifted up with a visible body to heaven is a wonder in the physical world. Orelli.
16. We read of no mediator to bring us to Christ; for though, being God by nature, he dwells in the height of majesty and the inaccessible glories of a deity, yet, to keep off all strangeness between himself and the sons of men, he has condescended to a consanguinity with us, he has clothed himself with flesh and blood, that so he might subdue his glories to a possibility of human converse. And, therefore, he that denies himself an immediate access to Christ affronts him in the great relation of a friend opening himself both to our persons and to our wants, with the greatest tenderness and the freest invitation. R. S.
Grace to help. It is grace that chooses, it is grace that calleth, it is grace that preserveth, and it is grace that brings to glory, even the grace that, like a river of water of life, proceeds from this “throne of grace.” Oh, when a God of grace is upon a throne of grace, and a poor sinner stands by and begs for grace, and that in the name of a gracious Christ, in and by the help of the Spirit of grace, can it be otherwise but such a sinner must obtain mercy and grace to help in time of need? Bun.
4. As soon as God began to constitute a Church and fix the priesthood, which before was dispensed into all families, God gave the power and designed the person: and therefore Moses consecrated Aaron; he performed the external rites of designation, but God was the consecrator Moses appointed Aaron to the priesthood, and gave him the order, but it was only as the minister and deputy of God, under God the chief consecrator. J. T.
5. Earnestly to covet greatness is contrary to the rules of the gospel. We should refer our advancement to the invitations of Providence, and stay until the master of the feast bids us sit higher. “Christ glorified not himself as high priest, but was called of God, as Aaron.” When we do not stay for the call of Providence, it is but an untimely de-
sire for promotion, which either God crosses, or else it proves a curse and snare to us. T. M.