Hebrews 4:6-8

The Voice

There is much discussion of “rest” in what we are calling the First Testament of Scripture. God rests on the seventh day after creation. In the Ten Commandments God commands His people to remember the Sabbath day, keep it holy, and do no work. By letting go of daily work, they declared their absolute dependence on God to meet their needs. We do not live by the work of our hands, but by the bread and Word that God supplies.

But a greater rest is yet to come when we will be released from all suffering, and when we will inherit the earth. Jesus embodies this greater rest that still awaits the people of God, a people fashioned through obedience and faith. If some of us fail to enter that rest, it is because we fail to answer the call.

⁶So if God prepared a place of rest, and those who were given the good news didn’t enter because they chose disobedience over faith, then it remains open for us to enter. ⁷Once again, God has fixed a day; and that day is “today,” as David said so much later when he wrote in the psalm quoted earlier:

Today, if you listen to His voice,
Don’t harden your hearts.^[a]

⁸Now if Joshua had been able to lead those who followed him into God’s rest, would God then have spoken this way?

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