God's Holy Rest (Part 1): Identifying God's Rest

Introduction

It feels like it hasn’t been long since we, in the Gospel of Matthew, were speaking about Sabbath rest.

What is restful to you?

In this first part of our look into God’s Rest, we will look to identify God’s rest. Next week, we will look at how we may enter that rest.

What Is the Sabbath Rest?

Now, it may seem a little difficult to follow the thought process of the author at this point. We have him quoting David talking about Israel’s 40 years of wandering, then somehow connecting this to the seventh day of creation to this rest. The author is pulling on many strings throughout the OT to put together the big picture of this theme of God’s rest.

Rest in the promised land:

Deuteronomy 12:10 ESV

But when you go over the Jordan and live in the land that the Lord your God is giving you to inherit, and when he gives you rest from all your enemies around, so that you live in safety,

Rest from enemies and the establishment of the Temple:

1 Kings 8:56 ESV

“Blessed be the Lord who has given rest to his people Israel, according to all that he promised. Not one word has failed of all his good promise, which he spoke by Moses his servant.

Rest as deliverance:

Deuteronomy 5:15

You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.

Atonement from Sin:

Leviticus 16:30–31

For on this day shall atonement be made for you to cleanse you. You shall be clean before the Lord from all your sins. It is a Sabbath of solemn rest to you, and you shall afflict yourselves; it is a statute forever.

Sabbath Began at Creation

Verse 3 tells us that we who believe enter God’s rest, as opposed to those who live in unbelief and disobedience and, like the unbelieving Israelites, shall not enter God’s rest. But what is this rest?

The rest here is spoken of in two ways, as a place and as a time. When God swore that he unbelieving Israelites would not enter his rest, he was speaking of a literal space, namely the promised land. Then in verses 4 and 9 it is spoken of as a time, namely the Sabbath. It’s obvious that these go together, with a space of rest being prepared for a time of rest.

But how does that rest apply to us? We are not inhabiting the land of the Canaanites, nor are we under the covenant in which the Sabbath day command was given. And yet the whole basis of the warning the author is spending so much time devoloping is that there is a rest today that we may fail to reach if we are not united by faith and hold our confidence firm to the end. So that, even though “his works were finished from the foundation of the world”, his rest can still be experienced, or missed out on, today. If you read the creation account carefully, you may notice that while the first six days end with “and there was evening and morning”, the seventh day doesn’t end this way. The implication being that the seventh day never ended, but was rather the establishment of a permanent rest. Our Lord taught us that the Sabbath was made for man and that his Father is always working, and it would be silly for us to think that God actually gets tired.

So, what was the purpose of this seventh day of rest?

At the beginning of the creation account, there are two problems with the cosmos. One is that it is formless, the other is that it is void. That is, the world was chaotic and empty. This was a picture to ancient people of a world void of purpose and structure, given to the chaotic forces of sea monsters and the deeps.

Unlike the myths of the time, Genesis 1 has God overcoming chaos through acts of creation, rather than acts of war and destruction.

The language that is used would have indicated to the original readers the purposes behind the creative act: God was preparing the world to be his temple, a place for his presence to dwell and his glory to be displayed. Human beings are created last as the priests and caretakers of this temple, as well as his image-bearers who function as the ones tasked with representing and mediating God’s presence in his created world.

So, when God brings order to the universe, his new temple, and brings his priests into that temple, he finishes creation with the beginning of an age of rest. Rest from what?

This is an important question because we tend to assume that the answer is obvious: rest from creating the world. This answer bothered me for a long time because of verse 10 in our text here in Hebrews 4: “for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his.” But if God’s rest was simply his ceasation of creative work, how is it that we are said to rest from our works as God did? Does this mean Christians are not to work? We might say that this is speaking of our final rest in the new heavens, but there are two problems with this. First, it seems to imply that we have nothing to do for eternity. Second, Adam was told to work the Garden; was he not partaking in God’s rest? As we’ll see, the Garden itself was a place of rest, so how is it he is working in this place of rest?

Others will say that this refers to works righteousness, resting from our attempts to please God and rest in Christ. Although that may preach well, it doesn’t make sense in the text which parallels God’s creative work.

So what exactly are we seeking rest from? To answer that, let us look at how this rest continues beyond creation.

Sabbath Continues Today

Remember that at the beginning of Genesis 1 the world is chaotic and empty, a problem that is solved through God’s creative acts. The Sabbath is the completion of that work and the beginning of an age of order and life rather than chaos and death.

In Genesis 2, we are introducted to a place called the Garden of Eden. If the Seventh day was beginning of God’s rest in time, the Garden is the beginning of God’s rest in physical space. The Garden is a Temple, this is clear. In the ancient world, gardens were seen as divine dwellings and even the Tabernacle and Temple later in Israel’s history were made to look like a garden. The Garden is a Temple and a Temple is a space of rest.

Now, what does that mean? This is where things begin to come together. The Seventh Day rest is the conclusion of creation and a Temple is the place where that rest is experienced. This can finally lead us to a solid definition of biblical rest. Biblical rest is the ongoing experience of God’s promised victory over chaos, death, and sin and the of the abundance of life, joy, and peace in his presence. In short, it means being in a place where God’s presence is to enjoy God. When God rested from his work, this means he had finished bringing order to the cosmos and was ready to share the blessing of his presence within that ordered and vibrant world.

Of course, we know that this good and wonderful state did not last. When Adam and Eve sinned, they came under curses. The man was cursed in his work, so that the work of his hands would not produce order and fruitfulness but rather chaos, represented by thorns, and in this way he would support himself until he returned to the dust in death. The woman was cursed in her role as a mother and wife, bringing chaos and grief into her marriage and parenting relationships. They would then be kicked out of the Temple Garden, so that they were removed from God’s rest; removed both from the sacred space of rest and the Sabbatical experience of life with God. The Fall was an exclusion from God’s Rest and, much like the Israelites many generations later, it happened because of unbelief leading to disobedience.

The Sabbath Day in the OT Law wasn’t just a command, it was a promise. It was not just another one of ten rules, but a mark of the covenant that speaks volumes: God is bringing his people back into his rest. The Sabbath Day was a promise that, in faithful covenant with God, the curse could be reversed. If you didn’t keep the Sabbath Day you were cut off from Israel, not because God is a real stickler for rules, but because disregarding the Sabbath was essentially disregarding the promise of rest; it was essentially an open denial of faith in YHWH.

This is where the Gospel comes in. One way we could explain the Gospel in this theme of rest is that Christ restores us to God’s sacred space and Sabbath rest by experiencing our separation from God and suffering our death on the cross. His resurrection is the reestablishment of Sabbath rest, and next week we will focus more on applying the idea of Sabbath rest to our lives. Suffice it to say for now that when verse 10 tells us that “whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works, as God did from his”, the work that we are resting from is the futile work of fighting against chaos and death in our fallen state. Adam was cursed to work and work and yeild only thorns, barely enough to feed him until his days ended in his return to dust. This is an endless labour that never produces the rest that we seek in our souls. For we who have believed, even today, we have access to that rest through Christ. However, only in part for now. Our experience of Sabbath rest will not be complete until the resurrection.

Conclusion: There Remains a Sabbath

As we’ve seen, several themes throughout the OT converge on this understanding of God’s rest, each one giving a slightly different neuance of perspective on what is really one concept.

The Sabbath Day

Temple

Eden

The Promised Land

The New Heavens and the New Earth

So we see that God’s rest is displayed as a time, a place, a hope, a possession, and even a person. All of these reflect an eschatological reality, a reality of our future in Christ and the state of being in the presence of God through a resurrection in Christ.

But it is also clear that this rest is not completely experienced now. Like most of God’s promises that are realized in Christ, there is an already-not yet aspect, where we do begin to enter that rest but don’t experience its fullness. We still live in a world affected by the curse, which means we will still feel parts of it in our lives. Our labour in this world will often be in vain. Family relationships will often break down. Although our faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is the key to our participation in God’s Sabbath rest, the world in which we live is far from being a Temple. Chaos and death continue to work around us and even in our own lives, meaning that the secular work we do in this world will mostly come to nothing in the end and our physical bodies will die in this age.

Howevere, this does not mean we do not have God’s Rest right now. Our text promises that there “remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God.” The Rest was not completely fulfilled when Joshua finally did lead God’s people into the land of Canaan. The author points out in verse 8 that God spoke of another day later on, a day which the conquest of Canaan pointed to. The Rest is not expired, it remains open and has ever since that seventh day. Although God did curse Adam and Eve with fruitless labour and denied them entrance into his Temple of life, the cross and Christ’s victory over the grave has restored that to us. For now, we experience this in part, and we can see it. The work we do for the Kingdom of Heaven is not vain, it doesn’t reap thorns that lead us to death. That work, if done in the Spirit, endures forever and is never in vain. The curse of Adam is being undone. Likewise, the church is a family which, though imperfect and incomplete, will endure for eternity with Christ as her head and husband. The curse of Eve is also being undone. And though now we live in a world full of sin and chaos, in the power of Christ we are called to fill this earth with believers awaiting the Temple that is to come, the New Heavens and the New Earth.

With this being our hope, why would we ever risk missing out on it? God’s rest is opened to us in the person and work of Jesus Christ. If we embrace him by faith, if we follow him and love him and his people, we can have confidence that we will have full entrace into that rest that was made for us at the foundation of the world. Are you troubled? Are you weary? Are you worn out in this fruitless world? Look in faith to Christ and enter God’s Sabbath Rest.