Chuck Larsen

Jesus sympathizes with us in our human predicament because he was fully human yet without sin. He knows the draw of the pride of life, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes. He was tempted in all of these areas yet He remained without sin. He knows the full force of temptation which none of us ever feel. I think it was C.S. Lewis who said: you don’t feel the full force of the wind by turning your back to it, you only feel it when you face it head on. Jesus faced our situation fully head on. I think this is the main point of the next verse. Hebrews 4:15 says, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.”

Adam didn’t feel the force. Abraham didn’t feel the force. Noah didn’t feel the force, Moses didn’t feel the force! Aaron, the priest, didn’t feel the full force of the wind. Jesus is the only one who faced the wind head on and never flinched. We have all flinched. But the point of this verse is that Jesus knows our pain. He isn’t a god who is far off like the gods of Greece and Rome. He is a loving God, who cares so much about us that he feels our pains along with us. According to the Oxford Companion to Music, “If two tuning–forks of the same pitch be placed in position for sounding and one of them be set in vibration, the other will take up the vibrations sympathetically; the first fork is then a generator of sound and the second a resonator.” Hughes quotes this and adds, “His instrument, so to speak, was the same as ours. It is a fact that if you have two pianos in the same room and a note is struck on one, the same note will gently respond on the other, though not touched by another’s hand. This is called ‘sympathetic resonance.’ Christ’s instrument was just like ours in every way. And hear this! He took that instrument, that body, to Heaven with him. It is his priestly body. And when a chord is struck in the weakness of our human instrument, it resonates in his!^[1]

The Law written on stone tablets gives no mercy and has no grace. It is inscribed on stone and can’t be changed. The religious leaders and Judaizers that caused Jesus such trouble, and trouble for Paul and others who put Jesus above all such things, had no sympathy for the hurting. Jesus healed a man blind from birth. The religious leaders accused him of violating the Sabbath. They had no concern for the life-long pain of the healed. Jesus brought Lazarus back from the dead and the religious leaders wanted them both executed for some violation of their laws. They had no compassion or sympathy for them. Moses, his law, the priesthood, and even the Temple itself, cannot feel you! It demands that we be stoned to death for our adulteries. It calls for blood! Jesus is so much more important than everything else! He poured out His blood for you and me.

^[1] R. Kent Hughes, Hebrews: An Anchor for the Soul, vol. 1, Preaching the Word (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1993), 130.

The Bible, including the New Testament, is full of various exhortations. Many of them are connected to other ideas which must not be dismissed when trying to understand what we’re exhorted to do. In Hebrews 4:1-10, we’ve seen how “God’s rest” is still available for us to enter. It’s not the departure from Egypt that the writer is addressing or the rest Joshua would bring when they entered the Promised Land, but it was Jesus’ rest. It was a more profound kind of rest. It was rest for our souls. The writer compared it to creation rest. After six days of creation God stopped or ceased. The Sabbath (see Exodus 20 devotions) is a time to cease from all our works and focus on the finished work of God. Those who have entered into Jesus’ rest have ceased from their own works just as God has ceased from His on the seventh day. The Israelites were exhorted to stop working and focus on the work that had been completed for them. The same is true for us today. The rest for us is on the Lord’s day. It’s the day we focus all our attention on the work that Jesus completed for us and which He personally proclaimed as “finished” on the cross.

Based on all this discussion, the writer then exhorts his readers in Hebrews 4:11 saying “Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.” This exhortation is just like the fourth commandment to keep the Sabbath day holy. How do you keep it holy? “You cease from all your works.” It’s an exhortation alright, but it’s an exhortation to “stop working” and “rest” in the finished work of Christ. Trusting in the complete sufficiency of Christ is not easy. We live in a world of sowing and reaping and it’s nearly impossible in many cases to stop relying on ourselves and our own efforts and simply trust Jesus. I like the brief comment by another commentator: “We must enter that rest. Clearly, the rest is entered by faith; but it takes diligent faith. This shows us that faith is not passive; it takes diligence to trust in, rely on, and cling to Jesus and His work for us.”^[1]

When the writer mentions “the same sort of disobedience” he’s referring to those at Kadesh Barnea who, instead of trusting in God and His promises, looked to themselves and their own abilities. Disobedience in this case is “unbelief” as the author mentioned earlier. The exhortation is to trust God and His work and not follow the example of those in the wilderness. The Handbook for Translators explains this Greek word for disobedience. It says, “The Greek word means ‘example,’ …it should be made clear that a bad example is meant.”^[2] The point of verse 11’s exhortation is to rest confidently in God’s work. It’s not an exhortation to try harder to be a better person, or do more, or give more, or serve more. Another commentator says, “…although we live in one of the most hurried, tense, tumultuous societies that has ever existed, we can experience His perfect rest by maintaining and cultivating our relationship with Him. But we must take time out from our own busy lives to do that.”^[3] If we’re ever going to experience Jesus’ rest we have to stop relying on ourselves and fully trust Him.

^[1] David Guzik, Hebrews, David Guzik’s Commentaries on the Bible (Santa Barbara, CA: David Guzik, 2013), Heb 4:11.

^[2] Paul Ellingworth and Eugene Albert Nida, A Handbook on the Letter to the Hebrews, UBS Handbook Series (New York: United Bible Societies, 1994), 82–83.

^[3] J. Dwight Pentecost and Ken Durham, Faith That Endures : A Practical Commentary on the Book of Hebrews, Rev. ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 2000), 84.

I’m of the opinion that the writer of Hebrews is careful with his language with regard to how he addresses his readers. He wants them to be clear on the fact that he’s talking to believers here. He has referred to them as brothers and sisters earlier and included them with himself in those anticipating their heavenly homes. In Hebrews 4:8-10, he refers to his readers as “the people of God.” He writes, “For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on. So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his.”

The translator’s handbook makes this passage a little easier for us. It says, “If the noun rest is rendered as a verb, ‘to rest,’ then that God had promised may be translated as ‘in the way in which God had promised them.’”^[1] God had “rest” in mind for His people but it wasn’t the kind of rest they would experience by just sitting down and wiping the sweat from their foreheads. God promised them something much more significant. It would be of a more permanent nature and would be a “rest for our souls.” It was a rest that wasn’t based on what we could earn or deserve. It was a rest based on a finished work of God. It was a true rest from the demands of our lives in a fallen world where sowing and reaping is the rule. It is a rest from all our “falling short.” It’s a rest from all our “failure to measure up.” It’s a rest from all the religious demands and expectations. It’s a true deliverance from the heavy burdens of life and religion that always leave us stressed out wondering if we’ve been good enough. It’s rest from those nagging reminders that we always could have done more!

“God’s rest” is the rest that Jesus calls us to. It’s Jesus’ rest. It’s a rest from the stress and strife of trying to measure up because through our faith in Christ, we know He has measured up to God’s standards for us. He came not to destroy the laws of sowing and reaping or to eliminate the laws of good and evil, but He came to completely satisfy them on our behalf. I don’t measure up. You don’t measure up. Nobody measures up! The writer of Hebrews is well aware of the fact that his readers believe that Jesus opened the door for them and welcomed them into the household of the people of God but they are insisting that to stay in that room, one must keep another list of religious obligations and expectations. There’s no rest in that room. Our eyes are on Jesus until we enter the room and then we must take them off of Him and put them on ourselves again. Once again, we’re trusting in our own works and not in the finished work of Jesus. The only way to enjoy God’s rest in Jesus Christ, is to trust completely in His work realizing it’s so complete, we can add nothing to it! There’s the rest Jesus calls us to.

^[1] Paul Ellingworth and Eugene Albert Nida, A Handbook on the Letter to the Hebrews, UBS Handbook Series (New York: United Bible Societies, 1994), 79.