Daily Meditations

Hebrews 4:3 It's time to enter His rest This verse is, at first, a confusing read. We need to turn it upside down and start at the end, where the author makes the point that God stopped working on the seventh day of creation and He had nothing to add to all that has been made. It is complete, it is finished, it is a reality. In the same way, when Jesus finished His work at the cross, He was able to cry out, “ It is finished.”  The work of salvation was completed and now He could rest.  God’s work of delivering the Hebrew slaves from their captivity and bringing them miraculously to the boundaries of the Promised Land had been accomplished in a very short time. He had used that time to meet with them on Mount Sinai and deliver the Torah so that they had everything they needed to live in His rest when the land was subdued. Here was the fulfilment of all their wildest dreams! God could rest now that they had arrived, but these foolish people dug in their heels and refused to ente...

Hebrews 4:2 True faith = obedience It seems that it is possible to take the “good news” too lightly and to fail to recognise its significance and its dramatic and life-changing implications. Certainly, a large number of Israelites did this and were foolish enough to rebel and disobey the Lord’s commands. As a consequence, they were unable to enter the Land of Promise and to enjoy the prospect of being at rest. The good news they heard and experienced was deliverance from slavery in Egypt and that their wilderness wanderings would eventually bring them to the boundaries of Canaan, the land promised to their ancestors and that was waiting to be claimed. The Lord God had promised them this inheritance, it was theirs! Forever! What extraordinary and exciting news, this was the stuff of dreams, this was the Lord at His most bountiful, this was what the patriarchs had longed for, and the Egyptian slaves had died for. But, as this verse tells us, the message of hope was lost on these people, ...

Hebrews 4:1 The promise of entering His rest still stands. We haven’t finished with the subject of God’s rest and how we, as His people, enter in and benefit from it. Moses had a tent that was pitched outside the camp of the Israelites and there he would go, with Joshua, to meet face to face with the Lord. On one occasion the Lord said to Moses, “ My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”  Exodus 33:14. On another occasion, whilst preparing Moses and the people for their crossing into Canaan, the Lord instructed him that all able-bodied men must be armed and ready to go and fight but their wives and children should remain behind in the fortified towns that the Lord had given to them. This arrangement was to stay in place until the Lord gave His people “rest.” Deut 3:18-20. God also promised King David “ rest from all his enemies.”  2 Samuel 7:11. It is clear from these passages that the troubled, battling nation of Israel would experience times of great upheaval...

Hebrews 3:19 Unbelief keeps us out! We’ve tried in recent verses, to understand the purposes of God behind the central teaching of these chapters, that it is possible to be delivered from bondage but to still live outside of God’s rest. We have seen that the three reasons why a generation of Israelites “missed out” is because of rebellion, sin and unbelief. It seems a travesty that these ex-slaves, who cried out for God’s mercy were unable to benefit from the fulness of His provision. They never made it to the Promised Land. We’ve also drawn parallels with our own spiritual status, for the author of Hebrews is clear that we too may be in danger of missing out on the delights of the Promised Land! All sorts of “salvation theologies” have been proffered over the centuries, from those who adamantly insist that it is possible for believers to lose their salvation, to those who are equally adamant that “once saved, always saved.” What can we add to this debate? Firstly, it is not up to us t...

Hebrews 3:18 Disobedience cannot be rewarded We are still trying to understand what was exactly in the author’s mind as he penned these unique words at the opening of his epistle. What is the “rest” he talks about? Who exactly is it who misses out on that promised rest? As we have seen, all the Hebrew slaves were delivered from Egypt and entered miraculously into the wilderness under the leadership of Moses and Aaron. But, only a very small number actually made it to the Promised Land, the rest wandered for 40 years, or for a lifetime, until they had all passed away.  The Promised Land was never a place of restful ease, it was a land that had to be conquered. Enemies had to be driven out. Giants had to be killed. A desert wasteland had to be tamed and made fertile. Towns, villages and cities had to be built. We might argue that Canaan was anything but a land of rest! However eventually, a large area was tamed, and the people gradually entered a place and time of peace and prosperit...

Hebrews 3:17 Who is God angry with? The argument that we can never lose our salvation seems to be under close scrutiny here in these verses. There is no question that the Lord God saved a vast number of Hebrew slaves from the tyranny of Egypt and that He led them through the Red Sea into the wilderness. The entire company, all its families, tribes and people assembled at Mount Sinai where they clearly saw God’s presence and received the Law in all its detail. Those same people then came within spitting distance of the Promised Land, but they never entered in! The reasons are multiple; from the human point of view, they rebelled (v16), they sinned (v17) and they disobeyed the Lord (v18). From God’s point of view, they prompted divine anger (v17) and caused Him to swear that these people would never enter His rest. A whole generation died before access was granted to Canaan and only Caleb and Joshua survived the 40 years of wilderness wandering. The majority of these people died as free ...