Three possible interpretations of Psalm 95:11 prepare us for understanding the discussion in Hebrews 3:7ff regarding the generation in the wilderness that did not enter into God’s rest. An important preface to the Sabbath discussion of Hebrews 4.
-D. Thomas Lancaster
Sermon Ten: Enter My Rest
Originally presented on March 9, 2013
from the Holy Epistle to the Hebrews sermon series
This lesson covers all of Hebrews 3 and most of Hebrews 4, but it all hinges on an understanding of Psalm 95:
O come, let us sing to the Lord;
let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation!
Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving;
let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise!
For the Lord is a great God,
and a great King above all gods.
In his hand are the depths of the earth;
the heights of the mountains are his also.
The sea is his, for he made it,
and the dry land, which his hands have formed.
O come, let us worship and bow down,
let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker!
For he is our God,
and we are the people of his pasture,
and the sheep of his hand.
O that today you would listen to his voice!
Do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah,
as on the day at Massah in the wilderness,
when your ancestors tested me,
and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work.
For forty years I loathed that generation
and said, “They are a people whose hearts go astray,
and they do not regard my ways.”
Therefore in my anger I swore,
“They shall not enter my rest.”–Psalm 95 (NRSV)
There are three possible ways of looking at this Psalm that affect today’s study. But before getting into that, we need to ask, what is “God’s rest?”
Lancaster took his audience through a quick Hebrew language lesson. The word “Shabbat” is based on the Hebrew verb “Shavat” which means “to rest.” But that’s not the word used in Psalm 95:11. Lancaster says it’s the Hebrew word “Minuchah” (noun) which is also based on a Hebrew verb for “to rest.” Lancaster cited another reference to the Shabbat in verse 7: “O that today you would listen to his voice.” In this context, “today” is a Hebrew idiom for Shabbat . Also, to “listen,” or more accurately rendered “to hear,” is idiomatic for “hear and obey,” and is better rendered in English as “to heed.”
So it sounds like those who did not “heed” (hear and obey) God’s voice will not enter His rest, which we could interpret as Shabbat. But who are we talking about?
How long shall this wicked congregation complain against me? I have heard the complaints of the Israelites, which they complain against me. Say to them, “As I live,” says the Lord, “I will do to you the very things I heard you say: your dead bodies shall fall in this very wilderness; and of all your number, included in the census, from twenty years old and upward, who have complained against me, not one of you shall come into the land in which I swore to settle you, except Caleb son of Jephunneh and Joshua son of Nun. But your little ones, who you said would become booty, I will bring in, and they shall know the land that you have despised. But as for you, your dead bodies shall fall in this wilderness. And your children shall be shepherds in the wilderness for forty years, and shall suffer for your faithlessness, until the last of your dead bodies lies in the wilderness. According to the number of the days in which you spied out the land, forty days, for every day a year, you shall bear your iniquity, forty years, and you shall know my displeasure.” I the Lord have spoken; surely I will do thus to all this wicked congregation gathered together against me: in this wilderness they shall come to a full end, and there they shall die.
–Numbers 14:27-35 (NRSV)
Because of the faithlessness of the Israelites, because they failed to hear and obey God and fulfill the promises made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to enter and take the Land (all except Joshua and Caleb who desired to do so), they shall not enter God’s rest. This generation of Israelites, the ones directly redeemed from slavery in Egypt, would die in the desert and not enter.
Not enter what?
The first interpretation says they would not enter the Shabbat, but that’s ridiculous because they kept the Shabbat for the entire forty years they lived in the desert.
The second interpretation seems to make more sense. They did not enter the Land of Israel. Is that correct, though? I suppose it is literally, but could something else be going on?
Lancaster relates that according to Rabbi Akiva inTractate Sanhedrin, the generation in the wilderness would not enter the age to come. Now this gets a little confusing as sometimes this means the Messianic Age and on other occasions, it means everlasting life or eternity. Is Akiva saying the generation in the desert, to put it in Christian terms, are “damned?” Rabbi Yochanan disagrees and says that they will enter the world to come, that is, eternity, and offers accompanying proof texts.
Let’s get back to the word “Minuchah”. What does it mean? What can it mean? It can mean “rest” or “resting place”. After the Torah service, when the Torah scroll is returned to the ark, the ark is referred to as God’s resting place. One interpretation of Isaiah 66 is that God’s resting place can be the Temple or even Israel in the Messianic Kingdom.
So we have three possibilities. God’s rest or resting place is:
- Shabbat
- Israel
- The Messianic Kingdom
To find the correct interpretation for our study of Hebrews, we have to ask the Apostles or at least the writer of the epistle to the Hebrews. Starting in Hebrews 3:7, it says “according to the Holy Spirit,” implying that David, who wrote Psalm 95, was inspired by the Spirit. Verses 7 thought 11 quotes Psalm 95. Then, the letter writer states:
Take care, brothers and sisters, that none of you may have an evil, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” so that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have become partners of Christ, if only we hold our first confidence firm to the end.
–Hebrews 3:12-14 (NRSV)
The writer of Hebrews is comparing the situation of his audience, who are suffering from a profound crisis of faith at losing access to the Temple (or at least potentially so) to the generation in the wilderness who lost faith and failed to obey God. Whatever fate the generation in the wilderness suffered for faithlessness, if the readers of Hebrews also loses faith and becomes disobedient, that consequence will be theirs, too.
So what would they lose? Shabbat observance? Unlikely. The Land of Israel? They, according to Lancaster, were living in Israel and since Lancaster dates the letter at about 63 CE, before the destruction of the Temple and the great exile, he doesn’t believe the writer or readers of Hebrews suspected any of that was coming. Entry into the Messianic Era seems to be the correct interpretation and what Lancaster is saying is that, just as the generation in the desert lost their place in the coming age of Messiah (which doesn’t mean they lost eternal life in the age to come, necessarily) for their faithlessness, if the readers of Hebrews continue on their path of faithlessness, they too will lose their place in the Age and Kingdom of Messiah when he returns.
So the letter functions both as an encouragement and a cautionary tale.
Therefore, while the promise of entering his rest is still open, let us take care that none of you should seem to have failed to reach it.
–Hebrews 4:1 (NRSV)
There’s still time. This could go either way. If the readers of the letter choose to emulate the faith of Joshua and Caleb, who did merit to enter Israel and also a place in the Messianic Kingdom, then they too will share in that promise. However, if they should be like the faithless generation who died in the desert and lost entry into the Messianic Age, this too will be their consequence.
Oh, in verse 2, when the text says, “good news came to us just as to them,” that doesn’t mean Moses preached the Gospel of Jesus to the ancient Israelites, but rather the “good news” for the ancient Israelites is that the promise made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was at hand, the promise of taking the Land for their own possession. Just “go get it.” The good news for the readers of Hebrews and for the rest of us is much more than personal salvation and eternal life, it is to enter the Messianic Kingdom by the merit of the Master, Yeshua.
Lancaster throws a monkey wrench into his well-oiled machine when verses 4 and 5 mention the “seventh day” again. So does this mean we are talking about Shabbat after all and not the Messianic Kingdom? Verses 7 and 8 also mention “today,” which as was mentioned above, is idiomatic for Shabbat.
However there is this:
For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not speak later about another day. So then, a sabbath rest still remains for the people of God
–Hebrews 4:8-9 (NRSV)
So entering Israel isn’t “the rest” and losing Israel though exile isn’t losing the rest. What is that rest, then? Lancaster ends today’s sermon with that question. Come back next week when we all hope he can pull an answer out of this “cliffhanger.”
What Did I Learn?
Let’s revisit a few verses:
For we who have believed enter that rest, just as God has said,
“As in my anger I swore,
‘They shall not enter my rest,’”
though his works were finished at the foundation of the world.–Hebrews 4:3-4 (NRSV)
A Kingdom that was already established since the foundation of the world and is not here yet should remind you of Lancaster’s sermon on Partisans which I reviewed a couple of weeks ago. It also reminded me of Brad Young’s book The Jewish Foundation to the Lord’s Prayer which I reviewed last week. The Kingdom of God or the Messianic Kingdom, according to Young, is something each of us, as believers, makes up, as if we are individual bricks being used to construct that Kingdom. All together, we are the Kingdom, and every time someone comes to faith, they are added to the overall structure. But to lose faith and abandon the Master is to remove ourselves from the structure and we lose being part of the Kingdom. I think that could be what the writer of the epistle to the Hebrews is saying. Perhaps this is also what the generation in the desert lost through faithlessness.
One of the greatest continual debates in Christianity is whether or not a believer can lose salvation. Rabbi Akiva said that the faithless Israelites did lose their place in the world to come (eternity) but Rabbi Yochanan disagreed. Perhaps they did lose their participation in the Kingdom of Heaven, but this is different from eternity. A great mystery how this would work, I must admit. And here we are sitting on the edge of Lancaster’s cliff, hanging around, so to speak.
May next week bring and answer and more illumination in this fresh perspective on Hebrews.
Oh, I just want to remind you to actually listen to the forty minute sermon (the link is at the top). I didn’t write down everything Lancaster taught.
Morning Meditations 
Kingdom of Heaven versus eternity?
If one doesn’t make it to the Kingdom of Heaven because of faithlessness why would one be able to enter eternity because of faithlessness?
Interesting question, Macher, particularly about the notion of “entering eternity”. What I find so interesting is your suggested implication that it might be conditioned by faithfulness. You see, everyone enters eternity. Everyone will be required to exit this life and face HaShem and His anointed king for judgment, when “scrolls will be opened” to review the records of each individual’s case. Some will depart into everlasting darkness and regret (and how’s about a little fire, scarecrow?). That sounds pretty much like an eternity to me. So the issue isn’t about entering eternity; it is about the subsequent conditions of existence within it. The much more pleasant conditions of the World to Come or the Kingdom of Heaven are another matter. Of course, there are some other fine details to consider, having to do with time dilation and temporal mechanics associated with the first resurrection and rapture, the thousand-year (millennial) messianic kingdom centered on earth in Jerusalem and known also as the kingdom of heaven, and the second resurrection (i.e., the really unpleasant one) after that thousand years is completed. After all that we see a lot of nasty things destroyed in a fiery lake, and then the old heavens and earth finally reach the end of their obsolescence period and are replaced with a new (renewed?) heavens and earth, presumably placing the survivors into a new Edenic garden to walk with HaShem in the cooling of the day as He had intended to continue doing with the original progenitors of the Adamic family. I suppose we might consider that yet another expression of the heavenly kingdom on earth, as well as fitting the description of a “rest” or Shabbat or cessation from all that went before it; and Yohanan’s vision doesn’t take us any farther than this brief glimpse of it, so we can’t say if this version is intended to last for all the remainder of eternity or if HaShem has more surprises in store for us. Nonetheless, it seems that if all the old stuff passed away, then the unpleasant eternity mentioned above must have been somehow compressed into a much shorter finite period as seen by folks outside of it, though that would serve no comfort to those experiencing an unpleasant eternity inside its own spacetime framework. Sometimes science fiction comes in handy to provide models of how certain scriptural notions could work, when on the surface there might appear to be conflicting reports about the flow of events.
However, all of this musing is predicated on the recognition that it would be a mistake to confuse the notion of the kingdom of heaven with eternity as if they were the same thing.
This is where I’m a little fuzzy on exactly the picture Lancaster and FFOZ are presenting.
PL said “Some will depart into everlasting darkness and regret (and how’s about a little fire, scarecrow?). ”
Makes sense eternity isn’t necessarily a good thing, can be eternity spent in everlasting darkness.
PL said “Everyone will be required to exit this life and face HaShem and His anointed king for judgment, when “scrolls will be opened” to review the records of each individual’s case.”
I’m also thinking if one is ‘in’ Messiah they won’t be judged to everlasting darkness but will be judged according to their works and will be greatest or least or in between in the Kingdom of Heaven.
Most Christians say ‘when I die I’m going to Heaven’ which is somewhat true however most Christians don’t believe that we will be judged according to our deeds/works which doesn’t mean everlasting darkness.
In other words one might be sweeping the floors in the kingdom or cleaning the toilets which might not be a desirable reward but the person is still in the Kingdom. Just a allagory per se 🙂