Enter Sabbath Rest Today—Hebrews 4 | 42

Colleen and Nikki continue their discussion through the book of Hebrews. Did you know that you can experience Sabbath rest today? Podcast was published May 12, 2020. Transcription by Gwen Billington.

 

Colleen:  Welcome to Former Adventist podcast.  I’m Colleen Tinker.

Nikki:  And I’m Nikki Stevenson.

Colleen:  We’re happy to be with you again today as we walk through looking at the New Covenant through the lens of Hebrews.  And once again, we’re doing this because understanding who Jesus is, what He did in relationship to the Old Covenant, is the key to understanding how the New Covenant works and what we do with all the pieces of it that we were taught carried over, like the Ten Commandments and especially the Sabbath.  The chapter that we’re looking at today, Hebrews 4, is at the heart of the Sabbath arguments.  But before we dive into that, I just want to say if any of you want to contact us, have questions, make comments, you can write to us at formeradventist@gmail.com.  You can subscribe to Proclamation! magazine and to our weekly emails by going to proclamationmagazine.com.  Also, if you want to donate to Life Assurance Ministries to help keep this podcast and our emails and our magazine going, you may do that at proclamationmagazine.com.  And don’t forget to subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and follow us on Facebook and Instagram.  We’re really happy to be here again today, and Nikki, before we start looking directly at Hebrews 4, I just have a question for you.  Did you ever read Hebrews 4 as an Adventist?  [Laughter.]

Nikki:  [Laughter.]  Um, not awake.

Colleen:  [Laughter.]

Nikki:  You know, I know I had to read it in class.  When I did my New Testament Studies class at La Sierra University, we had to read it, but I’m certain I must have zoned out because I never saw it until I read it as a born-again Christian.

Colleen:  Well, it actually is massively confusing if we don’t already have an idea of who Jesus is and what He did.  And once again, let me just say it makes me so angry when I think how Adventists use the Book of Hebrews to support their sanctuary doctrine when it actually systematically takes it apart and disposes of it.

Nikki:  Yeah.

Colleen:  And Hebrews 4 is at the heart of that.  Adventists actually use Hebrews 4 to say that a seventh-day Sabbath continues.  It’s anything but that.  Hebrews 4 is the opposite of that.  It says it’s not the seventh day.  Why don’t we just dive into Hebrews 4 and start reading some verses and talking about what they’re actually saying.  I find this to be an amazing passage that actually made me quite emotional as I studied to do this podcast.  So Nikki, how do you feel about reading chapter 4 verses 1 through 6 to start.

Nikki:  Okay.  “Therefore, while the promise of entering His rest still stands, let us fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it.  For good news came to us just as to them, but the message they heard did not benefit them, because they were not united by faith with those who listened.  For we who have believed enter that rest, as He has said, ‘As I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter my rest,’ although His works were finished from the foundation of the world.  For He has somewhere spoken of the seventh day in this way: ‘And God rested on the seventh day from all His works.’  And again in this passage He said, ‘They shall not enter my rest.’  Since therefore it remains for some to enter it, and those who formerly received the good news failed to enter because of disobedience, again He appoints a certain day, ‘Today,’ saying through David so long afterward, in the words already quoted, ‘Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts.'”

Colleen:  I admit that for a long time this passage seemed vaguely obscure.  I wasn’t completely sure how to unpack it.  But let’s just – before we start looking at it verse by verse, let’s just remember where we came from.  When he says “therefore” at the beginning, he’s referring to what they’ve just discussed in chapter 3.  How would you summarize where we left off in chapter 3, for him to say “therefore?”  What’s that in reference to?

Nikki:  Well, he had just gone through and explained the Israelites had been disobedient in the wilderness, when God sent them to spy out the land, and they stayed there for 40 days.  They spied it out.  They came back, and they said, “No, we can’t take this land.”

Colleen:  Um-hmm.

Nikki:  Even though God sent them to take the land.  And so they were disobedient.  They didn’t believe God, that He would be able to handle this for them, and God was angry with them for their disobedience, for their disbelief.  I mean, they’re one and the same.  When he’s talking in chapters 3 and 4 about disobedience, it’s about unbelief.

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:  So He swore in His wrath that they would not enter His rest, and they wandered around that desert for one year for every day they had been in the land that they were spying out, and they didn’t enter that rest.  They died in the desert, and the next generation came in.  So when we get to “therefore,” it’s referring to Israel not entering His rest because of unbelief, and he’s going to go on to say that there is still a promise of entering His rest.

Colleen:  This whole chapter is the chapter where he explains what it means to enter God’s rest.  It’s a profound and big thing, and it’s not the seventh-day Sabbath.

Nikki:  I remember reading this for the first time and realizing that this cannot be talking about the fourth commandment sabbath-keeping because the Jews, even though they were wandering around in the desert and they weren’t able to go into the land, they were still keeping the seventh-day Sabbath or they were stoned for it – right? – if they didn’t.

Colleen:  Right.

Nikki:  They were keeping that fourth commandment and yet they weren’t entering the rest that this section is talking about.  It’s not the same thing.

Colleen:  One more thing about them wandering around in the wilderness and keeping the Sabbath, we also know that they were getting the manna, and it wasn’t falling on Sabbath.  Whether they were remembering every detail of sabbath-keeping or not, God was making sure that the parameters were around them.  They had to collect on Friday, they couldn’t collect on Sabbath, so whatever else might have been going on, they were still keeping the Sabbath.

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  They were observing the day.

Nikki:  And keeping the day does not cause you to enter God’s rest.

Colleen:  Well said.  So in 4:1, where he says, “Therefore, let us fear.”  Now, who’s he talking to, “let us fear”?  In this context of Hebrews, the author is talking to the name of the book, actually.

Nikki:  He’s written to a Hebrew church.

Colleen:  He has.  He’s writing to Jewish believers who know the law.  That’s why the book is called “Hebrews.”  So he’s saying, “Let us fear”  – the believing Jews that he’s writing to – “while a promise remains of entering His rest, any of you may seem to have come short of it.”  He’s doing a contrast here, a comparison and contrast.  He’s saying, “If ancient Israel failed to enter His rest, even though they had the Sabbath and had the law, we need to be really aware that on this side of the cross we can also fail to enter His rest.”  He’s essentially building the case that it’s far more serious to miss what we have with Jesus’ finished work than it even was to miss what was given in the law.  That’s where he’s going with this.

Nikki:  If I could point out something that I had to work through as I read through Hebrews.  Understanding that this author is writing to a church that consists of various kinds of believers, various people in their walk, and some of them, of course, are going to be born again if they’re true believers, but there are going to be others in the congregation who maybe haven’t quite come to that saving faith yet, which is why there would be an admonishment to strive to enter, because I think if the assumption is that everyone there is born again, this becomes a difficult passage for those who also see the security of the believer.  So I had to learn how to really comprehend the audience as a body of believers who are gathering but not necessarily all born again, and you don’t see these kind of admonishing – when Paul writes to Timothy, he’s not saying “Don’t fail to believe,” because he knows Timothy’s a born-again brother who’s been entrusted with the work of God.

Colleen:  That’s a really good point, Nikki.  This is not a warning to people who have been born again that they might lose their salvation.  This is saying, “I know there are people in the congregation who might not have placed their full faith in Jesus, and we need to be aware that, just like Israel of old, we can go through the motions without truly believing.”  And you know, in any given congregation there are both born-again believers and those who are attracted to the message and attracted to the culture, but not necessarily born again, placing all their faith in Jesus, and this is just a call to those people, “Be sure you trust Jesus.”  In fact, that’s why at the end of every podcast we ask our listeners, if they haven’t really done that, to really seriously bow the knee before the Lord Jesus, admit our sins, and accept Him and trust His finished work.  This book is telling us that belief is the one thing our eternal security depends on.  So he moves on to verse 2, where he says, “We have had good news preached to us, just as they did, but the word they heard did not profit them because it was not united by faith in those who heard.”  What’s the good news we have had preached?  On this side of the cross, what’s he referring to?

Nikki:  Well, that’s the gospel, and Hebrews chapter 1 and 2 just outlined that Christ is the God-man who’s the founder of our salvation, that He’s brought many sons to glory, that we’re sanctified through Him, we have one Father, we share in a heavenly calling, and the Holy Spirit offers us rest through belief.  I mean, that’s our good news.

Colleen:  Yes.  And the good news in the Old Testament wasn’t a completely revealed gospel, but it was filled with God’s promises.  They had God’s promises to Abraham.  They had God’s promises through the law and the prophets that a Messiah would come and that God would be faithful to His people.  So when he says, “We have had the good news preached to us just as they did,” it’s different in its revelation between the Old and the New Testaments, but the bottom line is it’s God’s word.  We’ve all had God’s word, and they in the Old Testament, the ones that were described in chapter 3, they did not believe.  They had the law, they had the ceremonies, but they did not believe, and he’s saying, “We need to be sure we’re believing.  We can’t take it for granted that the gospel is the gospel.”

Nikki: Both groups heard directly from God.

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:  That group in the desert heard from God, they had word from God to go into this land and that He would deliver it to them, and they didn’t believe the word from God.  And now we have word from God about our salvation.

Colleen:  It’s quite overwhelming when you think about how consistently, deliberately, and lovingly the Lord has communicated His purposes and His will and our need of Him and His provision for us.  He has not left us without hope and without a way to know Him.

Nikki:  And He’s made it very clear that He is the one who accomplishes the impossible, be it overcoming the giants in the land or obtaining salvation.  It’s all His work.

Colleen:  So in verse 3, the author goes back again to Psalm 95:11.  Now, he quoted Psalm 95:11 in chapter 3, but here in verse 3 he says…

Nikki:  “For we who have believed enter that rest, as He has said, ‘As I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter my rest,’ although His works were finished from the foundation of the world.”

Colleen:  Well, you know, I just want to go back a little bit and review the Psalm 95:11 context.  Now, Psalm 95 is describing that wilderness generation that you mentioned earlier, Nikki, the ones who were wandering that didn’t believe, and it’s kind of profound because in verse 10 the Psalmist says that for 40 years God loathed them –

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  – and said, “They shall never enter my rest.”  So these unbelieving so-and-so’s, you know, who had been delivered from Egypt and had received the manna and the quail and the water in the desert, they had received God’s provision.  Exodus and Leviticus tell us that their shoes didn’t wear out.  They were completely provided for, and yet they didn’t believe when it came right up to going to take the land, and God punished them for 40 years, making them wander.  So in Psalm 95:11, that’s the context.  He’s talking about these unbelieving people, and even though their children went into the land, He said, “I swore in my wrath, ‘They shall not enter my rest.'”  Well, in context, how did that play out?  How did that generation not enter His rest?  On the surface, what was the visible way they didn’t enter His rest?

Nikki:  Well, that generation didn’t get to go into the land.

Colleen:  On a deeper, more spiritual level, as this whole thing is explaining to us, the rest is even more than the land.  Their unbelief prevented them from entering His true rest.  But they didn’t go into the land.  But now, in this verse, the writer of Hebrews does something really interesting.  He quotes this passage again, “They shall not enter my rest,” but then he deliberately identifies the rest with something other than the land.  He takes us back to Genesis.  He connects the rest that they’re not going to enter with the finished work of God, which was finished from the foundation of the world.  I mean, isn’t that interesting?  He doesn’t even explain it, he just quotes it.  He says they haven’t believed, just as He said, “They shall not enter my rest,” and then he says, although, essentially he says, God’s works were finished from the foundation of the world.  That’s a biggie for Adventists.

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  Talk about how this passage was used in your understanding as an Adventist, Nikki.  How is creation used to support sabbath-keeping.

Nikki:  I was told God gave two things, if I’m remembering correctly, two things in the garden.  He gave the Sabbath, and He gave marriage.  So it was treated as though the Sabbath was a command to humanity that was given – actually, I even heard the word “created,” that He created marriage and the Sabbath.  So it was a command given to us.

Colleen:  And it’s interesting, I think it’s very important to mention I used to hear that word a lot in Adventism, that He created the Sabbath, and like you said, He gave us two creation ordinances, the Sabbath and marriage, but it’s wrong to say He created the Sabbath.  He finished His creation on the sixth day.  He created nothing on the seventh day.  Sabbath was not something created; Sabbath was God’s ceasing His work.  He stopped.  He created nothing.  His work was done.

Nikki:  I just want to point out too the problem with their statement, even within their own paradigm, because you can’t on the one hand say that the Sabbath is eternal and then on the other say it was created, but that’s just a side note.

Colleen:  That’s very important.  [Laughter.]  That’s so true.  That is so true.

Nikki:  [Laughter.]

Colleen:  It’s also interesting that when He created Adam and Eve on the sixth day and ended His creation, they were created into His finished work.  They knew nothing of God’s creation except as God explained it.  They were created into His finished work, so there was nothing created and there’s no command in Genesis for them to keep that day.  God simply ceased.

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  He rested from all His work because His work was done and it was very good.  There was nothing more to add.  It was done.  So that’s what he’s now saying.  The author of Hebrews is saying that rest that Israel failed to enter, he’s now connecting that rest with God’s finished work at creation, so he’s very clearly saying the rest was not the Promised Land, the rest was not even the fourth commandment.  The rest that they did not enter was His finished work, the work of God being done and them resting in God’s finished work.  He goes on with this, and I get a lot of amusement from the way he articulates verse 4.

Nikki:  Me too.  [Laughter.]

Colleen:  Do you want to go through verse 4?

Nikki:  Yeah.  “For he has somewhere spoken of the seventh day in this way:  ‘And God rested on the seventh day from all His works.'”  I love how he doesn’t cite his source.  [Laughter.]

Colleen:  [Laughter.]

Nikki:  This is the foundation of Adventism.

Colleen:  Uh-huh.

Nikki:  This fourth commandment is everything.  It is the idol of the doctrine.  And for a Bible writer to say, “For somewhere he has spoken of.”

Colleen:  Exactly.

Nikki:  That was shocking to me when I read that for the first time.

Colleen:  It was to me too.  Like, really?  Ah, somewhere there’s a reference to Him finishing His work.  It was pretty funny.  It was not the way I was taught to think of it.  And verse 5 goes with it.

Nikki:  “And again in this passage He said, ‘They shall not enter my rest.'”

Colleen:  So here he is again, it’s almost as if he’s holding these two things up in front of his audience and saying, “Look!  These go together.”

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  God finished His work, on the one hand, and on the other hand, they – rebellious Israel – shall not enter my rest because of unbelief.  And he’s going, these go together.  The rest of my finished work and the rest they didn’t enter, that’s the same thing, and they didn’t enter it because they didn’t believe me.

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  It’s not the seventh day.

Nikki:  No.

Colleen:  He’s really, really clear here –

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  – that the rest he’s talking about is God’s finished work.  And then he says, in verse 6…

Nikki:  “Since therefore it remains for some to enter it, and those who formerly received the good news failed to enter because of disobedience, again He appoints a certain day, ‘Today,’ saying through David so long afterward, in the words already quoted, ‘Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts.'”

Colleen:  You know, I think one thing that’s really important to realize is that, as an Adventist, when I thought of Sabbath representing God’s rest, and I did, I mean I heard those words, I heard, “We keep the Sabbath to commemorate and to honor the fact that we’re trusting Jesus, and we enter His rest, and we honor Him.  It’s like a memorial, a memorial to creation, a memorial to our faith in Jesus that we keep the Sabbath.”  But that’s contrary to what this author is arguing.

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  This author is telling us that the rest that Israel failed to enter and the rest that we need to strive to enter is not our rest.  It’s not like a day off, a quiet day where we set aside secular things and contemplate God, a day for family, a day for not doing our homework and letting our work go, a Sabbath from our Internet devices, as I’ve even heard some non-Adventist Sabbatarians say.

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  That’s not what the Sabbath rest is.  The rest of God is God’s own rest that has nothing to do with us.  Hefinished His work, and that’s the rest we are supposed to enter through belief.  It’s not about time.

Nikki:  Uh-uh.

Colleen:  You know, it’s hard even to know how to talk about this with Adventists or with people who are recently out because it’s so ingrained in us.  I’ve heard Adventists say, “God gave us a park in time, every seventh day we have a park in time where we just come apart and rest and relax and enjoy the Lord and enjoy our family.”  Well, I am not saying that’s a bad thing to do, although as a former Adventist I would suggest we do it on a different day than Saturday because Saturday was an idol.  (More about that another time.)  But that’s not what the argument is for Sabbath rest.  That’s not Sabbath rest.

Nikki:  You know what it makes me think of – this might be a strange connection, but the king in Bethel who decided that he wanted to create a place for the people to come and worship there.  You know, they wouldn’t have to travel.  And so there’s all this you might say well-intentioned stuff that he does, holy days and just places of worship.  The intentions may have been pious, it may have been something that he thought was a good thing because it somehow correlates to something else in God’s Word, but it wasn’t what God said.  God said to do it where He said to do it, He said to do what He said to do, and anything else is idolatry, and so we can say, “Oh, look, the word ‘Sabbath’ is in the Bible and God used Sabbath,” and so we can pull from that and we can come up with something, and we can have all these great intentions, and in our hearts we’re honoring God in doing it, but if you’re missing God’s purpose and His teaching, His clear teaching in Scripture, to create something that you’re giving to God, you are completely missing the God of the Bible because He does not need our gifts, He does not need our –

Colleen:  Right.

Nikki:  – our sacrifices or our false piety.  He needs us to understand what He wants us to understand, and we do that by reading His Word in context and honoring it.

Colleen:  That is so true.  And the whole point is Jesus and His finished work.  And God’s finished work.  This passage actually takes apart the argument that God’s rest has anything to do with a day in the New Covenant.

Nikki:  And all of this helps us understand Colossians 2:16.  God’s purpose for the Sabbath was different at different times.  But it was a foreshadowing of something.  And Colossians 2:16 talks about it as being a shadow, but the substance is Christ, and this is where we’re learning how the Sabbath shadow, how the substance of that, is Christ.

Colleen:  Thank you for bringing that up.  That is such an important point.  And then in 6 and 7 the author is arguing that really does still remain a way to enter God’s rest, and here is where he completely takes apart the idea that it’s connected to the seventh day because he’s brought it up, “somewhere it said God rested from His labors on the seventh day, but they will not enter my rest,” and now he’s saying that because Israel failed to enter His rest, and Nikki, like you said earlier, they had the Sabbath commandment, but they were not entering His rest.  He again fixes a certain day, He sets a whole new day for entering God’s rest, and what is it?

Nikki:  Today.

Colleen:  Today!  “Today if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts.”  So what does he say constitutes entering God’s rest?

Nikki:  A soft, believing heart.

Colleen:  When we hear the truth of the gospel and believe, we enter His rest, and that can happen at any moment.  One thing that’s so significant about this to me, look at who he says is giving us this new day.  Who is revealing to Israel that there is a new day for entering God’s rest besides the seventh day?  Who says that?

Nikki:  It’s God.

Colleen:  And God says it to what writer?

Nikki:  Oh, He said it through David.

Colleen:  Now, isn’t that interesting?  David, the psalmist, David, the one who was the father of Jesus, the one on the eternal throne, on whose throne Jesus came to sit, the one who foreshadowed Jesus, a type of Christ, it’s David who articulates to Israel that there’s a new day besides Sabbath for entering God’s rest.  Now, this is still Old Covenant, but he’s very clear that the seventh day is not the way we enter His rest.  The seventh day is the seal; it’s the sign of the Old Covenant.  It does not undo that.  Israel had to keep the Sabbath, but it was always a shadow of something more, of something other than a day, and David says, “Today if you hear His voice, don’t harden your hearts.”  Nikki, would you talk to us about that interesting comparison between the way this verse is used in Hebrews 3 and who’s attributed with saying it, and this one here in Hebrews 4?

Nikki:  Yeah.  In Hebrews 3:7, right before this passage is quoted, it says, “Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says,” so the Holy Spirit is attributed with those very words, and then over here in Hebrews 4 it says He was saying this through David.  This right here is, I think, a great example of the inerrancy of Scripture and the fact that it is inspired by God, word for word.  It’s trustworthy.

Colleen:  The Holy Spirit says, David says, same words, same passage.  We get a very clear picture of how this has worked.  And you know, there is something mysterious and not completely revealed to us about how God speaks through the Bible writers.  It’s as mysterious as the hypostatic union of the divine and human in the Lord Jesus, but we cannot ever say the Bible is just the words of men or it’s just men putting down their thoughts that God inspired them to think.  These are the words of God.  These two verses show that.  So then in verse 8 we come full circle, back from David setting a new day to going back to those Israelites, the generation that actually did enter the land, and what does he say in verse 8?

Nikki:  “For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on.”

Colleen:  So Joshua takes not the generation that wandered 40 years and died in the wilderness, but their children, the second generation, he takes them into the land.  They do inherit the Promised Land, but it says even that did not give them rest.

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  If it had, God wouldn’t have spoken of another day later, and that comes right back to David saying, “There’s a new day:  Today.”  That’s the proof that the Sabbath, the keeping of the Sabbath and the entering of Canaan, did not constitute entering God’s rest.  It has to do with not hardening your heart when you hear God speak the truth.  And then verse 9, the verse that Adventists have argued and written books about to try to make it say this is about the seventh-day Sabbath.  What does verse 9 say?

Nikki:  “So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God.”  [Laughter.] 

Colleen:  [Laughter.]  You want to talk about this verse, Nikki?

Nikki:  Well, it’s a great verse when you understand what it’s saying, but it’s a very frustrating one to hear Adventists quote when they try to tell you, “Oh, we’re supposed to keep the Sabbath.  ‘There remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God.'”  And you want to say, “Have you read Hebrews?”  It’s a very frustrating thing.

Colleen:  One of the things that’s helpful for me when I heard this was that the Greek word underlying Sabbath rest here is a singular use of a Greek word “sabbatismos.”  That word, “sabbatismos,” does not mean sabbath-keeping, it does not mean seventh-day Sabbath.  It means a sabbath-like rest or sabbathing.  And on the basis of the first eight verses of this chapter, this cannot be referring to keeping the seventh-day Sabbath because the author has just taken apart – verse-by-verse, Old Testament reference by Old Testament reference, he has taken apart the argument that Sabbath rest has anything to do with keeping the law or entering the Promised Land.  It has everything to do with believing God when you hear His voice today.  And verse 10 confirms that.

Nikki:  “For whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from His.”

Colleen:  So what are the works that we rest from when we enter His rest?  Do you want to talk about how you understand that verse, Nikki?

Nikki:  The Israelites were told that if they were faithful to keep all of the commandments in the Decalogue, all of the Mosaic Law, that that would be their righteousness, and in the New Covenant we are told that Christ is our righteousness, and so when we cease from our striving after righteousness on the basis of our own works and we have faith in Christ’s finished work, we then enter into His rest.

Colleen:  And even the Israelites could not be saved without faith.  Abraham was the model of that.  He is the father of the faithful, both Jew and Gentile.  We learn from this passage that even if the Israelites kept, externally at least, all the laws, that would not be enough to cause them to enter God’s rest.  It had to be the belief.  It had to be the soft heart, the heart that believed that God would keep His promises.  And a believing Israelite who had a soft heart and believed that God would keep His promises would approach those laws and commandments as something that he was doing because he loved the Lord and trusted Him.  But these Israelites didn’t believe, so all of their legalistic rule-keeping accomplished nothing for them.  In verse 11 there is this little reminder, this little call to consider your ways.  What does he say to the believers he’s writing to?

Nikki:  He says, “Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.”

Colleen:  And that disobedience again was?

Nikki:  Unbelief.

Colleen:  Unbelief.

Nikki:  We see that in Hebrews 3:18 and 19.

Colleen:  He is calling these new Christians, this church of believing Jews to be diligent, to not think that they can enter God’s rest because they remember the law and they’re still trying to keep Sabbath or they’re whatever.  He’s saying, “Believe.  Don’t do what your ancestors did.  Believe.  Enter God’s rest today.  Believe.”  And then, in an interesting switch of subject, which is really closely related but seems different, we have two verses that address God’s Word.  You want to read those, Nikki?

Nikki:  “For the Word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.  And no creature is hidden from His sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of Him to whom we must give an account.”

Colleen:  So Nikki, when you were an Adventist, how did you understand those words, that the Word of God is living and active?

Nikki:  You know, I think I thought of the Word of God as a little bit of a magic book.  That would have fit really well with that in my head somehow, that I could just randomly flip it open, and anything I read out of it was actively telling me something from God, no matter what context I was pulling it out of.

Colleen:  Oh, interesting.

Nikki:  I think that would probably be how I would have explained that.

Colleen:  Yeah.  I think I would have too.  I don’t think I understood the Word of God as actually part of and an extension of God Himself, which is what this passage describes.

Nikki:  Yeah.  We couldn’t have thought that, though, because of our understanding of how Scripture was inspired, and it was fallible – or it was infallible but had error.  We had such a messed up view of what Scripture was.

Colleen:  Right!  Because we believed, we were taught, that Scripture was inspired exactly as the way Ellen White was inspired.

Nikki:  Yeah.

Colleen:  And that was, as we were told, that God impressed the Bible writers, like He impressed Ellen White, with thoughts from Him, but each Bible writer and Ellen White was left up to their own understanding to interpret those thoughts into the words we now have as Scripture or the Spirit of Prophecy.

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  I cringe now when I realize that that’s what I believed and that that’s what this whole denomination teaches because I was taught that we cannot call the Bible inerrant.  I was taught that we had to understand context, we had to understand the time things were written and that just as Ellen White made mistakes – and the leaders of Adventism have always freely admitted she made mistakes and that she changed her opinions – just as we have had to edit her writings to fit our time, so we could edit the Bible to have better understanding of how it works for our time.  I remember things like:  “Israel was primitive.  Israel lived among primitive nations.  They only understood a God of vengeance and anger who got His way and accomplished His will by killing and by punishing.  Today we are far more sophisticated.  Today we are more educated, and we know that God is not like that, so we have to understand the Old Testament as being what it is because the people were primitive.”  Did you hear that, Nikki?

Nikki:  Yeah, I did.  And I think that the way I understood Scripture being living and active on that basis was that we had all of these tales of the past, and God knew how to direct our eyes on the exact wording that He wanted us in that moment to read and apply to our own lives.  It was a very kind of strange relationship I had with the Bible.  [Laughter.]

Colleen:  Me too.  And I did not understand that every passage had to be understood, first of all, as it would be understood by the first audience.  That was a foreign concept to me.  And that I couldn’t apply Scripture to my life in any way that would be wildly different from what it had meant to the first audience.  I had to understand that before I could understand Scripture.  I was not taught that.  But now I look at these verses that Scripture is alive and active.  I read it’s sharper than a sword.  That Scripture, the Word of God, pierces as far as the division of soul and spirit.  Well, how do you even know what that is?  What is that saying?  What part of us is that?

Nikki:  It’s the immaterial part.

Colleen:  That’s right, the immaterial part of us that we cannot touch or feel but that is the essential identity that we have inside us, that’s who we are.  Of both joints and marrow, and Scripture, God’s Word, is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.  As an Adventist I read that last bit like, “I can figure out what to think about my thoughts and my feelings if I think about what Scripture says and it gives me some insight,” but that’s not even what it says.  What does it say Scripture actually does?

Nikki:  It discerns the thoughts and intentions of the heart.  It makes me think of David praying to God.  He says, “Search me, O God, and know my heart and see if there is any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.”  This is sanctification.  This is God at work through His Word sanctifying us.

Colleen:  And it’s saying that the Word of God actually judges our thoughts and our heart.  It is the convicter, the clarifier, the revealer of our hidden motives.  We can’t even know our own hearts.  Jeremiah said, “The heart is deceitful and desperately wicked.  Who can know it?”  But God’s Word, this thing we carry that we call the Bible, is alive and active, and it judges us and makes us aware of truth and reality.  It helps us know what we don’t even know about ourselves when we are born again.  What about the connection between verse 12 and verse 13.  Verse 12 is talking about the Word of God, and verse 13?

Nikki:  Verse 13 is talking about the Word of God.  It says, “And no creature is hidden from His sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of Him to whom we must give an account.”  Hebrews 1 just said at the end of it that He is the judge of all things; Christ is the judge of all things.  The Gospel of John in the beginning says that “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God and the Word was with God and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” So it’s fascinating that he starts with saying the Word of God, and then he says, “No creature is hidden from His sight.”

Colleen:  You can’t separate God’s Word, Scripture, the Bible, from the person of God.  When He speaks, He creates.  When He speaks, He destroys.  When He speaks, He saves.  And His Word is alive.  In fact, Peter says that we are born again through the living and enduring Word of God.  We cannot separate the Bible from God Himself, and I know that in Adventism they are not linked as indivisible.  They’re not.

Nikki:  No.  You know, as I was reading this, verses 11 through 13, and I see that we’re called to strive to enter that rest so that we don’t fall by the same sort of disobedience, with that disobedience being unbelief, the striving is to maintain our belief and our faith, and then it goes on to talk about the Word of God being discerning and exposing these parts of us.  It is God Himself who knows our heart and soul and thoughts and intentions and our disbelief.  We won’t be able to get away with this kind of false religion and disbelief.  We will give an account to Him.  And the same Word whom we give an account to, He is our faith.  He is the Word who gives and builds and sustains our faith.  He is the one who is sanctifying us and causing us to strive in our faith.  It’s through the living and abiding and sanctifying and sustaining Word and work of God.  That’s our rest.

Colleen:  That is our rest.  And another thing about placing this passage about the reliability and living power of God’s Word in this place, right after his argument about God’s rest, we have to know that what God’s Word, the Bible, says, including the first part of chapter 4, including Psalm 95:11, which the author of Hebrews quotes, including Genesis, including Deuteronomy, including all the passages we’ve looked at where Israel didn’t enter God’s rest, but we are called to enter His rest, we have to know that what Scripture says God’s rest is, is the truth.  It is not found or even represented by keeping a day in the New Covenant.  It could not be more clear that entering God’s rest is about believing today, and a day is not in view.  This passage completely removes any link of holy time to the idea of Sabbath rest, and we have to see this conversation about God’s Word as the final stamp on the argument.  He’s like saying, “Here’s what Scripture is saying, here’s the argument, and now know Scripture cannot lie” –

Nikki:  Um-hmm.

Colleen:  – “and it will judge your heart.”  So let’s read those last three verses in the chapter, Nikki.

Nikki:  “Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession.  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.  Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”

Colleen:  These last three verses are telling us what is true for us in Christ when we enter His rest.  What do we have, Nikki?  What do we have when we enter God’s rest?

Nikki:  We have a great high priest who is able to sympathize.  And the word there is more connected with empathize, with our weakness.

Colleen:  We were talking about this before we did the podcast, and it’s hard to understand what that can even mean, that Jesus, who was sinless, was tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin.  We can’t even imagine what that would be like, and I don’t pretend to try to explain it.  But what this seems to be saying is His flesh was tempted in all the categories our flesh is tempted in, but the flip side of it is that Jesus was sinless.  He was never spiritually dead andHe was also God the Son.  Jesus could see reality, which made it possible for Him to feel infinitely more pain than any one person will ever feel.  So even though His flesh was tempted, and we can even see some specific ways His flesh was tempted when Satan took Him into the wilderness, He could see reality, and He never submitted His will to gratifying His flesh.  He always submitted to His father.  And there was great suffering in that obedience.  It wasn’t just that He managed to just flippantly say, “Oh, well, I don’t have to do that because I don’t have sin, and I can see that that’s a temptation and I can walk away.”  He felt the pain of the temptation, and He felt the pain of the people around Him who were tempting Him, but He was without sin.

Nikki:  These last three texts here, again, they look to me like a summary and also something that’s thrusting us into the next section of Hebrews.  “Since we have a great high priest” – there’s our next section; we’re going to go into discussing what that means – “who’s passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God” – so you have Jesus the man. His name wasn’t even mentioned until we got into Hebrews 2.  Remember, when we talked about Him being a man, that’s when we first see His name Jesus mentioned.  So we have Jesus the man, the Son of God, we have the God-man, who is now our high priest, and because of that we have a priest who can sympathize with our weakness.  I was sharing with you before we started recording, that has been a text that I have wrestled with quite a bit.  It’s right there, completely connected to the hypostatic union of Christ.  It is something that we, I don’t think, will ever fully be able to understand, but what I do understand is in every point where I have been tempted and weak, since being born again He has met me in that place with empathy and comfort.

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:  He is the God of all comfort.

Colleen:  Yes.

Nikki:  And so we know that He is there and that He can sympathize with us and that He represents us now as our high priest, and so that gives us confidence to draw near to the throne of grace.  And my notes say that the word “draw” means repeatedly come back to.

Colleen:  Oh, that’s so wonderful.

Nikki:  I just love how this begins to then push us into Hebrews chapter 5, where we understand what it means that this sympathetic God-man is now our priest who’s passed through the heavens.

Colleen:  And it asks us to draw near with confidence, and we can do this when we enter His rest through believing in Jesus’ finished work.  It’s interesting that the author of Hebrews makes this detailed argument to show that God’s rest is not connected to a day of the week, but is connected to any moment when you hear His voice speaking the word of truth, the gospel of our salvation, and we enter His rest through belief.  We give up, at that point, our own efforts to please God, and we enter His rest, knowing that in Christ we are counted righteous, and even, as you have mentioned earlier, our sanctification is His work in us from that point on.  Because we’ve entered His rest, we have this perfect, empathic high priest who represents both God and man, and He can represent God to us and us to God, and we have perfect understanding and perfect intercession for us forever.

Nikki:  So one of the things that these two chapters helped me see, as a new former Adventist when I read it, it was as if Sabbath was God’s rest that has just always existed, but humanity fell out of it.  Adam and Eve were created into God’s rest, and then sin came and they were separated from God.  And then during that time you have rebellious humanity, who is not able to enter God’s rest, they’re unbelieving humanity, and then we have this New Covenant that promises us a new spirit and God’s spirit within us and a heart of flesh and faith.  We have faith that comes through this New Covenant.  Now we enter into God’s rest when we’re born again.  So it’s like this bookending.  It was never, ever about Saturday, Friday sundown to Saturday sundown.  It was always pointing us to what God had created us for and what we fell away from, walked away from, and He’s going to then recreate us and bring us back into it through the new birth.

Colleen:  I love that.  Thank you for explaining it so well.  It goes from Adam and Eve alive in God, falling out of life, to us being made alive in Christ and coming back into God’s rest.

Nikki:   Um-hmm.

Colleen:  And a perfect open way is made into the presence of God the Father because Jesus died and opened that way for us, and when we believe, we are forever at rest.  So if you haven’t experienced that rest that comes from trusting Jesus and being born of God, entering His rest and being in the presence of the Father, we’d like to suggest that you read through chapter 4 of Hebrews and ask the Lord to make these truths come alive in your heart, to show you that Jesus is the way to Sabbath rest and not a day.  So we just want to remind you to write to us at formeradventist@gmail.com, subscribe to the podcast, write us a review, and thank you for sticking with us through yet another episode that focuses on the Book of Hebrews so we can know who Jesus really is.  We’ll see you again next week.

Nikki:  Bye.