Hebrews 4:4 Commentary and Bible Study

The writer traces the origin of the seventh day, but his purpose is to expound Psalm 95, and to show in what sense the rest of God is still available for us to enter into it today. To do this he goes back to the origin of the term, rest, which as every Israelite knew was first spoken of by God at the time of creation, and he quotes Genesis 2:2 to establish this. Following the six days of creation in which God is pictured as working in the creation of different elements of the created world, on the seventh day God rested in consideration of and satisfaction with all that he had made. God had multiple purposes in arranging things in this way. He spread his workmanship across six days for ease of understanding by human beings, who could break down in their minds the different stages of creation, and see the Lord as a master workman who implements everything according to his perfect plan. But he also worked in this way as a pattern for human work and for the weekly cycle of days in which man should set aside one day in seven for worship of God and reflection on the Creator and what he has made: what God did once was to be a pattern of a repeating weekly cycle for mankind. This however did not exhaust the meaning of the rest of God, and this is the whole point of this passage in Hebrews. Taken in isolation, Genesis 2:2 might be thought to mean that the rest of God was something that was solely to do with creation and its application to the structure of the week. But here is the big point: why then does David in Psalm 95 still speak of that rest as something which could still be entered into? If all that was meant was the weekly Sabbath rest, then men and women had entered that already, time and time again. If a man is offered wages and comes to receive them and is told, ‘There, you have been paid’, then he does not later return again to receive them a second time. But if Psalm 95 speaks of the yet remaining possibility of entering into that rest, then something more is meant by that rest than simply the weekly pattern of days with its weekly seventh day set aside for worship.