Hebrews, chapters 3 and 4 give us the example of Israel, who failed to stay faithful to God’s calling. They continually tried his patience during their wilderness wandering and the adults who departed Egypt never entered the promised land God had prepared for them.
Numbers 26:65 “For the LORD had said of them, They shall surely die in the wilderness. And there was not left a man of them, save Caleb the son of Jephunneh, and Joshua the son of Nun.”
Notice the verses that tell us why they were not able to enter into the land. Verse 10, “They do always err in their hearts, and “They have not known my ways.” Verse 12, “An evil heart of unbelief”. They entered not in because of unbelief, personified by sin and disobedience. We are told that the word preached to them did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it. They hardened their hearts against their creator through the deceitfulness of sin.
To those who sinned in the wilderness God swore “They shall not enter into my rest”. Hebrews 4:1 opens with an admonition for the believer, “Let us therefore fear, lest, a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it.”
Although those to whom the promise was first given did not enter that rest because of unbelief, that rest still remains and some will enter in. Heb 4:6, 8-9, 11 “Seeing therefore it remaineth that some must enter therein, and they to whom it was first preached entered not in because of unbelief: For if Jesus had given them rest, then would he not afterward have spoken of another day. There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God. Let us labour therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief.”
The Bible is filled with duality, a former fulfillment and a latter fulfillment. The children of those who died in the wilderness did enter the promised land, a physical rest. This was a foreshadow of the eternal rest awaiting us today. This was God’s plan from the foundation of the world. Hebrews 4:4 “For he spake in a certain place of the seventh day on this wise, And God did rest the seventh day from all his works”. Hebrews 4:9-10 “There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God. For he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his“.
The previous scriptures speak of God’s rest by referencing the seventh day of creation week. That may seem strange to those of us who have been raised with a Gentile, Western mindset which has no concept of God’s reckoning of time. Because we have exchanged much of the original teachings of the Bible with man-made concepts and ideas, we have lost the keys that are vital to our understanding of God’s plan for mankind.
Dedicated students of the word of God recognize the patterns he uses to fulfill his purposes. As God worked six days during creation week and rested the seventh, he has given man six thousand years to do all his work, the seventh thousandth being the Sabbath rest of the Messiah. 2Peter 3:8 “But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day“. God placed intermediate fulfillments between the two. The seventh day of each week is to be a Sabbath rest for the people of God. Every seventh year is to be a rest for the land and a release of debt.
Annually, the day of Pentecost is calculated by weekly Sabbaths. Leviticus 23:15-16 “And ye shall count unto you from the morrow after the sabbath, from the day that ye brought the sheaf of the wave offering; seven sabbaths shall be complete: Even unto the morrow after the seventh sabbath shall ye number fifty days.”
The Jubilee year, likewise, is calculated by annual Sabbaths. Leviticus 25:8-10 “And thou shalt number seven sabbaths of years unto thee, seven times seven years; and the space of the seven sabbaths of years shall be unto thee forty and nine years. Then shalt thou cause the trumpet of the jubile to sound on the tenth day of the seventh month, in the day of atonement shall ye make the trumpet sound throughout all your land. And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubile unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family“.
Yeshua came to earth and tabernacled with man four thousand years in the span of human history. Two thousand years have elapsed since that time. We are approaching the thousand year Sabbath alluded to in the book of Hebrews. This is the rest that awaits those who are faithful to their calling in Messiah.
Revelation 20:6 “Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years”.
Revelation 20:5 “But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished”.
I can’t help but wonder. Hebrews 4:9 says “There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God.” This is interpreted as “a keeping of the Sabbath”. Is it possible that those who honor God’s holy Sabbath now will enter their eternal rest when the thousand year Sabbath appears? Could it be that those who have replaced God’s seventh day Sabbath with Sunday (the day of the Sun God) do not rise until the Sabbath is over? It is certainly food for thought. One thing is sure. The Sabbath will be kept in God’s Kingdom on into eternity.
Isaiah 66:23 “And it shall come to pass, that from one new moon to another, and from one sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worship before me, saith the LORD.”
It behooves us all to consider our ways now, whether we will follow the traditions of men or the word of God. Hebrews 4:1 “Let us therefore fear, lest, a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it.”
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