Sabbath Rest by Sinclair Ferguson
The anonymous author of Hebrews found different ways of describing the superiority of the Lord Jesus Christ. One of them, which forms the underlying motif of chapters 3 and 4, is that Jesus Christ gives the rest that neither Moses nor Joshua could provide. Under Moses, the people of God were disobedient and failed to enter into God’s rest (3:18). Psalm 95:11 (quoted in Hebrews 4:3) implies that Joshua could not have given the people “real rest” since “through David” God speaks about the rest he will give on another day (Heb. 4:7). This in turn implies that “There remains a sabbath rest for the people of God” (Heb. 4:9).
In speaking of this rest (3:18; 4:1, 3-6, 8) the author consistently used the same word for “rest” (katapausis). Suddenly, in speaking about the “rest” that remains for the people of God, he uses a different word (sabbatismos, used only here in the NT) meaning specifically a Sabbath rest. In the context of his teaching, this refers fundamentally to the “Sabbath rest” which is found in Christ (“Come … I will give you rest,” Matt. 11:28-30). Thus we are to “strive to enter that rest” (4:11).
Your thoughts.
And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made. Gen 2:2,3
although the works were finished from the foundation of the world. 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.
Had the Christ, the Son of the living God, Jesus of Nazareth entered the above rest prior to his death and being raised out of the dead?
Moses did not lead them.
Joshua did not lead them in.
But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour; that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man. For it became him, for whom
are all things, and by whom
are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings.
I ask that because:
there doth remain, then, a sabbatic rest to the people of God, for he who
did enter into his rest, he also rested from his works, as God from His own. Heb 4:9,10 YLT
V 11 May we be diligent, then, to enter into that rest, that no one in the same example of the unbelief may fall,
What is the sabbatic rest those, in Christ, should be diligent into, entering?