05.22. Appendix E.

Appendix E.—The Relation Of Cannan To The State Of Final Rest (Hebrews 4:1; Hebrews 4:10) THE view presented in the text upon this subject, and the conclusion arrived at, substantially coincide with the argument maintained in the fourth chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews. And as a somewhat intricate turn is there given to the line of thought pursued in the epistle, I shall here refer a little more particularly to the passage, as well for the purpose of explicating its proper meaning, as for confirmation of what has been said upon the subject itself. This part of the epistle is introduced by an exhortation in chapter Hebrews 3. To stedfastness in the faith, and to diligence in the use of the means naturally fitted to secure it; and the exhortation is further confirmed by a reference to the words employed for the same purpose by the Psalmist in Psalms 95, who there calls upon the men of his day to beware of falling into the apostasy, and incurring the doom of their forefathers in the desert, when they provoked God by refusing to go forward in faith upon His word to occupy the land of Canaan, and He, in consequence, sware in His wrath that they should not enter into His rest. Catching up this word rest—God’s rest—contained in the divine utterance of judgment (as given by the Psalmist), the inspired writer goes on, at Hebrews 4:1, to discourse of the relation in which believers under the Gospel stand to it. He reminds them that they had, as a matter of course, succeeded to the heritage of promise given in former ages to God’s people concerning it; it had come down as an entail of blessing to them, and might now, precisely as of old, be either appropriated by faith or forfeited by unbelief. Not only does He thus connect believers under the Gospel with believers under the law in respect to the promised rest, but the promise itself He connects with the very commencement of the world’s history with that rest of God which He is said to have taken, when He ceased from all His works which He created and made.—(Genesis 2:2) This was emphatically God’s rest, the only thing expressly characterized as such in the history of the Divine dispensations; and the Apostle points to it as a noteworthy thing, that while the works, from which God is thus said to have rested, were finished at the creation of the world, the promise of the land of Canaan should somehow, thousands of years afterwards, have been associated with it. Yet he does not (as is too commonly supposed) simply identify the two; while both he and the Psalmist speak of exclusion from Canaan as involving for ancient Israel exclusion from an interest in God’s rest: they both also conceive the possibility of having an inheritance in Canaan, and yet wanting a participation in the rest of God. On this account the Psalmist had plied his contemporaries when they were in Canaan with the admonition to beware, lest, by provoking God, they should still lose their interest in God’s rest. And now, again, the writer of this epistle, laying hold of the words of the Psalmist, repeats the same warning, and calls upon Christians to take good heed, that by stedfastly adhering to the faith and obedience of the Gospel, they should secure their entrance into that rest of God which remains for them, as it has remained for God’s people in every age—the blessed result and consummation of a life of faith.

Such are the leading points in the line of thought pursued in this portion of the Epistle to the Hebrews, viewed simply in itself, and without regard to the debateable questions and conflicting views which have been too often brought into it. The plainest reader can easily perceive the connection, when it is put in a distinct and orderly manner before him. But there is a marked peculiarity in the representation as first given by the Psalmist, and silently adopted by the Apostle, which must be noticed in order to make the inspired exposition appear altogether natural, and to apprehend the full depth of meaning involved in it. For, it will be observed, the language of the psalm in naming the rest in question strikingly differs from that of the original passage which relates to it, though no comment is made on the diversity by the author of the epistle. He takes the word just as he finds it. But it is remarkable that the utterance which it connects with the oath of God is nowhere found in the earlier Scriptures precisely in the form there given to it. In the passage more directly referred to by the Psalmist, the words are, “As truly as I live .... if they shall see” (that is, they shall certainly not see) “the land which I sware unto their fathers.”—(Numbers 14:21-23) In another verse of the same chapter (Numbers 14:30), the declaration is again repeated, and very nearly in the same words. It was undoubtedly these sayings which the Psalmist refers to, when he speaks of God reversing, as it were, His oath—swearing in regard to the generation that had provoked him, that they should not possess what he had previously sworn to their fathers to give them. But why, in pointing to this fresh oath or asseveration, should he have so remarkably departed from the language of Moses?Why, instead of saying, They shall not see, or they shall not come into the land, which I sware to give to their fathers, should he have represented God as swearing, They shall not enter into My rest?There must have been some reason for this; and, indeed, there needs no great search to discover it. The Psalmist would give the old word in its substance, but with a difference, such as might serve to convey an insight into the spiritual meaning involved in it, and let the men of his own generation see—the carnal and ungodly among them—that they were substantially on a footing with those who perished in the wilderness. They were living, indeed, in the land promised to their fathers; but what of that?The promise was never made to secure for them simply the possession of so much territory, as if in that alone they could find a proper and satisfying good. It could only be realized in the sense meant by God. And necessary to His people’s well-being, if the land was held as God’s land, and the rest it brought was enjoyed as a participation in God’s rest. If such, however, were the case, it must plainly follow, that for those who had entered the land, but who had not also entered into rest in this higher sense, the promise still remained essentially unfulfilled; they were but formally in possession of the children’s heritage, while in reality they knew nothing of the children’s blessing, and were in danger of being cast out as aliens. So that to them also reached the words of excision pronounced by God against their fathers, “They shall not enter into My rest:” no, it is not with Me they are sojourners; and whatever rest they may enjoy, it is not that rest which I engaged to share with My chosen. But what precisely is meant by this rest of God in its relation to God’s people?It has, we see, been set before them under all dispensations, as the one grand good which they are invited to make their own; but which those who in ancient times provoked God by their unbelief and waywardness were cut off from inheriting—which still also professing Christians are in danger, on similar accounts, of forfeiting. What, then, is it?Or how in reality is it to be entered on?That it is not simply to be identified with heaven is evident; since otherwise it could not have been so connected, as it was by the Psalmist, with a proper realization of the promised inheritance of Canaan, as at least a partial enjoyment of the blessing; nor, indeed, can it be absolutely tied to any one place, region, or time. “For they that have believed enter into the rest;” that is, they do it by virtue of their belief, and, in a measure, whenever they have it. In proof of this, the inspired writer carries his readers back to the creation of the world, and shows how, by the sanctification and blessing of the seventh day, it was from the first man’s calling and destination to share in God’s rest. But this destination, and God’s purpose in connection with it, were interrupted by the fall. They were for the moment foiled, and rendered incapable of being carried into execution after the primeval pattern; but they were by no means abandoned. The eternal purpose could not be frustrated; the calling of God was here necessarily without repentance; and the economy of grace entered, that it might be made good in a way consistent with the attributes of His character. Perpetually, therefore, as the plan of God proceeds, there must in substance be sounded in men’s ears the call to share alike in God’s works and God’s rest—to imbibe the spirit of the one, and enter into the participation of the other. And sometimes, as in the passages now under consideration, the call takes a more explicit form in this direction, in order to keep before us the thought, how God’s purpose in redemption coalesces with His original purpose in creation, and how the final issue of the one shall bring the realization of the good contemplated in the other. It tells us that redemption in all its stages—even in such preliminary and typical movements as were connected with the possession of Canaan, and still more, of course, in the riper movements and results pertaining to the work of Christ—ever aims at the restoration of man to the right knowledge and use of God’s works, and the blessed participation of God’s rest. The aim can be attained only in part now, but shall be perfectly so hereafter, when the work of God in this higher aspect of it being finished by the bringing in of the new heavens and the new earth, there shall be administered to all the redeemed a full as well as final entrance into the joy of their Lord. But for those who lived in the times preceding the Gospel, and who had spiritual insight to discern the meaning of what was established, the external rest of Canaan should (according to both the Psalmist and the Apostle) have been regarded, not as the ultimate boon they were to look for, but as the sign and earnest of an everlasting fellowship with God, in a sabbatism which shall be in complete accordance with His own perfect and glorious nature.

END OF VOL. I.