Hebrews 4 - God's Rest and a Sympathetic High Priest
Hebrews 4 invites believers to enter God's rest and approach his throne of grace boldly.
Picking up the warning about unbelief from Hebrews 3, this chapter explains that a rest still remains for God's people, one the wilderness generation forfeited because the promise was not mixed with faith when they heard it. Just as God rested on the seventh day, believers are urged to labor to enter that promised rest rather than fall through the same unbelief.
We may fear, then, lest a promise being left of entering into His rest, any one of you may seem to have come short,
for we also are having good news proclaimed, even as they, but the word heard did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in those who heard,
for we do enter into the rest -- we who did believe, as He said, `So I sware in My anger, If they shall enter into My rest -- ;' and yet the works were done from the foundation of the world,
for He spake in a certain place concerning the seventh `day' thus: `And God did rest in the seventh day from all His works;'
and in this `place' again, `If they shall enter into My rest -- ;'
since then, it remaineth for certain to enter into it, and those who did first hear good news entered not in because of unbelief --
again He doth limit a certain day, `To-day,' (in David saying, after so long a time,) as it hath been said, `To-day, if His voice ye may hear, ye may not harden your hearts,'
for if Joshua had given them rest, He would not concerning another day have spoken after these things;
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.
May we be diligent, then, to enter into that rest, that no one in the same example of the unbelief may fall,
for the reckoning of God is living, and working, and sharp above every two-edged sword, and piercing unto the dividing asunder both of soul and spirit, of joints also and marrow, and a discerner of thoughts and intents of the heart;
and there is not a created thing not manifest before Him, but all things `are' naked and open to His eyes -- with whom is our reckoning.
Having, then, a great chief priest passed through the heavens -- Jesus the Son of God -- may we hold fast the profession,
for we have not a chief priest unable to sympathise with our infirmities, but `one' tempted in all things in like manner -- apart from sin;
we may come near, then, with freedom, to the throne of the grace, that we may receive kindness, and find grace -- for seasonable help.