God did give the Israelites a sampling of rest in the land of Canaan under the leadership of Joshua. Yet that rest did not last. Joshua 24:31 says, “Israel served the LORD all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua and had known all the work that the LORD did for Israel.” While that verse may sound pleasant, it is merely the calm before the storm. The book of Judges goes on to describe the ever-growing wickedness of Israel in the centuries following Joshua’s death. No, the rest that Joshua gave them did not last; therefore, another rest was needed.

Therefore, while the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it. For good news came to us just as to them, but the message they heard did not benefit them, because they were not united by faith with those who listened. For we who have believed enter that rest, as he has said,
“As I swore in my wrath, ‘They shall not enter my rest,’”
although his works were finished from the foundation of the world. For he has somewhere spoken of the seventh day in this way: “And God rested on the seventh day from all his works.” And again in this passage he said,
“They shall not enter my rest.”   
Since therefore it remains for some to enter it, and those who formerly received the good news failed to enter because of disobedience, again he appoints a certain day, “Today,” saying through David so long afterward, in the words already quoted,
“Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.”
For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on. So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his.
Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.
Hebrews 4:1-13 ESV
At the end of Israel’s forty-year wandering through the wilderness under the judgment of God, the exodus generation of men, including Moses, had all died off. Only Joshua and Caleb, the two faithful spies, would be the only two men over the age of sixty to enter the Promised Land. Under the leadership of Joshua, the book of the same name tells of how Israel took possession of Canaan by also acting as instruments of God’s judgment upon the pagan nations within that land. Their entering came with much striving, for they took the land by force. Yet by the end of the book in 21:43-45, we read:
Thus the LORD gave Israel all the land that he swore to give to their fathers. And they took possession of it, and they settled there. And the LORD gave them rest on every side just as he had sworn to their fathers. Not one of all their enemies had withstood them, for the LORD had given all their enemies into their hands. Not one word of all the good promises that the LORD had made to the house of Israel had failed; all came to pass.
As we noted last week, the exodus generation could have had those words spoken about them if they had only believed God’s word. Though Yahweh demolished the greatest nation on earth in order to rescue them from slavery, they refused to believe that the LORD would also defeat the Canaanites within the Promised Land. They heard the bitter complaint of the ten spies and resolved to return to Egypt. Only Joshua and Caleb lived to enter that blessed land because of their belief in God’s mighty hand of salvation. Thus, in 3:7-19 the author of Hebrews warned us against possessing a wicked, unbelieving heart like the exodus generation. Our present text is a direct continuation of that warning, still using Psalm 95 and the exodus generation as erroneous examples for us to learn from. Yet while last week’s text largely focused upon Psalm 95:7-8’s exhortation not to harden our hearts as we hear God’s voice today, these verses before us more focus upon Psalm 95:11’s recounting of God’s oath that that generation would not enter His rest.
ET US FEAR; LET US STRIVE // VERSES 1-11
Before we attempt diving into the particulars of these verses, we might find a word on their structure to be helpful. Verses 1-11 are bracketed by two exhortations that are essentially saying the same thing only with different words. Verse 1: Therefore, while the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it. Verse 11: Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. Verses 2-10 explain what that rest is (largely through five for statements in verses 2, 3, 4, 8, and 10) and exhort us again exhorts us not to harden our hearts (verses 6-7).
Right from the beginning, therefore in verse 1 ought to draw us back to the previous verse, 3:19, which reads: “So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief.” By the context of chapter 3, we know that ‘they’ refers to the exodus generation and that they were unable to enter the rest that God was giving them through the Promised Land because of their unbelief. Now here in verse 1, the author turns that example upon us, saying, Therefore, while the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it. This verse is the thesis and the summary of our entire passage; however, the author endeavors to make his point clear through the remaining verses. Particularly, he will explain what the rest that still remains for us today is. After all, under Joshua, the children of the exodus generation did enter the Promise Land and, after executing God’s judgment upon the Canaanites, were given rest from their enemies. But clearly the Promised Land was only a picture of a bigger reality that is still before us today.
Verse 2 begins the author’s explanation with our first for statement: For good news came to us just as to them, but the message they heard did not benefit them, because they were not united by faith with those who listened. God declared good news to the exodus generation through liberating them from slavery and promising to bring them into the Promised Land, and we have received a similar and even greater good news since Christ, the greater Moses, came to liberate us from our sin and to give us life everlasting. However, the proclamation of that physical gospel did not benefit the exodus generation. While there is some debate on exactly how the final phrase about faith ought to read, Dennis Johnson summarizes the point: “hearing God’s voice brings wrath, not benefit, to those who refuse to receive the message with submissive trust.”[1]
But, as verse 3 notes, we who have believed enter that rest, as he has said, “As I swore in my wrath, ‘They shall not enter my rest.’
From all we have seen, it is clear that [the writer] is confident that those who truly believe will not come short of the promised rest. In fact, he here asserts that those who have believed are now entering into it (this is the implication of the present indicative of εἰσέρχομαι). In their case, this now actually is happening. They are not waiting to enter. They are entering. Here, in confirmation of this confidence, the writer cites again the divine oath against unbelief from Psalm 95: “As He has said: ‘So I swore in my wrath, “They shall not enter my rest.”’”[2]
But how is that oath against the exodus generation a confirmation of the rest that present day believers are already entering into? The writer is expecting us to make an inference from the contrary. Though the exodus generation had the promised rest before them, they failed to reach it because of their unbelief; therefore, unlike them, we who have believed are entering that promised rest.
The final sentence of verse 3 through verse 5 now ties that promised rest not merely onto the land of Canaan but back to God’s inauguration of the Sabbath at the end of creating the world:
although his works were finished from the foundation of the world. For he has somewhere spoken of the seventh day in this way: “And God rested on the seventh day from all his works.” And again in this passage he said,
“They shall not enter my rest.”
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All that we can do in great and deep affliction, and sore distresses of soul, is only to look up to Christ as a poor, wounded, bleeding man looks and cries to one who passes on the road for help. And our Savior and Physician is so compassionate that He will regard us, though we are able to say little more than, “Have mercy on us, Thou Son of David.”

The Puritans not only preached to comfort the weary and wounded, but admonished those who had close relations with such saints in how to help them.  So Timothy Rogers gave instructions to those who had to deal with those under a sense of God’s desertion:
Speak kindly and compassionately to those whom you perceive to be under the sense of God’s anger. Job complains in Job 19:2, “How long will ye vex my soul, and break me into pieces?” And as men who have been long used to poring over their troubles, he tells them how often they had vexed him in verse 3: “These ten times have ye reproached me; ye are not ashamed that ye make yourselves strange to me.” It is very likely that they did not vex him with their words purposely; for, being good men, they could not be so extremely barbarous. They made good sermons, but very sorry and mistaken application. It is easy to trample upon those with sharp and cutting speeches whom God and their sorrows have already thrown into the mire. It is easy for those who are in no trouble to silence and upbraid those who are. As Job says to Eliphaz, “Shall vain words have an end? I also could speak as you do, if your soul were in my soul’s stead. I could heap up words against you, and shake mine head at you. But I would strengthen you with my mouth, and the moving of my lips should assuage your griefs.”
When any of your friends are under spiritual trouble, you must carefully abstain from any passionate or sour word or action that may increase their grief; it will be some small help to them to see that you pity them, though you cannot give them relief. Use all the compassionate and kind words to them that you can, and seek to bind up their sores with a gentle hand. Beware of using any expression that savors of sharpness, reproach, or scorn, for these will, as they did to Job, vex their souls more, and they will be evil in you as well as unpleasant to them. Hence is that complain in Psalm 69:20: “Reproach hath broken my heart, and I am full of heaviness; and I looked for some to take pity, but there was none; and for comforters, but I found none. They gave me also gall for my meat, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.” And Psalm 123:4: “Our soul is exceedingly filled with the scorning of those that are at ease, and with the contempt of the proud.”
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The four-decade effort by the secular left to undermine the integrity of our elections and constitutional order is nothing less than an attempt to remove the biblical foundations of our government and culture in order to create a centralized, tyrannical government untethered from God which will be a terror to good conduct rather than bad (Romans 13).

When you go out to war against your enemies, and see horses and chariots and an army larger than your own, you shall not be afraid of them, for the LORD your God is with you.—Deuteronomy 20:1
Christians’ ability to speak and live out the Word of God is under assault from the secular, progressive left. They seek to remove any trace of God or His people from the culture.
The ongoing assault against President Trump is part of this. In order to understand why this is the case–and why Christians should be concerned, let us take a look at what the left has done to Trump in light of attacks on other Republican presidents before him.
The week before the raid on Trump’s home, George Parry published an article in the American Spectator, “The Democrats’ Looming Trial and Conviction of Donald Trump.” In it, he wrote:
“We intend to hold everyone, anyone who was criminally responsible for the events surrounding January 6, for any attempt to interfere with the lawful transfer of power from one administration to another, accountable,” said Garland.
Who’s he kidding? Garland made it sound as if there is a chance that Trump might not be arrested and prosecuted. But, to anyone who has been paying attention, the intention of the Democrat-controlled federal government has always been and remains to be the legalized destruction of Donald Trump. It is, in fact, the whole purpose behind the illegally constituted Jan. 6 committee’s Soviet–style show trial, its contempt citations of Trump administration officials, and the follow-up supporting criminal cases by the FBI and Justice Department.
The Soviet–style show trial and previous efforts to remove Trump from office come from the same playbook Democrats have been using against Republicans for decades. It started at least as far back as Watergate, when Democrats took illegal activities by some Nixon aides–who acted without Nixon’s knowledge–and managed to parley that into overturning the results of a presidential election in which Nixon won 97% of the electoral vote. They twisted and distorted the evidence so badly that even Nixon thought that he had engaged in a coverup. But he had not. Nixon had his faults, but he broke no laws and committed no high crimes or misdemeanors. Yet Nixon was forced to leave, and progressives had the run of the federal government for the next six years.
The Democrats took this route twice with President Reagan. First, it was the October Surprise conspiracy theory, where Democrats concocted a story that vice presidential candidate George Bush travelled to Paris in October on a U.S. government SR-71 spy plane to convince the Iranians not to release their American hostages captured during the attack on the American Embassy until after the November 1980 presidential election. Congress finally rejected the theory–in 1992.
Next were the 1987 Iran-Contra hearings, based on largely unconstitutional attempts by Congress to control the president’s ability to conduct foreign policy. These hearings failed to overturn the 1984 Reagan landslide over Walter Mondale, but hamstrung his final two years in office and were perfectly timed to affect Vice President Bush’s prospects for being elected president.
After Bush overcame Iran-Contra and was elected, the October Surprise hoax was revived. It received substantial coverage in the mainstream press, to the point that a January 1992 poll showed 55 percent of Americans believed the allegations. Bush created many of his own problems, especially lying to the American people when he promised, “Read my lips. No new taxes” during his 1988 campaign, but the propagation of the hoax likely had an effect on his loss to Bill Clinton in the 1992 election.
Bush’s son George W. also was the target of Democrats seeking to overturn presidential election results. This time, it was U.S. Rep Dennis Kucinich, joined by 11 cosponsors, who filed articles of impeachment because of what they claimed were lies regarding weapons of mass destruction as a pretext for America’s invasion of Iraq. I do not think we should have invaded Iraq, but neither do I believe that Bush manufactured false evidence to push us into another war. Yet Democrats still tried to overturn his election through the impeachment process. As well as hamstring his administration through the bogus Valerie Plame Wilson investigation.
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