2698.-Another Day

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Jan 13, 1909

2698.—Another Day.

Please explain Heb. 4:8, "If Jesus had given them rest, then would He not have spoken of another day." As the first part of the chapter speaks of the Sabbath, does this refer to the Sabbath also?

The subject of the scripture is the rest which God promised His children. Read from the third chapter through. When they left Egypt He promised them rest, and they would have come into that rest had they been faithful. That rest was finished from the foundation of the world. When God made the world, He made a home of rest for His people; and as proof of that, the Sabbath is mentioned. He rested the seventh day from all His works, showing that these works were finished for man from the foundation of the world. At the time of the deliverance from Egypt, they to whom it was preached did not enter in because they did not believe, consequently the Lord gave another time, as expressed in the 95th Psalm: "To-day if ye will hear His voice."

The word "Jesus" ought to be "Joshua" in verse 8. "Jesus" is the Greek form of the Hebrew word "Joshua." Read as in the Revised Version, "For if Joshua had given them rest, He [God] would not have spoken afterward of another day."

Joshua took them into the promised land, but the people were disobedient and unbelieving, consequently did not get the real rest of God there after all. The "another day" in which God gives that rest is to-day. To all those who will come to the Lord Jesus, and receive Him, He will give rest. Matt. 11:28-30. This spiritual rest which God gives here is the earnest, or pledge, of the glorious rest which He will give in the earth made new. Spiritual rest comes when we give up our own works and yield ourselves to God's works. The eternal rest will come when the Lord makes us immortal. The pledge of that eternal rest all through the ages has been His Sabbath.