The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews (many hold this one to be Apollos) presents a new and expanded picture of what it means to enter the rest of the Lord. In 4.7-10 we read: Therefore God again set a certain day, calling it ‘Today’, when a long time later he spoke through David, as was said before: ‘Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.’ Remember, it is always TODAY with God.

Whenever one enters into God’s rest it is never a matter of shutting down or stopping or even slowing, but a positioning of oneself into the realm of God’s presence TODAY: For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken later about another day. It is sometimes a difficult thing to understand what God means by this unless we come to grips with the fact that all eternity is present with our Lord TODAY!

Does this mean that there is yet a time of rest ahead of us? Absolutely! That time of rest is TODAY! But we must see that our God is speaking of our position in his rest rather than our own: There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; And the matter of the Sabbath Rest has a great deal to do with our worship of our God moment by moment. We are never to be outside of that resting in and with our Lord.

And the promise of entering into God’s rest also reveals our own resting: for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from his own work, just as God did from his. When we decide to become an active part of the rest of God we will then begin to know what it means for us to rest as well. Let us never fail to grasp that God means something entirely different than do most of us when he speaks of resting in him TODAY!