“There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God” (Hebrews 4:9).

This has long been a favorite verse of those who labor. Many employees may work a five or six day week, but mothers work seven days. Missionaries and people in special ministries are often heard to say that, while they never grow tired of the work, they do get weary in the work, for the needs seem so great that they dare not stop even for a day.

The Lord knew His people would need rest, of course, and so ordained a weekly day of rest. In fact, the only reason He took six days to do the work of creation was to set the pattern for man’s six-day work week (Exodus 20:8–11). Yet Jesus also indicated it is still “lawful to do well on the sabbath days” (Matthew 12:12), and the Scriptures command us to be always “redeeming the time, because the days are evil” (Ephesians 5:16), so it is often difficult for concerned Christians to find the time for needed rest, even on the “sabbath days,” let alone an annual vacation.

Our text verse seems to have a threefold application. The word for “rest” is actually the special word for “sabbath rest,” used only this one time in the New Testament, evidently indicating that the weekly rest day (like each of the other laws in the Ten Commandments) is still a divine principle in the Christian dispensation, and violating it is to our detriment. It also refers, in context, to the rest we find in Christ, “For he that is entered into His rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from His” (Hebrews 4:10).

There is surely also a most comforting application for our future life: “Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: . . . that they may rest from their labors; and their works do follow them” (Revelation 14:13). HMM