25.To whom did God swear that they should not enter His rest?

To those who disobeyed, not believing the Lord’s promise.

There is a close relationship between faith in God, and righteous, holy behavior. We demonstrate our belief by our behavior. The Israelites did not believe God. They complained against God, continually testing Him to see if He would take care of them.

True Christian faith follows God in confidence, joy, and courage. Israel chose to not believe that God would bring the tribes safely and joyfully into the land of milk and honey.

Under the new covenant the faith that saves us is not a correct statement of theological truth. Rather, the faith that saves us is a daily grasping of the Life of Christ such that we are enabled to overcome Satan, the spirit of the world, and our own fleshly lusts and self-will.

The daily grasping of the Spirit of life is salvation. The purpose of theological truth, of doctrine, is to lead us to Christ. Only as doctrine leads us to the Person of Christ is it effective, as far as eternal life is concerned. The writer of Hebrews was addressing experienced Christian disciples who had heard the Lord’s Apostles, who had witnessed the miracles of the first-century anointing of power, and who had accepted joyfully the confiscation of their belongings.

These Jewish Christians had been made a public spectacle, being subjected to abuse and insults. They had been persecuted vigorously for the Kingdom of God’s sake (see Hebrews 10:32-34).

They had come this far in the Lord. Now they were being exhorted to continue in faith, pressing forward to life lived wholly in the rest of God, that is, wholly devoted to the Lord’s Presence and will. The eyes of their faith were being lifted to behold a greater level of maturity in Christ than they had attained to this point. It appears, from the complete text of the Book of Hebrews, that at least part of their problem had to do with the overcoming of sinful behaviour.

Hebrews 5:12-14 gives us a key to the type of lack of faith that characterized the Hebrew Christians.

For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat. For every one that useth milk is unskilful in the word of righteousness: for he is a babe. But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.

The Hebrew Christians were spiritual babies, even though they had seen the miraculous of the Gospel and had suffered persecution. They were babies because they were "unskillful in the word of righteousness." They were saved. They were candidates for Heaven. But they were not growing in the all-important ability to distinguish between good and evil.

Without the ability to distinguish between good and evil, and the spiritual strength to choose the good and resist and reject the evil, it is impossible for the believer to enter the rest of God. The rest of God, the inheritance, the land of promise, is occupied now by the evil enemies of God. These enemies can be driven out only by saints who have become skillful in the word of righteousness.

We understand, then, that the writer of Hebrews is exhorting each believer in Christ to "lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us," and to "run with patience the race that is set before us."