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Types in Hebrews
Sir Robert Anderson
CHAPTER 9
THE RETURN OF CHRIST
"THERE remaineth a Sabbath-rest for the people of God." The Commentaries fail us here.
Information about the works of a watch, however interesting it may be, does not seem opportune when
we want to know the time. And our desire to know about that Sabbath-rest cannot be satisfied by learned
criticisms of the Apostle’s quotations from the, Old Testament.
We may say at once that if that section of the Epistle means merely that a justified sinner can have
peace with God, we can afford to ignore it altogether, for this truth is still more plainly taught in a single
verse in Romans. But we must not treat Holy Scripture thus. And without attempting to solve all the
difficulties which beset the passage, we may find perhaps that it throws not a little light upon a truth of
the highest interest and importance to the Christian. The Apostle shows that the Sabbath-rest here spoken
of was not the rest of creation, for the promise was given in the days of Moses. Neither was it the rest of
Canaan, for the promise was repeated "in David." And that it was not realized in the days of the kingdom
is no less certain. But no divine promise is ever cancelled, or can ever fail; and therefore "there
remaineth a Sabbath-rest for the people of God, and some must enter therein."
It is a popular error to suppose that the forty years of Israel’s wilderness wanderings were a part of the
divine purpose. When God brought His people out of Egypt He led them to Sinai; and there He gave
them His judgments and laws, and the ordinances of the divine religion. But within two years from the
Exodus they were encamped at Kadesh Barnea, and from "the Mountain of the Amorites" the promised
land lay open before them, and God bade them enter and take possession of it. "But they could not enter
in because of unbelief." For the stern facts reported by the spies whom they had sent into the land were
more real to them than the divine promises; and they rebelled against the command of God, and
threatened to stone their leaders. For forty days the spies had "searched the land"; and, in judgment on
their sin, God declared that for forty years they should wander in the wilderness; and that, save only
Caleb and Joshua, not a man of all the armed host that marched out of Egypt on the Paschal night should
ever enter Canaan. (Numbers 14)
And when at last a new generation of Israelites entered the promised land, it was not by way of a
triumphal march, such as that to which their fathers had been summoned, but through a death baptism in
Jordan. What concerns us here, however, is the fact that the Sabbath-rest thus preached and thus forfeited
was a corporate, and not a personal, blessing. Has all this no voice for us? In the Apostolic age the
people of God were taught to look for a Sabbath-rest, through the return of Christ. And in these days of
flippant unbelief, when that hope is declared to have been a delusion or a blunder, we do well to recall
the Apostle Peter’s words, "We have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto
you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." (2 Peter 1-16)