Hebrews chapter 4

vs 1

That's exactly what happened to the Israelites. They fell short. They fell in the desert, and never entered his rest - the rest he promised they would find in the promised land.

vs 2

The TNIV takes a slightly different path here, but the overall ending comes out the same. Notice we heard the gospel, and so did they. Remember that! The gospel is more than just Jesus, Love, Bible. It's about promises and relationship with God. For us it is valuable, for them it is not. It's valuable for us if we don't fall short of it. They did fall short in their faith, so the gospel became worthless to them.

vs 3

We get a few ideas coagulating in this verse. Firstly, the faithful do enter that rest. Secondly, God's anger still stands on them (the unfaithful), who will never enter his rest. Thirdly, we start talking about what rest is, specifically God's rest. It began after his work of creation.

vs 4

Somewhere! The author is either being very modest, or he can't even remember the book of Genesis. We put so much stock in the Genesis account - the author of Hebrews can't even remember where it was.

vs 5

So we have these two things at work - God's rest, and God's promise to the unfaithful.

vs 6

So some haven't entered yet who will, and those who are disobedient still won't. Something will be built on these statements.

vs 7

We come full circle back to the psalm. There is no problem with God's promise that those who are unfaithful will never enter his rest. Because unfaithfulness doesn't need to stick to you like glue. It can happily be washed away by God, and then you're free to enter the rest.

vs 8

The promised land, then, while being a land of rest for a little while (although to be honest I don't know when that is true - during David's reign they fought, during Solomon's reign they were enslaved for public works) was not the promised rest of God. That is an eternal rest.