² For indeed we have had good news preached to us, just as they also; but the word they heard did not profit them, because it was not united by faith in those who heard. ³ For we who have believed enter that rest, just as He has said, “As I swore in My wrath, They shall not enter My rest” …

All along, God has been and is looking for faith! Old Testament Israel did not “unite” the Word of the Lord with faith. Just having God’s Word is not enough, as though putting a nice Bible on our coffee table makes any difference. Many people sit under the sound of the gospel week after week and yet don’t really believe what it says. Other were raised in a Bible-reading home, yet don’t live their lives in faith by what the Bible teaches. Others do seek to live their lives by the Scripture’s precepts, but it ultimately does not benefit them because they don’t combine that knowledge of Scripture and life teachings with faith. To be sure, they may derive some benefit on the surface or the short term, but the struggle for righteousness continues unabated. There is no rest.

Notice what the good news is. It is the same for us as it was for the Old Testament Jews, that God was and is working among His people to bring them into a rest. The human perception of that “rest” may have changed, but the effect is the same. Israel needed rest from their hard, slave labor in Egypt and to enter into the corresponding blessing of life in the Promised Land. Today, people need rest from slavery to the Law which they can never satisfy and to enter into the corresponding blessing of life in Christ, the Promised One.

The warning to his readers and to us as well, don’t fail like they did by not having faith in God, the one who gives us good news. Again, Psalm 95 is quoted. Faith is not simply one aspect of the Christian life, it is the absolute crux. Our devotion to the Word of God by itself is not sufficient, we must fully embrace it by faith. We cannot be satisfied with knowledge alone. I once met an Old Testament Hebrew scholar who was a visiting lecturer at a nearby university. His doctoral thesis dealt with a passage in Scripture that he says proved that Moses didn’t know what he was talking about when he wrote the Pentetuch (the first five books of Scripture). He identified himself as a “believer” in the non-existence of God. I asked why spend his life studying the Bible then? He answered it was because he loves languages and literature. Despite his great learning and his study of the Word, it provided him no eternal benefit, because it was not “united by faith.”