Leavetaking of the Nativity

Let’s fear therefore, lest perhaps anyone of you should seem to have come short of a promise of entering into his rest. ²For indeed we have had good news preached to us, even as they also did, but the word they heard didn’t profit them, because it wasn’t mixed with faith by those who heard. ³For we who have believed do enter into that rest, even as he has said, “As I swore in my wrath, they will not enter into my rest;” although the works were finished from the foundation of the world. ⁴For he has said this somewhere about the seventh day, “God rested on the seventh day from all his works;” ⁵and in this place again, “They will not enter into my rest.”

⁶Seeing therefore it remains that some should enter into it, and they to whom the good news was preached before failed to enter in because of disobedience, ⁷he again defines a certain day, “today”, saying through David so long a time afterward (just as has been said), “Today if you will hear his voice, don’t harden your hearts.”

⁸For if Joshua had given them rest, he would not have spoken afterward of another day. ⁹There remains therefore a Sabbath rest for the people of God. ¹⁰For he who has entered into his rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from his. ¹¹Let’s therefore give diligence to enter into that rest, lest anyone fall after the same example of disobedience. ¹²For the word of God is living and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and is able to discern the thoughts and intentions of the heart. ¹³There is no creature that is hidden from his sight, but all things are naked and laid open before the eyes of him to whom we must give an account.

Some Sadducees, who say that there is no resurrection, came to him. They asked him, saying, ¹⁹“Teacher, Moses wrote to us, ‘If a man’s brother dies and leaves a wife behind him, and leaves no children, that his brother should take his wife and raise up offspring for his brother.’ ²⁰There were seven brothers. The first took a wife, and dying left no offspring. ²¹The second took her, and died, leaving no children behind him. The third likewise; ²²and the seven took her and left no children. Last of all the woman also died. ²³In the resurrection, when they rise, whose wife will she be of them? For the seven had her as a wife.”

²⁴Jesus answered them, “Isn’t this because you are mistaken, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God? ²⁵For when they will rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. ²⁶But about the dead, that they are raised, haven’t you read in the book of Moses about the Bush, how God spoke to him, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? ²⁷He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. You are therefore badly mistaken.”