REST
In Hebrews 4, we have the thought of God’s rest and the fact that we who believe are entering into it. Israel came short of the rest which God called them to, the land of Canaan, through not hearkening to His word. The word of God keeps God’s rest ever before us and exposes that in us which would hinder us pursuing our course as going on to that rest. With Israel it was lusting after the things of Egypt which hindered them. They had not, in heart, left Egypt. With us, too, there is a natural disinclination to leave things here and to go on to God’s rest.
God’s rest will be in a state of things in which everything will be according to God, to His satisfaction and glory. All lawlessness will be removed, righteousness will prevail, God’s love will pervade all, and every intelligent creature will be responsive to His love, and all will be filled with His praise. It will be a scene of endless peace and joy. To this end God is now working, and Christ is also working, the bringing it all to pass has been entrusted to Him. This is what He brought into this world. Back in eternal ages He could say, “Lo, I come … to do thy will, O God”, Heb 10: 7. When He was here He could say, “I delight to do thy will, O my God”, Ps 40: 8. He will not rest until He has brought about in heaven and on earth a state of things which will be perfectly according to the will of God. The moment will come when it will be said, “It is done” (Rev 21: 6); this will be God’s rest which we are now going on to. It will be eternal, everything of evil will be excluded, nothing will be allowed to enter which could mar or disturb it. To a great extent this state of things will exist in the millennium under the reign of Christ, but in its full result it will be in the eternal state, in the new creation condition of things. Then only will it be said, “It is done”.
God has ever been working for the complete accomplishment of that which He purposed in Himself from eternal ages. When this is brought to pass God will rest from all His works, and Christ will rest in having accomplished all the will of God; believers will enter into that rest and will cease from their works as God did from His, and the whole creation will rest in undisturbed repose.
In the meantime we find ourselves in a scene of unrest and confusion, where man’s will is dominant and Satan is in power. We are like the disciples in the ship passing over a troubled sea with the wind boisterous. And the Lord does not propose at the present time to change these outward conditions. But He would change us, to put us into the same state in which He was Himself when He was in this world of evil. He was the Man of rest, He could sleep in the midst of the storm. Now He says, “Come to me ... and I will give you rest”, Matt 11: 28. At the moment when He spoke these words, for Him, the circumstances were most unfavourable: John, His forerunner, had been cast into prison, and He had had to reproach the cities where most of His ministry and works of power had been exercised, because they repented not. It seemed as if He had laboured in vain and spent His strength for nought and in vain. Outwardly it looked as if evil was triumphing in this world and God’s will was being defeated. Yet at that time Jesus lifted up His eyes to heaven and said, “I praise thee, Father, Lord of the heaven and of the earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them to babes. Yea, Father, for thus has it been well-pleasing in thy sight”, v 25, 26. Whatever the outward appearances might be, the Father was just carrying out His will, doing just what He intended to do in spite of all the power of Satan and the will of man. He could not for a moment be thwarted in the carrying out of His purpose. What a comfort it is to know that whatever upheavals there may be in this world, God ever goes on in the path of His will, nothing diverts Him, nothing can thwart His will. “Thy way, O God, is in the sanctuary”, Ps 77: 13. Everything has been settled there. Then “thy way is in the sea, and thy path in the great waters”, v 19. In the midst of all the tumult here God has His way, in the midst of it all He is just bringing to pass what had already been settled in the sanctuary.
He everywhere hath sway,
And all things serve His might.
“He doeth according to his will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth: and none can stay his hand, or say unto him, What doest thou?”, Dan 4: 35. Divine love, wisdom and power can never be baffled, and must in the end triumph over all evil. He is the sovereign Ruler of heaven and earth. Jesus could look up to Him and say, “Father”, and He teaches us to do the same. As Man here Jesus found His rest in the Father, He knew Him in this name of love. This was His resource, His rest. What a resource against all the power of Satan and the hostility of men!
Now He proposes to put us in the same state of rest. He says, “Come to me ... and I will give you rest”. This He does by revealing the Father to us. “No one knows the Son but the Father, nor does any one know the Father, but the Son, and he to whom the Son may be pleased to reveal him”, Matt 11: 27. This is individual exercise and faith. We must, like Mary in Luke 10, come individually under the teaching of the Son. No one else can do it for us, we cannot do it for one another, we cannot get it by reading books. But it is always open to us to choose “the good part”. He is ever ready to teach us, He still says, “Come unto me”. We know much about the Father, but how little we know Him through the teaching of the Son!
This is the chief element of the rest He proposes to give. It is the knowledge of the Father which gives satisfaction and rest. How wonderful the privilege to be able to look up to Him who is the sovereign Ruler of heaven and earth, to address Him as Father. To know that the God of infinite wisdom and almighty power is our Father. One who loves us and cares for us constantly.
But there is another element of rest, the yielding of our wills. Practically we shall find that this is a most essential element of rest. What characterised Jesus was that He never sought His own will. He had no will apart from the Father. He found His delight in doing the will of Him that sent Him. With us often the chief cause of unrest is that we have a will of our own, and that will gets thwarted, we are checked in going the way we had planned for ourselves, or in gaining some end we had purposed. In consequence we are worried and dissatisfied. If we had nothing before us but the will of God, we know that His will is good, and must prevail in spite of everything, and hence we could afford to be quiet and patient. Take the case of the disciples in the ship, Luke 8: 22. If it was the will of God that they should go over to the other side, no storm could prevent their getting there. “He commandeth, and raiseth the stormy wind” (Ps 107: 25), no doubt to test our faith. But “He maketh the storm a calm, so that the waves thereof are still”, v 29. His love ever watches over us, and His power is able to preserve us during the storm.
Jesus says, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest to your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light”, Matt 11: 29, 30. To take His yoke upon us involves the surrender of our wills. When two oxen are under the same yoke they must walk in the same direction, they must pull together, otherwise the yoke would be galling. How much trouble we should be saved if we had no will of our own, if we were content just to go on in the direction of the Lord’s will. It is when we have a will and way of our own that we find the yoke galling. If we are willing to go in the path of His will, if we are truly submissive, we shall find that His yoke is easy and His burden is light, because He takes all the weight of it and supports us with His power. Then we find rest to our souls in every step of the path. As we learn of Him we are formed by His teaching according to Himself, as the One who is meek and lowly of heart. It is a new education for us to learn to be meek and lowly, it is the opposite of what we are naturally, and the opposite of what this world’s education would give us. It is only in the company of Christ and by His teaching that we are thus formed anew. It is the meek and lowly who find rest to their souls. Men of the world are naturally self-asserting and proud, and they are like the troubled sea which cannot rest. And if we as Christians allow in ourselves the spirit of the world, we shall not find rest to our souls, but, on the contrary, plenty of trouble.
The Lord grant to us that we may be so transformed by the company and teaching of Christ that we may enjoy this soul-rest day by day while we are on the way to the eternal rest of God. Then we shall cease from our works as God did from His.
March 1915
From Helps for the Poor of the Flock vol 20 (1915)