LOVE’S RESTING PLACE

E. C. Burr

Exodus 15: 27; Numbers 10: 33–36; John 21: 20

I was just attracted, beloved brethren—perhaps because in a way it suited me—by the reference in our hymn at the beginning to ‘love’s resting place’, just to linger on the words as we sang them, as we have sung them I suppose countless times. But sometimes something you are very familiar with touches you, perhaps because you have a need of it, and perhaps we all have a need of it—that is, love’s resting place. There is the

turmoil in the world, indeed in the country, to which our beloved brother referred, circumstances which exist as to which men, and for that matter women, scarcely seem to know any solution. I wonder sometimes how we think of these things, whether we think of these public situations as to how they might affect us. The great thing is, not how they affect us circumstantially but how they affect us in our spirits and souls—the general disorder and lawlessness and how God must view it and over against that I think the saints need a resting place.

Of course there are other circumstances; there are our beloved sisters in hospitals and in homes in the city at the present time who would remind us of the need for love’s resting place, and as you speak perhaps with one and another of them you are impressed with how needed it is. I think the Lord has something special to say to us in the city (not that I can say what it is) in our having so many sisters laid aside at the present time. Perhaps it is to increase the development of tenderness amongst us. It must be for something, and I suggest that it could at least be for that. Then there is the ordinary weariness of the way, where one gets tired, and things like that accumulate, and again one looks for a resting place. I have referred to these scriptures because that is what they suggest to me, in fact in one it is explicit.

The place where we need a resting place is, of course, the wilderness. We shall rest when we are with Christ, although it is interesting that Paul does not refer to rest, as far as I recall, in relation to the rapture, but in relation to the appearing—“repose with us, at the revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven”, 2 Thessalonians 1: 7. But this is the place where we need rest, and we need not a resting place that we have worked out or chosen for ourselves; what we need is love’s resting place. “And they came to Elim”; it just says that, “they came to Elim”. There was no special guidance or direction, though I suppose that they had divine direction at this point, because there was the cloud. “They came to Elim”. It is just as if in our circumstances the Lord allows us to come, almost unexpectedly, to where we may find what we quickly recognise, not as something that has just happened, but as being love’s resting place for the moment, and just what we need is there. There are the springs of water and the palm trees, which have often been applied in relation to the availability of the Spirit and of the saints, as providing love’s resting place; but we just come to it. It is not that we sought it out, we just came to it, and it is a great thing, beloved, in our circumstances to recognise the moment when love has given us a resting place that we did not expect.

Then the thing is, if I could just put it simply, to make the best of it and make the most of it, and enjoy it. One day we will have to journey from it, as the next chapter shows, but for the moment, if we touch love’s resting place, just providentially on the way, let us enjoy it, let us recuperate there, let us find what Jesus promised in Matthew 11: 30, rest to our souls, because that is what most of us I suppose need a good deal of the time. Most of the time we are under some kind of stress; for the minor part of the time we are at rest, I expect everybody is like that. For a lot of the time we are in the turmoil, for a little of the time we are at rest, but how blessed the rest is; and we just came to it.

But then in Numbers 10 we did not just come to it, it was sought out for us. “The ark ..: went before them in the three days’ journey, to search out a resting-place for them”, and if it is the ark, that is Christ, that searches out a resting place for us in the wilderness, then it must be love’s resting place. That is to say, it is a place where it can rest—it says, “when it rested”, a place where Christ Himself, in relation with His saints in the wilderness, can find a resting place—and where He can rest and we can rest. In a sense He has no rest here. “My Father worketh hitherto and I work” (John 5: 17), and the work goes on. He had, when He was here, no place where He could lay His head. Strikingly enough, He had that rest in the ship in the storm, but otherwise very, very little rest. He was weary with the way He had come (John 4: 6), but even for Him I think that He found love’s resting place in the Father’s work in relation to the woman who came out that she might draw water.

Beloved, the Lord searches out a resting place for us, and therefore if we find a need for rest the thing is not to look for rest but to look for the Lord, and to seek to discover in our spirits and under the guidance of the Holy Spirit just the way in which He is going, where He is going to rest, as Mr. Darby has the expression in his letter to the Irish clergy, ‘casual rest is of the supreme mercy’ (Coll. Wrtgs. Vol. 1, p.9). But beloved, if the Ark sought it out, then we may safely rest there, because when it sets forward it deals with the enemies, puts them all down, scatters them, in order that when it rests the people of God may rest. The Lord would give us, as I say, rest to our souls. If you reflect on the Scriptures you will notice very much how the question of rest enters into them, in a positive way too, and as valuable, and it should be so for us, because the Lord will provide it for us. He will search out a resting place for us, as much as to say, ‘It will not be here, and it will not be there’; you may have thought it was!

‘You will not find rest in this or that, but I have a rest’; and the Lord is going before us in the wilderness and would bring us to a place where we can rest, because He can rest.

Beloved, as I say again, the thing is, when we are under any kind of pressure or strain, or just with the ordinary weariness of everyday life (it affects some of us at different times, and affects all of us in different ways) not for me to search for a rest but to follow the Lord and the Lord will bring us to a resting place which He has searched out. It may be just for a moment, because if you look at Numbers 33 you find it was all movement, and one place after another; but if the ark had sought out the movements in each place, whether it was just for a day or a night, or for a week or a month, or whatever period, if the ark stopped there then that was a place where you could rest. I expect what most of us need is rest to our souls.

There is a need for rest in body, but there is a need for rest to our souls, and what the Lord Himself seeks out is a place where we may safely rest, and as I say again, it is love’s resting place.

I suggest that John found that, John knew that. John records the controversy and strife that entered into the Lord’s blessed life here, and in what he portrays in his gospel how much conflict and exercise there is. In the fifth chapter and the eighth chapter, how much conflict and strife there is with those who are opposed to Him; but there was a disciple whom Jesus loved who could lean at supper on His breast. That is to say, he found love’s resting place, and the striking thing in chapter 13 is that he found it in a moment when Jesus Himself was troubled in spirit. Think of that! The question of the betrayer arose there; their feet had been washed and Jesus had taken His garments again, and He was leaving the world to go to the

Father, and all that phase of things was over in relation to the disciples, and then our mind is concentrated for a few moments on the betrayer, the one who would deliver Him up, and Jesus was troubled in spirit; but even at that moment there was still love’s resting place.

John could lean on His breast then—indeed this is quoted in effect from chapter 13—in circumstances like that, when Jesus was troubled, and yet He would still provide a rest for a disciple whom He loved. Beloved, I need not say in relation to all the saints that He loves them all, and He would provide this kind of rest for them all. It just comes back to what I was saying a moment ago, that if we seek for rest the thing is to find the Lord, and then having found the Lord to get sufficiently near Him that you can take up this place. There is a sense in which it is special to John, but then there is a sense in which we may perhaps appropriate it for ourselves in our spirits, that there is a resting place in which, I think I could safely say, He Himself is content to have us in love’s resting place.

Well, beloved, I refer to these things because these familiar hymns sometimes strike a new chord in your mind. I suppose most of us speak here on a Tuesday night in relation to some impression that we have had ourselves, that has been formed in us out of our own experience and can be communicated to the saints, and the Lord would I think touch us all with a sense of the rest that He would give us. In the Song it says, “On my bed, in the nights, I sought him whom my soul loveth” (Song of Songs 3: 1), and He came and she was at rest when He came; not before and not apart from Him, nor may we be beloved; we cannot be at rest apart from Him. But in our circumstances He will provide for us what we do not expect. He will search things out and make Himself available, in order that we ourselves may find in Him love’s resting place. Well, may it be so, and may I say, may it do us good, for His name’s sake.

Word in meeting for ministry, London
18 March 1980