Appendix B — “Words for the Way.” — No. 2. Rest165
“There remaineth a Rest for the people of God.”
—Heb. iv. 9.
What is the thing that you wish for most in the world?
I cannot hear your answers to my question, and I do not suppose that everyone to whom it is addressed would answer it in the same way; but I must try and fancy to myself what you would be most likely to say. And first I suppose that each of you would be likely to wish for that of which he has most felt the need.
Some of you, perhaps, who are very poor, would say, “Money.” Well, money is a very good thing, and, if we know how to use it rightly, a great blessing for which to thank God when He gives it to us; but you might have money, and yet be far from happy—yet have a great many of your deepest wants unsatisfied. And very many of those who have most money would be the first to tell you that this is the case; and I am sure that with very little of it, it is possible to be very happy if we have some other things.
I hardly think that money is what we should wish for most.
Those of you who are very ill, and who are constantly suffering pain that seems to be always coming freshly upon you, would perhaps say, “Health.” Well, that too is a very good and great gift of God’s, and those of us who have it should thank Him very much for it, and pity heartily and helpfully those who have it not. But I think that with even this blessing, there may be very great wants left; and I believe that it is possible to be very blessed without it. I do not think that Health satisfies the deepest want of our nature.
And some of you perhaps, who have felt how sad it is to be ignorant of many things that it would be so good to know, and who are longing to learn more about God and His great and wonderful works, might say that “Knowledge” was the gift which of all others you desire.
Some again who have felt how sad it is to stand all alone in this great world, every part of which God has made so dependent on the rest,—who long for some heart to lean upon in all life’s troubles, some hand to help to cut a way through them, will say that “Love” is the greatest blessing that it seems to them possible to receive.
I have no doubt that if I were really talking to you, or, still better, could see the thoughts of your hearts, I should be told of many wants which you earnestly desire to have satisfied,—wants, some of them belonging to the lower and some of them to the higher part of that wonderful nature which God has given to us all.
And now perhaps you would like to hear my answer to this question I have been asking of you, “What is the thing we most want?” It seems to me that there is one blessing which sums up in itself—which seems to imply or to contain—almost all others, and which, if we go deeply enough into it, does really satisfy all the great wants of our nature. This is Rest.
Now let us think what Rest is: and see whether if you had that, you would have the deepest part of all your wants satisfied.
You said you wanted Money? Well, was not the comfort which you thought money could give you, just that freedom from care and anxiety which we call Rest?—was it not really for this, and not for the money itself, you longed?
And you wanted Health? Is it not just because health would give you rest from pain and from continual weariness that it seems to you the best of all things? Does not Health for you really mean Rest?
And is it not because there is something that you are always longing to know and understand that you desire so much to have Knowledge? Is not your wish for it founded on the feeling that God gave you a mind and understanding which can only be satisfied by learning and knowing. Do you not really desire knowledge that your intellect may have some firm standing ground?—that it too may have Rest?
And most of all do not you who long for Love, long for it because you feel that to have some one beside you to feel for you and help you, to pray with and work with you through all the labours of this life, is the nearest approach to Rest that we can have on earth, except that deepest Rest which comes through feeling the constant nearness of Him who loves most of all, who “will never leave thee nor forsake thee” (Heb. xiii. 5). If then we can but look forward to Rest, are we not sure of having all that we need?
And it is just this that is promised to us in the text we read at the beginning, “There remaineth a Rest for the people of God.” God knows so well all our wants, and knows so well what will best supply them, that all through the Bible you will find beautiful promises about Rest. Let us look at a few of them. Job in the midst of his great troubles speaks of the future life as that “where the weary are at Rest” (Job. iii. 17). The prophet Jeremiah promises to those who will hear God’s will and seek to do it, that they “shall find Rest for their souls” (Jer. vi. 16). Our Lord Jesus Christ knew well about this deepest want in our nature when He spoke that most beautiful of invitations to all who heard Him on earth, and to all who read His words now, “Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly of heart: and ye shall find Rest unto your souls” (Matt. xi. 28, 29).
And the whole argument of the chapter from which the text we are talking about is taken, is this, “Let us therefore fear, lest, a promise being left us of entering into His Rest, any of us should seem to come short of it” (Heb. iv. 1).
But now let us ask what is implied or meant by those last words about “coming short of it?” What is meant by our Lord’s telling people that they must “take His yoke upon them” and be “meek and lowly of heart” if they would find Rest? What is meant when Rest is promised specially to the “people of God”?
Now, if we believe that God loves us as He does, quite infinitely—more than we can even understand—we may be quite sure that He will always give us every good thing that He can—that He will never put any limit to His promises if He can help it—that He would like to give Rest and all other good things to everyone if it were possible.
We must never doubt for one moment God’s willingness to give us all good things, and to do all for us that it is possible for love to do. Remember what Christ says about that, “If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven know how to give good things to them that ask Him (Matt. vii. 11). And again, “I say not that I will pray the Father for you; for the Father himself loveth you” (John xvi. 26, 27). And St. Paul tells us that “He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him freely give us all things?” (Rom. viii. 32).
So you see that we may be quite sure that if we do not get this great blessing, Rest, it will not be because God is not willing to give it to us.
But there are certain great principles, which we call laws, which govern God’s world, which are of the very nature of God’s own being, and the more we come to know and realize about these laws, the more we shall find them to be the most wonderfully good and beautiful and blessed ones which could be imagined, and see in every one of them some great and glorious provision for the best possible things, which could not come without them.
Now you know God made man in His own image (Gen. i. 27), and, though man afterwards broke that beautiful image and lost the perfect likeness that God had given him to Himself—(as we are told in Eccles. vii. 29, “God made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions”)—still man is so deep a partaker of God’s nature, that the truest and deepest part of him is that which is like God and akin to Him, so that St. Paul tells us, “In God we live, and move, and have our being... for we are also his offspring” (Acts xvii. 28). Now just because our whole blessedness, and our only hope of returning at last to the perfect image in which God made us, lies in our trying to get nearer and nearer to God, and to become more and more like Him, so that our Lord Jesus bids us “Be perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect” (Matt. v. 48)—just because of this, I say, one of the great and merciful laws of God is that none of us shall ever find any true happiness apart from goodness; and no one can hope for Rest who does not seek it in the way of striving to do God’s will. Some one has said that the true Rest of the soul is attained only when God’s will is our will. So we are told by Isaiah, that “There is no peace, saith my God, for the wicked” (Isa. lvii. 21).
And “the wicked” do not mean those only who do great and shameful sins, which seem very terrible even to us, but all who do not strive in everything to do God’s will. Let us look a little more closely at what this will of God’s is.
We are told in the Old Testament what it is. Look at Isaiah i. 16, 17, “Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of thy doing from before Mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.” And again, look at Micah vi. 8, “He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God.”
And when we come to the New Testament, we find Our Lord Jesus Christ telling men who those are whom God blesses—what it is to do God’s will:
“Blessed are the poor in spirit.
Blessed are the meek.
Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness.
Blessed are the merciful.
Blessed are the pure in heart.
Blessed are the peacemakers.” (See Matt. v.)
And while He says that that man only “shall enter into the kingdom of heaven,” who “doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven” (Matt. vii. 21), He explains that will to be, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength; and thy neighbour as thyself.... This do and thou shalt live” (Luke x. 27, 28). So that if that Rest seems to us a great and glorious thing to attain, we must seek it in God’s way; we must try to do God’s will here, that we may rest in perfect harmony and agreement with that will hereafter.
Is it not a wonderful and beautiful thing that God loves us so much that He will not let us be otherwise than good?—that He will not cease to remind us by constant unhappiness and restlessness that we are not fulfilling our highest end, till we strive day by day to come nearer to Him; so that at last, in that great happy day of Rest, there will be no more striving; for “we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.”
Would you like to hear once more those words, which I daresay you know so well, and which tell us better than any others have ever done, what that Rest shall be, and how it shall satisfy all our wants at last, as “eye hath not seen, nor ear heard.”
Let us turn to the Revelation of St. John, and hear the description he gives of those who have entered into Rest: “They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat. For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters: and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.” “Behold the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself shall be with them, and be their God.... And there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.” “And there shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light: and they shall reign for ever and ever.” “Blessed are they that do His commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city” (Rev. vii. 16, 17; xxi. 3, 4; xxii. 5, 14).