The Rest That Remains

We come at the last to a promise of rest, and it is fitting that the long pilgrimage should end here, for rest is where every true journey is going. There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God. The word is remain. Beyond all the rests we have known and lost, beyond the Sabbath of creation and the promised land of Canaan that Israel entered and yet did not truly enter, there remains a rest, still ahead, still promised, the true and final rest of God into which his people are journeying. The whole weary road leads here, to the rest that remains.

The writer has been tracing the layers of this rest. There was the rest of God himself, who rested on the seventh day from all his work. There was the rest of Canaan, the land of promise into which Joshua led the people, and yet, the writer says, if Joshua had given them the true rest, God would not have spoken afterward of another day. So the land was not the real rest but a shadow of it, and beyond it there remains the true rest, the eternal Sabbath keeping of the people of God, the rest that is God’s own rest, into which we finally enter at the end of the pilgrimage.

THE REST THAT REMAINS

This rest that remains is the consummation of everything, the goal toward which the whole life of faith has been moving. All the labor of the cell, all the watching and the waiting, all the sowing in tears and the bearing of the yoke and the running of the race, has been a journey toward this rest. The solitary who entered his cell to seek God, the pilgrim who set out through the narrow gate, the weary sower and the pruned branch and the returning son, all are traveling toward the same end, the rest that remains for the people of God. The road is long, and often hard, but it has an end, and the end is rest, the everlasting Sabbath that has no evening.

For this is not the rest of a single night that gives way to another day of labor, but the rest of God himself, entered into and never left, the Sabbath that does not end. He that is entered into his rest, the writer says, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his. As God rested from his finished work of creation and that rest did not end in another day of making, so the people of God enter at last into a rest from their labors that does not give way to more labor, the finished and abiding rest of God. The pilgrimage ends not in more road but in rest, and the rest does not end.

CEASING FROM OUR WORKS

And the rest is a ceasing from our own works, as God ceased from his. It is the end of striving, the laying down of the restless labor of the self that has driven us all our days, the exhausting effort to justify and secure and prove ourselves. To enter God’s rest is to cease from all that, to rest in his finished work rather than in our own unfinished striving, to lay down at last the weary self-effort and rest in what Christ has done. There is a foretaste of this even now, for the soul that has learned to rest in Christ’s finished work, in his own It is finished, has begun to enter the rest, ceasing from the labor of self-salvation and resting in him.

This is the rest the Lord himself offered to the weary and heavy laden. Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, he said, and I will give you rest. The rest that remains is not only a distant consummation but a present gift begun, the rest of the soul that has come to Christ and ceased from its own works, that has laid its burden on him and taken his easy yoke, and found rest unto the soul. We enter the rest now by faith, in part, resting in Christ; and we enter it fully at the last, when the pilgrimage is done and the eternal Sabbath begins. The rest is both a present peace and a coming glory, both begun and awaited.

LABOUR TO ENTER IN

And there is one solemn warning laid across the promise, which is that a rest may be missed. Israel came to the border of Canaan and did not enter in, because of unbelief, and their carcases fell in the wilderness within sight of the rest they would not believe. So the writer warns, let us labour therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief. It is a strange and searching phrase, to labour to enter into rest, but it means the diligence of faith, the pressing on, the refusal to harden the heart and fall short at the border as Israel did. To day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts. The rest remains, but it is entered by faith, and forfeited by unbelief, and we must not come to its very border and fail to enter in.

So the whole long journey comes down at the last to this, to press on in faith to the rest that remains, not fainting, not hardening, not falling short at the border, but entering in. All the sermons of this book, all the watching and waiting and sowing and abiding, have been the labor of the pilgrimage, and the pilgrimage has an end, and the end is the rest of God. The soul that has walked the long and solitary road, seeking God through the cell and the desert and the narrow way, is journeying home to rest, and the road, however long, is bringing it there.

THE SATISFIED SOUL

We must not think this rest an empty idleness, a mere ceasing of activity, as though heaven were only the end of work. The rest that remains is the rest of the soul come home to God, the satisfaction of every longing in his presence, the end not of joy but of restlessness. All our days the soul has been restless, seeking, hungering, reaching for a satisfaction it never quite grasped, and the rest that remains is the finding at last of the One for whom it was always reaching. Thou hast made us for thyself, and the heart is restless until it rests in thee, and the rest that remains is that final resting of the restless heart in God, its hunger filled, its longing answered, its wandering ended in the presence it was made for.

In thy presence, the psalmist says, is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore. This is the rest, not the absence of joy but its fulness, not the end of all delight but the beginning of pleasures that do not end. The soul that has hungered for God through all the wilderness of this life is satisfied at last in his presence, filled with a fulness of joy that has no lack in it and no end. As for me, another psalmist says, I will behold thy face in righteousness; I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness. To behold his face, and to be satisfied, this is the rest that remains, the waking of the soul into the sight of God, satisfied forever.

And there every sorrow of the long road is answered. God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes, the last book promises, 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. The tears of the sowing, the wounds of the pruning, the weariness of the well doing, the long nights of the waiting, all are wiped away and answered in the rest that remains, and the pilgrim who walked the hard road through the cell and the desert and the narrow gate finds at the end not only rest from his labors but the God for whom he labored, and every tear wiped away by the hand of the One he sought.

So this is where the whole long journey has been going, all of it, from the first entering of the cell to the last. Every sermon of watching and waiting, of tears and stillness, of the yoke and the wound and the seed, has been the labor of a pilgrim traveling toward this rest, the rest of God himself, the presence for which the soul was made. The solitary who sought God in the silence and the desert was seeking this all along, this fulness of joy in his presence, this beholding of his face, this satisfied and everlasting rest. And the road, however long and hard, is bringing every faithful soul home to it.

So do not grow weary at the end of the road, and do not fall short at the border of the rest. Press on in faith to the rest that remains, entering even now, by resting in Christ’s finished work and ceasing from your own, and awaiting the fullness when the pilgrimage is done. The weary pilgrim is going home. He giveth his beloved sleep, the psalmist says, and beyond all the labor there is a rest where God shall wipe away all tears, and there shall be no more sorrow, nor crying, and no more night, but the everlasting Sabbath of the people of God, entered and never left. There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God. Press on, and enter in.