The Gospel of Rest

There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God. For he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his. HEBREWS 4:9–10

Meyer’s chapter on the fourth chapter of Hebrews begins with a description of his own age that could have been written yesterday. Strong and useful workers, he says, are breaking down early under the strain of mental toil. The brain was never made to bear such wear. And yet it is not that we work so much harder than our grandparents did, but that there is so much more fret and chafe and worry in our lives. Competition is closer, the pace is faster, and the age seems merciless to anyone who stumbles. We could stand the work, he says, if only we had rest from the worry. Is such a rest possible?

The epistle says it is, and Meyer calls its message the Gospel of Rest.

God’s rest

The rest the epistle offers is God’s own rest — the rest into which He entered on the seventh day. Meyer notices that Genesis gives no evening and morning for that day, as it does for the others, and he takes it as a hint that God’s rest has no end; that all the ages of human history are hours within it; and that we are invited not just to watch it but to share it, as a child may dip its cup into a great lake and drink without making a ripple.

And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. GENESIS 2:2

What kind of rest is it? Not the rest of weariness, for God does not faint. Not the rest of idleness, for Jesus said His Father was still working. It was the rest of a finished work, the satisfaction of One who looked at what He had made and saw that it was very good. So the rest offered to us is not slumber or indolence, but, in Meyer’s phrase, “the rest which is possible amid swift activity and strenuous work”: a contented heart, a will at peace with God’s will, and depths that the storms on the surface do not reach.

Christ has entered it for us

Neither the Sabbath nor Canaan exhausted that rest, the epistle argues; long after Joshua, David was still speaking of a rest to come. But there is a further reason for confidence. Jesus, our forerunner, has entered it. As God rested after creation, Christ rested after redemption. He lay in the tomb on the seventh day, Meyer says, not because He was exhausted but because the work was finished and there was nothing left to do. Then He sat down at the right hand of God. And because we are united to Him, we have entered the rest in Him and have only to take hold of it by faith.

For we which have believed do enter into rest. HEBREWS 4:3

Four ways into the rest

Meyer then becomes practical, as he always does, and gives four ways in which the rest is actually enjoyed.

First, we must will the will of God. So long as God’s will goes one way and ours another, there can be no rest, any more than in a house where the children are always fighting their parents. God’s will is going to be done. If we resist it, the yoke only rubs a sore place. The one who learns to say a perpetual yes to it — even so, Father — finds rest for his soul.

Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. MATTHEW 11:29

Second, we must accept the finished work of Christ. Many believers live as though they still had to do something — by tears or prayers or good works — to make themselves acceptable. “Why should we try to add one stitch to a finished garment,” Meyer asks, or one stroke to a pardon already signed and sealed? What satisfies Christ may well satisfy us.

Third, we must trust our Father’s care. Here Meyer lists the cares that crowd in on us — fear of poverty, household and business cares, cares about servants and children and money, cares like a swarm of gnats on a summer evening — and says that the secret is to learn the habit of handing each one over to God the moment its shadow falls, and to accept even interruptions and insults as permitted by Him.

Fourth, we must follow the Shepherd. The mountain track is often lost in mist. But the Guide knows the way, and walks unseen beside us, whispering peace.

Burdens, and what to do with them

In The Secret of Guidance Meyer returns to the same theme in an address on burdens, and he begins with the Sabbath. The law forbade Israel to carry burdens through the gates of Jerusalem on the Sabbath day. The outward rule, he says, was a picture of an inward rest that is meant for every day. And the secret of that rest is not to carry burdens into it. “Care will break the rest of the soul as much as sin does.”

Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you. 1 PETER 5:7

He makes a distinction that keeps this teaching from being cruel. There is a difference, he says, between care and pain — between the self-made burden of anxiety and the suffering God sends to teach us. The second must not be made light of. But the first we are not meant to carry. And he adds a sentence that goes to the root of much Christian exhaustion: “God is pledged to give strength for all duties which He sets, but not for the burdens which we elect to take on as well.”

He names the burdens that earnest Christians most often carry needlessly. The burden of how to grow in grace: we may leave our progress to the Teacher, as a child leaves his promotion to the school. The burden of keeping up a Christian profession: He who saved can keep. The burden of Christian work, of which Meyer knew a good deal: how to keep the congregation, how to find sermons, how to hold our ground. “They could bear the work, but not the worry.” The work is His, and He bears the world in His arms as a mother holds a sick child. And the burden of our changing feelings, which we may hand over to Him who remembers that we are dust.

The remedy for them all is the same. Kneel down, Meyer says, and deliberately hand each burden to Jesus as once you handed Him your sins. Say, Lord, I entrust this to You; I cannot carry it; take it, and give me Your peace.

Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. PHILIPPIANS 4:6–7

Reading him with care

One line in the address needs care. Meyer says that anxious burden-bearing dishonours God, because the world judges the Father by the faces of His children: “We are either libels or Bibles.” There is truth in that. But anxiety is not always simple unbelief. Some of it is illness, and some of it is the natural weight of real trouble. A believer struggling with anxiety needs the invitation of this chapter far more than its rebuke, and may need a doctor as well as a sermon. Meyer, who knew nervous depression himself, would not have wanted his words used as a whip.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. List the burdens you are carrying this week. Mark each one: is it a duty God has set, or a care you have taken on yourself?

2. Kneel and hand the cares over one by one, by name, as Meyer counsels. When one comes back, hand it over again.

3. Is there any sense in which you are still trying to add a stitch to the finished garment? Thank Christ that His work is complete.

4. Practise saying yes to God’s will in one thing you have been resisting.

5. If anxiety has become a constant companion, speak to a trusted friend or doctor this week. Rest is also received through ordinary means.

A PRAYER

Lord, I have worked and worried, and the worry has worn me more than the work.

Thank You that Christ has finished His work, and that I need add nothing to it.

I hand You my cares — this, and this, and this. I cannot carry them. Take them, and give me Your peace.

Let me enter Your rest, and keep it, in the midst of all my work. Amen.