Come and Rest with Me

Biblical "rest" can mean many different things while still meaning only one thing: a relinquishing of all human self-assertion and trusting in God alone.

Rest on the seventh day (the Sabbath for the Israelites and modern day Jews; Sunday for Christians) meant freedom from work. Even in the wilderness, the work of gathering "manna" for food was not done on the Sabbath. In fact, any who tried to do so, found their manna to be full of worms and inedible anyway. They soon learned that what God said, He meant.

It wasn't only the man of the household who got to stay home from work on the Sabbath and rest; also commanded to rest were the wife, the children, the servants, and even the animals. It was designed to be, in the words of Exodus 23:12, a time when all "may be refreshed." And as we saw earlier it was a time set apart (consecrated, dedicated) to the worship of God with grateful hearts for His provision.

Rest was not intended only for the Sabbath. Times of needed "refreshing" were utilized by Jesus, when He took time from the busyness of his short yet intense three and a half year ministry to retreat into the hills alone, mostly to pray. (Mark 6:45-47; Luke 6:12, Luke 9:28).

He taught the disciples to take necessary time away telling them to "Come away by yourselves to a lonely place, and rest awhile." (Mark 6:31 RSV) Such rest reorients a person's values, taking attention off the workday preoccupation with getting and spending, and onto God and spiritual realities.

In the bible willingness to engage in such rest is nothing less than a covenant sign between God and his people; but not only for the Israelites, but for us today.

The bible also describes rest as a form of freedom, such as the freedom of the Israelites from their 400 year bondage to Egypt (Deut. 5:15). Divine rest is freedom from bondage to many thing besides slavery: it frees us from anything that addicts, it frees us from anything that would want to consume our time and deflect us from considering God in all that we do; it frees us to enter into right relationships with one another as God designed us to do; it frees us from worldly preoccupation; it frees us from our own self-striving. Our willingness to heed the divine command to rest is a sign of our commitment to God; a sign of our willingness to trust Him more than we do ourselves.

Rest is a sign of salvation itself; it is a sign of accepting Jesus' invitation that says "Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." (Matthew 11:28)

 Unbelief causes us to be unable to enter into this divine rest as the author of the book of Hebrews tells us happened to those Israelites who died in the wilderness because of their sin and rebellion, never reaching the Promised Land:

"And to whom sware He that they should not enter into His rest, but to them that believed not? So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief." (Hebrews 3:18-19)

"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. Let us labor therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief." (Hebrews 4:9-11)

 For those of us who keep busy ministering to others, this is a timely word; for often ministry begins as a service to God, but, as the busyness begins to overwhelm, becomes something much less: our own striving to eradicate sin and evil, versus resting in the Lord as we trust Him to work His good works in others. I have been guilty of such, as recently as yesterday. Yet I thank the Lord that through Jesus Christ alone, I can still "come boldly into the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need." (Hebrews 4:16)

Jesus is our rest from striving for righteousness.  He is our rest from striving against bondage of those idols we've established in our lives.  He is our rest from ourselves.  He knew divine rest better than any of us, and in Him, we can find perfect rest.  This rest is one that lifts us above our circumstances: lifts us up out of the muck and mire of our sin, lifts us up out of the pain of diseased and failing bodies, lifts us up out of the sorrow of personal loss.  His rest sets us free from fear of death.

Those who don't know Jesus Christ personally run from Him in fear of the great burden of "Christianity" being placed upon them.  They have no idea that His "yoke is easy" and His "burden is light." 

They have no idea that the perfect life they are seeking can be found only in Him who is Perfect.