JOY, PEACE, REST | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Oct 15, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 42.

JOY, PEACE, REST.

REST is the fruit of peace, and both peace and joy are the fruits of righteousness. Those who have tasted of God’s mercies, whose iniquities are forgiven, are those who “go out with joy and are led forth with peace.” And those who have peace and quietness (or rest) are those who know the righteousness of God. For “the work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance forever.” Isa. 32:17.

THE one thing to seek, therefore, is not joy or rest, but righteousness. Many there are who are seeking the fruit, who do not wish to sow the seed or plant the tree. They prefer to let the natural products of the flesh, those most congenial to natural tastes, grow and bloom; but they do not wish to reap the fruit—disappointment, woe, misery, death. Many wish only the evanescent joy of this world,—the “folly [that] is joy to him that is void of heart”—the fruit of which is Dead Sea apples, turning to ashes in the mouth, tho beautiful to the eye.

ALL such wish to have the joy and rest and peace of God in a heart filled with selfishness, sin, and rebellion against Him. They wish to ignore all God’s warnings, transgress all God’s precepts, and yet reap the fulfilment of all God’s promises. But peace and rest will never come in that way. One may obtain sin’s anesthetics, may persuade himself that its numbing, soporific effects are peace; but there comes, sooner or later, the sad awakening, the harassed, goaded nerves, the troubled conscience, and the fear of impending and future dangers. “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” It is an inexorable law.

TO ALL these weary, restless, sin-sick souls there is peace and rest in Jesus Christ. God has naught against you. His thoughts toward you are “thoughts of peace and not of evil.” He holds peace in open hands for those who are far off and those who are near. The rough and turbulent sea of strife within your heart, whose “waters cast up mire and dirt,” is not of Him, but of your own restless, unsatisfied longings, lusts, and passions. O, would you not be quit of them forever? Would you not find rest in Him, with infinitely more assurance than the little child can rest sweetly careless in the strong, enclasping arms of a loving mother? It is not hard to find this peace, this rest, this joy unspeakable, if we will but seek in His way.

LISTEN to what He, the wronged One, says. He has never harmed you. He has given you good all your life long. His requirement—His holy, good, and righteous law—was ordained for your life. It is you who have made it death. It is your carnal heart which is enmity with God, and is not subject to the law of God. Rom. 8:7. There is, then, but one logical, right thing to do—surrender to God. Give up your rebellion. Yield to Him the carnal heart. Give to Him all your ways, yielding all, all, ALL, a willing offering; and then by faith accept what an open heaven freely offers to you—all the cleansing, the righteousness, the fulness that has been purchased for you by the life of Jesus. When God has nothing against you, when you have surrendered all to God and have nothing against Him, surely there is peace. It is not a matter of sentiment or feeling; it is a condition, as actual, as absolute, as the righteousness of God. “Being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Rom. 5:1. Let faith grasp it. Praise God for it, and the rest is yours, and the joy is yours. Abide forever surrendered to Him, and forever the peace is yours. This is the peace that Jesus gives; not as the world gives, but full, blessed, permanent if we will. As long as He is ours, peace will abide; for is not He “our Peace”? Eph. 2:14. It is the peace that floweth “as a river,” that “passeth all understanding,” that gives rest to the heart amid life’s fiercest turmoils and conflicts. It is the “joy unspeakable, and full of glory.” Blessed peace and rest and joy of God! Would you have them?—Seek His righteousness, and all shall be yours. For “the work of righteousness shall be peace, and the effect of righteousness, quietness and assurance forever.”