p. 7 | THE REST THAT REMAINS

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Apr 9, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 15.

“THE REST THAT REMAINS.”

IN the fourth chapter of Hebrews is a passage that is generally misunderstood and often perverted. Read carefully verses 1 to 11 from the Revised Version, as follows:—

“Let us fear therefore, lest haply, a promise being left of entering into His rest, any one of you should seem to have come short of it. For indeed we have had good tidings preached unto us, even as also they; but the word of hearing did not profit them, because they were not united by faith with them that heard. For we which have believed do enter into that rest; even as He hath said, As I swear in My wrath, They shall not enter into My rest: altho the works were finished from the foundation of the world. For He hath said somewhere of the seventh day on this wise, And God rested on the seventh day from all His works; and in this place again, They shall not enter into My rest. Seeing therefore that it remaineth that some should enter thereinto, and they to whom the good tidings were before preached failed to enter in because of disobedience, He again defineth a certain day, saying in David, after so long a time, To-day, as it hath been before said, To-day if ye shall hear His voice, harden not your hearts. For if Joshua had given them rest, He [God] would not have spoken afterward of another day. There remaineth therefore a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For he that is entered into his rest hath himself also rested from his works, as God did from His. Let us therefore give diligence to enter into that rest, that no man fall after the same example of disobedience.”

The rest that is here spoken of is God's rest. When God created the earth for man's abode “He rested from all his works which God had created and made;” “on the seventh day He rested, and was refreshed.” See Gen. 2:1-3; Ex. 20:8-11; 31:17. He did not rest because He needed a physical cessation from work; for “the everlasting God, Jehovah, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary.” Isa. 40:28. His was a spiritual rest, a refreshing of soul, a delight in His perfect work for man. Adam fell, marred the works of God, sought delight in sin, and failed to enter God's rest.

When Noah was born, his parents thought him to be the promised Seed, and named him Noah, or Rest. And God would have given rest then if the Gospel message preached by Noah had been truly and fully accepted.

Again God came to His people when they were slaves in Egypt. He came to give them spiritual rest in a land of rest for an everlasting inheritance. He promised them that their days should be “as the days of heaven upon the earth.” Deut. 11:21. As an earnest of this promise He preserved their clothing and shoes, and the eyes of his faithful ones waxed not dim, nor did their natural force abate, in the many wanderings of forty years. Then and there God would have given rest to His people by Joshua, who led them across Jordan into the land of promise. See Ex. 33:14; Deut. 12:10. But the rest that they received was but temporary, and from physical foes. We are expressly told in Hebrews that “if Joshua [called in Greek, Jesus] had given them rest, He [God] would not have spoken afterward of another day.” This does not mean any weekly day; for that is not what God proposed through Joshua, but it refers to another time. When God's people as a nation refused to enter His rest, He limits, or defines, another day in David (Ps. 95:7). That day is “To-day.”

God will have the inheritance peopled with righteous characters. For these He has called all along the ages specially and generally. Through unbelief (disobedience) men have rejected Him, and entered not. From the time that Israel refused to enter in, no earthly land awaits the people of God; but “the rest remains,” and the time to accept it is “To-day.”

That rest is spiritual rest, rest from sin; rest from the tyranny of the world, the flesh, the devil. It can only come to those who yield up themselves, cease their own efforts as meriting salvation, and accept of the salvation and rest which God alone can give. That implies and involves creative power. Only that soul can enter God's rest who ceases from his own works. He must anew be “created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore prepared that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2:10), His own good works.

The memorial of God's creative power is the seventh day, on which “He rested, and was refreshed.” Ex. 20:8-11; 31:17. The constant living sign of His power to sanctify and save through Christ Jesus is the Sabbath, in which God has placed His double blessing. Eze. 20:12, 20. That man who truly forsakes himself and his own works, who truly yields to Jesus Christ, finds God's rest from sin and sinning, and will, if he but knows it, rejoice in the rest of the Sabbath of the Lord. It will be an oasis of refreshing in a desert of dreariness; a living fountain, sending forth its life-streams in the brook by the way, from which the weary pilgrim may forever drink. It will witness continually of God's creative power to sanctify and keep day by day, and is a constant pledge of the earth made new by the creative power of God, the Sabbath rest which will be sempiternal, into which the redeemed of all ages shall enter, to go out no more forever. “Let us therefore give diligence to enter into that rest, that no man fall after the same example of disobedience.”