By REV. JOHN COLQUHOUN in Glendale, 6th June, 1955.
“There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God” (Heb. iv. 9).
In the previous chapter the Apostle Paul refers to the conduct of the children of Israel in the wilderness as that with which God was so grieved that He said of that generation, “They do alway err in their heart; and they have not known my ways. So I sware in my wrath, They shall not enter into my rest.” From this the Apostle takes the opportunity of warning sinners by saying, “Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God,” and thus come short of God’s rest from which unbelievers were shut out, and, in the chapter read in your hearing, he says, “For we which have believed do enter into rest.” Thus he hints at what he explicitly states in our text that “there remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God.” From these words we may notice, as enabled at this time, two things: I. The people spoken of; II. That which is said of them.
I. The people spoken of. They are the people of God. Here we have one of the most amazing matters which was ever spoken of in this world, that is, that God should have a people in this world. When, from the height of His sanctuary, He viewed the children of men, His verdict was that “They are all gone aside, they are altogether become filthy: there is none that doeth good, no, not one” (Psalm xiv. 3). Yet it is from that fallen, ruined, filthy, and condemned race that He elected, from all eternity, a countless number “to be a peculiar people unto himself.”
(1) As the people of God they are a privileged people, in the sense that God is their God. As such He manifests His interest in them in that He takes all their concerns upon Himself. They need to be upheld, and He keeps the feet of His saints; they need guidance, and He enables them to say, “This God is our God for ever and ever; he will be our guide even unto death.” In sorrow He turns for them their “mourning into dancing;” He puts off their sackcloth, and girds
them with gladness. In their weary journeyings through the valley of Baca He causeth the rain that falleth down to fill the pools, and thus they are refreshed so that they go from strength unto strength until they appear at last in Zion. Privileged indeed are the people who have a right to say, though they might never say it with their lips, “My beloved is mine, and I am His.” These are the people to whom He has revealed Himself, through the saving work of the Spirit, in another way than He does unto the world.
They are a people who occupy a unique position in the world, for although they are in the world, yet they are not of the world. They are strangers and pilgrims whose life here manifests that they are seeking a better country, even a heavenly. Their conversation, or citizenship, is in heaven, from whence also they look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ; “who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself.”
(2) They are a people who are known to God as His people. He knows them from all eternity by a sovereign, discriminating exercise of His eternal love, decreeing that they should be set apart as a people unto Himself, who were, to all eternity, to experience that rest which He has reserved for them. This act of discriminating love was the prerogative of God, and no one has any right to find fault with Him for it. The parable of the labourers in the vineyard, if properly studied, would effectively silence all gainsayers on this point, for it shows that God has the right to do with His own what seems good in His sight.
He knows them as their Surety. Through the Fall of Adam they became spiritually bankrupt, and could never be able to pay their debts. The Second Person of the glorious and ever-adorable Trinity undertook that the debt would be paid, and that those upon whom the electing love of God lighted should be set free, and put in possession of an everlasting salvation. Speaking after the manner of men, the bargain was made, the conditions were laid down that the redemption price should be acceptable in the Court of Heaven, and that it should cover all the sins of all the elect of God. None could do this but One who was incalculably rich in grace. This was true of the Surety of this people, for though He became poor in order that many be made rich, yet He retained His riches in order to enrich them with eternal riches, and yet, after all that they get out of His fulness, that fulness will never be impoverished, in the least degree, throughout eternity.
Because of this eternal transaction, on their behalf, with the Father, when the fulness of time came that the debt should be paid, He appeared as their Substitute. In every step of His humiliation, and in the greatest agonies of His sufferings, He had knowledge of them as the people given Him by the Father, and for whom He endured all that
He suffered in this world. Because of His great love for them He hid not His face from shame and from spitting, and for their sake “He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.” When the sword of Divine Justice was unsheathed, having voluntarily become their Surety, He, as their Substitute, willingly bared His bosom to its awful stroke, so that the command to the sword was not to awake against the elect of God but “Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, and against the man that is my fellow.” Such was the infinite efficacy of His sufferings and death that all the sins of this people were atoned for, and in consequence of this there was a glorious harmony in the attributes of the Godhead in connection with the flowing forth of mercy towards self-ruined and hell-deserving sinners. Justice, which formerly barred the way, now proclaimed concerning every elect sinner, “Deliver him from going down to the pit; I have found a ransom.”
They are known to Him in their effectual calling. They are, by nature, dead in trespasses and sins, and therefore, not able of themselves to benefit from His substitutionary work, but in the plan of salvation there is provision made to meet with such a condition. Christ Himself says of the Holy Spirit, “He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and shall show it unto you.” When the Spirit begins to do this work, He shall cause the sinner to hear the voice of Christ. “Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live.” The hearing of the voice of the Son of God, when accompanied by the power of the Holy Spirit, in the Scriptures of truth, has a remarkable effect on the sinner. No matter how much he is bound to his sins, and how much he may kick against giving obedience to that voice, he ultimately begins to conform to the exhortation, “Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, and he will abundantly pardon.” In short, they become new creatures, for “if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things have passed away; behold, all things are become new.” They are justified, adopted, and the work of sanctification has begun, which will, at last, make the effectually called sinner fit for that perfect rest which remains for the people of God.
(3) These are a people who have a duty to perform, that is, they must exalt the Lord, and in connection with this duty there are two things which they ought to bear continually in mind: (a) They must show that their Lord and Saviour is glorious. This was the case with the Psalmist when he was saying, “Thou art fairer than the children of men: grace is poured into thy lips: therefore God hath blessed thee for ever.” He is not merely a God who is a consuming fire, for how then could he save, but He is “God and man, in two distinct natures, and one person for ever,” and it is in this that the glory of
His Person is seen. In holding to that fundamental doctrine of God’s Word they are showing that Christ is glorious, and that there is none that can be compared to Him. They see the glory of His offices and of His teaching, for them can truly say, “Never man spake like this man.” Thus they are seeking, and ought to seek, to have a good word for Christ in whatever company they might be found. This was the case with David when he says, “I will speak of thy testimonies also before kings, and will not be ashamed.”
(b) They must, in the second place, speak of His gracious dealings with their own souls. The Sweet Psalmist of Israel left his exercises on record, on this point, when he said, “Come and hear, all ye that fear God, and I will declare what he hath done for my soul.” They are living witnesses of the fact that they could do nothing, but that He did all things for them, both in the work of redemption, and in the saving work of the Holy Spirit. “He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?” He has done much for their souls in giving them a hope that their sins are forgiven and that they have tasted the peace of God which passes all knowledge. Exercised souls have much to say concerning the gracious visits which He condescends to give them after periods of absence on His part, which were occasioned by lack of watchfulness on their part, and other sins. When He comes over the mountains of Bethel they have to say, “He hath not dealt with us after our sins, nor rewarded us according to our iniquities.”
(4) They are a people upon whom a great value is set by their God. That has been proved by the sufferings and death of the Son of God. The Lord honours them by showing that He prefers them to those who are highest in honour among men. “I gave Egypt for thy ransom, Ethiopia and Seba for thee. Since thou wast precious in my sight, thou hast been honourable, and I have loved thee: therefore will I give men for thee, and people for thy life.” He protects them from all their enemies, and will suffer none of these enemies to prevail, for He has declared that “No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper; and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and their righteousness is of me, saith the Lord.”
(5) Being not of this world they are a people who have many trials, for “Many are the afflictions of the righteous; but the Lord delivereth him out of them all.” Of this, Christ Himself forewarns them when He says, “In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” This was the hard experience of His Apostles also. Paul says, “For when we were come into Macedonia, our flesh had no rest, but we were troubled on every side; without were fightings, within were fears” (II Cor. vii. 5). While going through these trials they were ready to write hard things against themselves, concluding that their afflictions are evidences that they are not of
the Lord’s people, and that they are strangers to the blessings of these people. Again, when they see these afflictions coming upon others, whom they believe to be the people of God, they are puzzled, and especially when they see the prosperity of the wicked, yet, being taught in the school of the Holy Spirit, they are brought to see that all things, even these troubles and trials, work together for good to them that love God, and that, very often, the Lord makes afflictions the laver in which He cleanses His own.
II. I come now to the second thing which we purposed to notice, that is, What is said concerning them. We are told that “there remaineth a rest” for them.
(1) In this world they have foretastes of that rest. (a) The first time when they tasted this rest was in the day of justification. The Holy Spirit awakened them to a sense of their lost and ruined condition so that they had to say with another, “There is no soundness in my flesh because of thine anger; neither is there any rest in my bones because of my sin” (Ps. xxxviii. 3). This is the condition of those who are called effectually while they are faced with the question, How can a holy God save such a miserable sinner as I am? The day in which the Holy Spirit answers that question is the day of Justification, and the answer is that God is just and the Justifier of the ungodly who believes in Jesus. In that day the sinner is brought to experience peace with God. “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” He sees all obstacles that stand in the way of his being justified removed, his sins which are many are forgiven, the anger of God turned away, and the assurance given, confirmed by the oath of God which can never be changed, that this wrath will never return to overwhelm the repentant sinner, any more than the waters of Noah were again to deluge the earth.
(b) They experience this rest in the midst of troubles and trials such as have been alluded to already. Whatever the nature of the trial is the Lord’s people have given many evidences, in the very midst of the trial, that they are experiencing this rest. Going through the fires of persecution, we read of some to whom the words of the Apostle are applicable, ye “took joyfully to the spoiling of your goods, knowing in yourselves that ye have in heaven a better and an enduring substance.” In the eleventh chapter of Hebrews the Apostle gives a general account of the sufferings of God’s people when he says, ‘And others had trial of cruel mockings and scourging, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment: they were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, slain with the sword, they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented.” We have known of Christian soldiers who, in going through some of the fiercest battles in the history of our land, had so much of the presence of the Most High that they felt no fear, so that what was to others “the valley of the shadow of death” was to them the presence chamber of
the King, where they had foretastes of the rest that remaineth for the people of God. Thus it was with them as with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace in Babylon.
(2) Many will endeavour to rob them of these foretastes of the rest reserved for them. Satan is a busy enemy in this connection. He casts up to them the sins of which they have been guilty, and will endeavour to persuade them, in spite of the plain declarations of Scripture, that for these sins there is no forgiveness. When he will not succeed in this way he will tempt them to sin, so that, though they might not actually yield to the temptation, yet the foul tempter may so far succeed as to cause them to entertain thoughts of yielding, and, when they come to themselves and see how far they have gone with Satan, it raises such a storm in their breasts as to rob them of all comforts, causing them to fear that they shall never taste of the rest of which they had hoped that they had foretastes.
The world is hostile to all who experimentally know anything of this rest. In His intercessory prayer on behalf of His people Christ says to the Father, “I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.” He also gives the reason why the world hates this people when He says, “If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you” (John xv. 18, 19). This is the case in the history of this people in every age of time, though they should be ever so harmless. It was so with Daniel when we read, “Then the presidents and princes sought to find occasion against Daniel concerning the kingdom; but they could find none occasion nor fault; for as much as he was faithful, neither was there any error or fault found in him. Then said these men, we shall not find any occasion against this Daniel, except we find it against him concerning the law of his God” (Dan. vi. 4, 5).
The flesh in themselves often robs them of the comfort of this rest. They find within themselves, not a remnant of indwelling sin, but a whole body of sin. They are harassed by the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, and these seek to overcome them so that their mournful complaint often is, “My soul hath long dwelt with him that hateth peace. I am for peace: but when I speak, they are for war.” The flesh loves ease and when the child of God begins to pay attention to its demands his sight becomes dim as to his duty to his Saviour so that often Christ is neglected, secret duties are neglected, the family altar is compassed about in a formal way, and he ceases to practise his wonted diligence in seeking to derive benefit from the public worship of the sanctuary. Then he becomes painfully conscious that the Lord has withdrawn Himself, and that it was the believer’s own folly that made it so.
(3) In spite of all this there are encouragements given to the true believer to hope for this rest. The people of Israel had sinned against God, so that, as a token of His displeasure the Tabernacle of the Congregation was removed and set up “afar off from the camp,” yet Moses, who had not been a partaker in the sins of the people, found grace in the sight of the Lord, and by way of encouragement the Lord said unto him, “My presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest.” What was true of Moses is true of every one of the Lord’s people. God promises them rest; that rest has been laid up in the Covenant of Grace from all eternity, it has been purchased by the blood of Christ, and freely made over to them in the day in which they are taken out of the slavery of sin and Satan, and put in possession of the glorious liberty of the people of God.
Someone may say, There is no comparison between Moses and me. He saw God face to face and there are many indications that he was the particular favourite of heaven among men. That is true, but Moses was a partaker of the afflictions of God’s people in the wilderness of this world, and he knew much of what you and I have to go through if we are to be partakers of the rest that remains to the people of God. None of the Lord’s people is to travel the way to heaven ignorant of the privations of this world. The reverse is true. “They wandered in the wilderness in a solitary way; they found no city to dwell in. Hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted in them.” Truly here we have a graphic picture of the trials of the Lord’s people travelling on to where this rest is to be experienced in its perfection; and of such it is said, “And he led them forth by the right way, that they might go to a city of habitation.” It is the weary and heavy-laden who are promised rest.
(4) This rest is experienced in its fulness in Heaven. When the House of the Lord was being built in Jerusalem “there was neither hammer nor axe, nor any tool of iron, heard in the house while it was in building.” It was “built of stone made ready before it was brought thither.” Of believers it is said, “Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ” (I Peter ii. 5). These “lively stones” are prepared in this world. The Holy Spirit uses trials and afflictions to further the work of sanctification in them. Their enemies, though influenced by the spirit of enmity, do them a good service for they are, by their conduct, hastening their preparation for the place where their eyes shall see the King in His beauty and the land that is very far off, and where the inhabitant shall not say, I am sick. Their rest will consist in beholding eternally the face of their Saviour, for “they shall see his face; and his name shall be on their foreheads. And there shall be no night there: and they need no candle, neither light of the sun: for the Lord God giveth them light: and they shall reign for ever and ever” (Rev. xxii. 4, 5). What a wonderful exchange they make when they leave this world of sin and sorrow to be “absent from the body, present with the Lord.”
(5) There remaineth a rest. As has been already noticed, they experience foretastes of that rest in this world. These foretastes are so sweet at times that the world becomes very small in their estimation, and they are constrained to say, “O taste and see that the Lord is good: blessed is the man that trusteth in him.” The Apostle, however, says, “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.” If in his tasting of the pleasures of an interest in Christ the child of God had a consciousness that these pleasures came to an end at death, that would considerably mar his enjoyment, but what adds sweetness to his pleasures in this world is that he is enabled to believe that he shall have a fulness of these pleasures in eternity. In the strength of a Spirit-wrought faith he is enabled to say, “Thou wilt show me the path of life: in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.”
They need not doubt this, for it is the God who cannot lie who assures them of it, and He has pleasure in bestowing that rest upon them. Further, He is all-powerful to bring them into that rest. The Devil and the world put many obstacles in their way, imagining that they can keep them from this rest, but all who are against them seem to forget that all such obstacles are put, not so much in their way as in God’s way, in order to keep them from experiencing this rest, and that this is but vain work. As He Himself says, “Who would set the briars and thorns against me in battle? I would go through them, I would burn them together.” God has purposed to give them this rest, and “the Lord bringeth the counsel of the heathen to nought: he maketh the devices of the people of none effect. The counsel of the Lord standeth for ever, the thoughts of his heart to all generations.” In spite of all opposition the Omnipotent Jehovah will bring His people into that fulness of rest which He has reserved for them, and of which it is written, that “eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.”