Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3294
“This is My rest forever: here will I dwell; for I have desired it” Psalm 132:14.
THESE are the words of Jehovah Himself concerning the hill of Zion, but it is clear that He did not intend us to understand them merely in their literal reference to Zion, because Zion could not be a fitting place for His eternal rest. Nor has He made it literally His rest forever, for Zion has been trodden down of the Gentiles for all these centuries. I have no doubt that the Lord had in His mind the greater Zion, “the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem…the general assembly and church of the first-born, which are written in Heaven.” The eternal God, looking down from His Throne of Glory upon all the creatures He has made, selects His Church—elect, blood-bought, called, preserved and sanctified, and He says concerning this Church—“This is my rest forever: here will I dwell; for I have desired it.”
We would never have ventured to conceive of God as finding rest in such puny creatures as we are. However beloved, and however filled with His Spirit, it would seem too great a thing for the Creator ever to rest in His creature! Yet it is true that this is where He finds His rest. It is concerning the redeemed souls who make up the Church of Christ that He says, “This is my rest forever: here will I dwell; for I have desired it.”
I must, at the outset, confess my inability to dive into the depths of this subject. I can only, as it were, flit across its surface as the swallow with swift wings skims over the brook. I am going to ask, first, about God finding rest in His Church Then about the duration of that rest And in closing, I want to say a few practical words concerning our finding rest where God finds rest.
I. First, then, let us think of GOD FINDING REST IN HIS CHURCH.
He does this, in the first place, because in His Church all the three Divine Persons of the Trinity are honored. A man does not find rest in anything which gratifies only one part of his nature. Therefore it can truly be said to Christians concerning this world, “This is not your rest,” for whatever gratification it may yield to the body, it can never satisfy our soul. If there were in the Church of God honor only for God the Father, but none for God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, it could never be the Lord’s eternal rest. But, Beloved, when the Father looks upon the Church, He views with delight His own chosen children and sees His eternal purposes accomplished in them! He thinks of the Covenant into which He entered with His dear Son on their behalf, and of the Atonement which He gave for them when He gave His only-begotten Son to die as their Substitute and Surety. As for God the Son—when He looks upon the Church, He beholds those for whom He paid the ransom price on Calvary—every member of that Church He has purchased with His own blood and, therefore, He looks upon them with peculiar complacency. As for God the Holy Spirit, He—
” Takes delight to view
The holy souls He formed anew.” As He gazes upon them, He sees the gracious results of His regenerating energy and He rests in holy contemplation. I hope, Beloved, you will never exalt one member of the ever-blessed Trinity above either of the rest—it is quite a mistake to ascribe the work of salvation entirely to the Father, or to the Son, or to the Holy Spirit. In the first Creation, it is most emphatically true that God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness.” The first Creation was the work of Deity as a whole, and so is the new Creation! And for both we may most justly sing—
“Praise Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”
All are equally concerned in perfecting the Church, the true Zion, and therefore God, in the Trinity in Unity—Father, Son, and Spirit—says concerning the Church, “This is My rest forever: here will I dwell; for I have desired it.”—
“Arise, O King of Grace, arise,
And enter to Your rest!
Lo, Your Church waits with longing eyes,
Thus to be owned and blest.
Enter with all Your glorious train,
Your Spirit and your Word—
All that the Ark did once contain
Could no such Grace afford.” Just think for a minute or two what this rest of God is. Is it the entire cessation from toil? When we do nothing, but sit still in listless inactivity, that cessation from toil may yield us a measure of rest, but it is not rest of a kind that we could long love—certainly it is not such rest as we should wish to enjoy forever! We would be in a most restless state if we had nothing to do! We would soon be worn out with the weariness of living an aimless, purposeless life. I believe the truest state of rest is when a man has just as much to do as he can perform with ease. If your mind does not think at all, it is in a coma or in a sort of fainting fit. But when it is occupied with pleasing themes, not working out difficult problems, but meditating upon simple themes which you can easily understand, then it is at rest! Perhaps you sit down quietly by the fire and indulge in what we call day-dreams—your mind is active all the while, yet its activity does not prevent it from resting. Heaven is a place and state of perfect rest, yet it is not the rest of silence and stagnation! In one sense, they rest not day nor night, yet they serve God continually—and that is perfect rest!