How is Jesus our Sabbath Rest?

"The Sabbath, in any real sense, man had entirely lost; indeed, he had never entered into God's thoughts of rest. It was His rest, and had not sin spoiled all, man should have enjoyed that which was the result, not of his own, but of God's labour. This is the proper character of that rest which belongs to man distinctively; but sin having come in, the necessity has arisen that God should work afresh, if man is ever to share the rest of God (See Heb. 4). Meanwhile, Christ has appeared and finished the work which God gave Him to do. Hence, we who believe, find rest in Christ, as does God Himself. In Him, by virtue of the accomplished and accepted work of redemption, we have our Sabbath spiritually.

The sabbath, in any real sense, man had entirely lost; indeed he had never entered into God's thoughts of rest. It was His rest, and had not sin spoiled all, man should have enjoyed that which was the result not of his own, but of God's labour. This is the proper character of that rest which belongs to man distinctively; but sin having come in, the necessity has arisen that God should work afresh, if man is ever to share the rest of God (Heb. 4). Meanwhile Christ has appeared and finished the work which God gave Him to do. Hence, we who believe, find rest in Christ, as does God Himself. In Him, by virtue of the accomplished and accepted work of redemption, we have our sabbath spiritually.

No doubt there was a Sabbath — a rest that nothing could touch quite apart from God's rest in creation. The great thing in the Sabbath is that it is a type of Christ. God finds His rest in Him, and we do too.

Christ is also the true Sabbath of rest for men. After the six days of labour of the Old Testament dispensations — without law and with law, under patriarchs, priests, princes and prophets — the best that man could produce was only "filthy rags." They could obtain neither righteousness nor rest by their labours. Christ came to bring to an end man's futile endeavours, and to say, "Come to Me … and I will give you rest," and "Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord." The greatness of His person is the guarantee of the perfection of His work.

Our Lord when here spoke of "rest," but not "the rest of God." God had hallowed the sabbath from the beginning, the type and pledge of His rest at the end; but Jesus invited all that labour to rest meanwhile in Himself. Never was there a prophet that did so, least of all did John the Baptist, the greatest of all; for he called the people of God to own their sins; it was no question of calling them to himself, but of pointing them from everything done to Jesus, as he did when he proclaimed Him as the Lamb of God, and the two disciples that heard John speak followed Jesus. But our Lord could say to the most heavily laden one, "Come unto me," and this too when His work seemed to have been in vain, Himself rejected, despised, about to be slain and crucified, but His resurrection would prove that nothing was really fruitful for sinful man short of His death. His coming was even then showing what God is, and not merely what man ought to be. He the rejected Messiah but the Son, Emmanuel, Jehovah, He was the first and only One who could say on earth, "Come unto me, and I will give you rest." Yes, a present soul rest, in the fulness of divine grace; a rest He was entitled to give to anyone, no matter how burdened or how labouring; no matter what, no matter who, "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." He was entitled to say so — He did say so — He loved to say so. No doubt there was more He had to say then, there was also the call to take His yoke on them and learn of Him and they should find rest to their souls. (Matt. 11:29-30.) But I speak now, as the Lord does first, of the gift of rest in His own grace. (Ver. 28.) Then follows the government which He exercises, which never allows His sovereign grace to be slighted, so that for a season at least, some restive under His yoke find not rest but restlessness, even though He may have given them rest.

Then He beautifully falls back on the Sabbath rest of the Creator. The blessed Creator provided Himself a rest after creation. He promised Himself a rest in Canaan after bringing them through the wilderness. Adam disturbed His creation-rest. Israel disturbed His Canaan-rest. Is He, therefore, disappointed in His rest? No; He has found it in Christ. The secret of the whole Book of God is, God retreating into Christ when man in every way had disappointed Him. Christ is the One who has worked out that rest, and who holds it now, and it remains with Him both for God and for His saints. "Therefore it remaineth that some must enter therein." It is no longer a fallible thing depending on Adam or on Israel, therefore let us take care that we do not come short of it.

All this will be so, as in the hand of the great Repairer of all breaches. But more than this. At the beginning, the Lord God prepared a Sabbath. Adam profaned it. In due time Jehovah prepared another Sabbath in Canaan and in Solomon. Israel and the house of David profaned it. But now, blessed to tell it, Christ has prepared a Sabbath for God. "I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do," said He, addressing the Father. And God has entered this Sabbath. He rests in the finished work of the Lord Jesus; and He will rest in it for ever.

The ninth verse stands, in the order of the argument, in immediate connexion with the sixth. It states the conclusion of the foregoing reasoning, with a view to its immediate and special application to the partakers of the heavenly calling. A rest had been promised. Some, therefore, must enter it. But it had not yet been entered. For Canaan, in its conquest by Joshua, was not such. Israel, then, had not attained that rest. Moreover, Israel are not now a people. They are enemies, as concerning the Gospel in which God now speaks. Yet God has a people, and to them the Holy Ghost speaks daily of the rest to come. Now they whose confidence and rejoicing are in Jesus Christ, are the people of God (compare Phil. 3:3). And they which believe do enter into rest: already, in spirit; presently, in fact. But the time of patience, and with it, also, of daily warning, yet runs on. There remains, then, to God's waiting people, a sabbath-keeping of abiding joy.

The strong assurance of prospective rest to the believer is now confirmed by a reference to the Doer of the work to which that rest succeeds. "For He that is entered into His rest hath ceased," etc. God rested from His labour of creation on the seventh day. But sin had entered and disturbed that rest. In the work of finished reconciliation could His rest thenceforth alone be found. There was a Workman fitted to that work. "My Father works hitherto, and I work," was the word of Jesus, to those who watched Him with an evil eye in His gracious doing of His Father's business. Salvation is, indeed, the work of God. The doing of God's will, whether it be by works of power, or of grace, can be by none but God. God rested from creation. God rests now from redemption. But in the manner of its doing, the work of redemption stands most strikingly contrasted with the former work. The majesty of Divine power was the commanding energy which raised the creature at His word. It was in the lowly form of a rejected man, that the Son of God fulfilled, by suffering, the work of a Redeemer. But the work was finished and complete. Already we have seen the Workman crowned with glory and honour at the right hand of the Majesty on high. Jesus has gone into His rest. He has ceased to labour, and is now set down as the Fulfiller of the work of God. He is the perfect Sabbath of God's full delight (Col. 2:17). As the Doer of the work of man, for men, He has become His people's everlasting rest. They, too, have ceased from their works, as He ceased from His. They had toiled long in bondage, and had found no rest. They were imprisoned without help, within themselves. By the dying of the Lamb of God, they have been now set free. To be found in Him, not having their own righteousness, but that which is of God by faith, is now the one desire of the spiritual man (Phil. 3).

And this is the believer's comfort, that he sees his salvation depending on a finished work, in which God smells "a savour of rest." Gen. 8:21, margin. At the beginning, on finishing the work of creation, God sanctified the seventh day, resting, in full satisfaction, in all that His hand had formed. But that rest man disturbed, so that God repented that He had made man on the earth. Again, in due time, the Lord provided for Himself another rest, erecting a tabernacle in Canaan, and offering to Israel a place in that rest, giving them His Sabbath. Ex. 31:13. By the sword of Joshua, this rest in Canaan was first made good to Israel (Joshua 21:44; Joshua 23:1); and then under the throne of Solomon. 1 Chr. 22:9. But Israel, like Adam, disturbed this rest — the land did not keep her Sabbath, for the wickedness of them that dwelt therein. 2 Chr. 36:21. The blessed God has now found another and a sure rest, a rest that can never be lost or disturbed. In the work finished by the Lord Jesus Christ (and which the Lord here presents to Him) God again rests, as in His works of old, with fullest complacency. This finished work is altogether according to His mind. By the resurrection of Christ, the Father has said of it, "Behold, it is very good." It is His rest for ever; He has an abiding delight in it. His eyes and His heart are upon it continually. The work of Christ accomplished for sinners has given God a rest. That is a thought full of blessing to the soul. And when faith sets a right value, that is, God's value, on the blood of Christ, there is rest, God's own rest, for the soul. But it is then that the saint (or believing sinner) begins his toil. The moment I rest as a sinner, I begin my labour as a saint. The rest for the saint is a rest that remaineth; and therefore it is written, "Let us labour therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief." The sinner rests now; the saint labours still, and will till the kingdom come.

Immediately that Christ (in type) treads the earth rest succeeds; and so the Sabbath directly follows (Gen. 2:2). Just so, when in redemption the Israelites get across to the wilderness, the manna appears (Christ on the earth) and the Sabbath is directly connected therewith (Ex. 16:15-23). There is this difference however, that Adam represents the Lord on earth ruling and therefore brings rest in the way of authority, something as it will be in the millennium; while the manna represents Christ in humiliation, in the character of the Gospels, yet giving rest; humbled and outcast, yet able to say "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." In one form or another rest is always characteristic of Him; but probably the most beautiful of all phases is that whereof the type is now before us — God resting in Him in divine satisfaction and complacency: "He will rest in His love." (Zeph. 3:17.) Of course those who read this paper will know that the antitype of the Sabbath is not the "Lord's day" of the present dispensation, but that it is still in the future (Heb. 4:9). "There remains therefore a keeping of Sabbath — sabbatismos — to the people of God." To keep Sabbath in that sense now would be to dissociate it from Christ, which is to miss its whole connection. Spiritually the same principle is true; it is only as Christ is apprehended that the soul has rest with God.