Radford (J. G.), The Eternal Inheritance, 77.
Spurgeon (C. H.), New Park Street Pulpit, iii. (1857), No. 133.
Symonds (A. R), Fifty Sermons, 244.
Christian World Pulpit, xxi. 321 (A. Barry) ; Ivii. 184 (H. Price Hughes).
Clergyman's Magazine, 3rd Ser., viii. (1894) 1.
Sunday Magazine, 1881, p. 194 (D. Fraser).
3rt
The Sabbath Rest.
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.— Heb. iv. 9, 10.
1. Among man's deepest feelings is a longing for rest. Not deeply felt in the freshness and ardour of early life, it recurs from time to time, and grows stronger with advancing years. Nothing in life fully satisfies this longing. Labours, distresses, disappoint- ments, anxieties never allow the desired repose. Few there are whose hearts have not sometimes echoed the Psalmist's words, " Oh that I had wings like a dove ! for then would I fly away, and be at rest ! " Many since Job have felt something of his longing to be where " the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest."
Is there to be no satisfaction ever of this deep human craving ? Holy Scripture meets it as it meets all others. It tells of a rest of God above creation from the beginning of time ; it intimated man's part and interest in it by the weekly Sabbath which he was to keep with God. But this was, after all, but a symbol and earnest of something unattained. At length a fuller realization of the longed-for rest was held out to the chosen people, and the Promised Land was pictured beforehand in the colours of an earthly Paradise. Forfeited when first offered, through the people's unworthiness (representing by a historical parable the bar to man's entrance into the eternal rest), it was attained at last. But the true rest still came not. Canaan, like the Sabbath, proved but a symbol of something unattained. Yet the old longing for rest went on, and inspired men went on proclaiming it as attainable and still to come. The irrepressible craving, the suggestive symbols, the prophetic anticipations, are all fulfilled in Christ. He, when He had passed with us through this earthly scene of labour, entered, with our nature, into that eternal rest
of God, to prepare a place for us, having by His atonement
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320 THE SABBATH REST
removed the bar to human entrance. Through our faith in Him we are assured that our deep-seated craving for satisfaction as yet unattained, which we express by the term " rest," is a true inward prophecy, and that, though we find it not here, we may through Him, if we are faithful, confidently expect it there, where " beyond these voices there is peace."
2, The Hebrew Christians to whom ' this Epistle was addressed were familiar, as Gentiles could not be, with the observance of a weekly Sabbath or rest day : and the word " Sabbatism " — which is the exact expression of the passage — would at once suggest to them the enjoyment of a holy rest. They were also familiar, as Gentiles could not be, with the designation " People of God " as a title of Israel ; and as Christians they had learned, though slowly and with difficulty, that under the New Dispensation of grace, not Israel after the flesh, but a holy people redeemed and called out of all nations, was made nigh to God in Christ Jesus. The people of God during the present "age" is the Church of God. As St. Paul puts it : " We are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh."
For this people " a Sabbatism remains." The word " remains " must be construed in harmony with the strain of the Epistle, which shows that many things of the Old Covenant had waxed old and were vanishing away, but better things remained for the people or Church of God in Christ Jesus. Shadows departed, but the substances remained, and among the " better things " of the new day which had dawned there was the entrance on a rest surpassing in its fulness and sacredness all that was reached in the old times of Moses and Joshua, and even of David.
The text is the climax of an argument which may be set out as follows : —
I. God gave the perfect pattern of rest when He rested from the work of Creation.
II. In Old Testament times man failed through unbelief to attain to the rest to which God called him.
III. Christ made good man's failure when He rested from Eedemption as God did from Creation.
IV. The Gospel offers Christ's rest to believers.
HEBREWS IV. 9, lo 321
I.
The Divine Pattern of Eest.
1. The term rendered " rest " means literally a keeping of a Sabbath. And this refers us at once to the rest of the seventh day. When we read in the Old Testament that, at the end of the creative act, God rested on the seventh day, and blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, the thing that comes into view is not a Divine nature wearied with toil and needing repose ; it is a Divine nature which has fully accomplished its intent, expressed its purpose, done what it meant to do, and rests from its working because it has embodied its ideal in its work. It is the pro- clamation : " This creation of Mine is all that I meant it to be — finished and perfect " ; not the acknowledgment of an exhaustion of the creative energy which needs to reinvigorate its strength by repose after its mighty effort. The rest of God is the expression of the perfect Divine complacency in the perfect Divine work.