EXPERIMENTAL REST

As is true of all benefits in experimental life, God-centered experimental rest contains various degrees or steps of grace. In Matthew 11, for example, we read of a given rest before a found rest.

Scripture distinguishes at least three degrees or steps of experimental rest. In the first place there is an experimental rest received of God or from God through hope. This is rest received of or from God’s Holy Spirit on the basis of the Spirit’s own work in their souls. It is a rest that no child of God is a stranger of when he has experienced something of a quiet hope and Spirit-wrought freedom to believe that what is taking place within him is not the fruit of his own field. When God’s children are enlightened with the light of the Spirit to see that the marks of grace which betray Jehovah’s flock as the possession of their Divine Shepherd, are also evident in their walk of life and experienced in their souls in the exercise of faith, they shall have moments of rest flowing forth from God, during which they shall receive courage to confess, “If God be for us who shall be against us?” Standing and walking in the old paths, they may find rest for their souls (Jer. 6:16). At such moments all fear of the law, sin, Satan, afflictions, temptations, the world, the attributes of God, death, grave, judgment, hell, and eternity may be temporarily lost. They may even receive rest from self—self-righteousness, self-reformation, self-repentance, self-idolatry, self-possibility. They receive rest of God, hoping against hope that He will make and keep things well forever.

But such moments of hope usually do not last long. As soon as the light of the Spirit over His own work in their heart is missing, dark days overcome them. Oh, what spiritual unrest then overtakes them—cold blasts of hell, black clouds from heaven, thick mist on earth, and total darkness within becomes their portion! Indeed, their just portion, for who brings more unrest upon their souls than their own restless soul?

Rest from the Spirit’s work, the Word and promises of God, and the attributes of God, may all be rich, various, and applicable, but it is not enduring. As soon as faith goes out of exercise, God’s child searches in vain for the spiritual rest granted momentarily before. Often the souls asks, yes, complains to the Lord concerning the shortness of its rest received from Him.

And yet the Lord has a wise purpose in view, prompting Him to withdraw spiritual rest received from the Spirit’s work, the Word of God, or Divine attributes, for His people have to learn the necessity of being driven outside of themselves to experience room and place being formed within them for a deeper rest—to rest with God or on God by faith through the reconciling blood of the Lamb of God being sprinkled on their soul within its own courtroom. Were God to allow them a continual, lively rest in His Word, promises, and attributes, would not their soul be content to rest short of the deeper rest with God by faith which they are earnestly called to seek (II Pet. 1:10)?

God’s people discover a vital distinction between an assurance of the uprightness of faith when the Spirit gives light upon His own work, and a full assurance of faith in the court of their own conscience when the Spirit seals the mediatorial work of Christ; a difference, in other words, between a hope of forgiveness and forgiveness itself, between a hope for eternal life and a right to eternal life. They are brought to long for rest with God through personal justification, in which personal acquital of all sin and a personal right to everlasting life is received. They come to need not only a temporary rest of God that disappears when God withdraws His light, but also more permanent rest with God and on God by justifying faith, which gives them strength to say with Asa even in days of conflict, “We rest, O Lord, on Thee” (II Chr. 14:11). They cannot find real and stable rest until they find rest with God sealed home personally by the Spirit in the court of their own conscience when the Father, speaking as Judge, declares them free on the grounds of Jesus Christ’s satisfaction and advocateship, saying, “Deliver this sinner from going down into the pit, for I have found a ransom” (Job 33:24). If the great wonder of personal justification is experienced, they may finally embrace a restful salvation with all its benefits as their personal possession. Then they receive a religion of personal pronouns, as Luther called it. “I believe in the forgiveness of my sins.” “I know in whom I have believed.” “My Redeemer liveth.” “My Lord and my God.” “Unto me this day is born in the city of my soul, Christ the Lord.”

Rest with God becomes the flock’s rich, overflowing possession, only as a fruit of experienced justification. “Being justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 5:1). All obstacles to spiritual rest are then removed.

(1) The guilt of sin never returns in its condemning power, for its sting has been washed away through the stream of Christ’s reconciling blood.

(2) The law of God no longer curses with its impossibly demanding yoke of perfection, for Christ is Law-fulfiller, Curse-bearer, and Curse-Remover.

(3) Conscience, formerly never excusing but always accusing, now experiences perfect peace, resting in Christ as Victor as well as in Christ’s victory. Really the friend of God and the friend of the soul it torments, conscience, beholding Christ resting in His victory on its behalf, may, in turn, rest by faith in Christ’s victory for itself. “There is no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1).

(4) In Christ, God’s attributes become a more abiding and glorious resting ground instead of a ground for terror. Through Him the throne of justice becomes a throne of grace.

(5) Satan’s head is also bruised within mansoul. The soul receives courage to send the arch-enemy to Christ, its Head, and its crucified exalted King.

(6) There is rest even from self. Finally, the old man cannot rightly claim the upper-hand. A little breathing space from self-idolatry is received.

(7) Rest in mind, rest in affections, rest in understanding, rest in judgment, and rest in desires all becomes reality.

(8) The redeemed sinner feels no will against the will of God, but may rest in the Divine will. “Thy will be done.” Whatever the Lord shall do is well and best. They are made willingly unwilling to will anything but the will of God, and therefore the Lord does not hesitate nor fear to hand the keys of the storehouse of Divine grace, but grants them full liberty to take what they will, knowing their will to be consistent with His: “O woman, great is thy faith; be it unto thee even as thou wilt” (Matt. 15:28). Indeed, they may then experience more rest with Daniel’s three friends in the furnace of affliction, than the king is his palace (Dan. 3:24), knowing that “many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivereth them out of them all” (Ps. 34:19).

(9) The fear of death, hell and grave passes away for their living Jesus has posession of the keys (Rev. 1:18).

(10) The last judgment and eternity they commit into His hands by faith.

(11) Truly, all lions are chained. Even sin. Its dominating and victimizing power receives a fatal blow.

Oh, blessed rest when a sinner, surrendering himself unto condemnation, experiences that God already surrendered him from eternity to the peace terms of Calvary! Pardon enacted from eternity and pardon sealed in time cannot but yield established peace and enjoyed rest with God. Secured in the possession of everlasting good, they may say, “Return to thy rest, O my soul, for the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. Till the pastures of God wither, and the river of life fail, my soul cannot want, for Jehovah is my Shepherd.” It is the jubilee day when an open hell of condemnation is exchanged for an open heaven of eternal rest. Blessed foretaste of perfect, uninterrupted, heavenly rest!

Still, there is a rest that goes even deeper. Scripture does not only speak of an experimental rest from God by hope and with God by faith, but also of a resting in God by love. “Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for Him” (Ps. 37:7). Even though seldom experienced among God’s children in our backsliding day, nevertheless, there is an experimental resting in God through coming to know Him personally in His three Divine Persons.

By sovereign gift and through a cutting off way, true believers’ deepest exercises of gracious rest take place after personal justification. The highly favored child of God who may be privileged to come to know personally the Second Person of the Holy Trinity as Elder Brother, Heavenly Comforter, Personal Intercessor, and Intimate Advocate, receives an unspeakable, experimental acquaintance with Immanuel Himself. To know Him as the personal bosom Friend that sticketh closer than a brother goes far beyond knowing Him as Savior and Redeemer. Christ’s benefits are wonderful, but His Person is infinitely supreme. Blessed are they who cannot only say “He became my peace” but He is my peace”—as a martyr wrote on the catacomb walls prior to his death: “In Christ, in peace.” Oh, what a wonder to be admitted into the inner circle of His personal friends, whom He causes to rest in Himself in the very rest with which He rests in His Father! He rests in grateful submission in the Father’s sovereign decree of electing love, in which there is the most perfect understanding between Himself and His Father. He rests in the blessed contemplation of all that is delivered unto Him by the Father—all that He receives as the fruit of His mediatorial purchase through the Father’s delight in Him and satisfaction with His work. He rests in the rapturous sense of the full knowledge which He has of the Father and the Father of Him, and in the incomprehensible love subsisting between them. He rests in the very heart of His Father as the only-begotten Son. Into a measure of this rest it may please Him to bring His people—not only through a personal knowledge of Himself and resting in Him, but also through introducing them, as it were, to His Father. Through His Spirit Christ may be pleased to usher His children into filial acquaintance with His Father—into the possession of the Father’s favor not only as reconciling God but as restoring Father, into the fulness of the Father’s blessing, and into an experimental knowledge of the Father as divine Person.

Having received personal knowledge of Christ as Elder Brother, it may also please the Triune God to lead His children one step further by opening up for them experimentally their incorporation into the Divine household by personal adoption, causing them to know the First Person of the Holy Trinity. Experienced adoption is the work of the Father, through the Spirit, who witnesses, for Christ’s sake, with their spirit that they are children of God, leading them to cry out, “Abba, Father! Abba, Father!” Through adoption they receive a Father who restores experimentally for them all that they lost in the first Adam through the second Adam. This personal restoration through adoption goes beyond personal reconciliation through justification. Reconciliation brings a sinner, as a member of the household of faith, into the possession of God, but restoration, which gives a place at the table of the Divine family, includes the sinner as a child of the Father and brings Him into the personal knowledge of the Divine Persons. Simply said, justification is a judicial act within a condemned sinner, adoption is a fatherly act within an acquitted sinner. Blessed prodigal sons who know not only the prodigal’s confession but also the prodigal’s experienced reception—to receive a reception of mercy from a loving Father for Christ’s sake! Blessed, free mercy from beginning to end—for the Father saw him a great way off with eyes of mercy, had compassion on him with a heart of mercy, ran to him with feet of mercy, fell on his neck with arms of mercy, and kissed him with lips of mercy (Luke 15:20)! Unspeakable wonder of free grace—instead of rejected, accepted; instead of a hired servant who could be fired daily, restored to sonship; instead of filthy rags, the best robe; instead of ringless and shoeless forever—the sign of a slave, rings for his fingers and shoes for his feet; instead of a deserved death, the fatted calf was slain—pointing to Jesus Christ! The father permitted his prodigal son to confess his guilt, but he cut off the remainder of his son’s rehearsed confession. He did not allow him to say, “Make me as one of thy hired servants.” Do you know why? Because it was an impossible confession. Just as children remain flesh and blood of their parents no matter what they do or where they go, so God cannot deny the adopted sonship of His own elect. Even though God’s people spoil many privileges of sonship by their own transgressions, the Father shall never desert His children entirely. “No man is able to pluck them out of the Father’s hand” (Jn. 10:29). All the bills of divorcement His children send

to the heavens cannot tear out the ever-beating heart of the Father. Blessed are they who know what it means to rest in the green pastures of His fatherly heart. They have an open throne—the richest blessing in the whole world. They may tell the Father everything. No need is too small. No sin is too great. When they ask for bread, He shall not give them a stone. There is room in His fatherly heart to surrender everything over unto Him. “As a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him” (Ps. 103:13). He takes His own children up and over for time and eternity as everlasting Father.

Finally, there is a resting in the Holy Ghost, Who is the first Divine Person to work in the souls of His people, but the last whom they come to know and rest in. “And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost” (Acts 2:4). On Pentecost, the disciples were allowed to embrace and rest in a Triune God. Through Christ, they did not only receive reconciliation with God and restoration by the Father, but they also received an experimental knowledge of the Holy Spirit in His Divine Person. Jesus not only became their Eldest Brother and God their Father, but they also came to know and possess the Holy Ghost in His Person as their Comforter, Sealer, and Intercessor within their own soul. They were not only allowed to rest in the father-heart of God and the mediatorial-heart of the Son, but also in the Person of the Spirit, their everlasting seal and Sealer. On that day the Spirit not only sealed their inheritance within them in the Name of the Triune God, but He Himself was the Seal in their souls. They were not only sealed by the Holy Ghost, but with the Holy Ghost, resting in Him (Eph. 1:13). He sealed His own Person to them on the foundation of His sealing Christ within them, who, in turn, is sealed by the Father— “for Him hath God the Father sealed” (John 6:27).

Grounded in sovereign good pleasure and flowing out of Triune love, blessed are they who may rest in the eternal God’s sealed covenant of grace—who may receive freedom to confess with David, “He hath made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure” (II Sam. 23:5). In this covenant the Son not only rested in the Father’s love, but the Father also rested in the Son’s love, and both Father and Son rested in the Spirit’s effectual love for the elect, while the Spirit rested in the Father’s choosing love and the Son’s redeeming love. Can there be a deeper rest on earth than resting in the very love and sovereignty in which God Himself has rested within Himself from eternity, as Zephaniah tells us: “He rests in His love” (3:17)?

And yet, all resting on this side of the grave is but a shadow of the perfect, eternal, and heavenly rest to come. Moments of rest that are “unspeakable and full of glory” here below, are but drops from the fountain above—a mere foretaste of the river of pleasure flowing out of the throne of God. A first jubilee rest on earth from the guilt and dominion of sin only shadows the second jubilee rest from the consequences and existence of sin. Here below, child of God, the pilgrimage is through a wilderness, but soon all your sorrows shall cease, and you shall enter the rest that remains for the people of God. “In the world ye shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).

Eternal rest! Eternal Sabbath! Eternal Elim! Eternal communion! Eternally a triumphant church, never again to come down from the holy mount of God! The sword of enmity eternally sheathed; the banner of truth eternally unfurled; the holy warfare eternally past; the heavenly victory eternally won—so Jehovah’s flock shall rest from their labors.

They shall rest from all sin, from all temptation to sin, from all watchfulness against sin, from all unbelief, from all worldly engagements, from all assaults of the prince of this world, from all unsatisfied desires, and, above all, from the unbearable burden of self. With palm branch and harp in hand, they shall rest in eternal union with the triune God.

Truly, the change from grace to glory will be as radical as the change from nature to grace. All human words describing heavenly rest are but mute noises compared with the full thunders of celestial bliss in that day. “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him” (I Cor. 2:9). All heavenly inhabitants shall become Queens of Sheba on that day, confessing, “The half was not told me” (I Ki. 10:7). Happy, happy day when mortality shall be swallowed up in immortality, and corruptibility shall put on incorruptibility!

Dear reader, what do you know personally of true, spiritual rest? Shall you have rest when the world passes away and the fashion thereof; when the last trump resounds and the dead arise from their graves; when the great white throne is set, and the books are opened; when the dividing voice separates the sheep from the goats; when hell opens, and the unconverted descend to their unending doom?

Allow me to earnestly warn you—there is so much false rest, even in religion. Religious feelings, common convictions, and temporary faith can all be deceiving. Consider Esau, Orpah, Judas, Ahab, Felix, Agrippa, and the five false virgins—to name but a few. A visitor once refused to sleep overnight in a palace when the owner told him the only unsure thing in the entire structure of beauty was its foundation. Are you concerned about the foundation of your rest? A contractor once said that of the hundreds of prospective homebuyers to whom he had showed sample homes of his building capabilities over a period of 25 years, only one asked him about the foundation of his homes. Are you, by grace, that one? Remember, there is no sound rest short of Christ Jesus. Christ and true rest are inseparable.

Can you say personally with David, “He maketh me to lie down in green pastures?” Has room been made within your heart for the rest of God, rest with God, and rest in God? Can you say with Augustine, “My heart was restless, until I found rest in Thee”?

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