All earnest souls seek
T HE voice that breathed o’er Eden” spoke of rest. In Genesis 2:3 we are told of the rest of God. Upon that day there fell no night, because the rest of God has no shadow in it and it never terminates. God has left open the door. It stands wide open, and every heart which He has made may share it. It is a rest full of work, but, like the cyclone, all the atoms of which revolve in a turbulent motion around the central cavity of rest, so do all the activities of God revolve around His deepest heart which is tranquil and serene. It is possible, if you and I learn the lesson amid anx iety and sorrow and trial and pressure of work, always to carry a heart so peaceful, so still, so serene, as to be like the depth of the Atlantic which is not disturbed by the turbulent winds that sweep its surface. Now this rest of God spoken of in Genesis was not ex hausted by the Sabbath or by Canaan, for after each of these had existed for many a century, God still spoke of His rest as being unoccupied. And at last a simple Jewish peasant (so He seemed) stood up in the midst of fisher folk and other humble people and said: “ Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. “ Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.” His words may be re-stated thus: “ On this breast of Mine is a pillow for every heavy heart. My breast is broad enough; My heart is deep enough. I offer Myself to all weary ones in every clime and age as Shiloh, the rest-giver.” Here is the accent of Deity as He says, “I am meek and lowly in heart.” Yet He assumes to Himself the prerogative of giving rest to all that labor and are heavy-laden. How can one possibly account for the meeting of humility so great with pretentions so enormous in this meekest of men unless He be more than man, the very Son of God incarnate? As He stands there upon some mountain slope, with Chorazin, Bethsaida and Capernaum on the land-locked lake of Galilee at His feet, He speaks of two kinds of rest, the rest He gives, and the deeper rest which He shows us how to find: “ I will give you rest,” He says, and then, in a softer undertone, He whispers: “ Take my yoke upon you . . . and ye shall find rest unto your souls.” I will not now refer to the rest He gives—rest from the guilt of sin, rest from its penalty, rest from conviction, rest from an accusing conscience, rest from the dread and the wrath of God. That rest He gave you, beloved, when you knelt years ago at the cross. From those parched lips the dying Christ, your Priest and Intercessor, gave rest unto your soul, and, being justified by faith, you had peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. M A Y , I 9 4 9
I will not write of this, but of something deeper, because I find that there are tens of thousands of Christians who have the first rest, but have not the second. They could look death in the face without wavering, but they cannot look panic, disaster, bereavement, pain or trial in the face without dis quiet. “ You shall find rest,” but you must look for it. I want to show you where to find it and how; in three ways, which are one, for they converge in one. First, you must take His yoke. Now, at first sight it appears ridiculous that those who labor and are heavy-laden should find rest by having the im position of a new yoke or burden, however light. He says: “My yoke is easy . . . my burden is light.” But then, even an easy yoke with a light burden imposed on laboring and weary souls would surely not give them rest. How can it be? Ah, listen! The yoke that Jesus imposes is the yoke that He Him self carried, a yoke that by the very nature of it includes two. He says then to you, weary soul: “ Come hither and share My yoke with me, and we will pull the plow together through the long furrow of life.” I have been told that there are farms in Western Canada so large that you may start a furrow in the morning, pursue it all day, and only finish it at night, returning the next day. One day when I was at Northfield, Mr. Moody took me to Mount Hermon school. He had a yoke of beautiful white oxen, and he told me that when one of these oxen was being yoked in, if the other happened to be on the far side of the farmstead it would come trotting up and stand beside the other until it was yoked in also. So Jesus stands today with the yoke upon His shoulder, and He calls to each one, and says: “ Come and share My yoke, and let us plow together the long furrow of your life. I will be a true yokefellow to you. The burden shall be on Me. Only keep step with Me, and you shall find rest to your soul.” What W a s His Yoke? Christ’s yoke was His Father’s will. “ I delight to do thy will, O God.” Now it is not to my purpose to discuss here the human and the divine side of Christ’s character. But to me it is as though Christ curtained off His divine attributes, as we might allow the curtain of a theatre to drop from the roof and to shut off the whole of the apse behind. Any moment the curtain could be lifted, and I suppose you would still grant the apse to be a part of building, but it would be cur tained off for a definite purpose. So for the purposes of under standing our human life in all its aspects, our Lord voluntari-
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