Big, Brash Gospel Friday - April 1, 2011

Rest.

Rest imitates God. Rest obeys God. Rest saves our souls, transforms our lives, and enjoys God's goodness. Rest is not optional - unless you want things to go very badly.

And, by the way, it's also very refreshing.

We are a restless race. Henry David Thoreau famously said that, "Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them." He was soundly observant.

Augustine of Hippo stepped further (though much earlier) and discerned the source of this restlessness, praying, "You have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in You."

Rest is ancient. This is no new-fangled concept like Marxism or Psychoanalysis. It goes way back and was first defined and practiced by...God.

After the Lord had made everything that is in the heavens and on Earth - He rested. This messes with our preconceptions immediately. Rest is not checking out, doing nothing, or crashing into a vegetative state. The Lord of Heaven and Earth - while being God, holding all things together, exercising providential control over every detail of everything that is - rested.

God ceased His work at a very specific endeavor and what then did He do? We're not entirely sure. This we know for sure: His rest involved the full engagement of His mind, heart, and soul in the goodness of all that He had done. He looked deeply at everything He had done, considered it, and declared, "Behold, it is very good."

When we rest we are doing something God has done. We are also doing something that He has commanded. He gave the people of Israel the non-optional gift of a weekly Sabbath rest and did not take it lightly when the gift was politely set aside.

The intensity of God's expectation and enforcement of the gift of Sabbath rest to His people in the Old Testament is disconcerting to many who read the Bible. I mean, the man in Numbers 15 was only picking up a few sticks for the family fire... The death penalty seems a bit harsh for the offense. In our discomfort with God's ways and in His explanation (not that He owes us one) we begin to drill the depths of the mammoth reality of what rest really is.

The Lord said, "Rest." The man said, "No problem, Lord, just a few sticks that I forgot to gather yesterday." And when the the people needed to hear why the consequence was so sobering, God made rest a very personal matter: "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt - to be your God."

Rest is thinking deeply about the good of what God has done, keeping in focus the promises He has made for both your present and your future, and letting God be your God.

Restlessness is unbelief, skepticism, blasphemy against the capability and character of God. Restlessness declares that God is unable or unfaithful to honor His word. Restlessness is providing the Lord of Heaven and Earth reinforcements, emergency resources, and a Plan-B if His efforts go South. "Don't worry, Lord, we've got your back!"

Restlessness is hell. It is a splendid angelic warrior finding his roll in the glories of heaven too constraining to his gifts and potential. It is discontentment with the boundless pleasures and provisions of Eden, if even one desirable fruit is being withheld.

Refusing to rest is a direct affront to God. It is Moses hearing the promise of God to make fresh water flow from the rock and saying (in essence) "Here, Lord, I'll help!" as he beats the rock with a stick. It is the people of Israel surveying the land that God had promised them, and declaring, "We are not big enough to defeat the giants in this place." Neither Moses nor that generation entered the promised land of rest because they did not rest in God. In the words of Hebrews, "they could not enter His rest because of unbelief."

Rest at essence is God-entranced, God-magnifying, and God-satisfied.

Rest is a bold declaration of the over-sufficiency of the goodness and grace of God. It is treating God's promises as rock-solid and unquestionable.

Rest is a conscious relishing of God's gushing generosity and a relinquishment of our own self-sufficiency.

In short, rest is the only human response to God's engagement that honors and satisfies Him. All else is both deplorable and unacceptable.

Rest is the garden, the Sabbath, the feasts, the land, and the worship of God's people in the Old Testament.

Rest is the promise of the Gospel and the only path into its life. "Come unto me all you who labor and are heavy laden, " says the Savior, "and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light."

Peter the apostle sums up the Gospel simply, "Rest your hope fully upon the grace that is brought to you in the revelation of Jesus Christ."

There were two lost sons in the story of the Prodigals, one who offered to work his way back into His Father's favor and one who reminded the Father of the favor he deserved for the work that he had already done. Both offered work as a payment for the gift of the Father's fellowship, forgiveness, and feast; and to both He said, "No."

"Come in!" was the only offer of the Father. "Cease from your work and celebrate my lavish extravagance and prodigal generosity and you will have me and everything that is mine."

Rest is:

1.) a captivation with the glory, grace, gladness, and gifts of God - and

2.) a confidence that our joy, well-being, and acceptance are fully secured in our Father's loving care - arising from

3.) faith in the completed work of His Son and in His covenant guarantee that He will never stop doing us good - all resulting in

4.) a dawning realization that striving to secure for ourselves pleasure, praise, protection, or power through anything other than the Lord is now absurd, silly, and - frankly - an affront to our lavish and extravagant Father.

Rest is a gift. Rest is the Gospel. Rest is the path of growth and transformation. Rest is the godly solution to anger, anxiety, greed, or grumpiness.

What temptation, what failure, what sin is not answered by this kind of rest?

Unforgiveness or bitterness (for example) is work - striving to get what we deserve, preserve our reputation, answer injustice, etc. It is faithless, futile, and exhausting.

Forgiveness is rest...in the Father's acceptance, approval, affection, and agenda to do us great good in all things. As Pastor Tim Keller writes, "The essence of forgiveness is absorbing pain rather than inflicting pain."

Everything good starts with rest, grows through rest, and is sweetly tasted in the feast of rest.

And then comes Heaven.

Rest is not doing nothing. Rest is refusing to try to satisfy ourselves through our work or worthiness and (instead) running to explore and embrace all that the Lord has done and discovering, "Behold, it is very good!"