RESTING PLACE

Rest is elusive in this fevered, harried, frenetic world. Israel felt this. They had ‘forgotten their restingplace’, Jer. 50. 6, by forsaking the Lord.

Jeremiah predicts Israel’s return, to God first, and then to the land. This conversion will open the way for the fulfilling of a flood of promises, Jer. 50.4-5. This turnaround will be marked by lament: not worldly sorrow, but tears of repentance for sin, and then tears of joy for God’s goodness as they see deliverance dawn. God will turn hearts to mourn more for sin than they had mourned for all the calamities of their captivity. With tender hearts about sin and guilt they will stir themselves, easily weeping, with serious and real questions on how to return. These are indicators of the Holy Spirit’s work. To truly seek God we will have godly sorrow, and the oil of joy for the spirit of mourning. ‘Fools make a mock at sin’, Prov. 14. 9. Those who purpose to return to God turn their laughter to mourning. Blessed are those who mourn for their sins.

As they seek God they will renounce their idols, and desire to return to the holy hill of Zion. This return is not a convenience, it is a solemn duty, Jer. 50. 5. Their dirge is Psalm 137. This obsession, with faces fixed, to go back to Zion is about experiencing God in the appointed place. They will resolve not to stop short of the goal. Christ is the Resting Place they aim at.

Do not ask the way to heaven and set your faces toward the world; or set your faces toward heaven and go wandering hither and thither, without asking directions. In the spirit of the Hebrew epistle, ‘let us labour therefore to enter into that rest’, Heb. 4. 11. This is the spirit of our Lord’s offer in Matthew 11. In this turbulent, surging world, a world troubled by sin, Christ calls for an exchange: your burden for His yoke. In repentance, bring the burden of idolatry and wickedness to Him, He takes the load we labour under, and then by faith we take Him, with His yoke, His burden, His companionship, and His rest. To come to repentance seems as long a journey, as the distance from Moab to Bethlehem, or the far country to the father’s house, or from Babylon to the Resting Place.