Hebrews 4:9 There remains therefore a rest to the people of God. I. WHAT MAN SUPREMELY NEEDS IS NOT REST FROM WORK BUT REST FROM CARE. 1. What is care? It is the experience of the man who is bent on being his own providence; who takes on himself the whole responsibility, not of the conduct of life only, but of the conditions and results which are absolutely beyond his power of regulation, and which God keeps calmly under His own hand. 2. This rest from care has been the great aim and desire of man through all his generations. The problem of man's higher life has always been how to secure emancipation. 3. But the sad part of the matter is, that man does not and cannot rest in mere renunciations and denials. There is a question in the background which has its origin in every conscience. How, on this principle, can the world's business be carried on? No! there is no rest for the human spirit in this burying the head in the sand when troubles throng around. II. THE ONLY POSSIBLE REST FOR MAN IS THE REST THAT HE FINDS IN GOD. 1. The lowest, but by no means the least burdensome and distracting class of our cares concerns "the great bread-and-cheese question" and its surroundings. 2. A nobler form of care is that which has to do with persons, that which springs out of our affections, sympathies and loves. 3. The same faith lifts the burden from the heart of the Christian lover of mankind. In truth we are always calling for the twelve legions of angels to finish the work swiftly and usher in Messiah's reign. And God answers, "Patience," and points us to the redemptive purpose which stamped its impress on the first page of revelation and sets its seal on the last; and bids us wait His time. The man who trusts most perfectly, works most heartily. Christ, while He lifts the burdens, braces the energies, inspires the will, and parades all the faculties of man in their noblest form for service. The man who believes, understands perfectly that the most strenuous use of all the powers of his being is one of the high conditions by which God is seeking to work out blessing for him self, for his dear ones, and for the great world. (Jr. Baldwin Brown, B. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God.WEB: There remains therefore a Sabbath rest for the people of God. |
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