Crossroads

by R. Armstrong, Toronto | Category: Crossroads | Mar 1969

"There remaineth therefore a sabbath rest for the people of God" (Hebrews 4.9). The rest spoken of in this verse is the rest of obedience to the word of God in all that He requires of us. Christ spoke of this when He said, "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" (Matthew 11.29). It is required that we "labour ... to enter into that rest" (A.V.). Men sleep or turn to pleasure to obtain physical rest, but in the realm of the Spirit things are different, exactly opposite to the natural. True life in the Holy Spirit shows that labour, the labour of obedience, brings true rest. Something of this truth is seen in the blessings of Jacob on one of his twelve sons. "Issachar is a strong ass couching down between two burdens: and he saw that rest was good, and the land that it was pleasant; and bowed his shoulder to bear, and became a servant unto tribute (or taskwork)" (Genesis 49.14,15. A.V.).

The people of God are different from any other people. They should think, speak, and act as Christ would. To do this we must know Him. To know Him we must commune with Him. Paul said, "Be ye imitators of me, even as I also am of Christ". We are people of another world. In our salvation experience through the Lord Jesus Christ we became attached to the divine Persons of the Godhead so that we might be come partakers of the divine nature" (2 Peter 1.4). God manifested Himself through Christ, who, by the mystery of incarnation, lived for a brief span in the narrowness of time that we might be fitted for eternity with Him. Christ took our humanity that we may become partakers of the divine nature. We should live in this world as those who belong to another world, of which the millennial reign of Christ on this earth is the sabbatic rest. This will open the portals of the great eternal day.

As a pilgrim, "a passer over", the true disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ uses the world's highway to travel on, stops at its wells to drink, and pitches his tent to sleep, but does not identify himself with its system or speak its language. Paul wrote that we should be as "those that use the world, as not abusing it: for the fashion of this world passeth away" (1 Corinthians 7.31).

Like Abraham, we have here no abiding city, we look "for the city which hath the foundations, whose builder and maker is God". "They desire a better country, that is, a heavenly: wherefore God ... hath prepared for them a city" (Hebrews 11.10,16). This is our rest for ever.

R. Armstrong, Toronto | Mar 1969
Crossroads