Psalms 37:7

Psalms 37:7

Rest is the highest condition of man. It is above work. The maturity of everything is its rest. It is an approach to the Eternal One. For what is rest? The balance of the mind, the equipoise of feeling, a harmony of the inner with the outer life, the peace of desire, and the repose of the consciousness of truth. Consider what is the exact meaning of the expression to "rest in the Lord."

I. Those two words "the Lord" convey to the mind (1) absolute sovereignty, (2) the idea of the work of God. "The Lord" is the essential name of the Second Person in the blessed Trinity. (3) The person of God the Lord Jesus Christ. He is a real presence, a personal Saviour, the truest reality of every day's life "the Lord."

II. What is rest? (1) Satisfaction. The needle points to its pole; I find all I want, and more, in the Lord. (2) Silence. This silence is a blessed, childlike state, the truest worship. "The Lord is in His holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before Him" the still sanctities of rest. (3) Absolute reliance, as one who feels that all things are undertaken for you, who feels, "I have omnipotence on my side; an eternity of faith is underneath me." (4) Perfect peace the shadow of the rock, the chicken under the wing, the babe asleep on its mother's bosom, the loved disciple on his Master's breast. "Rest in the Lord."

III. Notice one or two ways by which you may secure your own soul and glorify God by rest. (1) You must set out with a simple and undoubting sense of your own forgiveness and your safety in Christ. (2) Learn the happy art of quickly passing on everything to God. (3) There is an active and a passive rest. You will find work a great help to rest. It does more than anything else to prevent what is the bane of rest self-inspection and the restlessness of idle fancies. And as you work never forget this rule of life, that you have nothing to do with results; results are with God. Do your duty, and leave all issues. That is the rest of work.

J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons,10th series, p. 174.

I. Consider, first, the state of mind here supposed. It is a state of unrest, of a mind ill at ease, a distracted heart going first to this source of relief and then to that, but never satisfied. The text is to remind a man under such circumstances that there is but one way and one strength; that other ways besides that one are but a going about, and other strengths besides that one but a comparison of weaknesses.

II. Consider some classes of persons who are thus laboriously miserable, doing and undoing, like children building up paper houses which are to fall down under their hands. (1) There are the men who have their portion in this present world, not knowing, and perhaps not caring to know, whether they have a portion in any other. (2) The words of the text are addressed to the weary, burdened, conscience-convicted sinner. If we can get no rest in our sins and no rest from them, we are exactly those for whom the proffered relief is prepared, exactly those whom Christ invites to partake of it: "Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest." Rest in what Christ is, and wait patiently for what Christ will do.

III. The words of the text may also be addressed to the more established believer under all the disquietudes and trials which he must expect to meet with in his Christian course. Rest and wait, trusting, expecting, like the impotent man at the gate of the Temple, to receive something. He that believeth must not make haste; though the vision tarry, he must wait for it. The general lesson of the text is that we be without carefulness, that we carry our burdens to God and leave them with Him. God in Christ is the soul's refuge and the soul's rest.

D. Moore, Penny Pulpit,No. 2998.

Restlessness and impatience seem to be inseparably connected with humanity. They are manifested by all classes at every stage of their existence, from the child who grows weary of its newest toy to the philosopher who is dissatisfied with the result of his patient, lifelong thought. Rest! Some men know not what it means; they have never in their lives experienced it. And for others it has no sooner come than gone, vanished like some transient dream of bliss. Yet rest cannot be quite impossible for man, for it has been occasionally achieved. The Psalmist, for example, had practised what we find him preaching in the text. "The Lord is my Shepherd," he says; "I shall not want."

I. Observe that the rest to which the Psalmist attained is an intelligent and intelligible rest. There can be no rest for us in circumstances; they are ever changing. There can be no rest in self, for self is too much at the mercy of circumstances. There can be no complete rest for us in other men, for they may play us false or be taken away by death. The only perfect rest conceivable for man is a rest in the Lord.

II. All forms of restlessness and impatience resolve themselves into a want of faith. They amount to practical atheism. (1) Young men probably more than any other class are characterised by a feverish restlessness and a tremendous impatience. It is our eager craving after ease and pleasure, our indisposition to endure hardness and conflict, our longing to enjoy the present moment, however meanly, rather than work out patiently some future good, however glorious it is these things that mar us, that keep us from ever becoming what we might have been. There is no cure for this restlessness but faith. Faith in the future and in the God of the future will alone help us worthily to discharge our present duty. (2) There is another very common form of restlessness, arising not from the mere absence of enjoyment, but from the actual presence of pain. To any one in such a predicament I would say, (a) Your present adversity may be the best means, perhaps the only means, to a great prosperity which is in store for you at no distant date. (b) It is a great mistake to imagine that happiness is the chief end of life, and that we have a right to as much of it as we like to demand. The end of life is not happiness, but duty. God has a purpose to fulfil in our existence, and surely it must be evident that with this purposean indefinite amount of happiness might be quite incompatible.

III. Our restlessness and impatience involve a practical disbelief in immortality. We chafe and fret when our wishes are thwarted, as if there were no life but the present, as if the grave were the end of all things for us. Can we not wait wait like men for "the far-off interestof tears"?

A. W. Momerie, Defects of Modern Christianity, and Other Sermons,p. 242.

I. First David speaks to us about rest. All men are craving for rest. In the present day there is a very great danger of many men working too much rather than too little. Where can a man rest? (1) Not in worldly prosperity. How very soon the gourd withers! How often the stream dries up! We are like boys upon the seaside with their sand spades. We dig and dig, but it is all sand, and we cannot build on sand. We are looking to the trees, and we want a tree where we can build our nest; but on every tree there is the woodman's mark, and soon the trees will fall. Not here, not in the world, can we rest. (2) We cannot rest in the sunshine of home. Very often the hardest blows we receive come to us in the home circle, and the deepest wounds the heart ever knows are the wounds inflicted in the home. (3) A man cannot rest in his own religious experience. David found that his experience changed from day to day. Nor is he alone. The experience of all God's people has fluctuated: one day in the mountain and then down in the valley; one day in the arctic regions of death, another day amid the tropics. Not in our own experience can we rest. (4) But where can we rest? "Rest in the Lord." There is an ark upon the troubled billows; O dove with weary pinions, fly there. Rest in the power of God, in the promises of God, in the unchanging goodness of God.

II. Our text speaks also of patience. Many a man waits who does not wait patiently. (1) We have to wait patiently for answers to our prayers. (2) We have to wait patiently for the explanation of many of life's mysteries. (3) We have to wait patiently for God's blessing to come upon our labours. (4) On a bed of death we must exercise patience and wait for the Lord to come.

E. S. Gange, Penny Pulpit,No. 1009.

Waiting is the side of faith which develops most slowly. Working is not always a sign of faith. Diversion and oblivion are not faith. Faith's harder lesson is given in making a man lie still, and not work at all, but simply bear and wait.

I. We are to wait unwaveringly. "Wait on the Lord and keep His way."

II. We are to wait cheerfully. "Fret not thyself because of evil-doers."

III. We may wait confidently. "Thou shalt dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed."

M. R. Vincent, Gates into the Psalm Country,p. 127.

References: Psalms 37:7. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxiii., No. 1333; H. R. Reynolds, Notes of the Christian Life,p. 130; Clergyman's Magazine,vol. xx., p. 279; C. Vince, Christian World Pulpit,vol. v., p. 81; S. Wilberforce, Sermons,p. 225; J. Martineau, Hours of Thought,vol. i., p. 329. Psalms 37:9. Congregationalist,vol. vii., p. 409.