Trusting brings rest

For we who have believed do enter into rest. Hebrews 4:3

Trusting brings rest. This is a simple truth of God, and yet it is a truth we need to remember, consider, and be assured upon! Peace does not come to the believer through his works; he ought to have works, he will have them if he has the life of divine grace within his heart. He should attend to baptism, to the Lord’s Supper, and to all Christian ordinances, but he does not get rest through these. The rest comes through his God-given faith, not through the ordinances. “Means of divine grace,” men call those ordinances, and some have gone to great lengths as to what comes to us through sacraments—but I say most boldly that the apostle goes to greater lengths in another direction, namely, in neglecting to say anything in such a case as this about baptism, or the Lord’s Supper, and in laying all our rest at the door of believing! “We who have believed.” He is of the same mind as our Lord Himself, when He declares that whoever believes on the Son has everlasting life, as if the only essential thing were this believing, and where this is, all the privileges of the covenant were to be enjoyed! Dearly beloved, we ought to pant after sanctification; it should be the ambition of our spirits to be useful; we ought to be crying and sighing everyday after conformity to Christ; but, remember, it is neither in our sanctification, nor in our usefulness, nor in our conformity that we find our rest—our rest comes to us through believing in Jesus Christ! The apostle indirectly tells us in these words, that those who believe in Christ Jesus enter into rest, notwithstanding anything and everything beside. “We who have believed,” he says, “do enter into rest.” What? Paul, have you no corruptions? “Alas,” he cries, “Wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me?” Yet he entered into rest. What? Paul, have you no doubts? Hear him—“I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means when I had preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.” Had he no vexing troubles? He answers, “Without were fights, and within were fears.” And yet, O apostle, did you enter into rest? Yes, by believing! But had you no sins, Paul? Yes, verily, he confesses himself the chief of sinners, but, believing made him enter into rest!

Rest - Sermon 866, Charles Haddon Spurgeon
Photo credit: Kenneth Muir [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons