Longing for the Future Sabbath

Over the last few weeks, we have been looking at the various rest-work rhythms that God has built into our world; night and day, rest and work, seed time and harvest.  These rhythms are gracious provisions for weary pilgrims sojourning through this world. 

And yet, even those rhythms often leave us longing for more.  We enjoy a vacation, but we know it will soon come to an end.  We love the Lord’s Day, but we remember that Monday is lurking right around the corner.  Many who have spent years looking forward to retirement often find themselves disappointed.  We hope for rest in this world, but it’s never quite enough.  

C.S. Lewis once said, “If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.”  Each of these rhythms remind us that there is a rest our hearts truly long for that cannot be found in this world.  That’s why this final letter in our series will deal with a glimpse into the future, final rest that we as believers eagerly await (Phil 3:20)! 

Already and Not Yet

The Bible often describes the Christian life as a sojourn (Acts 7:6, 1 Peter 2:11).  This terminology naturally harkens back to the time when Israel had been delivered from Egypt and journeyed toward the Promised Land.  This was to be a land filled with milk and honey, abounding in earthly blessing.  It was to be a place of rest that would be a haven for their weary souls after years of harsh slavery in Egypt.  But even after God’s people entered the land, those blessings were not fully realized; instead they pointed to a future city (Heb 11:10) infinitely greater than any earthly city (Rev 21).   

This is a wonderful summary of the Christian life: We already enjoy God’s blessings to some degree in this world, but there is a fullness of blessing that we will only enjoy in the world to come.  This is especially true of rest: While we will never fully experience complete and perfect rest in this world, the day is coming in which we will enjoy perfect rest with God in Heaven. 

In Hebrews 4, we are told several times that the Israelites failed to enter God’s rest because of disobedience (Heb 4:3, 5, 6).  And yet Hebrews asserts that God’s kindness endures despite our hard-heartedness: “So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his” (Heb 4:9–10). 

How can we enter into such a glorious future rest?  Only through the finished work of Jesus!  Verse 11 tells us: “Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.”  When Hebrews says “strive” we should not take that to mean we must work to enter the rest; it means that we must be sure that we are truly trusting in God’s Son for salvation, as evidenced in a life of faith and repentance.  To be a Christian is to live all of life understanding that our time in this world is very temporary, and we are merely sojourners making our way to our eternal home in Heaven.  

Dear ones, we must learn to live our lives and set our hopes on the glory of this future day!  Life in this world is full of toil and difficulty; if we’re only living for this world, our souls are in very grave danger (Philippians 3:19).  But what great joy our souls will experience if we set our hopes upon the future rest that is ours in the eternal Sabbath spent with the Lord Jesus (Hebrews 4:1)!  

While our final rest will not come until we are present with the Lord, we do receive a sample of that rest now by faith when we observe the Lord’s Day as a day in which we can simply rest, revel, and rejoice in what Christ has done (which will be the main occupation of Heaven!).  The Sabbath rest we enjoy in this world is but a foretaste of that “final, perfect consummation of all the purposes of God in and through His creation, which has been washed clean through the blood of the Lamb (Rev. 5:9) for whose pleasure all things are and were created (Rev. 4:11).” (Douglas F. Kelly, Creation And Change: Genesis 1:1–2:4 in the Light of Changing Scientific Paradigms, Revised edition (Mentor,   2017), 336.)

Let us conclude this series with an extended, wonderfully encouraging quote by Robert Murray M’Cheyne:

It is a type of heaven when a believer lays aside his pen or loom, brushes aside his worldly cares, leaving them behind him with his weekday clothes, and comes up to the house of God. It is like the morning of the resurrection, the day when we shall come out of great tribulation into the presence of God and the lamb, when the believer sits under the preached Word and hears the voice of the Shepherd leading and feeding his soul.

It reminds him of the day when the Lamb that is in the midst of the Throne shall feed him, and lead him to living fountains of water. When he joins in the psalm of praise, it reminds him of the day when his hands shall strike the harp of God, ‘where congregations ne’er break up and Sabbaths have no end.’ When he retires and meets with God in secret in his closet, or like Isaac in some favourite spot near his dwelling, it reminds him of the day when he shall be a pillar in the house of our God and go out no more.

This is the reason we love the Lord’s Day. This is the reason we call the Sabbath a delight. A well spent Sabbath we feel a day of heaven upon earth. For this reason we wish our Sabbaths to be wholly given to God. We love to spend the whole time in the public and private exercises of God’s worship except so much as is taken up in works of necessity and mercy. We love to rise early on that morning and to sit up late, that we may have a long day with God.

Andrew A Bonar, Memoir and Remains of Robert Murray M’Cheyne (Edinburgh; Carlisle, Pa.: Banner of Truth Trust, 1995), 539.

I cannot wait to experience that future Sabbath in which the joy of walking with Christ and fellowshipping with the saints will never, ever end. Come quickly, Lord Jesus!