Psalms 143 - James Nisbet's Church Pulpit Commentary

REST AND SERVICE

‘Hear me, O Lord, and that soon.… For Thy righteousness’ sake bring my soul out of trouble.’

Psalms 143:7-11 (Prayer Book Version)

There you have the transition of a soul from the rest which it needed in long conflict and many failures, from the rest, to the energy of a new service. ‘Show me the way that I should walk in.’ ‘Quicken me, O Lord, according to Thy Word.’ We need rest and may claim it at various times (e.g. in Lent). If men will but taste deeply of the fountain of that rest they will, before they know it, be roused up in new strength to the new service, and so it would be quite well to think of the promises of rest, and the duty of leaning all our weight upon God.

I. The nature of the rest.—First, then, about the rest itself, which is not a rest of sloth, a rest from toil. It is a rest from the strain of poverty, or the strain of covetousness and ambition. Found in pleasure, in the satisfaction of our desires? No; found in the spirit of contentment. We rest from struggle or from ambition in contentment; we rest from adversity and strife and contention in patience, not by God’s taking away the causes of our unrest, not by His blunting the weapons of our accusers and oppressors, but by the spirit of patience in our hearts, the spirit of Jesus Christ, by which He submitted to the unjust judge, and for us bore our stripes and hung upon the tree. It is our rest from injustice, from tyranny, from adversity, from conflict. Our rest from anxiety, debate, discussion, and doubt is not in the clearing up of the atmosphere in which we view all things, but it is in taking into our hearts the great treasure of a trustful reliance on God, though we see Him not, though He seem to smite us. Rest from distraction is not found in being able to comprise and manage all the objects of our desire, so as to be able to husband our time and forces and gain them all, it is found in returning to the single eye, in submitting every desire to the yoke of Jesus Christ. We shall have no rest by forgetting moral distinctions or thinking our way right because it is ours. Rest from sin is in a deep penitence. We take the peace of God, Christ’s own peace which He enjoyed on the Cross and in the Garden, Christ’s own peace which is so deeply rooted in earthly sorrow that no man can take it away. That is the peace we come to.

II. Peace and warfare.—We find our joy in conflict; the kingdom we come into is no land of milk and honey, no Sabbath place of rest. It is called a kingdom because it is the sphere of activity and influence of a King on His march. We have a peace, but it is the peace of soldiers under the banner of a King in arms. Never be afraid of coming into Christ’s rest because you think you will avoid difficulty and strife. It seems to me it is the doubters, the clever debaters, it is those who escape from trouble and toil, those who are always waiting in the uneventful ante-chambers of doubt, where nothing happens, where the doors of the arena are always closed, and men are always wondering whether they shall put on the armour or not, talking of the strife and strain of doubt, talking of the wonderful adventure of free thought, and all the while abiding where the same controversies are turned over and over again, where the narrowed soul is self-satisfied with its own stale contribution to worn discussions. There is indeed a strife and a strain in that for some who are longing to enter in; but I assert, without much fear of contradiction from those who really know themselves in that room, that on the whole that life of doubt, debate, and question is a life which shirks the true issues of life. It is the man who believes and takes the plunge, who finds himself in the deep waters of difficulty and amidst the real problems of the life of faith, who is under the vast truth of God. No man liveth to himself but to the Lord, Who needs him for His service. He must live, he must be strong in the Lord, for the needs of others; he must rest for them, he must be revived for them, he must find strength for them, and, dying for them unto sin, he shall live again for them unto righteousness. He shall fight well because he hath rested well for them.

Just take that one word, rest, and find energy; rest, and in your peace find war; rest for others that you may fight for others. It is the corporate nature of your life which makes your rest necessary, which makes your weariness necessary, for it is to teach you to bring your single note into the great chord of life.

Rev. P. N. Waggett.