Read: Psalm 23
Read: John 10:1-18
A few years ago I realized that I was rushing at a pace that was unsustainable. I was working long hours, gaining weight, losing sleep, and worrying about my health. So I decided to take a year to get myself back into shape. I started dieting, hired a personal trainer, and began studying the biblical principles of fasting and sabbath. What I learned from that year has made a tremendous difference in my life.
I would wager that if you are struggling in your spiritual walk then it somehow correlates to your understanding of rest. We’ve just been through a series of months where we were forcibly required to do less, and yet, I am almost certain that most of us were more anxious and stressed than usual. We fill our time with activities that numb us to life or work us into a frenzy without any resolution. It is almost impossible to see people resting without some distractions or depressants.
At the core of Psalm 23 is an invitation to rest. We are instructed to lie down in green pastures and all of the various movements talk about comfort and ease. But it is not just this Psalm, it is the center of the gospel as well. If we are going to know what it means to trust in God for our salvation, we need to have a theology of rest.
God’s Sheep
You could understand that this imagery of the sheep and the shepherd would come from someone who had spent a good deal of his early years in the fields. David, who penned this Psalm, was a shepherd when He was anointed to be the King of Israel. But really, this theme of God’s people being compared to sheep has been there from the beginning and carries through the New Testament as well.
Abraham was a shepherd who found a ram in the thicket when he was about to sacrifice Isaac. Jacob, later named Israel, was a shepherd who brought his family down to Egypt during a famine. Moses was a shepherd when he heard God speak to him from the burning bush. Jesus claimed to be the Good Shepherd who lays down His life for the sheep. Finally, we are told that in the final hour when Christ returns, the lion will lie down with the sheep in a new world marked by rest.
The people of God have always been associated with sheep because they symbolize a flock that is completely dependent on their shepherd for safety, nourishment, and rest. We are not compared to a pack of wolves who have a unique leadership structure, or a pride of lions who reign from the top of the food chain. We are sheep, who depend on the shepherd for everything we need.
Rest and Comfort
The LORD knows exactly what we need, even better than we know for ourselves. There is a parallel here with the Lord’s Prayer in the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus tells us to ask God for our daily bread and later tells us that if we ask for bread, our heavenly father isn’t going to give us a stone. He clothes the lilies of the field and feeds the birds of the air, He will provide for us as well.
But we don’t often think of God in that way. We know where our food comes from. We work, get paid, go to the grocery store, cook our meals, and then pray and ask God to bless the food after all of the work is done. Subconsciously, we are tempted to think that we don’t need God because we are doing it on our own. Then, when we go to bed at night, the burden of responsibility to provide for our families is on our own shoulders.
Restless Sheep
This Psalms says that God makes us lie down and restores our soul. Rest is part of God’s treatment for people who are overworked and over confident. God won’t allow you to go for too long thinking that you have everything in your control before things start to get overwhelming and fall apart. When the Israelites were taken into captivity, God told them it was for disregarding the sabbath rest.
I’m sure you’re familiar with the images of Jesus carrying a lamb on His shoulders. It’s a beautiful picture of the Good Shepherd. What you may not know is that it is actually depicting a common practice for a shepherd. If a young lamb was wandering off and not staying with the flock, the shepherd would actually break their legs and carry them until they learned how to stay in the place of rest. I’ve found that God will either give me rest when I am diligent enough to seek it, or He will give me rest by force. Sometimes that is painful, but it is always necessary.
Rest is so important that God built it into creation. The first full day that Adam was alive was a day of rest. The week does not end with the weekend, it begins with rest. Gathering together to worship God and spending time in God’s word is meant to be the fuel that carries us through the work week, not the rest stop where we get repaired and replenished. We need to understand that rest is an essential spiritual discipline, commanded by God, and provided by our Shepherd.
Rest and Stress
Without a theology of rest, we will not know how to handle the times of trouble. If we cannot rest in God in the little things, we definitely won’t trust Him in a crisis. It is the regular working out of our faith in the everyday challenges that prepares us for fight day.
Recently, I visited a good friend of mine who was on his deathbed. I asked him what was comforting him in his final days and he quoted for me Psalm 23. Faced with death, he was clinging to the promises of God’s Word.
An old preacher named Donald Gray Barnhouse was driving from the funeral to the cemetery with his young children to bury their mother. When a semi-truck passed them, casting a shadow over the car, he asked his kids if the truck had hurt them. They said, “No.” He then pointed to this passage and said, “Death is just a shadow. It cannot hurt us.”
Rest teaches us that we can trust in God. He leads us down the right paths. We can be assured that when the shadows tower over us, if we are following the shepherd, then we are in the right place.
The Grass Is Greener on the Other Side
The roads are not always easy. There are challenges in life, but the destination is always rest. God is providing for all of our needs when we are surrounded by our enemies. He has chosen us as His own and our resources are plentiful. This is what it means to rest in God.
True spiritual rest is not about watching television, shopping, or even doing chores. Rest is reflecting on the goodness of God, both now and in the future. We need to be reminded of the gospel every day. This word translated mercy is actually “hessed” in Hebrew. It’s hard to translate into English, but it basically means the loving promises of God. In a romantic sense, it would be like a man who goes off to war and promises to return to his one true love, marry her and start a family. When he returns, the love and passion for that woman has only grown in intensity. This mercy of God contains with it all of the covenant promises, with the added benefit of love. God is not keeping His word simply because He’s a man of honor. He loves us.
The promise of God is eternal. It is with us in the here and now, but it also carries with it a promise of things to come. We are currently underneath the shadows of death, but we are promised a new heaven and a new earth, where we will rule and rest together for eternity.
Adam Miller is the president and host of Songtime Radio and serves as the pastor of South Chatham Community Church. This article is a condensed version of one of his sermons.