Sleep, To The Glory of God
Most mornings I am fortunate enough to be able to hit the snooze button once before diving headfirst into a day packed full of studying, responsibilities, and tasks. I’ll subsequently drink a few cups of coffee (a Christian’s ambrosia if you will) throughout the day to keep myself alert and moving forward. I check off “to-dos” as I make visits, review Sunday School curriculum, plan activities, and study for upcoming messages and lessons. Upon arriving home, I finish my “honey-do” list, work on some course-work, finish an article for this site, and take care of our dog. On a good day, I get enough time to indulge in one episode of Doctor Who or Sherlock, before going to bed and starting all over again. All the while, like Greek mythology’s Sisyphus, we push the proverbial boulder up the hill, just to watch it roll back down and repeat the process.
I’m not alone. Busyness is an equal-opportunity employer. Working hard is not exclusive to pastors (or even Christians for that matter). We work hard, and rightfully so (cf. 1 Cor. 10:31; Col. 3:17). We hope and pray that our hard work and faithful obedience will bring glory to God. Important imperatives call us to service—and committed service at that. Unfortunately, this is often to the detriment of our rest. The Bible talks extensively about rest (e.g., Exod. 33:14; Isa. 30:15; Ps. 127:2). But what does it tell us about how we should rest? Are we to work or rest more? In the following paragraphs, we will observe a biblical perspective of rest, how it alters our identity in Christ, and ultimately, how it gives God glory.
Scripture and Slumber
A cursory view of any concordance shows ample mentions of “rest” and “sleep”. From the Ten Commandments’ imperative of the Sabbath, to the saints resting in Revelation, the Bible holds a thread of rest from beginning to end. However, Scripture seems to paint the theme of rest in three particular colors.
Our first view of rest is from the Decalogue where we see God ordain one day a week for rest (Exod. 20:8-11). This is the Lord’s Day, or the Sabbath, in which God has commanded us to take a specific day of the week and stop working. Not only has God given us an imperative to do so, He Himself, in the Genesis account, set an example for us—creating (working) for six days and resting on the seventh. Furthermore, Christ expounds the true nature of this commandment in that (1) He is the Lord over the Sabbath and (2) that the Sabbath was made for man (cf. Mk. 2:23-28, Mt. 12:1-14). Here is an amazing truth to ponder: whereas God worked for six days and then rested on the seventh, mankind’s first day was a day of rest. This means that humanity was created into rest. God has made us, at least in part, to rest in Him, as we did from the beginning of our creation.
Second, the Bible tells us that rest is available for us in Christ. The clearest picture we see of this is in Matthew 11: 28-30. In this infamous passage, Christ gives an astounding invitation, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” It is in Christ, and Christ alone, that we have release from our earthly burdens and rest for our weary souls. It gives us peace in troubled circumstances, hope in a broken world and assurance that the hardships of this world are but a vapor.
Our final picture of rest is the sleep we enter into when we die and pass from this life to the next. Specifically throughout the New Testament, we see believers who have died being referred to as “sleeping” (cf. Jn. 11:11-14; 1 Thess. 5:9-11; 1 Cor. 15:20). Two points should be noted here. First, only believers are said to fall asleep. Nowhere in Scripture do the unredeemed have the blessing of sleeping in regards to their eternal state. Second, this idea of sleeping in death is closely tied to the resurrection of the dead. Specifically, a believer is “sleeping” in order to be awoken in their resurrection bodies.
Redemption and Rest
The Scriptures helpfully define rest, but it is also important to know how this affects our faith now. How does the scriptural truth regarding rest change the way we live our lives from day to day? Thankfully, the early church father Augustine said two things that help us apply these truths.
In Augustine’s Confessions, he famously writes, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” Here, Augustine gives a contrast between our pre-redemptive state of restlessness and our post-redemptive state of joy and peace that comes with faith in Christ. For all persons, before we put our hope and trust in Christ, we are restless, as the magnitude of sin weighs heavy upon our souls. We are at enmity with our Creator as an eternal gap divides us from Him. However, through faith in the Gospel of Jesus Christ [1] we are reconciled to God, and thus receive rest for our souls. Rest, in a sense, is found in redemption.
Augustine also said, “I have read in Plato and Cicero sayings that are wise and very beautiful; but I have never read in either of them: Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden.” Certainly, the type of rest that Christ offers us is something of which the world knows nothing. To have Christ, God-incarnate, bear all of life’s burdens for us is a gift beyond our wildest imaginations. Not only does He bear the payment of our sin, but Jesus has offered us rest in Him. Not only do we have redemption in Christ, but we also have release from the weight of the world.
Does rest in Christ give believers license to be lazy? To echo the apostle Paul, “By no means!” The writer of Hebrews exhorts us in this balance, “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.” The rest that Christ offers us is both already and not yet. We rest in Christ now, yet we will rest in Him fully for all eternity too.
Albert Mohler adds to this. Commenting on Hebrews 4:9-10 he writes,
The writer of Hebrews speaks of a promised Sabbath rest that is a rest of salvation—both present experience and eschatological expectation. This rest is accomplished by the atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ, perfectly accomplished for us as He paid in full the penalty of our sins. Thus, the most important issue of Sabbath rest in the New Testament is that we rest in Christ and we rest from our labors—from all efforts to be saved by our works [2].
Mohler says it wonderfully. As a Christian, all rest finds its center and purpose in the work and person of Jesus Christ.
Giving God Glory
Scripture points us to rest in Christ, and Christ has offered rest to us. But if the Westminster Catechism is right, and “the chief end of man if to glorify God,” how does our resting give God glory? In our “time-is-money” culture, how does taking time to rest bring praise to our Heavenly Father? Is it not counter-intuitive that we think we need to be doing something in order to bring glory to God?
These questions can easily find their answer in this fact: by resting we are inherently admitting that we are not God. The fact that our bodies need rest is a testament to our finitude and mortality. Only God, Who is omnipotent and sovereign, is able to perpetually create and work without rest. It is only for our benefit and instruction that He rested “in the beginning.” By resting, we show through our actions that only God is God. By finding our rest in Christ, we admit that we are unable to work, through our own merits, into salvation.
As Christians, we have an opportunity that is not available to those outside of Christ’s covenant community. Because we are found in Christ, we no longer have to worry about validating our existence through our own actions, but depend wholly on there work of Jesus. Because of that, we can rest. We can rest in our redemption. We can rest in peace that Christ brings. Finally, we can rest in death—looking forward to an eternity to glorify God.
_______________________________________
[1] This is the Gospel:
The one and only God who is holy made us in his image to know him (Gen. 1:26-28). But we sinned and cut ourselves off from him (Gen. 3; Rom. 3:23). In his great love, God became a man in Jesus, lived a perfect life, and died on the cross, thus fulfilling the law himself and taking on himself the punishment for the sins of all those who would ever turn from their sin and trust in him (John 1:14; Heb. 7:26; Rom. 3:21-26, 5:12-21). He rose again from the dead, showing that God accepted Christ’s sacrifice and that God’s wrath against us had been exhausted (Acts 2:24, Rom. 4:25). He now calls us to repent of our sins and trust in Christ alone for our forgiveness (Acts 17:30, John 1:12). If we repent of our sins and trust in Christ, we are born again into a new life, an eternal life with God (John 3:16). He is gathering one new people to himself among all those who submit to Christ as Lord (Matt. 16:15-19; Eph. 2:11-19).
Taken from 9Marks.org “The Gospel”, http://www.9marks.org/what-are-the-9marks/the-gospel (accessed November 18th, 2013).
[2] R. Albert Mohler, Jr., Words From the Fire: Hearing the Voice of God in the Ten Commandments (Chicago: Moody Publishers 2009), 86-87.
Recent Comments