On a recent day of retreat I took along F. B. Meyer’s, A Castaway and Other Addresses published in 1897. The pages in the old book would crumble and break as I turned each one. The binding would crack and break, yet I had to turn another page as I devoured the book at the expense of losing the integrity and possibly enjoyment of future readings.
How God used Meyer to speak to my heart. In the last sermon recorded in the book, he spoke of God’s Rest. After several months of turmoil and unrest in my life, it was as if God were audibly speaking to ME! How refreshing, how encouraging it was for me to find sermons spoken to preachers over 110 years ago by this man of God, still breathing fresh life into me.
Just a sample,
“The voice that breathed o’er Eden spoke of rest. In Gen. 2:3 we are told of the rest of God, and upon that day there fell no night, because the rest of God has no shadow in it, and never terminates. God has left open the door. It stands wide open, and every heart which He has made may share in it. A rest which is full of work; but like the cyclone, all the atoms of which revolve in turbulent motion around the central cavity of rest, so do all the activities of God revolve around His deepest heart which is tranquil and serene. And it is possible, if you and I learn the lesson amid anxiety and sorrow and trial and pressure of work always to carry a heart so peaceful, so still, so serene as to be like the depth of the Atlantic which is not disturbed by the turbulent winds that sweep the surface.
“Now this rest of God spoken of in Genesis was not exhausted by the Sabbath, or by Canaan; for after each of these had existed for many a century God still spoke of His reset as being unoccupied. And at last in Matt. 11:28, 29, a simple peasant (so He seemed,) stood up amid a number of peasants and fisher-folk and others, and said:
“On this breast of Mine is a pillow for ever heavy heart. My breast is broad enough, My heart is deep enough I offer Myself to all weary ones in every clime and age as Shiloh, the rest-giver”; for Shiloh in Him had come.
One feels that here is the accent of Deity. He says: “I am meek and lowly in heart.”
And yet He assumes to Himself the prerogative of giving rest to all that labor and are heavy-laden. How can you possibly account for the meeting of humility so great with pretentions so enormous in this meekest of men unless He be more than man, the Son of God incarnate? You will notice that as He stands there upon some mountain slope, with Chorazin, Bethsaida and Capernaum on the land-locked lake of Galilee at His feet, He speaks of two kinds of rest which He shows us how to find. “I will give you rest,” He says, and then in a softer undertone He whispers: “Take My yoke and you shall find rest.”
More later on God’s Rest
