Our North Star and Anchor

In his preface to The Saints Everlasting Rest, Richard Baxter writes:

“What more welcome to men under personal afflictions, tiring duties, disappointments, or sufferings, than rest?” [The “rest” that Baxter writes about is our seeing the face of Christ; a “rest” that I believe the Bible teaches begins now and continually unfolds in Jesus Christ.]

“It is not our comfort only, but our stability. Our liveliness in all duties, our enduring of tribulation, our honoring of God, the vigor of our love, thankfulness, and all our graces; yea, the very being of our religion and Christianity depend on the believing, serious thoughts of our rest.” (italics mine).

While I have heard the saying, “People can be so heavenly minded that they are no earthly good,” I have seldom, if ever, seen a person like this. My experience has been quite the contrary. The people I have known who have a deep and abiding sense of Christ, of things above (Colossians 3:1-2), of the eternals, are those who tend to have more compassion and mercy on those around them; they are those who tend to use their time and resources to help others.

Note that Baxter is looking at life as it really is; we will have afflictions, we will have disappointments, we will have sufferings; Baxter’s Christianity is not “health and wealth” or “name it and claim it” or “maintain the status quo” or one of personal peace and affluence.

Baxter knows that when we are seeking Christ and the “rest” we have in Christ (Hebrews Chapter 4) that Christ becomes our North Star and our Anchor. (Consider that the men and women of faith in Hebrews 11 were “looking for a city that has foundations, whose builder and maker is God.”) When we look to Jesus Christ we have stability, and when we have stability in Jesus Christ we have one response to suffering, one response to pain, one response to uncertainty, one response to mountains and valleys – Jesus Christ and the rest that we are on pilgrimage to reach, the rest that is already unfolding in our lives – for it is Jesus Himself who is our rest, our heart’s desire, our hope.

The professing-church today, at least in the West, is unstable; it runs here and there looking for a new teaching, a new experience, a new solution that will appeal to church attendees and prospective attendees and will solve our immediate problems – making us feel good. We are like puppies chasing their tails. We sow seed in soil with no depth or nutrients. We grow dis-eased crops. We plant annuals and do not cultivate perennials.

When Baxter writes “our liveliness in all duties” I take that to mean that the rest of Christ, and the life of Christ within us, animates all of life (John 15:1ff). We not only have a North Star and an Anchor, we have a constant source of Life, Divine Life, the very Life of Jesus Christ, the life of the Trinity, living and abiding with us.

What a blessing to enjoy stability in Jesus Christ in an unstable world!

There is More

Richard Baxter (1615 – 1691), in The Saints’ Everlasting Rest, writes:

“When God would give the Israelites his Sabbaths of rest, in a land of rest, it was harder to make them believe it, than to overcome their enemies, and procure it for them. And when they had it, only as a small intimation and earnest of an incomparably more glorious rest through Christ, they yet believe no more than they possess, but say, with the epicure at the feast, Sure there is no other heaven but this! or, if they expect more by the Messiah, it is only the increase of their earthly felicity [happiness].

“The apostle [who wrote Hebrews, the “rest” Baxter writes about is Hebrews 4:9] aims most of this Epistle [Hebrews] against this obduracy [stubbornly refusing to change an opinion or course of action], and clearly and largely proves that the end of all ceremonies and shadows is to direct them to Jesus Christ, the substance; and that the rest of Sabbaths, and Canaan, should teach them to look for a further rest, which indeed is their happiness.”

I have chosen to use the original manuscripts when quoting Baxter, Ambrose, and Owen rather than update their English to make it easier to read for a few reasons. One is that reading older English should slow us down and ponder what they are writing – consuming words rather than pondering words is a disease. Another reason is that in using current English something might be missed, or something might be injected, that would add or subtract from the original authors’ thoughts – I don’t want to take that chance. Thirdly, the more we read a style of writing or a form of English that we are not familiar with, hopefully the more familiar we’ll become, thus enabling us to read more older writing with greater profit.

When Baxter writes above, “it was harder to make them believe it, than to overcome their enemies, and procure it [the inheritance of Canaan] for them” he is pointing out that the Israelites did not accept God’s promise of rest in the Promised Land of Canaan – they understood warfare but they didn’t understand the Sabbaths, they didn’t understand “rest”. They, like us, were more comfortable doing than believing and resting.

An irony with both the Israelites and ourselves is that when we insist on the primacy of doing we end up not doing as much and we inevitably fall short of what God has promised us in Jesus Christ.

This is because, like Baxter’s above example of an epicurean, we just can’t believe there can be anything more than what we are experiencing. Baxter points out that rather than the Israelites seeing that the inheritance they were gaining, and the rest from the Wilderness wanderings they were experiencing, were just a foretaste of more to come – they thought they were experiencing and inheriting all that there was, that there was nothing beyond what they had.

This is pretty much the picture of the church today. We would rather “do” than “believe and rest”. We think that what we have is all there is. We do not see that all that the Father gives us is designed to draw us deeper into Jesus Christ; we do not look for more of Christ, a clearer vision of Christ, a deeper rest in Christ – we tend to simply look at ourselves and what we have and we do not believe there is anything more.

We are comfortable with Martha; we think Mary is irresponsible (Luke 10:41 – 42). We dumb-down the words of Jesus, we excuse them, we don’t really want to hear Him say, “…but only one thing is necessary, for Mary has chosen the good part, which shall not be taken away from her.” We say and preach and teach “Yeah but…what Martha was doing was important.” But Jesus doesn’t say that, we add to Jesus’ words. Jesus says, “…but only one thing is necessary…”

Baxter points out that the happiness we seek is not more of the eternal Christ, but rather more of the here and now Christ; give us happiness now and don’t bother to expand our horizons, don’t bother to expand our vision of You, don’t trouble us with thoughts of eternity. Unlike our fathers and mothers of faith in Hebrews Chapter 11, we are not seeking a City to come (and that is coming), we are not looking for a City whose builder and maker is God. We do not want God to work and live within the Holy of Holies of our lives, but rather we want Him to entertain us in the Outer Court.

We would much rather eat from food trucks than dine in the palace of the King of Kings.

There is so much more; more peace, more understanding, more grace, more mercy, more hope, more faith, more love…more rest, deeper rest…and most importantly…more of Christ.

Are we learning to know Jesus Christ as our Sabbath, our Rest? What does this look like in my life? In your life?

The Saints' Everlasting Rest

Richard Baxter (1615 – 1691), in The Saints’ Everlasting Rest, writes:

“It was not only our interest [relationship, participation] in God, and actual enjoyment of him, which was lost in Adam’s fall, but all spiritual knowledge of him [see 1 Corinthians Chapter 2], and true disposition toward such a felicity [happiness of knowing God]. When the Son of God comes with recovering grace, and discoveries of a spiritual and eternal happiness and glory, he finds not faith in man to believe it.

“As the poor man, that would not believe any one had such a sum as a hundred pounds, it was so far above what he himself possessed, so men will hardly now believe there is such a happiness as once they had [before Adam’s fall], much less as Christ hath now procured.”

We just don’t believe the glory of Christ’s work, of His reconciliation, of His work on the Cross. Unbelievers don’t believe it, and Christians usually don’t believe it. As Baxter writes, we are like a person who has known nothing but poverty all his life, someone who has never seen or held more than $1.00. When this person is told that there are people who carry $100.00 bills in their wallets he cannot believe it, he simply cannot comprehend it.

So with many Christians, we simply cannot believe that we are truly and fully forgiven in Jesus Christ. We cannot believe that we are the sons and daughters of the Living God. We cannot accept and live in the fact that “Greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world.”

We are called to an everlasting rest that is to begin here, on this earth, right here and right now in Jesus Christ (Hebrews 4:9 – 16). We enter this rest by submitting to the Word of God, we enter this rest by our Great High Priest, we enter this rest by ceasing from our own works and relying completely and absolutely on Jesus Christ.

But…we cannot believe it. We have been conditioned to be spiritual dumpster-divers, to eat out of garbage cans, to wear clothing of tatters rather than the fine linen that is the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

We think and act as if Christ begrudges us light and life and forgiveness. We live and think as if, even though Jesus died for us and has reconciled us to our Father, that neither our Father or Lord Jesus really want us to be close to them, they really don’t want us to find peace and rest (but see Romans 5:1 – 11!). We think and act as if the Holy Spirit does not really want to reveal Jesus and His Word to us.

Oh that we would allow the Gospel to penetrate our hearts and souls and chase all our fears away; that we would trust the love and grace of our Lord Jesus – believing that our Father loves us just as our Father loves Jesus, His only begotten Son (John 17:23, 26).

Let us not take counsel of our fears and insecurities, nor of preachers who would only teach one-half a gospel, and certainly not of other preachers who seek to dethrone Jesus Christ (as if that could be done) and place us at the center of the universe, making the Cross a selfish means of pleasure and satisfying our lusts for more, more, and more.

Can we not believe the life and love and Word of Jesus Christ? Can we not accept the love of our Father? Can we not receive the communion of the Holy Spirit?

Isn’t it time we learned to be the children of the Great King and live in His Palace of light and truth and love and dumpster-dive no more?