God's Rest and God's Work

“The Lord rested the seventh day.” — Exodus xx. ii. “Jesus answered, My Father worketh hitherto.” — JOHN v. 17.

Does our Lord mean to contradict the statement of the book of Exodus? Exodus says God “rested the seventh day;” Christ says, “Up to this present time My Father has never ceased from labour’* Does Jesus mean to deny the primitive record? No. What He means is that rest is not the opposite of work, but the opposite of friction. And I think our experience must confirm this. Is it not true even of physical rest. It is not motion that tries us; it is the interference with motion. It is not work that makes us weary; it is the impeding of work. If there were no friction in the air or in surrounding objects, you and I would find in the longest and swiftest locomotion a sense of absolute rest. Why does a little bird grow weary on the wing? Because of motion? No; because of motion interrupted. It is because all things are calling to the bird,” Lie down! “It is because the pressure of the atmosphere is every moment stopping its progress, and saying” You shall not pass here! ‘’ If the bird had less friction, it would do more work and at the same time find more rest. When God rested. He rested not from work, but from the friction that impeded work. Are you startled that the working of God should have been impeded by friction! I am quite sure it was, till the birth of a human soul. Do you think that the selfish struggle for survival among the beasts of the field was favourable to the movement of His love! No; it restrained the beating of His wings. It was not the environment for your Father. It was a foreign atmosphere in His own world. It broke the nuptial ring, wherewith He sought to surround all things. Lord, it is Thy rest in man that has accelerated Thy work. The movement of Thy Spirit is faster than of yore. There are fewer obstacles on the line — love’s line. The friction has been lifted from Thy path. Thy rest is not rest from Thy flight, but rest in Thy flight. The Sabbath broke not Thy wing, but the impediments to Thy wing. The day of Thy rest has been a day of new travel. Thy message has flashed quicker since the birth of man. The swiftest of all telegraphs has been raised by the rest which my heart has given to Thine — the telegraph of prayer. Between these points of peace — my heart and Thy heart — there is established a rapid communion. It is quicker than the wings of an eagle, quicker than the sweep of the wind, quicker than the words of a man, quicker than the thought of a soul, quicker than the feelings of a heart, quicker than the aspirings of a spirit. I have no time-measure which can express the rapidness of Thy response to prayer. And it is a rapidness born of rest, a swiftness wrought by sympathy, a flight made fleeter because friction dies. Thy Sabbath morning is Thy working-day.