Total Tranquility

And He said, "My presence shall go with you, and I will give you rest."

It has always been the object of your Creator’s love and mercy to be with you and provide you with rest. This can hardly be seen more clearly than in the rest of your Lord Jesus in the tomb after He made payment for your sin.

His presence has always been one to take away the sin of the world. He established a means of dwelling with poor sinners from the very moment the first Adam fell into sin, placing before all people the sure and certain promise that He is present, and that He is at the ready to provide everything good, even eternal life, despite all weakness and sin.

Rest is sweet. Rest is peaceful. Rest grants release from work and labor, fear and hurt. Your Maker fashioned you in the womb so that, as you go through your days, you experience in a small way how sweet it is to sleep soundly. But, because you are a child of the first Adam, subject to weakness and sin, there are times when even at night you awake with a start; when a sorrowful thought, or bitterness, ruins what would otherwise be total peace.

Jesus knows this well, for he took on flesh just like yours, so that He would be a Man of Sorrows, acquainted with grief. His presence among us is no less complete and participatory than has been in the heart of God from everlasting, and yet it was necessary for Him to enter into history experiencing birth and death, so that He might sanctify the birth and death of all who came after the first Adam.

You see, this is how His presence goes with you, and He gives you rest. He gives you rest because He gives you His flesh and blood, baptizing you into His own righteousness and life; feeding you the same, so that you need not fear sin and death, but may rather look forward in confident joy, because He has fully taken your place under the law, even to the point of resting in your tomb.

Because He participates fully in your life, having complete sympathy, He also intervenes on your behalf, praying for you, teaching you, and comforting you in the midst of trouble, just as He was comforted and sustained by the Father’s unfailing declaration: “You are My Son, today I have begotten You,” meaning that the Father’s love is always manifest in the Son, and the Son is manifest to us in love in His flesh laid down as our substitute in every way.

So it remains true, that while you traverse this short-lived moment in the midst of fallen creation, He is present and gives you rest, making known abundantly how longsuffering, patient, kind, unchanging, merciful, righteous, tender, and certain is His desire for you. By His rest in the tomb, preceded by His perfect atonement for your sin, all things are prepared for you to enter His rest, both now and forever.

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