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. Let us therefore strive to enter that rest.
About this time of year my thoughts start turning to the open road with a motorcycle under me and a wife in the seat behind (reminding me I should have turned at that last corner!). We haven’t been on a proper motorcycle trip for a couple of years and I miss it. Jane’s and my longest trip on our bike was three weeks in 2019 when we took our trip to South Carolina. Our longest day on the bike, however, was a year before that when we went to Colorado and Utah. It was on our way back and we stayed in a little town by the name of Baggs, WY 0n the Colorado border. We were on the way back home and we got on the bike at about 8:00 that morning and when we finally parked it for the night it was 2:30 in the morning, we had covered nearly 800 miles.
I have said before that motorcycle trips are not an easy way to travel. It is slower than a car because you need to stop for gas more often and take a lot of breaks to stretch and walk around, at times its pretty rough, you are out in the weather and the sun beats down on you and the wind batters you and it is physically exhausting.
A strange thing happens on a motorcycle trip. On the way out all that discomfort toughens you up. When you start out you can probably spend at most five hours in the saddle. By the time you are heading home you are saddle-hardened and it gets easier. So that day from Baggs we spent nearly 15 hours on the bike.
The second thing that happens on a motorcycle trip is the strange turn of mind a little more than halfway through. Eventually all the battering of the bike ride gets you longing for home. The reason we spent 15 hours on the bike after we left Baggs that morning is that, by that time on our trip, both Jane and I just wanted to get home. We were tired of hotel beds and restaurant food and, as much as I love being on the bike on the open road, we were tired of the road. Just get us home, Lord, we prayed, we just want to get home.
Life is kind of like that, isn’t it? It’s a blast, life is. We have lots of days that we go to bed with a smile and look forward to the next day with great anticipation. Lots of happy times with family and friends, lots of good days on the open road when the weather is perfect and the road is smooth and it just makes you smile. But the next day can be a bugger. Suddenly you are bucking a 40 mile an hour crosswind and 100 degrees on a black road and thunderstorms are building in front of you – everything seems against you. Along with the joys, life is filled with afflictions and pains and sorrows and hardships, you all know that. Some of those times can be really tough and really hard to bear, they put you through the ringer, pull sobs of grief out of you, make you ache all over as they soak you one minute and roast you the next and the wind of adversity batters you.
These times of affliction and pain are one of the ways God plows the soil of our souls and gets us ready for the Seed of His Word. Pain and suffering have a way like nothing else in a Christian’s life to plunge us back into the Word of God, to seek out His promises in Jesus. When the pain of the road hits we want to hear our Father’s voice and rest in His embrace — the Sabbath rest, that Hebrews talks of - that place, in His Word, where God gives those blessed promises – the adversities and sorrows of life make us receptive to those things. You don’t need God if you can make it on your own, so God will plow us by showing us from time to time that we can’t make it on our own, that we need Him, we need the presence of Christ in us through His Word to sustain us on the way.
When we are young, these adversities of life serve to toughen us up and teach us the way of the faith and give us Christian maturity. I often say when working with young pastors, and I apply these words to my young pastor self too as I look back on my pastoral life, a man shouldn’t be a pastor until he’s been a pastor for 10 years. Walking with the saints through the joys and sorrows of life and all the situations you encounter on the way may not always be pleasant for a pastor, but it toughens a pastor up, teaches him, prepares him to be able to face things in life without losing his grip and teaches him how to be a Christian consolation to other people. I can tell you that my pastoral practice has changed a lot since my younger days as a pastor. Not only my afflictions, but the afflictions of the saints have matured my faith and my pastoral presence.
The same is true for all of God’s people. As we flee to the Word of God for our refuge in times of distress, we learn how to make that Word our own consolation and then apply that consolation to others that God puts in our way – who, for instance, can speak consolation to Christian parents who have lost a child to death better than other Christian parents who have already gone through that terrible sorrow and whom God has kept safe in His Word? Paul said in 2 Corinthians: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.”
Did you know that your suffering and afflictions join you to the sufferings of Christ? Your suffering is holy because it has been redeemed by the blood of Jesus just like every other aspect of your life. By that affliction you are joined with Christ and through it God teaches you how to be a consolation to others who are going through similar things. In other words, suffering toughens us up as Christians, it helps us understand God’s promises in Christ and gets us ready for the next day on the road and all those whom God will put in our path that we may have the opportunity to console with Christ.
But a strange thing happens in life, and you who are old enough have maybe experienced this. Eventually the afflictions and pains and sorrows of life serve not so much to make you tougher, although they continue to do that, but they start to turn our hearts and thoughts toward home. Instead of being a challenge to face, they start to remind us just how much we are strangers here in this world. Baggs might be a nice town, but it’s not home. This world may be nice enough in many ways, but it’s just not home, is it? Eventually the Christian soul just gets tired, weary of life in this broken and sinful world, worn down by the attacks of Satan and just longs to be home where there is peace and joy and we can see Jesus and be in our Father’s house and rest from our labors.
The day is coming when our ride will be done and we can put away the boots and hang up the leathers and relax because we are home. But you and I, friends, we are still on the road here, still heading home from Baggs. Here God continues to plow the soil to make it just right for the seed. And here God continues to plant that seed in us as He gives us His Word and, kept by that Word, here He uses the afflictions of life to toughen us up for the ride and, eventually, to turn our hearts toward home and give us the stamina for that last day, that long last ride until we stand safely home in our Father’s glorious house.
But there is one more thing God does with the afflictions of life that is even more important — afflictions in life make us lean hard on Jesus. Paul said this when speaking of that unknown affliction he had that was making his trip hard, “Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.
Strangely, Paul boasted of his suffering. That’s something that is completely foreign to the way people think, and this isn’t the only place Paul speaks like this of suffering. In Romans 5 he speaks of the toughening-up aspect of suffering and the longing for home aspect of it, as he points us to Jesus. Listen to what he says there: “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
In the end, our suffering teaches us how weak we really are on our own, how unable to face life without God’s help. Suffering teaches us to throw ourselves upon our Lord Jesus Christ and rely upon His grace. Suffering makes us flee to where He is for us in His mercy, His forgiving love, His strength for today and His hope for tomorrow.
When Hebrews says there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, God is talking there of that rest we have right now, right here, in the middle of all of our afflictions and sorrows and pains. The rest that is a foreshadowing of the final eternal rest we will have in glory. He is talking about the blessed Means of Grace – His holy Word, Baptism, Holy Communion, by which the Holy Spirit keeps us connected to Jesus and gives us a refuge for our weary souls every day we spend on this weary road through life. Here, at the altar, where Jesus is for you, connecting you by Word and Water and Bread and Wine to His death and resurrection for you, here, in His sanctuary, where your Father forgives all your sins ans strengthens you for the road ahead for this day, here where you receive by the ministration of the Holy Spirit all the spiritual strength and energy you need for this day, here is your rest, here is your blessed Sabbath Day.
By the plowing of the soil of our souls, by the planting of the Seed of the Word, by the afflictions and sorrows that toughen us up and turn our hearts toward home and make us lean hard on Jesus, by our Father’s love in the blood and righteousness of Jesus, that great and eternal Sabbath Rest is opened up for the people of God where our labors shall be finished, the sorrows all healed and we shall have that blessed reunion with our dear loved ones who have gone ahead into glory and, most importantly, we will finally see Jesus face to face and rest forever in the perfect peace of His presence.
What’s really a blessing, though, is how the rest we receive here in our Father’s house does get us ready for the next day on the road. When His Word is received by the plowed soil of our souls, the Holy Spirit has a way of giving us the rest we need in His Word and Sacraments to help us through the next day on the road until we get home.
Even though we spend the night in foreign places and unknown beds eating less that satisfactory food when Jane and I are on our motorcycle trips, I am always ready for the next day on the road when I get up in the morning. And so it is for us on the tough road through life. God’s Word fills you with Jesus. Baptism washes you in the blood He shed for you on the cross and gives you new life in His resurrection. His Holy Supper fills you with Jesus’ strength to help you through just one more week in this world.
Eventually you will get home, friends. That’s what we all look forward to. But as long as you are on the road, know that your Father will give you what you need for the day through His blessed Word as we look forward to that day, not too many days from now, when we shall at last be home.
What though the tempest rage,
Heav’n is my home;
Short is my pilgrimage
Heav’n is my home;
And time’s wild wintry blast
Soon shall be over, past;
I shall reach home at last,
Heav’n is my home.
Thank God for the toughening up. Thank God for the heart longing for home. Thank God for the blessed arms of Jesus to lean on. Through every day and every affliction and sorrow, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, here at the Altar where God gives you Jesus and forgives your sins, and there on the other side where you shall forever be in glory in y our Father’s eternal house.
May God keep you ever until that day through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen!
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