Christ comes to us, faithfully, week after week, on the Lord’s Day, with his gospel. For we are fully dependent on him, as the crucified and risen Christ. As he gives us rest, he makes it plain to us that he has broken the dominion of sin in our lives, once for all. He came in the fullness of time, Scripture says. Paul says somewhere that it was the right time. What made it the right time? Was there peace and order and stability in the kingdom? No! While we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly…. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:6, Romans 5:8). There was darkness in the kingdom. We needed a true Judge, an everlasting King. And he came, to restore peace, to give relief to his sin-soaked people. We forfeited everything good in the Garden of Eden. Peace, rest, fellowship. Christ came to restore all that for us, by offering up his own life. He brought us into the kingdom of light, by the shedding of his own blood. He died, and he too was buried, like Tola and Jair. But that was not the end, it could not be the end, because we needed an everlasting King. And so he rose, to secure and share our peace. So that already in this life, we rest from our evil works. He gives us rest, a gracious gift, and a foretaste of our final rest.

And so we begin in this life the eternal Sabbath, as we confess. Today’s rest is to push us to seek a better country, with a great king and judge. He is supremely faithful, and has secured a future for us, one with no more intermissions, but one of unending peace and unimaginable prosperity as we enjoy life forever at the feet of the king of glory.