The Lord is Your Rest and Your Comforter

God promised  comfort to His people Israel -- and through Christ, our First-born brother, to every believer:

"Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God.

"Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned: for she hath received of the LORD'S hand double for all her sins." 9(Isaiah 40: 1-2) 

Later, Isaiah prophesies the word of the Lord:

"I, even I, am he that comforteth you: who art thou, that thou shouldest be afraid of a man that shall die, and of the son of man which shall be made as grass." (Isaiah 51: 12)

This rest is granted to the believer through Jesus Christ

“Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

"Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.

"For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. “(Matthew 11: 28-30)

Here, Jesus indicates not only that He gives rest, but more accurately he states "I will rest you".

He is our rest! The writer of Hebrews explains in greater detail:

"For if Jesus had given them rest, then would he not afterward have spoken of another day.

"There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God.

"For he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his.

"Let us labour therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief.

"For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

"Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do." (Hebrews 4: 8-13)

Here, "Jesus" refers initially to Joshua, yet the successor to Moses was in many ways a type of our Savior, one who led those who believed into the Promised Land. In Christ, we have ceased from our own dead works (Hebrews 6: 1), for the life we live is His life (Galatians 2: 20) We enter this rest by meditating on God's Word, which cuts through anything that smacks of fleshly self-effort, which would tempt us out of the rest which God gives us through His Holy Spirit.


By rightly divide the Word of God (2 Timothy 2: 15), I realized that by His death, I have remission of all my sins, and the Holy Spirit now lives in me, and by His Work, Christ is now in me, my hope of glory (Colossians 1: 27), is also my rest, and in that every believer finds the supreme comfort.