41: The Promises to Israel - Another Day (Part 2 of 2)

The Present Truth : February 11, 1897

[In studying this subject last week we saw that the rest promised is God’s rest—the rest into which Adam entered when the Lord “caused him to rest in the garden of delight.”]

It is sin that brings weariness.  Adam in the Garden of Eden had work to perform; yet he had absolutely perfect rest all the time he was there, till he sinned. If he had never sinned, such a thing as weariness would never have been known on this earth. Work is no part of the curse, but fatigue is.  “Because . . . thou hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it; cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground.”  Genesis 3.17-19

Keeping the Rest

Up to this time he had enjoyed perfect rest while laboring.  Why?  —Because his work was simply to “keep” that perfect work which God had prepared for him and committed to him.  Adam did not have to create anything.  If he had been asked to create no more than one flower or a single blade of grass, he could have wearied himself to death over the task, and died leaving it unfinished; but God did the work, and placed Adam in possession of it, with directions to keep it, and this he did so long as he “kept the faith.”

Note that this perfect rest was rest in the new earth, and note further that if sin had never entered, the earth would have remained new forever. It was sin that brought blight upon the earth, and has caused it to wax old.  God’s perfect rest is found only in a heavenly state, and the new earth was most decidedly “a better country, even an heavenly.”  That which was given to man in the beginning, when he was “crowned with glory and honor,” which he lost when he “sinned, and came short of the glory of God,” but which the Second Adam has in His own right, being crowned with glory and honor, because of the suffering of death, is what God has promised to Abraham and his seed, and will be given to them when the Messiah comes at “the times of restitution of all things.”