Return to your rest, O my soul, for the LORD has been good to you.Return to your rest, my soul, for Yahweh has dealt bountifully with you.Return unto thy rest, O my soul; for the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee.Return unto thy rest, O my soul; For Jehovah hath dealt bountifully with thee.
3 sermons cite this verse
"I am so glad that Jesus loves me." You may turn it over, and over, and over, and over, as long as you like, but you will never find anything that makes you so glad as that thought, "Jesus loves me." And you will never find that the sweetness of that thought, "Jesus loves me," will ever be exhausted. Sinner, if you only knew the blessedness of the life of Christ, you would be glad enough to run away from your own life and run to share ours in Him! We have peace like a river, we can leave all our cares and our burdens with our God. We are just where we love most to be—in the bosom of our Heavenly Father—and the Spirit of adoption makes us feel perfectly at home with Him. We can say, "Return unto your rest, O my Soul, for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you!" We are in perfect safety, for who is he that can destroy those whom Christ protects? We have got into peace even with our own conscience. We have also a blessed prospect for the future—we shall be borne along upon the wings of Divine Providence until we exchange them for the wings of angels! We have a Heaven below and we are looking for a still better Heaven above— "All that remains for me Is but to love and sing, And wait until the angels come To bear me to the King!" This is the lower part of the choir. Some of the singers are up in the galleries and we are learning, here, the notes that we shall sing above. Come, Beloved, let us make these sinners long to share our joys! If any of you saints have been moaning and groaning of late, get into your proper condition! Begin to tune up and praise the Lord with all your might till the ungodly shall say, "After all, there is something sweeter and brighter and better in the lives of these Christians than we have ever known in ours." …
I fear that some Christians forget their resting place through idolatry. "Idolatry?" you ask, "We are not idolaters! We are not, even as the Romanists are, who will worship their crucifixes or their relics." No idolatry? Was not that idolatry this afternoon with that boy of yours? Ah, what a boy! Your heart all but adores him and if he were taken from you, you would feel you could not forgive God! No idolatry? The other day, when you looked upon your fair estate and all the comforts of life with which God had surrounded you, did not you feel your heart go after these things? No idolatry? "Little children, keep yourselves from idols," was once an exhortation of John, and it is also my exhortation to you this evening. We so soon make idols. I am afraid if an idol breaking were to take place tonight, many of you would go home broken-hearted! Or if your idols are at home, you would go home to see them broken, and yourself be ready to despair. There is much idolatry—and if you love son or daughter more than Christ, you are not worthy of Him! If you love husband or wife more than Christ, you are not worthy of Him. Oh, be it so, that they take low seats and Christ sits on the Throne! Go down, Beloved, go down! I love you there as I may and should, but come up, my Savior, take the highest place, for there You must sit King of Kings and Lord of Lords! …
Helpless, look to You for Grace." There is no living comfortably, there is no living with the peace and joy of the Holy Spirit in the heart if we at once wander from the simplicity of our confidence in Christ! Further, there are many Believerswho also wander out of their place. What, now, is a Believer's place? A Believer's place is on the bosom of his Lord, or at the right hand of his Master, or sitting at His feet, with Mary. Now some of us have had times in which we did come very near to the Lord Jesus Christ. Ah, some of you never woke in the morning without thinking of Him, and all day long a sense of His Presence was in your heart. How you grudged the world the hours you had to give to business! And when you locked up your heart at night, you always gave Jesus Christ the key. Oh, how sweet ordinances were to you, then, because you could see Christ through them, as through windows of agates and gates of carbuncles! How delightful were Prayer Meetings and similar gatherings, because you saw Jesus there, and talked with Him! But what about your present state? Perhaps, my dear Friend, you have wandered from your place. You are not living near to Christ as you used to do. Hence ordinances have but very little comfort in them—they are dull and tedious. And services which were once as marrow and fatness to you, have now become as dry bones. Your closet, too, is much neglected. Your Bible is not studied as it was. You have lost your first love and, I appeal to you, have you not also lost your first comfort? Are you not like a bird that has wandered from her nest? Believe me, there is no solid joy, no seraphic rapture, no hallowed peace this side of Heaven, except by living close under the shadow of the Cross, and nestling in the wounds of Jesus! Oh, that we should be so foolish! The bird does not forget her nest, but we forget our Lord! We have need to say with the Psalmist, "Return unto your rest, O my Soul, for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you!" We have need to cry tonight— …