How the Saints’ Everlasting Rest Enlivens the Pastor’s Momentary Work

The Saints’ Everlasting Rest: Updated and Abridged; By Richard Baxter, Abridged by Tim Cooper. Crossway, 2022. 192 pages.

I probably don’t need to tell you, brother pastor, but I will: shepherding the flock of God that is among us (1 Pet. 5:2) can be wearying. We labor in the Word . . . and we wonder if God is really changing people through our preaching. We labor in counseling with a husband and wife battling marital conflict . . . and they file for divorce. We pour our hearts into discipling a new believer . . . until he gets entangled in sin, criticizes you, and then leaves the church because you’ve not invested in him enough. Surely you can fill in your own sources of pastoral weariness.

The apostle Peter knew we’d get weary in our labors for Jesus’s dearly-loved sheep. So, after exhorting the elders to shepherd the flock of God among them willingly and eagerly, he encouraged them with this wonderful promise:

“And when the chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory” (1 Pet. 5:4).

From this passage, we learn that the promise of future glory helps to fuel present pastoral perseverance.

This lesson applies not only to pastors, but every Christian. So Peter wrote to all the elect exiles of the Dispersion: “Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1 Pet. 1:13).

A Help in Heavenly-Mindedness

In The Saints’ Everlasting Rest: Updated and Abridged, Tim Cooper has done a great service to the Church by distilling Richard Baxter’s very good but very long work on heaven (350,000 words) into a form (35,000 words) that is sweetly nourishing to all of us.

As Cooper notes in his introduction, Baxter wrote his original work in anticipation of his own death. As he slowly recovered from a severe illness, he began to write what he thought would be his funeral sermon (taking Hebrews 4:9 as his Scriptural anchor). Baxter’s sufferings moved him to think and write deeply about what awaited the saints upon their arrival at the heavenly shore. Though he ended up living another forty years, the Lord used Baxter’s confrontation with death to give the church one of the great resources on heavenly glory.

Though Baxter is not a theologian I’d recommend on every matter of theology (particularly his articulation of justification and sanctification), I found his treatment of the inheritance awaiting God’s people both biblically faithful and soul-thrilling. The opening chapters are filled with evocative language describing the glorious rest awaiting God’s people. For example:

Doubtless, there is no such thing as grief or sorrow there. Nor is there such a thing as a pale face, feeble joints, languishing sickness, groaning fears, consuming cares, or whatever deserves the name of evil. A gale of groans and a stream of tears will accompany us to the very gates, and there they will bid us farewell forever.

 

Christian, believe this, and think on it: You will be eternally embraced in the arms of that love that is from everlasting to everlasting, of that love that brought the Son of God’s love from heaven to earth, from earth to the cross, from the cross to the grave, from the grave to glory.

 

Once you are in heaven, you will sin no more. Is this not good news to you who have prayed, watched, and labored against sin for so long? I know if you had the choice, you would choose to be freed from sin rather than be made heir of all the world. Well, wait until then, and you will have your desire. That hard heart, those vile thoughts that lie down and rise with you, that accompany you to every duty, that you could no more leave behind than leave your very self behind, will now be left behind forever.

Having whetted the appetites of the saints for this satisfying and unending rest, Baxter gives much space to practical exhortations and advice on how to daily set our minds on this heavenly glory. From challenging our reluctance to die, to recommending specific locations and times of day to give ourselves to meditation, to giving guidance on the use of Scripture, creation, and our everyday experiences, Baxter passionately and urgently pleads with the Christian to expend energy in reflecting on our coming rest. He writes,

Reader, if you are a humble, sincere believer and wait with longing and laboring for this rest, you will shortly see and feel the truth of all this, and then you will have a full apprehension of this blessed state. Let even the little I have said kindle your desires and energize your efforts. Be up and doing: run, strive, fight, and hold on, for you have a certain and glorious prize before you.

Certainly, his instruction in this section could become formulaic and mechanical if woodenly applied. But by receiving these exhortations as suggestions for growth rather than requirements to be rigidly followed, I’ve grown in my anticipation of the glorious rest that awaits the people of God. What a comforting promise. This has borne good fruit in my own soul, as well as in my care for my family and for the sheep I have the privilege of shepherding towards that everlasting rest.

Conclusion

Brother pastor, I praise God for the hard work you expend in serving our Lord Jesus and the sheep he is leading to glory. As you labor—and inevitably grow weary—in this good work, consider the words of another Puritan. At the end of the introduction to his classic work, Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices, Thomas Brooks wrote, “For a close, remember this, that your life is short, your duties many, your assistance great, and your reward sure; therefore faint not, hold on and hold up, in ways of well-doing, and heaven shall make amends for all.”

May the chief Shepherd use The Saints’ Everlasting Rest to thrill your soul with the unfading crown of glory he is preparing for his faithful under-shepherds, and so spur you on in your labors for his sake.