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There the winked cease from troubling; and there the weary be at rest. The day was, when it was thought fit that the Christian's last resting place should be surrounded by gloomy and repulsive associations. It is not of peaceful rest that the burying place of the Middle Ages would remind you. We all remember the locked up, deserted, neglected churchyard, all grown over with great weeds and nettles, and not like God's acre at all. How much more appropriate are the quiet, beautiful, open, carefully tended cemeteries of today! It is not merely better judgment but sounder faith that is here. It is a thoroughly Christian thing, to scatter the beauties of nature around the Christian grave. In the text I see something that is like turning the ghastly, neglected, nettle-grown churchyard which we may remember in childhood, into the quiet, sweet, thoughtful sleeping place which we find so common now. The text speaks to us over nearly four thousand years. Job lived in days when the light of truth was dim; Jesus had not yet brought life and immortality to light; so it is possible that we are able to understand Job's words more fully and better than he understood them himself. The text may be read first of the grave; but in its best meaning it speaks of a better world, to which the grave is the portal.

I. THESE WORDS AS SPOKEN OF THE GRAVE, "THE HOUSE APPOINTED FOR ALL LIVING." We need not justify the impatient burst in which Job wished, as many others have wished since, that he had never been born. Job speaks of the rest to which he would gladly have gone. He would have slumbered with the wise, the great, and the good: how he would have lain still and been quiet, where trouble could never come, in the peaceful grave. There "the wicked cease from troubling." There is one place into which the suffering can escape, where their persecutors have no power. There is nothing more striking about the state of those who have gone into the unseen world than the completeness of their escape from all worldly enemies, however malignant and however powerful. But there is something beyond the mere escape from worldly evil. Now the busy heart is quiet at last, and the weary head lies still. What a multitude there is of these weary ones. But there is a certain delusion in thinking of the grave as a place of quiet rest. The soul lives still, and is awake and conscious, though the body sleeps; and it is our souls that are ourselves. We have no warrant for believing that in the other world there will be any season of unconsciousness to the soul.

II. TAKE THE WORDS IN THEIR HIGHER AND TRUER MEANING. They speak of a better world, whose two great characteristics are safety and peace.

1. There is safety and the sense of safety. Everything wicked — evil spirits, evil thoughts, evil influences cease from troubling. Everything evil, whether within us or around us, shall be done with. If evil were gone, trouble would go too. The great thing about evil and trouble here is not so much the pain and suffering they cause us, as the terrible power they have to do us fearful spiritual harm.

2. Besides the negative assurance, that trouble will be done with in heaven, we have the promise of a positive blessing. "There the weary are at rest." The peace and happiness of the better world are summed up in that word. "The end of work is to enjoy rest," said one of the wisest of heathen. Doubtless there will be rest from sin, from sorrow, from toil, from anxiety, from temptation, from pain; but all that fails to convey the whole unspeakable truth; it will be the beatific presence of the Saviour that will make the weary soul feel it never knew rest before! In that world the bliss will be restful, calm, satisfied, self-possessed, sublime. The only rest that can ever truly and permanently quiet the human heart is that which the Saviour gives. His peace. And He gives it only to His own.

(A. K. H. Boyd.)

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KJV: There the wicked cease from troubling; and there the weary be at rest.

WEB: There the wicked cease from troubling. There the weary are at rest.