Bible Commentaries

Zephaniah 3:17

Those who have ever known that sense of repose too deep for words—the thought which feels that, by any expression of itself it would only mar its own intensity—would understand the beauty of the fact, that the sentence which we have translated, "He will rest in His love," is more literally still, "He will be silent in His love." For there is rest beyond language, whose very eloquence it is that it cannot choose but to be silent.

I. Notice, on what the love of God really lies. It lies, first, on that eternity, in which you may go back for ever, and never find the moment when it began. It lies, secondly, on the vast sacrifice of Christ, and the immensity of the value of the comprehensiveness of the atoning work It lies, thirdly, on the breadth of the atonement. And it lies, fourthly, on all those attributes which go to make its own great name; and which have been gathered by the grace which is in Christ Jesus into the one prerogative of love.

II. There is a law in the material world that, left to itself, all motion will go on to move, and all rest will go on to rest, for ever. It is true a thousand-fold with the character of God. It is, we know, not only a doctrine of our faith, but a matter of personal experience with every one of us, that "having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them unto the end"—that wherever love lights, there love rests; and that He will abide in His love.

III. Let our watchword of duty, this year, be one which the most closely copies Him—the "rest" of a fixed heart. When all is mystery, and you cannot see one step, and the mind must not reason and cannot reason, let the soul rest its silent rest. Wherever God has placed you, rest in your lot till He comes. Rest, and by resting learn the rest which is to rest for ever.

J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons, 4th series, p. 117.