What Does the Bible Say About Rest? Rest for Your Souls, the Sabbath and a Rest That Remains

Where to start: rest for your souls

The passage Bible Nudge offers for anxiety is Matthew 11:28-30:

28 Come to me, all you who labor and are heavily burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart; and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

It is an invitation to come and learn, open to you today, whatever your symptoms or circumstances are. Bible verses for anxiety and overthinking reads where it falls in Matthew 11.

The phrase "rest for your souls" is older than Matthew. In Jeremiah 6:16, God tells Judah to "ask for the old paths, ‘Where is the good way?’ and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls. But they said, ‘We will not walk in it.’" John Gill, in the commentaries gathered on Bible Hub, calls Matthew 11:29 a reference to Jeremiah 6:16 and says the rest is "not a corporal, but a spiritual one." Matthew Henry reads Jeremiah 6 as Judah refusing God's "old paths."

Something to do with it tonight

Read verse 28 once, slowly. Then answer this in a single sentence: "What burden are you trying to carry alone?" If your mind will not slow down, Psalm 131 is only three verses long, and its middle line reads, "Surely I have stilled and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with his mother." Either takes about a minute, and either can be left there.

A minute is enough for one verse.

The next scene in Matthew is about rest too

Matthew 12 opens "At that time," and the scene is the Sabbath: "Jesus went on the Sabbath day through the grain fields. His disciples were hungry and began to pluck heads of grain and to eat." The Pharisees object. In the synagogue that follows there is a man with a withered hand, and Jesus says, "Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath day" (Matthew 12:12), then heals him. That is the order Matthew gives: the invitation to rest, then two disputes over the Sabbath. Mark tells the same two scenes (Mark 2:23 to 3:6), and there Jesus says, "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath." The Catholic Catechism (2173) says that in these words Jesus "gave the Sabbath its authentic and authoritative interpretation."

Where the Sabbath comes from

It is grounded in two places. Exodus 20 ties it to God's rest after creation, and Deuteronomy 5 to Israel's release from slavery in Egypt, "that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you." What the Bible says about burnout gives both.

Which day, and what keeping it asks

Churches answer this differently. The Seventh-day Adventist Church teaches that "The seventh day of the week is the Sabbath of the Lord," kept "from evening to evening, sunset to sunset." The Catholic Catechism (2175) says Sunday "fulfills the spiritual truth of the Jewish sabbath." The Orthodox Church in America celebrates the Divine Liturgy on the Lord's Day, Sunday, "the 'day after Sabbath'". The Reformed Westminster Confession (21.7-8) keeps one day in seven as "the Christian Sabbath."

Readers land on different sides as well. One member of Reddit's r/SeventhDayAdventism wrote of the Sabbath, "It’s a weekly appointment that I spend with him in thanksgiving." On Reddit's r/Reformed, another wrote, "I rejected the notion of sabbath keeping for Christian’s seeing Jesus as our fulfillment of our sabbath rest." For the detail of your own church's practice, your pastor or priest is the person to ask.

When rest becomes one more thing to get right

A former Adventist, posting on Reddit's r/exAdventist, described the rules they grew up with as "no internet, forums, chats, texting, TV, newspaper, no ANY pleasure, etc, just stay home and 100% rest." That is one person's account, not a church's rule. Beside it stands Mark 2:27: "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath."

Rest is not only sleep. The Rest Test, a 2016 online survey of more than 18,000 self-selected respondents in 134 countries, found that 68% wanted more rest. Its authors, Hammond and Lewis, note that rest "remains subjective, and is vaguely defined and often confused with sleep, limiting its utility for research and practice." The respondents chose to take part, so the figure describes them.

A soul at rest, from somewhere hard

These lines were not written in easy hours. Psalm 62 opens, "My soul rests in God alone," from David while he is being pushed "Like a leaning wall, like a tottering fence." In Isaiah 30:15, God tells Judah, "You will be saved in returning and rest. Your strength will be in quietness and in confidence." The next words are "You refused," as they plan to "flee on horses."

Rest offered in the middle of the trouble, not after it.

A rest that remains

Hebrews 3:7 to 4:11 is the passage behind that phrase. It is an exhortation built on Psalm 95 and the wilderness generation, of whom God said, "They will not enter into my rest," and then it says, "There remains therefore a Sabbath rest for the people of God" (4:9). John Calvin calls it "that perpetual Sabbath" and "clearly the rest in heaven." Bishop Youssef's Coptic Orthodox commentary treats it as the promised rest to come rather than the seventh day alone. The USCCB note traces it through creation, the wilderness, Joshua and "another day." They agree it is more than a day off, and differ on how to describe it.

Rest in peace

Many people meet the word at a funeral. Revelation 14:13 is often the verse behind "rest in peace": "Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on." "Yes," says the Spirit, "that they may rest from their labors." It comes in a vision given to John, and Lee's 2019 study reads it as drawing on Jewish traditions of "rest from work" and "rest from enemies."

If words like these sound different to you tonight, because you want life to stop, please talk to someone now: 988 in the United States, 9-8-8 in Canada, Samaritans on 116 123 in the United Kingdom and Ireland, Lifeline on 13 11 14 in Australia, or Befrienders Worldwide anywhere else.

When the restlessness is in your body

One person posted on Reddit's r/Christian, "For the past few days when I pray or read my Bible I get restless, and I feel like I have to move or stretch my body to make it stop." The NHS describes restless legs syndrome as "a condition where you have a strong urge to move your legs, usually when resting at night," and says to see a GP, a family doctor, if it is "stopping you sleep" or "affecting your mental health." For tiredness it says, "See a GP if you’re worried."

For worry that will not switch off, the NHS describes generalized anxiety as "feelings of stress or worry that affect your daily life and are difficult to control." That is a description, not a diagnosis. See also Bible verses for anxiety and overthinking, Bible verses for being tired and Bible verses for sleepless nights.

Questions people ask

Is resting lazy? Exodus 20 commands rest for the whole household, servants and livestock included, and grounds it in God's own rest on the seventh day.

Does Hebrews 4 mean I must keep a weekly Sabbath? Readers differ. Calvin reads it as the rest in heaven, while Adventist and Reformed readers also connect it to a weekly day.

Is Mark 6:31 about rest? Yes. Jesus tells his disciples, "You come apart into a deserted place, and rest awhile," because so many were coming and going that they had no time even to eat.

Where to go next

Tonight, read Matthew 11:28-30 with the verses around it, and verse 28 once more before you sleep.

If you are thinking about ending your life, reach a person tonight: 988 in the United States, 9-8-8 in Canada, Samaritans on 116 123 in the United Kingdom and Ireland, Lifeline on 13 11 14 in Australia, and Befrienders Worldwide for everywhere else.

If what you are carrying is not quite this, Bible Nudge can take a line about it in your own words and come back with one passage and what surrounds it. Find a passage.