Shiloh Our Place of Rest

Sometimes we all find that we need rest from the cares of daily life.

This week we had the heartache of losing a member of our family, as many of you will know, our cat, Smudgie, who we left behind in Thailand, with a family who loved him as much as we did and are also grieving for him, but we take comfort that the Lord is our Place of Rest.

Shiloh is not only a Place of Rest is a place where we can be refueled and refreshed by God, but it is a person, Jesus Christ, He is our place of rest and our comfort and He has provided a place of rest for us to rest in Him.

When God had completed his work of creation, He rested and He offers the same rest to us, in Him.

Jeremiah 6.16 says, This is what the Lord Yehovah (Messiah Pre-Incarnate) says,
“Stop at the crossroads and look around.
    Ask for the old, godly way, and walk in it.
Travel its path, and you will find rest for your souls.”

Jesus tells us to look for the old, godly way and walk in its path and we will find rest for our souls, he himself IS our rest.

We run into Him and find comfort, when we go through losses in life, He is our shelter.

Similarly in Psalm 23, He leads us beside still waters to find restoration and rest for our souls.

God is good, God is for us and He restores us.

He is with us when we go through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, as we all sometimes do in this life and certainly will in the future.

We are not promised a walk free from pain, but we are promised that He walks with us, and leads us to a place of blessing and restoration.

Jesus says in Matthew 11.28 to come to Him to find rest for our souls, because His yoke is easy and His burden is light, let us trust and rest in His goodness and perfect love.

Isaiah 30.15 says that in quietness and trust we find rest for our souls.

He provides us with perfect peace.

In Jeremiah 7.12 God tells Israel to go to Shiloh, which is called, “The Place of Rest”! This is where he once put his tabernacle, on the way to Jerusalem. His tabernacle was a foreshadow of the temple, it was His dwelling place, His presence, but see now the dwelling place of God is with man, in the regenerated humanity, the church.

We have Shiloh within us, as temples of the Holy Spirit, through Jesus, Emmanuel, God with us. He is our Good Shepherd, never leaving us, guiding us into the place of rest and safety in His presence, the Sheepfold of God, through the door of salvation

Hebrews 3 and 4 speak about entering God’s rest;

 3.¹⁴ For if we are faithful to the end, trusting God just as firmly as when we first believed, we will share in all that belongs to Christ. 

4 God’s promise of entering his rest still stands, so we ought to tremble with fear that some of you might fail to experience it.

² For this good news—that God has prepared this rest—has been announced to us just as it was to them.

But it did them no good because they didn’t share the faith of those who listened to God.

³ For only we who believe can enter his rest.

So let us do our best to enter that rest.