Today I should probably do a program about the approach to Easter
because this will originally be broadcast on Palm Sunday. But I want to focus
on what Christ has accomplished for us through this death and resurrection, and
so it may seem a little bit tangental to Easter, but the scripture we're going
to read is about the gift of rest that God has given us through his son Jesus
Christ. And so the scripture is taken from Matthew
11:25-30;
25 At that time Jesus said, “I praise
you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things
from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. 26 Yes,
Father, for this was your good pleasure.
27 “All things have been committed to
me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the
Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.
28 “Come to me, all you who are weary
and 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.” [1]
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We're going to take a look at the rest that Jesus offers to his people.
The rest that he's offering to you and to me, and we'll do that in a few
moments. But in a nod to the Palm Sunday date, when Jesus entered Jerusalem
peaceful and riding on a donkey, I'd like to have you listen with me to the
song, sung by Steve Bell-Ride on King Jesus from his album Beyond The Shadow.
I always enjoy listening to Steve Bell's music and that song which mixes
the triumph of his entry into Jerusalem and the paradoxical surrender that he's
making of offering his life for the sake of his people. That beautiful hymn is
sung so well by Steve Bell, I'm anticipating, as I record this, going to see
Steve Bell at the Metropolitan Bible Church on March 25. But that will have
passed by then. I'd like to encourage you to look for his music on line and so
on, because there's a great witness to the glory of God in his music.
This scripture that I read today about Jesus offering rest to the weary,
is given at a time when he's speaking to the Pharisee's who are having a lot of
difficulty accepting his message. And Jesus notes that his disciples who may
not be academically honored with degrees and years in rabbinical school, or
seminary. He's delighted that his own disciples are getting this. Understanding
why he's come and who he is. And so he praises God, his father, that God is
revealing this to little children as he describes them. It's not that the wised
learned are not liked by God, but so often when we think we know stuff, we're
unwilling to learn new things, and God is revealing a new thing in Jesus Christ
to these people who have a very strong religious tradition and believe they
know exactly what it is that they have to do.
When he describes his invitation, Jesus describes it in a great
contrast, to the kind of religion that people are used to. You see, he tells
them that they can come to God for rest. Now, in the religions of the time, and
in the circle of world religions, there are many different things that you
expect from your relationship with God. You may expect that your god demands
all kinds of sacrifices in order to be convinced to do something good in the
world.
Many religions in the day of Jesus and in the generations before, people
would practice all kinds of rituals to try and convince the gods to show them
some favor and to bring rain on the land, or to bring them defense from their
enemies, or to come against disease in their country. That they felt that the
gods were basically opposed to them, but if you really gave enough sacrifices,
if you sacrificed something valuable enough, then you could convince them to do
something for you. That was the attitude that many people had towards gods in
those days, and I must say I still see that attitude today. Where even
Christians have an attitude that God must need some convincing in order to do
good. It's a kind of sad attitude, because Jesus reveals a God who says “come
to me if you're weary, and I'll give you rest.”
Not come to me if you're rich. Not come to me if you're really, really
wise. Not come to me if you're willing to make a sacrifice of a thousand oxen,
or rivers of precious oil. Especially not he says, if you're willing to
sacrifice someone else for your own good. For many of the gods that Israel had,
was lured towards in their day, were gods that required sacrifices of humans
and of children. And God absolutely rejects that kind of an image of the God
who created the universe and who rules all things. So, on the one hand God is
not a god that has to be convinced to do good. But the Pharisee's that Jesus
contended with and the religious mindset of his day was, that God would do
good, if you're good enough.
God wants to do good, but he'll only do good for people that prove that
they are really good themselves. And so people were carrying what Jesus
described as heavy burdens. Heavy burdens of responsibilities and requirements that
they just felt that they had to get everything right and all their ducks lined
up or else God's blessing would pass them by. But Jesus now specifically
addressed people who are weary of those burdens. Weary of carrying that weight
and that uncertainty. Weary from not knowing whether they've been good enough
to qualify for the blessing of God. And Jesus says come to me. Are you tired?
Are you fed up with all this striving? Are you burdened? I'll give you rest.
It's incredible to me, that the God of the universe, the Lord God
Almighty, would look upon us and say you look tired. How can I help you? And
yet, that's what he does. I can't help but be reminded that in the opening
pages of scripture, as God creates the universe and the story is told of six
days of creation and through those six days God labors mightily. He creates
light and distinguishes from darkness. He creates the stars and the planets. He
creates the earth, the land and the sea and the sky. He sets the seasons and
life comes into being and green plants, and ocean animals, and birds of the
air, and the things that creep and crawl and run upon the earth. All these
things are brought into being. And finally at the end of the six days he brings
into being humanity. Male and female he creates them in his own image he
creates them. And he brings them into being at the tail end of creation and
then when they wake up after their first night, God says- take the day off. Have
a rest. I'm going to take a break now. Have a rest with me. God's first
command, if you will, to his creatures, his sons and daughters, was have a
rest.
The scriptures highlight how important it is that we understand that God
is a God who gives rest and peace to his people. I don't know how we manage to
continually get mixed up and to see life as an endless marathon of desperate
striving that is beyond our capability , but maybe, maybe, maybe we can do it
just about good enough to get God's favor. NO. That's not the picture of the
universe we have. Yes life is full of challenges but God is offering grace. And
so we have this beautiful message about a God who is willing to give rest to
his people.
And as we continue to think about this, let's let someone else remind us
the grace of the God who is worthy of so much worship. This is going to be a
song from Steven Curtis Chapman singing again a familiar hymn, At The Feet Of
Jesus. And this is from his wonderful album, The Glorious Unfolding.
Here we are invited to bow at the feet of Jesus. We're invited to give
our lives to him and as soon as we here those words we might start to get a bit
of a hesitation and wonder is this the hook. Is this the price that we must
pay?
Jesus in his invitation has said come to me all you who are weary and
heavy burden, and I will give you rest. And then he says something that seems
at odds with that. He says take my yoke upon yourselves and learn from me . Now
we know what a yoke is. A yoke is what an ox or a horse wears in order to pull
a plough or a cart. It enables their energy to be used to do work, and all of a
sudden from the word rest we're suddenly brought to the word yoke and there
seems to be a problem here. Something causes a bit of confusion. If you're
going to bring us rest Lord Jesus, what is this yoke you're putting upon us?
Well, Jesus is actually making a huge contrast here. When he says take
my yoke upon you, he's making an assumption here. And it's the right assumption
. You're going to be wearing somebody's yoke. You're going to be yoked. You
might be yoked by the expectations your parents put upon you. You might be
yoked by financial necessity. Debts that you have to work off. You might be
yoked by your own expectations, your own ambitions. And you're going to be
driven by those things that yoke you.
Now he also knows that he's speaking to people who are under the yoke of
a complex law of ritualized religion. And he's saying that there is a different
yoke then the one which you're currently burdened with. This yoke, is the yoke
of Jesus Christ. And here's the thing about yokes. You can only wear one, and
that's the good news of putting Jesus' yoke on. If you are yoked to Jesus, then
you can't be obligated to pull the ploughs of another. You can't be obligated
to do the hard labor that is required by another employer or another lord. You
have one Lord. Jesus Christ. And he immediately says after that we should take
his yoke upon himself and learn from him. He says I am gentle and humble in
heart.
Has that been your experience of the yokes you're bearing. That they're
gentle. Even your own expectations, have they been kind to you or have they
pushed you beyond what you're capable of or left feeling inadequate because
you've tried to do things that you thought you should be able to do and you
found yourselves falling short. Jesus' yoke is a different yoke. He says my
yoke is easy and my burden is light. It's very similar when Jesus says take my
yoke upon you to that initial moment of creation that I spoke about earlier. That
God calls the people of earth into being and he says go forth and multiply and
fill the earth and subdue it, but first-take the day off. And he tells us, come
to me for rest. Come under my yoke because I'm the one who will command rest
upon you. I'm the one who will command blessing upon you. And if you're
receiving my commands you're free the commands and demands of others. And so
Jesus calls us into an attachment to him, into a relationship with him. Into a
firm and fixed relationship with him, in which he promises us this rest.
Now what does that rest look like? I know both my messages from last
week and this week come out of an experience at a prayer summit where I learned
to look at myself and my own relationship to God in a fresh way. And I note
that I'm in the same bind that I find the others in. That we play, but not
necessarily find rest. We sleep but we don't find ourselves restored. We do the
things that seem best and seem good for us, and yet we find the law of
diminishing returns. That peace can be far from us.
Jesus is offering us a different yoke. A new rest. A rest which he
himself is giving us what we need. In which he himself is leading us in the
paths that actually lead to a restored soul. Not things that give promises that
can't be fulfilled, but to a walk with Jesus that is in a relationship for
those who have been weary and burdened, and are deeply in need of the peace
that God gives.
When I look at Jesus' experience of his father, I see that he is one who
in his human life has learned peace from his own father. For whenever the
father speaks to Jesus, you hear a voice from heaven saying -this is my son
whom I am well pleased. God's love for his son is one which communicates peace
and satisfaction. In which a child who has a father like that can go to the
father and know that however thy may feel they haven't done well that day,
however they may feel about their kindergarten art work, or their stumbles and
their bruises as they learn to run and play. They know that they will be
received by a father who's pleased with them.
That is the relationship that Jesus offers to his people. The one that
he learned from his father, the one that he passes on to us. Is this
relationship of giving rest and peace to the weary and the burden. This
relationship is offered to all people. Regardless of what yokes you've been
wearing. What you've been committed too, or what you have done in the past, God
is offering to take away those burdens and replace them with a life that is
entirely different. That is free and light and easy. Not a life without effort
or challenge, but a life with challenge and effort that is combined with peace.
This is the offer that Jesus gives to us.
