Stand Alone Matt 11:25-29 Sermon

Intro/Welcome

Happy Labor Day Weekend.

We’ve been celebrating Labor day as a Nation for over 120 years

Labor Day commemorates the accomplishments of the American Worker

In fact, 5 day 8 hour a day work week and paid holidays was the result of activists in the late 19th Century that culminated in President Grover Cleveland establishing the national holiday in 1894

Prior to that American workers, sometimes as young as 5 years old could be subject to 12 hour days 7 days a week.

Driven by greed and profit American Businesses had deliberately disregarded the 4th commandment.

Written into the very creation order was a day of rest.

Even God after created the entire universe, rested.

God Rested

As Author Pastor John Mark Comer states

“And in doing so, he built a rhythm into the DNA of creation...God worked for six, rested for one. When we fight this work-six-days, Sabbath-one-day rhythm, we go against the grain of the universe. And to quote the philosopher H. H. Farmer, “If you go against the grain of the universe, you get splinters.”14

And so in celebrating Labor Day

We both celebrate the dignity of Work — being what we were created for

And adhere to the commandment to rest

Bible

Today I want to spend some time talking about one of the greatest promises that Jesus gives us: rest.

A rest that can pervade even our work.

A rest that can endure the heaviest burdens

A rest that remedy all those who are weary

the rest Jesus offers us is so much more than relief , its a call to a way of life

We are going to look at what a rest-filled life looks like, and why it is so hard for us to find this promised rest.

We are going to look at Matt 11:28-30 today

You can go there in your bibles.

My name is Justin, one of the Pastors here.

I want to welcome you here as we gather to worship Jesus

and Online to join us when you can

Let me read out text and pray.

underline, circle highlight

Matthew 11:28–30 (CSB)

28 “Come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take up my yoke and learn from me, because I am lowly and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Pray

For rest

The Puritans

The Puritans, a highly devout group known for their theological treaties and holy living,

would often take a single verse of Scripture and expound upon it for hundreds of pages.

They left us with some of the richest theological insights ever written.

Dane Ortlund “Gentle and Lowly”, WORLD magazines Book of the Year in 2020

does a great job making some of those Puritan theological insights accessible to us through this book that I would highly recommend if you want to really experiences the heart of Jesus.

I’ll have a few copies to give away today if you want one

and some more next week.

It is based on this verse.

Today I want to see how much we can squeeze out of this verse.

Come to me

How can we live a rest-filled life?

another way to ask it is to ask “how are we going to endure

anybody here feeling weary? burdened? I know I am

Matthew 11:28 (CSB)

28 “Come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.

Jesus says, “Come to me”

This is the first step — Come to Jesus

What is the promise?

“I will give you rest”

In fact, there is no ultimate rest, outside of Jesus.

Who should come?

All

all who are weary and burdened.

In fact, the only prerequisite is that you are weary and burdened.

Ortlund:

The minimum bar to be enfolded into the embrace of Jesus is simply: open yourself up to him. It is all he needs. Indeed, it is the only thing that he works with…You don’t need to unburden or collect yourself and then come to Jesus. Your very burden is what qualifies you to come. No payment is required; he says “I will give you rest.”

Have you come to Jesus?

Do you need to come back to Jesus?

Rev 2 4-5 “4 But I have this against you: You have abandoned the love you had at first. 5 Remember then how far you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first.

The first step, and most important step to finding rest is to

Come to Jesus.

Have you come?

Are you weary and burdened?

Who is this Jesus?

Matthew 11:29 (CSB)

29 Take up my yoke and learn from me, because I am lowly and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

He says he is ‘lowly’ and ‘humble in heart’

Ortlund

In the four Gospel accounts given to us in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Johh--eighty-nine chapters of biblical text--there’s only one place where Jesus tells us about his own heart. (Gentle & Lowly, 7)

These words are very close in meaning.

“lowly” mean,s meek, gentle, humble mild

NOT harsh, reactionary, easily exasperated

“humble” - undistinguished, of no account, socially unimpressive, the idea of ‘being thrust downward by life circumstance.

someone who’s close not living far off behind security fences and guards

Ortlund

“For all his resplendent glory and dazzling holiness, his supreme uniqueness and otherness, no one in human history has ever been more approachable thanJesus Christ

This means Jesus is accessible to you

approachable.

In Christ we have both the Lion and the Lamb

a ferocious lion of against sin for those outside of Christ

But for those in Christ the gentleness of a lamb for those who come to him.

So, have you come to Christ?

I think John 6 is the equivalent passage to Matthew 11 specifically where he offers a similar command:

John 6:37 (CSB)

37 Everyone the Father gives me will come to me, and the one who comes to me I will never cast out.

anyone and everyone can come to Christ

“the one who comes to me I will never cast out”

“But you don’t know what I’ve done”

“the one who comes to me I will never cast out”

You don’t know the shame that I carry

“the one who comes to me I will never cast out”

You don’t know what’s been done to me

“the one who comes to me I will never cast out”

I don’t believe you would accept me

“the one who comes to me I will never cast out”

This is the most important step

Come to Jesus.

Why we don’t come to Jesus?

Why don’t we come to Jesus?

1. Satan

We have an enemy

And he is bent on keeping us from coming to Jesus

Neil Anderson

Before we come to Jesus, satan is intent on keeping us from Him, after we come to Jesus Satan is intent on keeping us from serving him.

Satan hates God, Hates Jesus and Hates God’s people.

His whole aim is to keep you from coming to know the kind of rest that Jesus offers.

2. Our Flesh (the sinful nature)

The second reason is our flesh — the sin that lives with in us.

There is something in us that is intent on turning everything back to be about us.

We want the path of least resistance

When weariness and burdens come

We readily go to any number of attempts to escape the pain.

entertainment

drugs

alcohol

sex

work

success

money

food

We are so easily led astray from Jesus.

All of these things seems more real, more readily available than Jesus.

3. The World

The biblical concept of world is anti-God and anti-Jesus

And it offers us a plethora of options to try to escape the weariness and burdens of life.

all of these are against us.

I will give you rest

And he will give you rest

A deep soul rest,

a wholeness, and peace that you have longed for your entire life.

Augustine

“Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.”

Only Jesus can satisfy our deepest need

We are all striving to ‘justify our lives’

to make them count

to feel worthy of something to make an impact

But only Jesus can give our lives meaning, purpose and worthiness.

Jesus overcame our flesh/sinful nature

And Jesus by sacrificing himself for Sin has paid for our sin

so that our flesh, our sinful nature, no longer rules us

Jesus has decisively defeated satan and disarmed him

Col 2:15 “15 He disarmed the rulers and authorities and disgraced them publicly; he triumphed over them in him.”

So that for those in Christ — There is no condemnation

Jesus has overcome the World

So that we now live by a supernatural power.

Jesus takes care of sin, all of our sin, past present and future

He absorbs it all

I’ll give you an unusual illustration

Illustration: A Vacuum

In our house, with kids, there are often crumbs and food that falls on the floor

Walking barefoot there’s nothing like experience of finding that Doritos that was left on the floor

or that old piece of banana squishing between your toes.

So we have one of those mini vacuums that we pull of the wall and suck up all the crumbs.

That’s kind of what Jesus does.

We were a total mess and we come to him and he takes in all the mess

And we make new messes, and Jesus comes and takes it all in

absorbs it into himself and we are made clean

and kept clean.

So have you come to Jesus?

Are the messes you have created keeping you from him?

He can handle it

Transition

Come to Him.

This step one in living a rest-filled life.

But Jesus has more to say.

Take up my yoke

Matthew 11:29–30 (CSB)

29 Take up my yoke and learn from me, because I am lowly and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

The next thing he says is “take up my yoke”

What does this mean?

We have a picture of a yoke

A Yoke: Picture

It is a wooden instrument that binds two oxen together to pull a load.

A yoke was a common metaphor for the teaching of a rabbi

Their disciples would take up their yoke — their understanding of the Torah

And Jesus certainly means that.

But this such an apt metaphor

becuase by taking up the Yoke of Jesus

we are bound to Him.

In Christ we are united to Him

What this is then is a call to discipleship — to follow Jesus.

To take up the Yoke of Jesus — is to commit to follow Him.

My Yoke is Easy/Kind

And this yoke of Jesus is easy he says.

Matt 11 30 “30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.””

The word for easy is elsewhere translated as “kind”

it is a ‘kind yoke’ or better yet is a yoke that is uniquely fitted to you.

It is a ‘custom fit yoke’

OLD T-SHIRT

It’s like if I were to try to put on one of my wife’s t-shirts, that would not be a custom fit

I am much larger than her.

But if I put on, you know one of my ‘favorite’ old t-shirts

ya’ll have that? your favorite t-shirt

it’s like old and nasty, and you wouldn’t wear it in public?

Yea that one

That’s this yoke

It fits to you, it’s kind, it’s comfortable in that sense.

So to take up this yoke of Jesus, that is custom fitted for you,

is to commit to follow Jesus.

Transition

The first step is to ‘come to Jesus’

the second step is to ‘commit to follow Jesus’ to be a disciple of Jesus.

The third thing he says is “to learn from me”

Learn from Me

Matthew 11:29 (CSB)

29 Take up my yoke and learn from me, because I am lowly and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

What are we to learn from Jesus?

In that day, students of Rabbi’s would literally follow their teachers around and commit to following them.

It was the same with Jesus.

To be a disciple of Jesus was to learn his teachings yes

but also to learn his way of life.

In fact the word for “learn” is μανθάνω the verb form of the noun for

the word disciple (μαθητής) found 261 times in the NT

Certainly his teaching — this part of the yoke — his teaching. but it is also how he lived his life.

This is the secret to a rest-filled life

What did Jesus teach?

Well if you read the sermon on the mount, that yoke doesn’t sound very easy at all

gouge out your eye if you look lustfully

cut off your hand also

give to everyone who asks

love your enemies.

Again in all this the first thing Jesus was doing was point us to himself.

John 5 says that the Scriptures point to Him, yet the pharisees refused to come to him.

John 5:39–40 (CSB)

39 You pore over the Scriptures because you think you have eternal life in them, and yet they testify about me. 40 But you are not willing to come to me so that you may have life.

So again, to live a rest-filled life.

step 1: Come to Jesus for rest, soul rest, eternal rest.

Step 2: commit to following him

Step 3: But then, learn form him, grow in him.

Oswald Chambers observes:

“The Sermon on the Mount is not a set of principles to be obeyed apart from identification with Jesus Christ. The Sermon on the Mount is a statement of the life we will live when the Holy Spirit is getting his way with us.”

In other words, the Sermon on the Mount is a vision of what people of the Kingdom of God are like.

Dallas Willard

Jesus never expected us simply to turn the other cheek, go the second mile, bless those who persecute us, give unto them that ask, and so forth. These responses, generally and rightly understood to be characteristic of Christlikeness, were set forth by him as illustrative of what might be expected of a new kind of person

—one who intelligently and steadfastly seeks, above all else, to live within the rule of God and be possessed by the kind of righteousness that God himself has, as Matthew 6:33 portrays.

How do we access this kind of living? this kind of power?

Final point.

But not just his teaching, also how he lived.

Keeping in Step with Jesus

So let’s return to the metaphor of the Yoke

Picture of Yoke and Oxen

Here we see to oxen yoked together.

And by taking up the yoke of Jesus we have become yoked to Him.

Now how does this work?

A larger oxen

Suppose one oxen is larger than the other, much larger

What will happen?

the larger oxen will bear the load

Jesus is much larger than we are

It’s why he says his burden is light

being yoked to Jesus means he bears the weight with us.

How does a Yoke work?

It works best when both oxen are in step with one another

if one gets ahead or falls behind the yoke will drive him to keep in step.

When we are yoked to Jesus

we are learning to keep in step with him.

So here’s what happens.

We come to Jesus — that’s step 1

We put on the yoke of Jesus — we commit to follow Him — that’s step 2

We learn from Him — how to keep isn step with him — that’s step 3

And what happens?

If we try to go our own way?

eventually the yoke will bring us back to Jesus.

If we try to get out ahead of Jesus?

the yoke will bring us back to Jesus.

If fall behind and drag our feet?

the yoke will bring us back to Jesus.

Ah but not harshly, not with contempt or disdain

for Jesus is ‘gentle and lowly, humble in heart’

Being a disciple of Jesus is learning how to keep in step with Jesus, and where he is leading you.

Paul says also we are to keep in step with the Spirit -

Gal 5:25 “If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit.”

If you live by the power of the Holy Spirit you will find rest.

So we learn this from his teaching and his way of life.

This is the key to living a rest-filled life.

what did Jesus life look like?

The Gospel Accounts

Thankfully today we have the gospel accounts of Jesus’s life and teachings

so that we too can be disciples of Jesus.

Written by men who walked with Jesus

It’s why we are going through the Gospel of Mark

Mark was Peter’s assistant — so we are getting Peter’s Account of Jesus life and teaching.

Matthew was one of the twelve apostles as was John the author of John’s gospel.

Luke, who disclosed in the beginning of his gospel that he had done extensive research likely had mark and or Matthew to write from in addition to the living apostles in Jerusalem.

So, just as the disciples walked with Jesus, you and I get to as well

It’s why I’m always in a gospel — to learn from Jesus.

How Jesus lived

How did Jesus live?

he knew the word

he prayed often (publically & privately)

he went into silence and solitude

He knew the father and did what he said

Look at John’s gospel and how often Jesus talked about his relationships with God

I only do what the Father says to do, I only say what he tells me to say.

He practiced the sabbath

JMC stats on taking a sabbath

he took naps (in the storm)

He was in community with others.

These are what are called the spiritual disciplines / spiritual practices

and they are not a spiritual barometer of maturity, they are a way of life that leads to rest.

We would do well to imitate them

as Paul said 1 Cor 11:1 “Imitate me, as I also imitate Christ.”

But Jesus never commands you to wake up in the morning and have a quiet time, read your Bible, live in community, practice Sabbath, give your money to the poor, or any of the core practices from his way. He just does these practices and then says, “Follow me.” (Ortberg, 113)

These practices lead to a rest-filled life, an unhurried life

They are a way of communing with the Father.

What these practices do is train us for life to better keep in step with Jesus and as we do them we discover rest.

John Ortberg

Spiritual disciplines are to life what calisthenics are to a game.

- Once the game starts, the basketball players get no bonus points based on how many free throws they shot in practice. The only reason to practice them is to be able to make them in a game. (45)

An olympian doesn’t just show up to their event and try their best

No they, have invested in a lifestyle of training so that when game time comes they are ready.

It’s during the race that the training pays off -- just like it’s during life that spiritual training pays off.

This is what the spiritual practices of Jesus are.

They are a way of ‘setting the sail’ to catch the wind of the Holy Spirit.

Setting the Sail is all we can do.

Our primary task is not to calculate how many verses of Scripture we read or how many minutes we spend in prayer.  Our task is to use these activities to create opportunities for God to work. Then what happens is up to Him. We just put up the sails: “The when blows where it chooses…” (Ortberg, 52)

You say, I don’t need one more thing to do

It’s like telling a drowning man that he must put on the burden of a life preserver only to hear him shout back sputtering “no way! Not me! This is hard enough, drowning here in these stormy waters. The last thing I need is the added burden of a life preserver around my body!”

You say, well, i’m already in a hard spot, what do I do now?

answer come to Jesus, starts somewhere

commit to following him

learn from him to live as he lived.

it’s like reading , you learn to do it and it serves you the rest of your life

You will find Rest

Look again and what Jesus says.

Matthew 11:29–30 (CSB)

29 Take up my yoke and learn from me, because I am lowly and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

When you follow Jesus and learn from him

you will ‘find’ or ‘discover’ rest for your soul

lit. psyche — your life

Closing Application

How do you live a rest-filled life?

Come to Jesus — wherever you are

he is gentle and lowly — he will not cast you away (John 6)

come back to him

Commit to being his disciple — take his yoke

it is fitted for you, it is kind, it is light.

you are yoked to something if not him.

Learn from Him how to live

join us as we travel for the gospel of Mark

and become disciples of Jesus.

Do this together.

get in community with others for this journey.

Fill out a next steps card.

Come to Jesus

Get Baptized

Join Team Jesus

Get connected to others in community

cone to Jesus, commit to Jesus and learn from Jesus and live a rest filled life.

Closing Prayer