You Are Invited

Baggage

In college, I had to move all my stuff home at the end of the school year.

My dad had a little Chevy S10 pick up truck with an extended cab.

I would drive that down the week before I had to move out, pack everything from my dorm room in it, and head home.

I could fit pretty much my whole life in an S10 pick up.

Fast forward a few years later, Pam and I got married in 2008 and then moved to Fargo, ND in 2009.

We had 2 cars and 22 feet of a semi trailer to stuff all our life into.

Each year we add more and more stuff to the collection.

In 2017, I rented a 26 ft penske moving van and we packed it from floor to ceiling and back to front with everything we owned in Fargo to move here.

We had accumulated a lot of stuff over the years. Furniture, clothes, housewares, toys, and tools.

That’s probably true of most of you as well. With every year we bring more and more baggage into our lives. More and more stuff to carry from place to place.

This isn’t just true in our physical lives.

As we go through life, we also pick up lots of baggage along the way

We pick up baggage as we face trials, disappointments, and frustrations.

We experience the pain of loss, the scares of relationships gone bad, and the fears of what the future may or may not hold.

The baggage is what Jesus has in mind when he speaks some of the most well known and comforting words in the Bible.

Matthew 11:28 CSB

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

If we are honest, every one of us walked in here, or tuned in, today with a weariness and heaviness in our souls.

Like a large, heavy suitcase we are all lugging around.

The Source of our Weariness and Heaviness

Open the suitcase

Sin, hidden, habitual, un-confessed, shame-inducing sin

Pull out

Alcohol bottle

Computer

Combination lock

Worry and fear about the future- Which is our attempt to control

Pull out

Bill

Money

Stethoscope

Hurt, bitterness, anger

Pull out

chains

Grief, pain, sadness

Pull out

Photos

letters

But what we find in Matthew 11 is an invitation from Jesus, the greatest invitation ever made.

Into RELATIONSHIP with God.

Matthew 11:28 CSB

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

There are 2 imperatives (“do this” statements) in these verse.

“Come to me” and “take my yoke”

Neither of those imperatives are meant to burden us or give us a list of things to do.

What Jesus says here flies in the face of the religious leaders of the day whom He calls out in Matt 23.

Matthew 23:4 CSB

4 They tie up heavy loads that are hard to carry and put them on people’s shoulders, but they themselves aren’t willing to lift a finger to move them.

We often think of, and even present to others, an idea of the Christian life that is loaded down with responsibilities and expectations.

But the invitation of Jesus is not burdensome rule following, it is to a relationship of deep care and affection.

1 John 5:3 CSB

3 For this is what love for God is: to keep his commands. And his commands are not a burden,

Jesus says “Come to me”

Jesus doesn’t offer us a four-fold path to peace-giving enlightenment, like the Buddha did. He doesn’t give us five pillars of peace through submission as Islam does. Nor does he give us “10 Ways to Relieve Your Weariness,” which we pragmatic, self-help-oriented 21st century Americans are so drawn to. Unique to anyone else in human history, Jesus simply offers himself as the universal solution to all that burdens us. - Jon Bloom

To RECEIVE Him and be RECEIVED by Him.

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.

When we come to Jesus, we don’t come to someone who is coarse, cold, and calculated.

Rather, we are received by one who is “lowly and gentle in heart.”

Notice that Jesus reveals to us His heart, the very core of who He is.

The heart here does not mean the blood-pumping organ in your chest. It means the core of who we are at our deepest and most basic level.

Jesus is saying that at His core He is gentle and lowly.

He is nonthreatening, compassionate, kind, and caring.

He is the most approachable and accessible person that has ever lived.

Here is the gracious invitation of the gospel in which the Savior’s tears and smiles were blended, as in a covenant rainbow of promise. “Come ”; he drives none away: he calls them to himself. His favorite word is “Come.” Not, — go”. — Charles Spurgeon

His invitation is to receive Him and be received by Him.

To take off the burdens and weight that is wearing us thin and crushing our souls.

And to up His yoke, a yoke that is easy and light.

It is a yoke that no longer has to hide our sin behind a fake show of self-righteousness.

It is a yoke that isn’t weighed down by the fears and worries of tomorrow because we carry the promises of a victorious savior who has conquered all.

It is a yoke that doesn’t need to carry bitterness, anger, and the wounds of being hurt, because “by His wounds we have been heal” and “by His blood we have been forgiven.”

It is a yoke that heals the grief and pain of loss because death has lost is sting for “death has been swallowed in victory.”

We were not designed to carry the loads that are crushing us.

To REST in Him.

Matthew 11:29–30 (CSB)

... you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Rest is a theme that runs throughout the whole bible.

From Genesis 1, when He rested on the 7th day, God has promised rest to His people.

Rest is not lounging on the coach in a soft par of sweat pants.

It is freedom from the burdens of sin and the struggles of life in a broken world.

It isn’t accidental or coincidental that in the very next section of Matthews Gospel Jesus is confronted by the very religious leaders who He calls out for heaping heavy burdens on the people seeking to follow God.

His disciples were confronted for picking and eating heads of grain as they walked through a field on the Sabbath.

For the Pharisees, to pick grain on the Sabbath was a sin, going against the 4 command of the 10 commandments.

They had developed laws and regulations that took the 4th commandment and gave everyone specific applications and parameters they could follow in order to now break the commandment.

The problem was, as Jesus pointed out, they had missed the purpose of the commandment.

God didn’t give the commandment to honor the Sabbath as some way to keep from making Him mad.

Jesus says in Mark 2:27 “27 Then he told them, “The Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath.”

The point of the Sabbath was practical in the sense that it acknowledges our need for physical rest.

But it is also deeply spiritual as it declares to our souls that we can rest in God, knowing that He is sovereign and we are weak.

We no longer have to strive to be perfect because Jesus gave His life so that we could be set free.

Our humble, gentle, approachable, accessible Savior invites us to rest in Him.

He takes our yoke, the very one crushing us, and give us His yoke.

A yoke of trust, a yoke of grace-motivated obedience, and a yoke of faith-filled worship

Rest displayed in the Lord’s Supper

In a Jewish household during the time of Jesus, and for generations before, God’s people would gather for a meal on Friday night to transition from the norm of everyday life to the day of rest known as Shabbat, or Sabbath.

The focus was to rest and remember all God had done.

And to reflect on His example and command to rest.

Jesus established a new meal for His followers

Matthew 26:26–28 CSB

26 As they were eating, Jesus took bread, blessed and broke it, gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take and eat it; this is my body.” 27 Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks, he gave it to them and said, “Drink from it, all of you. 28 For this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.

Rest is only possible because Jesus died.

Rest is only possible by the blood of Jesus.

Come to Him, all to are weary and burden, and He will give you rest.