Matthew 11:28-30 | "Finding Rest in the Resurrection"

This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

Our time in God's Word this morning is going to be primarily in Matthew chapter 11.

Matthew 11 · chapter mention

So if you have your Bible or the Bible on your device, I encourage you to find your way to the end of Matthew chapter 11.

Matthew 11 · chapter mention

I'm going to be reading that for us in a moment, if you would like to follow along.

And I'll be reading from the English Standard Version.

But if you don't have that and would like to follow along, there's a copy in the seat back in front of you, if you would like to have that.

And we provide those for you.

If you don't have your own Bible, please take that home with you and make use of it.

Read it.

And we would love for you to make use of it.

Again, Matthew chapter 11 this morning, beginning in verse 25, is where I will start to provide a little bit of context for what we're going to be looking at in a little bit.

Matthew 11 · chapter mention

So Matthew chapter 11, beginning in verse 25, it says, At that time, that is, at the time that he had denounced three different communities for not believing in him, at that time Jesus declared, I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and the understanding, and have revealed them to little children.

Matthew 11 · chapter mention

Yes, Father, for such was well pleasing before you.

All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son, and any one to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

Amen.

Henry Ford is attributed with saying, and I quote, It is high time to rid ourselves of the notion that leisure for workmen is either lost time or a class privilege.

End quote.

In fact, Ford Motor Company is a primary reason that most developed countries today have a five-day, 40-hour work week.

On May 1st, 1926, Ford became one of the first companies to abandon the six-day work week and adopt the shorter five-day schedule.

And most of you are celebrating because of that, right?

Now, in recent years, there have been many, many voices pushing for a four-day work week.

Science has even gotten involved studying the effects of active rest on the brain.

Active rest is that kind of activity that you do that that calms you.

So it might be taking a walk, it might be sitting out on your porch or participating in some kind of hobby.

It's a means of generating creativity, of improving brain function, even and improving productivity.

But if you think about it, the reality that our language even has a place for the word overworked ought to say something about our tendency to push ourselves, to drive ourselves, to produce, to work more, to always improve.

It's not uncommon at all these days to hear the term burnout, right?

Maybe you've even uttered it yourself fairly recently.

You know, when we when we push ourselves and we push and push and push until there's just nothing more to expend, we're burned out.

Now there's always that that one or two people, right, that just have to say something different.

So somebody's going to quip that it's it's just a matter of perspective.

You know, one person is overworked at 80 to 100 hours a week, while someone else might be overworked at 30 hours a week.

But then we have to ask the question how is overworked measured?

How do we measure that kind of thing?

Is it is it the mere number of hours put in each week?

Well, somebody else might argue, no, it's the number of calories that I expend each week.

Someone else might say it's the number of days on the road.

Or the number of hours that I've truly rested during the week.

Or maybe it's the number of hours I spend standing rather than sitting.

How do we measure that kind of thing?

However, you want to measure it, for the remainder of our time this morning, I would like you to assume with me that in our ever-connected postmodern world, we are all simply too busy.

There are too many things demanding our attention, whether it's that smartphone in your pocket or something in your life or someone in your life that is screaming to be satisfied.

In some way or another, we are all in need of some good rest.

And I'm not talking about that extra day off every once in a while.

I'm not even talking about making every weekend a three-day weekend.

I'm not suggesting that we all need a good vacation, even though we might.

Because none of those things can provide what I'm hinting at.

See, there's only one way we can get what I'm hinting at, and it's only provided by a person.

Not an experience, not time, but it's only provided by a creator.

You see, only the one who made you, only the one who knows you inside and out, who knows your body, who knows your soul, who knows your spirit, who knows your mind, only the one who made you can truly give you rest.

And it's something we're all pursuing in one way or another.

It's something that God's people have been after from the very beginning.

From the time of Genesis until today.

And the Bible addresses this concept of rest in many different ways.

For example, the Old Testament describes your home as rest.

You know, that place where you can go home and you finally take your jacket off or your coat off and you just crash, right?

Just relax and everything feels back to normal.

The Old Testament also describes peace as rest.

That is the absence of war.

When there's no bickering, when there's no fighting, when there's no warfare, that can be restful.

You know that the word rest is even used for land?

That land can have a time of rest.

God commanded his people Israel, every seventh year he said, Don't plant.

Don't plant your gardens, don't plant your fields, let the land rest.

Land is even said to rest from the sinfulness of the people who live in it.

But there are some other elements of rest in the Old Testament.

Elements that seem to point away from our physical need for rest to some other kind of concept.

For example, Proverbs chapter 19, verse 23, it says, the fear of Yahweh leads to life, and whoever has it rests satisfied.

Proverbs 19:23

Now, scholars argue about what the reference to of it is.

Does it refer to the fear of Yahweh, or does it refer to the life that we get from the fear of Yahweh?

But in the end, it doesn't really matter because when you are resting satisfied, it comes from God, whether it's from fearing him or from the life he gives you.

And we get a little closer to the New Testament concept of rest in Psalm 116, specifically verse 7 of Psalm 116, where the psalmist expresses praise for God's grace and for his mercy, even for his righteousness and his preservation of people of the lowly.

And in the midst of that, the psalmist writes, Return, O my soul, to your rest.

For Yahweh has dealt bountifully with you.

So there we very clearly have this sense that there is something about rest, something about resting, that is not physical.

He doesn't say, Return, O my body, right?

He says, return, O my soul.

That immaterial part of us that makes up who we really are, who you are.

Return to that place of rest that comes only from God Himself.

He provides it bountifully.

The New Testament book of Hebrews picks up on this theme of God's rest for more than an entire chapter.

It refers to God resting from his labor in the days of creation.

He worked six days and then he took the seventh day off.

But there's much more than that.

There are themes in Hebrews chapter 3 and 4 of God's grace and God's mercy and his righteousness within his rest, much like the psalmist wrote in Psalm 116.

Hebrews 3 · chapter mention

But the way that the author of Hebrews does this is very interesting.

He does it by way of analogy.

In Hebrews chapter 3 and 4, it talks about God bringing the ancient people of Israel out of slavery in Egypt.

Hebrews 3 · chapter mention

He rescued them, he redeemed them on that Passover night, bringing them out of Egypt with a powerful hand.

And he did that promising rest to them.

They'd been working and slaving away for four centuries.

And he promises to give them rest.

And he brings them out with a powerful hand.

But the writer to the book of Hebrews says that there was an entire generation of people that didn't get the rest that God promised.

Entire generation of people didn't make it.

That is, they didn't receive God's promised rest.

They rebelled against God and they died in the desert.

And so the writer to the Hebrews gives a sense of hope hand in hand with a warning.

He says, there yet remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God.

For those who trust in him, there is a rest that is available.

Whoever abandons their own working to obtain God's rest by trusting in Christ alone will find God's rest.

But if you reject faith in Christ alone, thinking somehow that you can find your own way.

That you'll you'll take your own road to get to God's rest.

You're going to fail and never have that rest.

Now this is important when we come to the end of Matthew chapter 11.

Matthew 11 · chapter mention

It's important because a significant number of people, we're not told how many, we're just told that there are three entire communities at the time of Jesus that were much like the people of Israel whom God brought out of Egypt.

In verses 20 through 24, Jesus named three cities, three locales in which he had spent the vast majority of his time.

He lived in one of them during his time of ministry.

These three communities, we can understand, received the greatest number of miracles.

They saw the most healings.

They heard the most teaching.

Just like that first generation of people coming out of Egypt.

Those people coming out of Egypt saw the power of God in separating the Red Sea so that the people could walk across on dry land.

That generation saw God's provision of water by causing a river to come out of a rock.

They experienced bread coming down from heaven.

They experienced living through flocks of birds settling around their camp overnight when they complained to God that they didn't have any meat to eat.

And many others, miraculous provisions.

For 40 years, their clothes didn't wear out.

My socks wear out in a few months.

But like that first generation of Israel out of Egypt who failed to enter God's rest, many in Palestine in the time of Jesus who experienced Jesus' presence in the greatest measure of grace given to them would not believe that Jesus was the way to enter God's grace.

They could not believe that Jesus was the way to experience God's rest.

That was hard for people to grasp, but that's exactly the way God planned it.

You see, in eternity past, God the Father handed all things over to God the Son, planned in such a way that Jesus would come to this earth to reveal the Father.

He had to do that because no one of their own accord would seek after God through Jesus.

But to those whom Jesus chooses, he reveals, he shows in a saving kind of way God the Father.

And then at least from a human perspective, the unexpected heaven.

The one to whom all things were handed over in sovereign power was handed over to those he came to save.

Handed over to those who would put him to death on a cursed tree.

And he died.

But I know that that's not what most of you believe because you're here today.

You know that that's not the end of the story.

We know that the tomb was opened.

We know that an angel came and rolled back the stone, but that stone was not rolled back for someone to come and take the body of Jesus away.

It was rolled back for the disciples to see that the tomb was already empty because Jesus rose from the dead and left the tomb before it was opened.

My friends, Jesus promised rest.

And he cannot promise rest if he remains entombed.

It's not possible.

The empty tomb becomes the greatest evidence that God provides that it's in Jesus and only in Jesus that we find the rest that God promised.

Now, if you are not a Christian or maybe you're almost a Christian or you're interested in being a Christian, you need to hear this.

Jesus says very clearly that He is the only way to receive the eternal rest that you so desperately need.

If you're willing to admit it, you're searching for rest.

The empty tomb is proof that only Jesus is the one that can give you what you seek.

Now, if you are a Christian and you've already received that promised eternal rest through faith, you're likely also still longing for some rest.

You will only find rest in this world of unrest in the one who gave himself for you.

And who today, this very moment, lives to make intercession for you before the Father.

The resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ is the only sure basis of God's promise of rest.

Now look with me at the last three verses of Matthew 11.

It's a long introduction to get here.

I want you to note with me a few elements.

I think it's very clear what Jesus says here.

Matthew makes it quite easy to see.

I've laid it out for you in your bulletin, but you can also see it here on the screen.

This is a means of structuring written content that's called a chiasm or a chiasm, some people say.

It's shaped like an arrow.

And the point of the arrow, the tip, highlights the main idea that the author wants us to take away from the text.

It's a very common Hebrew way of writing.

And these chiasms tend to use parallel statements.

So let's look at this.

It says, verse 28, Jesus is speaking, Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you and learn from me.

For I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

Maybe I can explain this most simply by displaying it for you, if you are a note taker in your bulletin.

Connect the first and last lines of the text with a vertical line.

Why did Jesus say, Come to me?

He said it because his yoke is easy and his burden is light.

They're parallel statements.

They work together.

We move then from the physical sense to the spiritual sense in the next line.

Connect those two with lines.

Why should all who labor and are heavy laden come to Jesus?

Because it's only in him that you will find rest for your soul.

Connect the next set of lines.

Why should you come to Jesus for rest?

Because he's the only one who's gentle and lowly in heart.

Now that leaves the point of our arrow.

How do we come to Jesus?

By taking his yoke upon us and learning from him.

This is this is submissive discipleship.

It's submissive in that we take his yoke.

We place ourselves under its form, its structure, it's its control, and we become disciples who follow Jesus.

Now we don't we don't pull a wagon in which Jesus sits with a whip, cracking the whip on us to drive us forward so that we pull him under its yoke.

No.

He is one who leads us as a gentle shepherd who is gentle and lowly.

He leads by going before us.

And we know that we can follow this one.

We can take his yoke upon us because he has already gone where we will go.

Every single one of us will die unless the Lord returns first.

If you question that, read the first few chapters of Genesis.

You will find after you pass through Genesis chapter 3 that there are three words repeated in your English Bible ad nauseum, so much that it makes you sick.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

Those three words are and he died.

And he died.

And he died.

And he died.

And you don't have to go very far before you realize that that's the whole intent.

We're gonna die.

But when we take Jesus' yoke upon us, we don't have to fear because he's already gone there.

He's already gone before us into death.

He has conquered death.

He has taken away its sting.

And he has become victorious over even that.

He's already conquered because all things have been handed over to him.

He has revealed the Father to us, and by trust in his revelation, we take his yoke and become learners of him.

Is this a yoke?

And you remember if you were with us last Sunday, I described a yoke.

It's a generally a wooden implement that is stiff and firm that goes over the shoulders of an animal and it attaches to an animal to control that animal, to take its strength and its energy and use it for the benefit of something else.

Jesus says, I know you're burdened by other yokes.

I know you're worn down.

Come and take my yoke.

But remember, Jesus says that his commands are not burdensome.

They are if you're trying to fulfill them without faith.

Just trying to do them because Jesus said to do them, well, yeah, they might feel burdensome.

But when you come to him in trust, understanding that he has called you to this with joy and gladness, because we know that all along he is leading us home.

He is leading us to eternal rest.

Last Sunday we gave out the book Gentle and Lowly.

If you weren't here, you missed out on that.

If you need a copy or would like a copy, please let me know and we'll do our best to get some more.

But as you read that book, you will gain a deeper understanding of what it means for Jesus to be gentle and lowly.

But here you see in the structure of the text that gentle and lowly is given as the reason Jesus is able to give us rest.

Why can Jesus give us rest?

Because he's gentle and lowly.

This parallels this 23rd Psalm.

Why do we follow the Good Shepherd?

Because he leads us beside still waters.

Because he feeds us, he cares for us, he pursues us.

We do these things because he's the good shepherd.

Why does Jesus say in John chapter 10, the sheep know my voice?

John 10 · chapter mention

It's because we know the voice of someone who's gentle and kind.

He is the good shepherd.

Maybe you can think about it in the opposite kind of way.

Following someone who is rough, who is mean, who is dangerous, who is overflowing with prideful arrogance, that doesn't sound like a means to rest.

It sounds like stress and anxiety and work.

But Jesus, being a God who is characterized by gentleness and lowliness, brings us to a place of rest.

But we have to take care to put this in its proper context.

It's important for sure that Jesus is gentle and lowly.

But notice what is most important.

The most significant aspect that Matthew lays out for us in the words of Jesus is how to gain rest, or as the author of Hebrews puts it, how to enter God's rest.

The fact that Jesus is a place of rest, because he is gentle and lowly is of absolutely no significance at all if you never find your way to him and never enter his rest.

If you never enter his rest, you will never know him as gentle and lowly.

But that process, if you never enter Jesus' rest, you will not know him as gentle and lowly.

The only way to find rest for your soul, not just today, but forever, is by submitting to the one giving the commands.

Yes, the commands.

There are three words emphasized here.

Come, take, and learn.

These are imperatives, these are commands from the mouth of Jesus.

The one who died, was buried, and now is risen and living again, says to you, come.

It's not an invitation that you, eh, yeah, I don't have time today.

Maybe tomorrow, Jesus, you know, that miracle was really nice, but if you do something like this, no, that's not at all.

This is the sovereign Lord of the universe to whom all things have been handed over, saying to you, Come.

You know you need rest.

You know you desire rest.

You know your soul wants eternal rest.

Come to me.

Come to me.

Take my yoke upon you and learn.

Unless we unless we be confused.

We need to emphasize that these are verbs of faith.

These are verbs of faith.

Judas came to Jesus.

Judas took the yoke of Jesus, at least for a time.

Judas was a disciple.

But Judas never received the promised rest because there was no genuine faith in Jesus as the promised one of God.

You can come to Jesus and work to follow him in obedience without genuine faith, and in the end you will not find rest, but only labor and toil and agony that Adam and Eve experienced when they left the Garden of Eden.

You might be familiar with the term we often use to refer to the end of Matthew's gospel in Matthew chapter 28.

Matthew 28 · chapter mention

The Great Commission, right?

This conclusion to chapter 11 is that Great Commission in seed form.

At the end of the book, Jesus stands before his disciples and he says, All power and all authority has been given to me.

In other words, he's the sovereign of the universe.

Nothing's been left out of his authority.

And he told them, as you're going along in life, make disciples, teaching them to observe all of his commandments.

And he does the same thing here.

He commands everyone everywhere to repent, to change their minds about him and to come to him.

He commands them to leave off their lives of self-centered idolatry and come to him, to submit to his leadership, to his yoke of leadership, and to begin a lifelong process of learning, of discipleship.

This is the way to rest.

And you can trust him every step of the way because of his heart.

It's gentle and it's lowly.

That word for learn, learn from me, is the same word from which we get our word disciple.

This is a call to believing, faithful discipleship.

You can listen to Jesus all you want.

You can listen to hundreds and thousands of sermons from faithful Bible preaching pastors and still be like the people in these cities who rejected Jesus.

You can wander in the desert for 40 years with ancient Israel, listening to Moses as God gives him the law, listening to Moses expound it and explain this is what it looks like, this is what God says.

You can be at the mountain of Sinai and hear the rumblings of the voice of God Himself, seeing the hand of God miraculously supply needs out of nowhere.

Again and again and again.

You can see the power of God in the hands of Jesus as he heals diseases, as he restores body parts, as he calls people back from the dead by the power of his words alone, and still end up like Judas.

This isn't merely about coming to Jesus, to see him with your eyes.

This isn't merely about following behind him as he ministers to people observing.

It's not merely about learning the facts of what he says so that you can regurgitate them anytime the pastor asks you a question in Bible trivia.

This is a command to believe that Jesus is God the Son who took on human form.

And being found in human form, he humbled himself.

As one who is gentle and lowly, even like a slave.

The one to whom all things have been handed over, humbled himself.

He humbled himself to the point of death, even death on a cross.

But God raised him up because it was not possible for him to whom all things have been handed over to be held lifeless by death.

Death cannot hold the one who possesses all authority and all power.

The tomb cannot hold the one who holds all things together.

He cannot possess all things and be ruled by death.

But God so loved the world that he gave his only unique Son.

That those who believe in him should not perish, should not lose out on any chance of that eternal rest, that promise of rest in Christ alone.

Oh, the depths of the love of God in Christ Jesus, our Lord.

John Owen, one of the greatest Puritan theologians, wrote, The greatest sorrow and the greatest burden that you can lay on God the Father, the greatest unkindness that you can do to him is to not believe that he loves you.

So how do we respond to this kind of love?

We respond by believing that Jesus is the Son He sent.

That Son to whom all dominion and all power and all glory belongs, handed over to him by the Father, so that he might show us the way home to the Father, to eternal rest.

He shows us his love by understanding our labor and understanding our burdens and showing us that he is a safe place to come when we are burdened and laboring in our sin.

He is a safe place because he's gentle and lowly.

That's what his heart is.

And when we come in humble submission to his authority, to his position as the rightful son of God who gave himself for us, and we we seek to be placed under his yoke, becoming his disciples, his learners, his followers, then he leads us in his rest, to his rest.

And my friends, if in any way you're not experiencing his rest this very moment, this day, this week, it's because you're looking somewhere else for your rest.

While ancient Israel spent forty years in the Middle Eastern desert, an entire generation of people believed that God led them out of slavery in Egypt only to let them die in the desert.

They couldn't fathom that the hot, dry, waterless desert was the way, was the path, the road to God's rest.

In the same way, during the life of Christ, many did not believe that a cross and a tomb were the means of rest.

But to those whom the Son has revealed, the Father, they are able to see and understand with divine enablement to see that this sovereign Lord of the universe is the one who leads us through the desert of sin to the rest of forgiveness because he is gentle and lowly in heart.

By his humility, he laid down his life on the cross.

And because all things have been given to him by the Father and His sovereign power and authority, he took it up again and rose from the dead.

The tomb is empty.

Come, take his yoke upon you and learn from him.

Let's pray.

Lord Jesus, may we be humbled today, to not stand firm in our arrogance and our own perceived rightness of our world, that we would stand before you and shout, no, this is not the way.

May your spirit grant us humility to see, to understand, and to know that you are the way.

You are the truth, and you are the life.

Lord Jesus, you know all who are in need of rest today.

You know those who are in need of rest today and for all eternity.

Enable us to see your rest and to know your rest.

Give light to those eyes that are blind that need to see you.

Give light and life to those who desire it.

For we come to you, the one who upholds all things.

And we ask to be your disciples.

We ask to see you as the one who is high and lifted up, the one who was buried and yet lives today.

We celebrate together this joyful triumph over all things, and we anticipate together spending an eternity in your rest with you.

Amen.

That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.

Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.

You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.com.