Matthew 11:25-30 | "A Look Behind the Curtain"

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

In the year 1900, Frank Baum published a children's novel entitled The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

How many of you have seen the movie?

Better question, how many of you have read the book?

Yeah.

The book's always better, friends.

The book's always better.

Now there are some substantial differences between the book and the musical, and the book and the movie.

Some of those are going to be brought out here in a few moments.

But the book, as you know, later made into first a musical and then a movie, described the magical adventure of a young girl named Dorothy and her dog Toto.

Her adventure took place in the land of Oz, to which she was whisked away by a cyclone, although my late father-in-law would argue that was a tornado, not a cyclone.

Right?

Amen.

Thank you, brother.

Whisked away from the land of to the land of Oz from Kansas.

And the only way for Dorothy and Todo to return to Kansas was by following what?

The yellow brick road to the Emerald City.

The Emerald City to find the Wizard of Oz.

When Dorothy and her crew that she picked up along the way finally found the wizard, he was discovered to be merely an ordinary man behind a curtain.

Our passage this morning in Matthew's Gospel is similarly a look behind the curtain.

Now we know from the very first sentence in Matthew's gospel, we know what this book is all about.

He tells us very clearly.

He says, this book is about the gospel of Jesus Christ, the son of David.

So we know, we know what we're going to encounter.

We're going to encounter everything about Jesus, who is the Messiah, the Son of David.

And so far in Matthew's gospel, we've covered the birth of Jesus, we've covered much of his ministry.

Most recently we've learned how Matthew has shown us the lackluster response to this son of David from Galilee.

Now at the end of chapter 11, Matthew pulls back the curtain completely.

And we hear Jesus speak.

Will we find an ordinary man or will we find an extraordinary God?

If you have your Bible or a device, I encourage you to make your way to Matthew chapter 11, beginning in verse 25.

Matthew 11 · chapter mention

We're going to work our way through the end of the chapter, kind of.

Going to give kind of a big picture overview of this passage, and we're going to cover it in greater depth as we work along through it.

But this morning I want to begin reading in Matthew chapter 11, verse 25, if you'd like to follow along.

Matthew 11:25

Matthew says, at that time, that is, at the time that Jesus has condemned some communities for not responding to him, Jesus declared, I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding, and you've revealed them to little children.

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 Father, 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.

When Dorothy and the Scarecrow and the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion all arrived at the Emerald City ruled by the great and terrible wizard of Oz, each one was granted the privilege of entering the wizard's presence alone, one at a time.

And they each left the wizard's presence with a different image of the wizard, with a different understanding of the wizard.

The wizard appeared to Dorothy as a giant head.

He appeared to the scarecrow to be a beautiful fairy.

And to the tin man, he appeared as a terrible beast, a monster of some kind.

And to the cowardly lion, he was like a ball of fire.

And they all discovered that Oz was, and I quote, a humbug who had used a lot of elaborate magic tricks and props to make himself seem great and powerful.

Unfortunately, that's the way a lot of people think about God.

That he's merely an ordinary person with great power.

In fact, to some he is referred to irreverently as the man upstairs.

The big guy.

That's a quote, by the way.

Some see him as one who appears in different ways at different times and in different forms depending on the need of the moment.

But no matter what, he's always loving and always kind and always gentle and always helpful.

In fact, some some see him like Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings.

An old, long-haired, long-bearded with gray hair man who makes great fireworks and is wonderful at helping people get out of tough binds.

And then there are others.

There are others who seem to open this book called a Bible.

And they see someone entirely different.

Holy.

Awesome.

Mighty.

And yes, gracious.

Kind and loving.

So which is it?

Sadly, I think Christians often contribute to the confusion in the world.

Because the Jesus worshipped throughout the world is is different from one church to the next, from one denomination to the next denomination, to one culture to another culture, from one country on one side of the world to another country on another side of the world.

So much so that it's no wonder that many people don't really even know who Jesus is.

Some even think that he's a kindly old wizard who can be manipulated according to my needs and desires.

And then there are some who look at all of what you've just heard and said, I don't want your Jesus.

Even when Jesus was here on earth, there were many who wanted nothing to do with them.

Even his own people, the Jewish people, rejected him, we see in the first chapter of the Gospel of John.

In fact, his own family.

His own family, his own siblings wanted him committed to a mental institution at one point.

Oh, but surely, surely, coming and showing his power and doing magnificent kinds of things to confirm what he says and who he is would make a difference, right?

That will make people believe.

If only Jesus were here, people would believe.

Yeah.

No.

We saw last time that the three communities where Jesus was most present and the three three communities of people where his power was most often on display were the least positive in responding to the truth of who he is.

Even John the Baptist was a bit confused.

Dorothy and her gang were quite surprised when they saw behind the curtain.

They saw a person described by one website as, and I quote, a corn fed, dried-up old man who remains a fun-loving country boy at heart.

His wrinkled face is cheerful, and his eyes glimmer with innocence and adorable humor.

I don't think you would have to search very far before you found somebody who described God in the same way.

Here in this passage, Jesus pulls back the curtain on the Godhead.

And he reveals to us the inner workings of the Father and the Son to bring about the fulfillment of God's promise of rest.

And that's the draw in this passage.

Jesus describes a group of people who are laboring, who are carrying heavy burdens, but he's not very descriptive.

He doesn't go into much detail about that labor or about those burdens.

So we don't know.

Is Jesus talking about just the normal scope of life where we go to work and we come home exhausted?

Is he talking about just the way that life goes with generally short lifespans and we get sick and we have diseases and all these things happen?

Is he talking about the burdens of superficial spirituality?

Or is he even talking about the burden of being ruled by ancient Rome?

We're going to talk about that more in a few weeks, but it's important for right now to notice how this famous and favorite passage fits in with everything that goes on around it.

Our perspective is that Jesus stands almost like a loving and caring grandfather, arms open wide, waiting for his grandchildren to come running to him, and he's going to scoop them up and embrace them, lift them up in a way that just seems to melt away the cares and the concerns of our world.

We see Jesus here almost like the father in the parable of the prodigal son.

You remember that story, right?

The father in that parable never loses his love for his straying son.

And when that son finally comes to his senses and decides to return home, he's uncertain about how he's going to be received.

And he's convinced himself that even if I go back and be a slave in my father's house, it's better than what's happening to me now.

And so he goes home, he starts walking home.

And he's surprised that when he gets close enough to be seen, he realizes the father has been there waiting, watching.

And when the father finally gains sight of his long-lost son far off in the distance, he throws off everything and gathers up the bottom of his garment and frees his legs so he can race down the road to embrace his son.

But we need to be careful to not read that parable and what it says about God into what Jesus says here.

We need to be careful because Jesus isn't saying the same thing here that he says in the parable of the prodigal son.

I'm going to leave this with you to ponder for a few weeks.

This is not an invitation of a loving father for his straying children to come home.

In fact, it's not an invitation at all.

It's a command.

Jesus uses three imperatives.

Come, take, and learn.

These are not, these are not invitations.

These are commands to which we must respond.

And the blessing of divine rest is the result of obeying the commands to come, to take, and to learn.

But that's for another sermon.

Here Jesus pulls back the curtain on eternity, if it were.

And we see again his promise to provide rest.

And again is an important concept to understand.

Because it's not new.

We're hearing this again.

Rest is one of those fantastic biblical themes, biblical concepts that's begun in the first pages of Genesis and carried all the way through to the last pages of Revelation.

In many ways, it's a picture of God's grand work of restoring his sin-cursed world to himself.

So this is nothing new.

We've heard this story before.

But more particular than that, what we see here in Matthew 11 is something that we have seen in very great detail in biblical history.

This is like one of those old Hollywood films that's been remade for a modern audience.

Except now it's not really better.

And it may be worse.

Hold your finger here and go with me on a journey starting in Jeremiah chapter 6.

Jeremiah 6 · chapter mention

Jeremiah.

About the middle of your Bible, a little past the middle of your Bible.

Jeremiah chapter 6.

Jeremiah 6 · chapter mention

This is a disastrous section of scripture for ancient Israel.

It's disastrous because God had declared judgment and war against his own people.

He said, I'm coming to war against you.

You know how sometimes you just are so exhausted and so worn down and so just at the end of your rope that you have no patience left.

I confess that I get there too often with my children.

But you don't have to be a parent to understand that.

You've probably been there with a coworker that you have to work with, that just doesn't do their end of the bargain.

Or maybe it's a fellow student that you have a project to do with and they're just not doing their end and their part.

Maybe you're a business owner and you have employees that just are not doing what they're capable of doing.

And you're just you're just done.

You're at the end of your rope.

That's a very human way of describing where God is in Jeremiah chapter 6.

Jeremiah 6 · chapter mention

Look at what he says in verse 11.

This is Jeremiah speaking first.

Jeremiah says, Therefore, I am full of the wrath of Yahweh.

I am weary of holding it in.

And then notice the very next thing you see is a quotation mark.

So God is now speaking, and he says, Pour it out.

Pour out that wrath that you're weary of holding.

Pour it out on the children in the street.

What?

And pour it out upon the gatherings of young men also.

Both husband and wife shall be taken, the elderly and the very aged.

All their houses are going to be turned over to others, their fields and their wives together.

Why?

Because I, God says, will stretch out my hand against the inhabitants of the land.

What follows is a general description of the sin problems that led to the end of God's patience.

In fact, verse 15 says that the people weren't even ashamed of sin anymore.

God said, the things in your life and in your world that ought to make you blush in the presence of others, you don't even blush anymore.

So in verse 16 of the same chapter, God said, Go out.

Go out of your homes, go out of your communities, and stand by the roads.

And look for the ancient paths.

Find somebody that you can pull aside and ask them, where's the ancient path, where the good way is, and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.

Sounds an awful lot like Matthew 11, doesn't it?

But look at the end of the verse and what Jesus continues, or what God through Jeremiah continues to record.

It says, but they said, No, we will not walk in it.

God says, I set watchmen over you.

So pay attention to the sound of the trumpet, but they said we will not pay attention.

I'm old enough to remember in the early days of the Cold War, first grade or so, how we we went through drills for nuclear warfare.

You know, that was around the time when they were installing missile silos in North Dakota and we didn't know about it yet.

That kind of thing.

Yeah, we were told we're gonna have a drill in case there's war.

So when when you hear the sound of the siren, crawl under your desk.

Because that's gonna protect me from nuclear fallout.

We had tornado drills, right?

The walls of our classroom, one wall of our classroom was solid glass.

Floor to ceiling, side to side.

When the tornado comes through and blows out your window, crawl onto your desk, because that's gonna protect you.

Fire drills, you you know, you know about it all.

God promised rest to those who searched out and walked in the good way.

And he even gave warnings.

He said, I'm I'm I'm gonna install a watchman, and he's gonna be your protector, so listen for the sound of the trumpet.

It's like the the policeman or the fireman at the intersection that is there guiding traffic around an accident or in a way that protects everyone involved to the best of their ability, but instead of following the direction.

Given to you by the officer in the intersection, you go the opposite way and you lead yourself and everyone into harm.

But that's not the worst of it.

God says they chose this way.

They looked at God's way and said, No, we're going to go our own way.

This is the coach spending hours upon hours pouring themselves into their players, teaching them how to run this play and how to run that play.

And when it comes to the moment of running the play, the player rejects the coach's instruction and does his own thing.

It's the son or the daughter hearing their parents' wisdom and guidance, instructing them in the way to go, and the child doing their own thing.

It's the child of God hearing the word of the Father and saying, No thanks, Father, I'll do it my own way.

Why do we do that?

Why do we do that?

Ultimately, it's it's sin, right?

That's the action of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

God said, Here's the way, walk in it.

And they said, Yeah, no, thanks.

We'll do our own thing.

We know we know better.

And what it what it looks like, you know, in the moment, as the one doing that, it feels like I'm exercising my freedom.

I'm doing the thing that I want to do.

I'm living my life the way I want to live it.

But from the outside, looking in on somebody who's doing that, it's arrogance and pride.

It's the arrogance and pride of looking to yourself rather than to God.

It's the arrogance of saying, I know better than the one who made everything.

It's the pride of putting yourself in front of Scripture.

In a way, through Jeremiah, God said to ancient Israel, here's the yellow brick road.

Follow this road home.

Follow this road to rest.

But they said, No.

Now look at what God says in verse 19.

He says, Listen up, planet earth.

Behold, I am bringing disaster upon this people.

It's the fruit of their own devices.

This is the outworking of what they've chosen.

Because they have not paid attention to my words, and as for my law, they've rejected it.

Speaking about offerings in the temple, he says, What use to me is is frankincense, expensive frankincense that comes from Sheba, or what use to me is sweet cane from a distant land.

Your burnt offerings aren't acceptable, your sacrifices aren't pleasing to me.

Therefore, thus says Yahweh, behold, I will lay before this people stumbling blocks against which they shall stumble.

Fathers and sons together, neighbor and friend, shall perish.

So a few chapters later, chapter nine, God would say in verse 23, let the wise man not boast in his wisdom.

Let not the mighty man boast in his might.

Let not the rich man boast in his wisdom.

Instead, let the one who boasts boasts in this, that he understands and knows me.

The problem, of course, is that the people chose the opposite.

The wise chose to boast in their wisdom.

The mighty chose to boast in their might.

And the rich chose to boast in their riches.

In other words, they were they were self-sufficient.

They looked to God and said, God, I got this.

Don't worry, God, sit back on your throne.

I got this taken care of.

They didn't need the Lord.

They didn't need his word.

They didn't need his direction.

And so God would confirm them in their rejection of him.

Isaiah, another prophet, describes it this way in Isaiah 29.

He says, listen, because this group of people talks a good game but doesn't have a heart change because they draw near to me with their mouths and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.

Because because they put on an air of being religious and acceptable, and all they're really doing is following commandments taught by other people.

Because this is the essence of your spirituality, therefore, behold, I will again do wonderful things with this people.

Great God, thanks for blessing me.

He says, I'm going to do wonder upon wonder.

I'm going to take away your wisdom.

And I'm going to take away your discernment.

Hear this.

Listen again to the wonder upon wonder that God will do.

Well, I'm going to take your wise people, and I'm going to take your wisdom and wipe them out.

Because you're choosing your way instead of my way.

I'm going to take everything that you think is discerning and right and applicable, and I'm going to hide that away from you so that you can't find it.

God would let his people go their own way, giving them, as it were, a push in their own chosen direction, saying, All right, see if you enjoy it.

I remember the first time I went downhill skiing on a black diamond route.

If you've never been downhill skiing, you know the black diamond route is one of the most difficult routes that you can take.

I remember standing at the top of the mountain, skis, you know, just a foot or so over the lip of the slope, and wondering, is this really wise?

I wasn't that experienced at this point in time.

And the friend that I was skiing with came up behind me and went, here you go.

I made it down the hill, not all of it standing up, but see, God's judgment is often letting us go where we want to go, and sometimes even giving us a push.

Saying, see if see if you really want that in your life.

God's people here wanted nothing of God's rest.

So he sent them on their way to bear their burdens and their labors without him.

His yellow brick road looked unpleasant and daunting with nothing but disappointing bald old man at the end of the road.

What do we need him for?

Another prophet came along about 700 years later.

His name was John.

And he he sought to turn Israel back to God.

Maybe it was that living out in the desert and in poverty, wearing nothing but itchy clothes made out of camel's hair.

Maybe that was somehow analogous to the people's labor and burdens and their suffering.

Maybe they had traveled so long and so far apart from God's path without rest, that their lives were nothing but a dry, dusty desert with no relief and no rest in sight.

And so John came calling the people to repent.

They had to change their thinking about God Himself and about God's road.

God's road isn't a mythical golden highway with a fake magician at the end of the road.

No, this road is the right road.

This road is the road that takes you back to God.

It's the road for true rest that's found only in the Lord and in his ways.

And so John said, You must repent and you must do so genuinely.

That meant a change of mind about who God is and about what God was doing in his world and about how God was drawing them back to himself, and that it was genuine in the sense that it became lived out in daily life.

And it was vital, John the prophet said, because the king himself, God with us, is coming.

Now you would think, you would think that after 700 years of wandering in the deserts of life, that God's people would be joyful at another new opportunity at finding the place of true rest.

Yes, it's coming.

And then the king came.

He came saying the same thing as John.

And he he even supported that preaching and that teaching with powerful, miraculous displays of his true identity.

Here's the way, he said.

Walk in it.

I am the way to God's promise.

Now we love a good story, don't we?

And we love a good story with it with a good ending.

How does this story end?

If you've been following along with us in Matthew's gospel, you know the end of this story.

Jesus says in Matthew chapter 11, verse 16.

Matthew 11:16

What should I say about you people?

This is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to their playmates.

We played the flute for you, but you didn't dance.

We sang a dirge for you and you didn't mourn.

Some places and some groups of people had had far more of God's God's great and grand grace to be able to see the right way before them than any other people before them or after them had known.

Instead of hearing Jeremiah's, reading Jeremiah's book and hearing God say, go out of your home, go out of your community, and stand by the roadside and start dragging people over and asking them, where's the ancient path, where's the good way?

God says, I'm coming to you, I'm bringing the way to you.

And like the people of Jeremiah's day, they said, Yeah, nothing.

It might seem strange then to see in verse 25 that Jesus responded to that situation with praise.

You see that?

Jesus declared, I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth.

He gave thanks.

Jesus gave thanks because it is part of how God has chosen to fulfill his promise of rest.

You see, those who pridefully and arrogantly believe that they know the way, that they're gonna make their own way, that they're going to discover the way, that they they have a sense of this is what life is about.

God says it's gonna be hidden from them.

But those who come humbly to Jesus not knowing the way, but seeking the way, believing that Jesus is the promised one, the king himself, that they are they're going to find the promised rest.

You see, God the Father, God the Father is the only sovereign over all of heaven and all of earth.

He's talking about the sphere of sovereignty here.

Over what is God sovereign?

Over everything, over all of heaven and all of earth.

There's not, as somebody has so well said, there is not a square inch over which God does not say, it is mine.

There's not a molecule that God does not point to and say, I know it, I made it, it's mine.

All of heaven and all of it, and that same sovereignty has been given to the Son as well.

They are sovereign over the promised rest.

And so those who refuse to pay attention will be sent on their way, bearing greater and greater burdens, laboring evermore.

They're going to be like the cities of Korus and Bethsaida and Capernaum.

But those who, in a sense of humility, have ears to hear, those who know that they don't know the way, they will be given the grace to trust the one who is the way, who is the truth, and who is the life.

Those who come to him will find that as they trust in Jesus as the way, that he is the one who actually bears their reproach, that he bears their shame, that he bears their burdens, and they will find rest.

And while their while their road to rest may not look like the golden pathway that the world wants, that points to worldly fulfillment, they're going to find themselves oddly at rest.

Those who look to Jesus as the way and the truth and the life and follow him are not going to necessarily have a golden pathway laid out before them.

In fact, it may be filled with pain, it may be filled with struggle, it may be filled with sorrow.

But there's going to be a strange sense of it's okay.

And at the end of the road, they're not going to find a wrinkled old man full of illusions.

No, they're going to find their father, who is Lord of heaven and earth.

And they're going to find him full of joy because it is the Father's good pleasure to hide the way of rest from those who refuse his way, from those who arrogantly say, No, I'm going my way, and it brings him great joy to bring home to him those who say, We did not know the way, but we trusted that Jesus is the way, and we followed him.

Now you might be saying, this is a good question if you're thinking it.

You might be saying, that's a nice story, preacher.

How do you know it's true?

Well, I know it's true because it's what the Word of God says.

In his second letter to the church at Corinth, the apostle Paul described the Jewish people who rejected Jesus and followed their own way, like this.

He says their minds were hardened.

He says, for to this day, when they when they read that old covenant, when they when they read the ancient path, when they read the roadmap that God laid out before them, there's a veil that covers their hearts and minds, and they they can't grasp it.

Why?

Because it's only removed through Christ.

He goes on to say, yes, to this day, whenever they read that ancient past, whenever they read Moses, a veil lies over their heart.

But when one turns to Jesus, the veil is removed.

Did you know?

In Frank Baum's book, Dorothy's shoes were not ruby red.

I have some red sparkles from my daughter.

And I know that those shoes were are in the Smithsonian.

But originally they were silver.

Or silver shoes.

Changed because the movie came out in Technicolor.

After encountering the old man behind the curtain, Dorothy discovered that her silver shoes could magically take her home to Kansas.

So with a little hop, clicking her shoes together, she and Todo found themselves once again at home.

There's no magical escape to our rest.

For us, we we hear the testimonies of others like John the Baptist, who stood in the muddy waters of the Jordan River, baptizing people into repentance.

And he looked up one day and he saw this guy approaching the river on the other side, and he said, Turn and look there, behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

We hear the testimony of disciples like Matthew saying, Let me let me lay out for you how Jesus is Emmanuel, God with us.

We hear of his miraculous entrance into the world.

We hear him call to us through the scriptures.

We hear of his power and his might.

We hear of him going to a cross.

We hear of his body being bound up and sealed away in a tomb.

And we hear of that tomb being empty.

And we hear of his return home.

And through the revealing work of this Savior, we follow and we believe.

We have faith to believe that this is true.

And so we follow him, refusing the way of the world with all of its false promises, with all of its false hope, with all of its fakery, with all of its illusions.

And we we reject all of that for his way because by grace through faith, which is the gift of God itself, we believe that Jesus is the king who will take us home.

We believe that he is not only the one who promises rest, but who gives rest.

And finally, when the curtain is pulled back for us, Jesus will be there.

For we will have followed him home.

He will be there, not in weakness, not on a cross, not in a tomb, but in power and great glory.

And we will call him our friend, and we will call him our brother, and we will call him our savior, and we will call him our Lord, and he will reveal to us the fullness of him who sits on the throne, who is the Lord of heaven and earth, and we will hear those words come, enter into my rest.

May we not leave here, may no one leave here today without knowing this rest.

Saying enough is enough to our way, to the world's way, to the to the ways offered to us by by our culture, by by our sense of what is what is good.

Grant us humility to choose your way.

May we all receive that precious gift of faith.

To believe, to follow you home, to be at rest.

What a treasure we possess in Jesus Christ our Lord.

We may not fully grasp all of these things that are shown to us behind the curtain, but we can see the way, and we can know the truth and have his life.

Enable us to rest in that, to celebrate it, and to speak of it.

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.