Matthew 11 (Part 3) :28-30

--- Matthew chapter 11 I saved the last three verses of this chapter that we could focus on them and you know I foolishly thought well you know I'll just take a Sunday and we'll go through these three verses and we will and we won't carry it on to another Sunday I promise but we we we still won't begin to mine the depths of these verses I I got into studying them and I realized wow what a fool I am and how how deep and and powerful these verses are to really get into and think about and study out so here's the way it goes Matthew 11 skip all the way down to verse 28 we're gonna read to the end of the chapter and it says

would you pray with me father we're coming and praying here beseeching you today that our hearts would be open to hear your voice that you would speak to us that you would be the teacher here today that you administered you each heart and that you would bring wisdom and insight and understanding father we confess to you right now that apart from your Holy Spirit we are cut off from understanding your word it becomes so much confusing mumbo-jumbo but Lord with your spirit with the power of who you are working in us and through us we know that you will not only help us to understand it but also to apply it to our very lives and that's Lord our prayer that we would not be just hearers of the word but doers also so be with us we pray father we ask it in Jesus name amen amen you know whenever I begin to tackle a section of scripture like this like the verses that we just read and I realized how important these verses are I am willing to bet that the vast majority of those of you who think it's okay to underline in your Bible probably have these verses underlined just because you know they're they're they're just so powerful the so precious they're so life verses for many of us you know come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden and so forth so I go into verses like this with a bit of trepidation but I also did you know one of the things that I do and I'm looking at verses like this and I want to really gain a better understanding is I kind of I kind of act like a doctor a little bit and I dissect it take it apart and so that I can lay it out and see what it says or what the elements of the passage are and I want to let you in on a little bit of that dissection here this morning I'll put these up on the screen for you and we'll look through these these these three verses but we'll dissect them according to kind of what is being said or what they mean to us here and the first thing that we see when we read these verses are the words come to me and and on the screen you can see that that part is the invitation Jesus extends the invitation come to me and then the second part is all you and that is where those who are invited become specified and we know now who this invitation is directed to next we see the words who are weary and burdened and that is the condition of the invited so the invitation is extended by Jesus to those all those who are weary and burdened so we know now who he's kind of directing this invitation to and then we next come to the words and I will give you rest which is of course the promise that is what we see here in this passage followed by the words take my yoke upon you and learn from me that portion is what we call the instruction and I wish I had more time to get into all of that this morning and then finally we come to the words for I am gentle and humble in heart now that is the reason given why you should come to him and do those things because I am gentle and I am humble in heart the result is next which is you will find rest for your souls and then finally he says my yoke is easy and my burden is light which for us is the benefit of the whole process so you can kind of see how we've taken those verses and we've dissected him in such a way as to have a better understanding of what Jesus is saying to whom he is saying it and how those verses are qualified and so forth I wish again I had time to go through every aspect of this dissection and look at each phrase by itself and and really see what it has to say to us today but we're gonna I think do our best to at least get through the gist of the passage so that when you leave today I think you'll have a better understanding of what Jesus is actually saying to us here but we'll go ahead and put up these as we go through them the first one that we're gonna go back and look at of course is the one we began with which is the given and that is come to me and we understand that this invitation is given to people who are going through a time of weariness and and difficulty and so forth and it is at that time that Jesus says come to me well believe it or not in this in this three-word phrase there are two words that we really need to focus on and those are the words come and me and if I could look at those with you this morning and invert them use the second one first I I I want to I want to show you a little bit more about what Jesus is actually saying first we look at the emphasis on to whom should we should come and that is to me and obviously this refers to Jesus Jesus says come to me all right and and it seems pretty obvious but the fact of the matter is it's amazing how many things we run to other than him when we are burdened when we are struggling when we are heavy-laden when we're depressed when we're frustrated stressed overwhelmed whatever the case might be we run to a lot of different things we sometimes even to people but Jesus says to come to him and by the way just as a point of clarification he's not talking about coming to religion I think some people think that Jesus and religion are essentially the same thing they are not and and we need to we need to recognize that there's a huge difference you know I've talked to people in the past who have said things like you know well you know there was a time in my life when I was going through a really hard time so I thought you know I'm gonna check out religion you know I'll come to church okay so I came to church for a while and you know I did that didn't didn't really help and you know I'm not really surprised because you know the passage doesn't say come to religion all you who are weary and burdened in fact it doesn't even say come to church all you who are weary and heavy-laden Jesus said come to me do you know that it's possible to come to church and not come to Jesus I mean I wish in my heart as a pastor that everybody who came to Calvary Chapel Ontario came for Jesus but I'm not so naive as to think that that's true I know that there are people who have come right here into this church gone through worship the teaching of the word fellowship and all and walked out of these doors unchanged I know that I understand that and I know why it's because they came and they didn't really come to him they came to church they were trying out church I'm gonna you know come and see what this is all about or see what the music does to me or or whatever and they didn't really didn't really come to to Jesus let me just let me just say this coming to church will not do any good in your life if you don't come to meet a person here and that person is Jesus Christ coming to church is not the answer coming to Jesus is the answer and you can come to church to meet Jesus you don't even have to come to church to meet Jesus you can meet him anywhere the point is meeting him he is the one who's going to meet your needs and nothing else remember the other word that we were going to look at here we've looked at me but then there's that other aspect of that first word come and this is something that we ultimately do as an act of faith on our part we've already mentioned that we're not talking about just coming to church we're not even talking about coming to God in prayer we're not even talking about coming to listen to his word none of those things are bad in and of themselves but please understand you can come to church you can come to to pray you can come to you know hang out and and still not really come to Jesus people came and listened to Jesus during his earthly ministry and they walked away unchanged They were like, yeah, whatever so you see there's nothing magical or mystical about just Either being even in his presence necessarily or hearing his word. We love his word We want to be in his presence, but if you're not coming to him if you're not coming and by coming I'm meaning Embracing him, you know It's not again, it's not just coming to listen it's coming it's it's trusting him It's putting your life in his hands. It's putting your hopes your desires your wishes It's bringing all of that to him. I'm coming to you Jesus, and I'm giving you my very life You know, I'm not just coming to hear you. I'm coming to give myself to you There's an intimacy and and a giving of ourselves. I'm coming to you Jesus You see It's it's a it's a powerful active sort of a thing You know, there are people who Come to church their Parents are usually happy when their children come to church with them. Sometimes they become very dismayed when their kids Turn 18 and leave home and then don't want to go to church and they kind of they're sitting around wondering Why aren't the kids going to church? Well, it's because they never came to Jesus they came to church and Sometimes we satisfy ourselves with that. Well, no God, my kids are coming to church Yeah, but did they come to Jesus? Did they come and embrace him? Did they give their hearts to him? Did they give their all to him and so forth? And that's that's really what Jesus is talking about when he says come To me and then the next part of this Invitation is this the specified of the invited you'll notice here It's it's just encompassed in those simple words all you and it's a general and it's an open invitation and I just I share this because Although it might seem really obvious for you to look up there and read that say well all you of course, you know That's what he but you know, there's a lot of people who don't Come to Jesus because they don't feel like the invitation is for them typically, the reason is is because they don't feel like they're worthy to Come to him and I have had people say that to me on many occasions and it breaks my heart every time You get to you're praying with somebody whatever you or you're talking rather with someone about whatever's going on in their life And so have you brought this to the Lord? Well, no, not really. Well, why not? Well, I Just I guess I just don't feel like I deserve God's help And so they don't come they don't see the invitation as all you You know, they don't apply it to themselves They might think other people have the right to come but they don't and they particularly feel that way if they're the one who they Feel got themselves into the problem, whatever they're going through people have actually said to me well you know the reason I haven't prayed about it and asked God to help me is because I'm the one who got myself into this mess and People do you know that the invitation to come to him is open Regardless of if you're the one who caused the problem He doesn't judge he doesn't say come to me all you who deserve it or come to you come to me all you who are Good enough You know guys I don't mean to offend anybody here today But listen, if you're thinking about whether you're good enough, your problem is you're thinking too much about yourself You shouldn't be thinking about yourself at all in that respect. You should simply be thinking about him and The fact that he has extended the invitation to you to come and you should let nothing stand in your way from coming Right. I mean, that's the playground of the enemy. Don't go there Don't worry and and you know, okay Let me just play into your hands for a moment Those of you who don't come because you don't feel like you deserve anything from God Let me just help you out with that one. You're right You don't deserve anything from God. Okay? Are we good now? The fact of the matter is none of us deserve anything good from God That's not why we come or don't come because we're deserving or undeserving we come because the invitation has been made None of us deserve God's help none of us deserve his blessing his grace his mercy None of us not one of us in this room can stand up and say well, you know I've actually lived a really good life. And so I deserve To have God help me out Yeah, that's not gonna happen so let's just get over that one right now, okay, none of us deserve it Let's just come anyway, because the invitation has been made The next thing that we look at here is the condition which is why we come Because we're weary and burdened Your Bible may say weary and heavy laden. Your Bible may say come to me all you who labor and are heavy laden Whatever wording might be used in your particular translation. There's a kind of a universal understanding here Of what this is all about and we may used words today. I mean people don't typically come to me and say pastor I'm heavy laden They'll say things like, you know, I'm stressed out. I'm overwhelmed. I I can't take it anymore that sort of thing It doesn't really matter What descriptive words we use we have all experienced and understand the challenge Of what Jesus is talking about here When he says that we are to come when we are feeling burdened and and and Heavy laden by the way that that word heavy laden in the Greek means weighed down and I like that I like that descriptiveness Come to me when you're weighed down when you've just got a weight on your shoulders that you just you can't carry and it's breaking You you know there's something on your heart something on your shoulders that you're attempting to carry in your own strength and You just you feel the weight of it and and so forth the the Greek I kind of looked it up I looked up some of the definitions. It refers to someone who has grown weary because of hard toil and labor Carrying what they probably ought not to carry and it could be a lot of different things, you know When Jesus was going around saying these things he was speaking to his people the Jews Primarily and we know what they were carrying They were carrying the burden of religious expectations rules and regulations, right and we know that Jesus told the Pharisees You know you you guys are incredible you tie up loads on people you literally load Stuff on their backs. You're not willing to lift a finger to help them carry it but you just load it up and and and you expect them to carry it and Jesus comes to people who are Laboring under that legalism of I've got to do it this way I got to wear my hair just this way or I got to wear just these clothes or I have to be careful to do this or to do that or to go there to wear and and and Worship on this day and do this just this exact sort of you know, that's all these religious regulations that become this burden That we can't bear and Jesus says if you're if you're burdened by that kind of stuff then you know Come to me and I I'll help you out with that I'll give you a rest from that kind of stuff, but there are all kinds of other burdens that I can think of people who've been burdened and wearied by Constant temptation in their lives to do things that they know they shouldn't people who are burdened from trials and hardships and tragedies You know You just well I've watched some people go through things in life when they just and they just seem to get one storm after another You know, it's like hardly a day goes by and another storm comes in wham You know and then and then as soon as that one's passed wham another storm and you know It's hard to watch actually and you just you want to just pray for him. Oh god, you know, just be merciful here but that's so wearying, you know, it's just and you and you get wearied by By just the the trials of life and difficulties and so forth some people become wearied by besetting sins Do you know what? I mean when I talk about besetting sins? It's not a term that we typically used much today But it refers to those sins in our lives that we keep stumbling over, you know, the things that we just We pray and and and we hate it when we do it But we do it and and we we come to God. We're like, oh god, it's me again Here we are and you just get burdened by you're wearied by it. Jesus says come to me Come to me if you're wearied by that kind of stuff And there's all kinds of other things, you know what wearies you The point is we come then to the promise next on our list here and the promises I will give you rest And of course, this is almost identical to the result that we looked at that We also put up on the screen, which is you will find rest For your souls now. Remember he says rest for your souls Okay, what is your soul? Remember? We are made up of three parts all human beings, right? We have a body That's that part we can see in the mirror We have the spirit that which is breathed into us and made alive when we come to Christ Is that part of us that communicates with God through the spirit and so forth gives us understanding and insight into spiritual things But there's also the soul and the soul Is made up of our intellect and our emotions it is basically kind of the essence of who you are And it's the part that becomes weary frankly. I mean your body can certainly become weary too, but Jesus isn't talking about that He's you can just lay down and rest for a while and take care of your body weariness, but it's that soul weariness It's that emotional weariness. That's we we we long for for a respite We run along for for rest, but we don't often get it and Jesus says I will give you rest for your souls now I want to I want to show you something interesting about the idea of the word rest because when Jesus makes a promise like this and says I will give you rest for your souls and You think of the word rest Don't don't shout out, but what do you think of you know? What goes through your mind when I say the word rest or? resting or Rested are you rested? Hey, let's go You know for a rest. You know what do you think about well? we all kind of have our different ideas, and I'll I'll talk about that here in just a moment, but You might be interested to find out that in the Bible the word rest Is one of the first words we run into? In God's Word in fact it's connected to the creation account It's in Genesis chapter 2 let me put it on the screen for you. It says that by the seventh day God had finished the work. He'd been doing so on the seventh day. What did he do it says he rested? From all his work now once again you and I being the humans that we are we read that word that he Rested from his work, and we think we understand it You know but what exactly does it mean all too often we think of rest as being sprawled out on our favorite You know chair with the remote in my hand Doing my thumb exercises. You know flipping through the channels or whatever or sometimes we define rest as Going on vacation. You know boy. It's been a busy year I can just tell that I'm tired, so I need to go get some rest We're gonna take a week off or two weeks or whatever the case might be Some people find rest in the arms of someone they love some people think of it in terms of retirement You know one someday. You know when I reach a certain age You know I'm gonna quit my job and retire And then I'm gonna be able to rest from the the work that I've been doing And that's kind of the way we define rest for the most part and you know frankly our English dictionaries feed into that That's sort of an explanation Let me show you Webster's collegiate dictionary. This is the definition of rest you ready. They say sleep They minimal functional and metabolic activities that's what they call rest freedom from activity or labor a state of motionlessness In other words not moving the repose of death that last one's a little creepy, but you understand what we're talking about Yeah, it's it's we we say rest in peace. You know whatever anyway But this is essentially how we define rest isn't it There's you know you do. I just need to rest Would you be surprised to learn that is not the definition in the Bible of the word rest as it is used here in Genesis? and as Jesus is Promising you and I rest for our souls. He is speaking of a completely different thing now Let's go back to the Genesis passage Can we put that one back on for a second? Says by the seventh day once again God had finished the work he'd been doing and on the seventh day He rested from all his work all right. Did you ever stop to think why God? Rested on the seventh day was he tired I? Don't think so The reason that God rested on the seventh day was the work of creation was over it was done Let me put it another way it was fulfilled It was over It was finished So I want you to see something God included in creation a Fulfillment and Contentment that he called rest and rest according to the Bible means to be fulfilled Content I'm good Now King David before he was even King David understood this idea of what it means to rest and In that very famous psalm that he penned the very first verse he said this The Lord is my shepherd So here's the conclusion. I shall not be in want I love sometimes to look at these verses in like a paraphrase like the Living Bible. I love this it goes like this Because the Lord is my shepherd I Have everything I need You know what he could have been saying just as this is much He could have said because God is the one who takes care of me I Can rest in him I? am content I am fulfilled I'm good I'm resting right. I'm resting. I'm not working and Restless But I am resting in him David found what it meant To rest or to find that rest in God now I Just gave you some I think what I consider to be fairly good news now. I need to give you the bad news the bad news is God as I said Put this idea of rest into his whole creation when he said on the seventh day We're gonna. You know I'm resting. It's fulfilled. It's done. It's finished.It's good. It's everything's good But you need to know something about that rest that God created in the Materialistic world that you and I live in That rest doesn't exist That rest You can go out into the world and seek that rest For all of your life, and you will never find it in the world or in the universe that is now created And that's because of sin sin is the essence of restlessness and When we run after the things that this world has to offer It will only increase our Restlessness have you ever wondered why people get addicted to things Because they're restless They want to be fulfilled there is something in each of us a desire to be fulfilled to rest to be completed to Say like David. I'm good the Lord is my shepherd. I don't have any other needs. I'm done. I'm good. It's fine I am resting in him. There is something in us that desires that longs for that But instead of turning to God, what do we do? We go out into the world. We say I'm gonna go to college and I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna work hard I'm gonna get a job and we do those things and we go out and we make our money and we buy our things and We build our little tinsel kingdom and we we do the things that the world basically tells us to do and then what happens We're not satisfied. We're not fulfilled There's still something in us that's gnawing at us to rest there is no rest There is no fulfillment You know is it's interesting to you know that demons are Experiencing that same dynamic Jesus told us he gave us this interesting insight He said when a demon comes out of a man, it goes through dry and errant places seeking rest and finding none So even demons who are Locked in the whole cycle of of what sin has caused long for rest, but cannot find it You know, there's just no Satisfaction there's no fulfillment and that is basically what life is like for people outside of Christ I'm gonna give myself to this I mean and we go from one thing to the next giving ourself to it jumping into it with all we're worth living for it and Eventually it disappoints us You know and we just say You guys know that Solomon wrote about this process of looking for meaning in life now here's a guy who had all kinds of smarts and all kinds of money and he used his smarts and his money to Investigate the things of the world to see if there was any meaning Do you know what the smartest man who ever lived said you know what his conclusion was? It's all vanity It's all vanity it's a chasing after the wind there's no fulfillment there's no Satisfaction there's no rest You you he says he says you work you toil you raise up this you that you make money Why to leave it to somebody after you die big deal you can't take it with you, you know That's kind of what life is like, you know But because sin has eliminated that rest The only way that we can get it back is by coming to Christ. He's the one who makes the invitation Come to me I'll give you that rest. I know how to give it to you It's a rest that all the vacations in the world can't give you All the delights of this world can't touch but I can give it to you. I Can give you that kind of rest that you can say with David the Lord is my shepherd So I'm good I'm good. All right now, so the obvious question comes into our minds Why is it then that as a born-again Christian? I? Struggle to lay hold of that kind of rest that kind of fulfillment Why is it I mean, is it automatic? No, it's not automatic if it were automatic then all we'd have to do is just come to Christ, you know Give our hearts to him and we would just kind of be Okay, sweet But that's not the way things go Many times we continue to struggle with the things of this world the the the Running after things and so forth. So why is that? Well I'm not going to take long to do this But in the book of Hebrews, there's an interesting discussion on the subject of rest that occurs in the fourth chapter I'm gonna put it on the screen so we can read it together and it goes like this Look at this therefore since the promise of entering his rest still stands Let us be careful that none of you be found to have fallen short of it For we also have had the gospel preached to us just as they did and is speaking of the Israelites But the message they heard was of no value to them because those who heard it did not combine it with faith So you see here this passage tells us that the answer to why we struggle with finding rest for our souls Is because we have a lack of faith unbelief as a matter of fact you guys remember don't you that Hebrews chapters 3 and 4 are kind of talking about the writer of Hebrews is Remembering how the nation of Israel came to the promised land right to the edge of the border of the promised land, right? And you remember what they did? They sent spies into the land and God had told them. Hey, this is yours. This land is yours By the way, do you know what that's called according to the Bible going into the promised land? The writer of Hebrews says that was entering into the rest of God if they just simply would have gone in by faith They would have entered into his rest But what happened they sent spies into the land didn't they and those spies came back and they said we can't take this country There's giants in there. They're gonna have us for lunch We can't do it And so all the people got discouraged and they let up a howl and none of those people actually went in from that generation Why? because of unbelief Unbelief Well the same is true for you and I we can have the same Promise that we can enter into his rest and never go in Because of unbelief because we really aren't trusting him To enable us to go in and do what he said Think about it when the nation of Israel was getting ready to enter into the rest Which we remember the Hebrew writer of Hebrews says going into the land was entering into their rest What did they do once they got into the land? They had to fight for the land didn't they they had to go to battle against the people who were there in the land You might say well that doesn't sound like rest to me Oh, it was it was rest because the battle belongs to the Lord and God told them I will do it for you. Just go in and do it. I'll take care of it rest in Me and I will accomplish it. So you see rest isn't this? Americanized idea of sitting in front of the TV with my remote is it it's walking through life It's even walking through the battles of life sometime, but knowing that God is able trusting him Trusting him to see you through that. He's gonna take care of you. He is your shepherd He is gonna walk through this situation with you. He is gonna give you the ability He is gonna enable you to be able to walk into the land and accomplish what he has given you to do in the land That's called rest Resting in him. It's not sitting around being lazy. It's trusting God and saying you know what come what may He is my shepherd and I'm good Come what may whatever battles may come my way I know that God is going to give me the victory the victory is his and I now am More than a conqueror through Christ Jesus who loved me and so forth you see That's resting yeah, we got battles on every side we got issues we got things swirling around us, but we're still resting We're entering into his rest You know, that's what it means. That's what Jesus is promising when he says come to me When you're all tuckered out You're weary You're heavy laden. You've been laboring because you know, you've been laboring in your own strength So come to me and I will give you rest Because when you come to me You're coming to the one who can do this thing who can see you through this time Who can walk you through the most difficult battles challenges and warfare's that you can imagine. I'll see you through I'll get you through the battle belongs to me. Just trust in me Just be still and know that I am God And I am going to take care of you See it all it all comes down to this issue of faith You know, am I really trusting him for the battles of life? Am I trusting him for my contentment? Remember what Paul said about that kind of contentment. He said godliness with contentment is great gain You know why? Because when we have godliness and contentment we enter into rest We enter into rest and we say Jesus, I Don't know. I don't know what you're gonna do. I don't know exactly how it's gonna happen But I trust you you're my shepherd and Because you are my shepherd It's all good Because you're good and you're faithful and I know that you love me And that's what he's promising Rest for your souls. Amen You ---