“Come to Me,
all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Matthew 12:28-30
Matthew’s gospel has an interesting arrangement: We see Jesus doing things for a while, then we see Him saying things for a while—chunks of action alternating with chunks
of teaching. (If you have a Bible with words
of Christ in red, you’ll see a few pages of mostly black text alternating with
a few pages of mostly red.) Our theme
verse comes at the end of a “red section,” so it’s helpful to look at what else
Jesus says there.
- First, Jesus sends his disciples out on a mission saying “go nowhere among the Gentiles…but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” He warns them that they’ll face much opposition from the Jews, but that the reward will be worth it.
- Then He spends some time answering the question “are you the Messiah?” Jesus points out that that the Law and the Prophets predicted what both He and John the Baptist were doing, but very few people believed it.
- Continuing on the topic of unbelief, Jesus also points out that the towns where He did a lot of His miracles refused to believe He was the Messiah—which made them more wicked than even Sodom and Gomorrah!
- Finally, Jesus talks about the people who will believe He is the promised Messiah: not the important religious leaders, but people who might be viewed as lowly and unimportant but trusting, like children. This is where our text comes in.
Do you see a theme? Lost sheep of Israel…Law and Prophets…the
Messiah… These
pages show Jesus speaking especially to the people of Israel. (Not too much farther on Matthew will show
how Israel’s unbelief reaches a climax. Jesus will start speaking against the
leaders more strongly, and ultimately He’ll turn his focus to the upcoming
Church.) Knowing who Jesus’ original
audience is will help us understand what He said to them.
“Come to me, you who labor and are heavy-laden.”
We can think of many things in our modern world
that fit this description: raising a busy family; having mounting
responsibilities at work; being deeply involved in ministry; carrying a heavy weight
of expectations. Is this what Jesus had
in mind? Maybe, but it’s also possible
he was speaking specifically to people who were heavily burdened with man-made Jewish
commandments. In addition to the Law
given by God through Moses, down through the years the religious leaders had
added many other laws. For example, God’s
command not to work on the Sabbath now included “a woman
cannot look in a mirror on the Sabbath, because she might be tempted to pull
out a gray hair and that would be work.”
Seriously! The people
of Jesus’ day labored under a massive rule system that ultimately did nothing for them. In His compassion, Jesus reached out and
offered them rest from their unending, useless effort.
“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.”
Here
are three observations that may help us understand Jesus' words better:
·
“Yoke” was often
used as a metaphor for the Law as interpreted by the rabbis.
·
“Learn from Me” is something a rabbi
might say—an invitation to learn from an expert in the Law.
·
“You will
find rest for your souls” is probably a direct quote from Jeremiah 6:16. There God says to Israel: “Stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where
the good way is; and walk in it, and find
rest for your souls. But they said,
‘We will not walk in it.’ I set watchmen over you, saying ‘Pay attention to the
sound of a trumpet!’ But they said ‘We will not pay attention.’”
Look at Israel’s response in the Jeremiah text. In verse 19 God goes on to say “they have not
paid attention to My words, and as for My law, they have rejected it.” Doesn’t that look a lot like the response Jesus
just described in Matthew? Like the
prophet Jeremiah, Jesus was God’s Messenger to bring Israel back to Himself and
His perfect Law but the people refused to listen or believe.
In some ways the situations in Jeremiah and Matthew are
different. In Jeremiah’s day, the people
outright rejected God and His Law. In
Matthew’s day the people looked like
they were super-dedicated to God’s Law, but they exalted their own efforts and
ended up rejecting God Himself. In both
cases, though, the people needed a
rest for their souls that was only available if they came to God on His terms. Jesus, the Messiah of
Israel, was offering to show Israel the true purpose of the Law. They needed to trust Him, repent, and return
to God.
So how does
this speak to us today?
We’re not burdened under the Jewish Law; in Ephesians the Apostle
Paul says the Church is a “new man” created apart from the Law. But are we not still tempted to rely on our
own efforts to win God’s favor? Don’t we
sometimes feel the pressure of unwritten rules that determine whether we are a
success or a failure? Doesn’t our pride
often fuel a need to appear super-spiritual?
In the midst of these temptations, our hearts still crave a rest for our
souls. We, as believers today, must
still come to God on His terms for us;
we must come to Him through Christ.
Complete in Thee, no
work of mine
May take, dear Lord,
the place of Thine;
Thy blood hath pardon bought for me,
And I am now complete
in Thee.
Yea justified, O
blessed thought!
And sanctified! Salvation
wrought!
Thy blood hath pardon
bought for me,
And glorified I, too,
shall be!
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