Come To Me

Good morning. You can turn in your Bibles to Matthew 11, verses 28 through 30. Come to me, Jesus says. Take my yoke. Learn from me. He had said, My Father has hidden these things from the wise and understanding. He has revealed them to little children. So come to me like a child.

Take my yoke. I am gentle. Learn from me like a child. Jesus has said, all things have been handed over to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father. No one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.

Jesus is the perfect revelation. He says, I am the truth. He reveals the truth about the Father. He's the inside scoop about the Father and what the Father wants. And what Jesus says is, come to me, not to someone else. Take my yoke, not someone else's. Let me be your teacher, not someone else.

The kingdom has suffered violence since the time of John the Baptist. Even in the life of Jesus, there is turmoil, there's conflict, there's anger, there's deception, there's scheming, there's plotting. It's like a chaotic storm with loud shouting opposition, and in the middle of all of that, somehow, in the storm, we're supposed to decide.

And yet, because of the Trinity's perfect plan of revelation that we studied last week, where Jesus is, it's not a storm. He's calm in the midst of the storm. Jesus doesn't have to join the chaos and shout over all the other voices. God has miraculously hidden the truth from the wise and revealed it to the simple, so that quietly, in the eye of the storm, Jesus can simply say, Come to me.

Take my yoke, learn from me. His sheep will hear the voice of their shepherd. Little children will come. If you've never come to Jesus, I hope that you'll come today. I hope that you'll hear his voice. And come to him. He offers you what no one else can offer you, and that's rest for your soul.

That's what he offers you. As he calls you to come, he gives you three promises: he says, I will give you rest. He says, I am gentle and lowly, and he says, My yoke is easy. Come to me. Listen to what he says and come to him. Trust him and come to him.

For those who have already come, maybe you've forgotten that your king wants you to rest. He wants your soul to find rest. That's what he wants for you. All the turmoil that you walk around with, even as a Christian, all the anxiety, all the bubbling, persistent worry that you walk around with, all the busyness.

You're walking around as if that's something that God wants for you. Like he wants you to be stressed, as if that's what it looks like to be faithful as you serve him, as if God is constantly bothered by you, as if you need to do penance for your sin.

But that's not what your king wants. Your king wants your soul to be at rest in him. He wants you to be settled. He wants your yoke to be easy. He wants your burden to be light. So listen to the promises that he makes today. I will give you rest.

I am gentle and lowly, and my yoke is easy. Listen and come to him again and rest. Follow along as I read Matthew chapter 11, verse 28 through 30. Jesus says, 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. Pray with me. Father, we long for this rest that Jesus speaks about to help us understand, to help us come to him, help us remember that his yoke is easy and his burden is light, and he wants. us to find our rest in him and help us rest in him today in Jesus' name amen the first promise from our gentle Savior is I will give you rest look at verse 28 Jesus says come to me all who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest all who labor that's a picture for our soul right all who labor a laborer is tired they worked all day and how depressing how painful to hear at the end of working all day and wearing yourself out and you're exhausted how painful it would be to hear it's not enough you haven't done enough work you have more work to to take home tomorrow you're going to come back and work and it's still not going to be enough the work never ends it's more stressed the next day it's unrelenting but how relieving to hear that's enough you've finished the project you can go home and rest you can let it go take your mind off work well spiritually you need to hear both your work is never enough You need to feel this.

If you are someone who's still trying to earn the pleasure of God, you need to feel this. You need to understand that, full of exhaustion at the end of every day, as you have tried to obey his commandments again, the answer is always the same: you haven't done enough.

There is more to do. You can never cross the finish line of earning God's favor. It's an unattainable goal because of the depth of your own sin. You need to feel that because it's only when you feel that that you can understand what Jesus says when he says, I will give you rest.

You will find rest for your souls. This is a call for you to be saved. This is a call for you to be forgiven. He doesn't want you to labor harder so that you can try and earn your way into heaven. He wants you to stop laboring. You can't find rest apart from him.

He wants you to come to him and rest from your works. So he invites you, come to me. In his day, that was choosing between two alternatives: it was come to Jesus or keep listening to the Pharisees, the tradition. Pretending that fastidious observation of the law is going to earn you God's favor.

They were whitewashing over sin, but it was a false rest that never actually arrived because there was always more to do. Yet, so many in Jesus' day heard him say, Come to me, and they chose, No, I'm going to stick with the Pharisees. I want to believe that my religious works earn me something.

I want to go through the motions and appease my conscience. It's the same error of every false religion since I want this. The only alternative is what Jesus offers. It's not do more religious deeds. It's come to me, I will give you rest. Come to me, I will give you rest.

Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts. Strive to enter that rest from your works. Why does forgiveness give us rest? Why is this the word he uses? Well, if any of you have ever been in debt, then maybe you understand. That you labor, you toil, you work so hard, you get this big paycheck, and it all just goes towards the debt.

And you just pay a little bit more out of your debt, and it feels like you're not making any progress at all. But when that debt gets paid off, when there's no more loans, when there's no more car payment, when there's no more mortgage, there's relief. I'm out.

I can rest. I can spend, I can give, I can bless, I can share, I can rest. There's relief. When we're forgiven in Christ, all of our debt is erased. And by the way, that was a debt that we were not even making a dent in. We had no hope of ever paying that debt off.

But that debt has been paid for entirely. Blank check, totally forgiven for all of eternity. So we're starting on this new level where all of a sudden, just like when everything's paid off in our own life financially, we're starting on this new level where everything is only positive.

I have no liabilities. In Christ, I only have assets. I only have positive. Everything negative is paid for. I'm on this foundation where now everything positive is. Rewarded, and I don't deserve this. This feels wrong. It feels scandalous, even that that's okay, that everything negative is paid for, and it's only positive, and I can be rewarded for the good that I do.

But that's grace, that's the freedom that we're invited into. That's the rest that we can have in Christ. Jesus doesn't just say all who labor, he also says, all who are heavy laden, all who are carrying heavy burdens and lifting this weight, this burden. I remember going on a wilderness backpacking trip when I was in college.

It was stinky. There were a lot of us, and it was many days. It was a couple of weeks, and we were hiking through a wilderness, and we'd hike and hike and hike, and we had to take everything with us, our tent, our sleeping bags, and all our food, and so it was heavy.

And I remember loving whenever the group would stop for water. And it's not because I needed water, it's because I finally got to put my bag down because the thing was so heavy, and I got to just stand there. And it just felt like I was so relieved of all the weight.

I could put the bag down. You feel the same thing when you're on vacation, and you're taking all the bags, and you finally get to the hotel room, and you just get to set them down, and you're free. You're unencumbered. That's what Jesus offers for your soul. You're walking around with these heavy burdens, these heavy bags.

He says, Hey, you don't have to do that anymore. Come and rest. So, picture what that feels like, laying down your burdens, the physical freedom that comes from that. Picture what it feels like to rest from your work. You've made it to the end of a semester, you've made it to the end of your project at work, there's no more homework, there's no studying, it's just done.

Picture what it's like relationally when we have that rest. When I go to Tombaugh, where I'm from, and I go to the house that I grew up in, and I'm around my parents, it's like entering a different world. All of a sudden, I just get to, you know, I'm at rest.

I'm with my brothers, and they're so easy for me to be around. I'm just at rest relationally. Even more in marriage. You know, we love spending time with others, we love spending time with all of you. But when it's finally time again for us to just be together, just us, you know, what a relief.

Rest. I'm trying to remind you of all of these feelings, physical rest, and bags being unloaded, and rest from your labor, and no more work, and all the restful places, and the most restful people for you to be around. I'm trying to remind you of all these things because spiritually, in your soul, that kind of rest is constantly available in Christ.

You can always have that as a believer in Jesus Christ. You can be unburdened. You won't always be. Be resting from your job. I know that you won't always be relationally or physically unburdened. I know that. But spiritually, you never need to not be rested. It's always available to you.

Jesus wants you to find rest for your soul. So why do you keep rushing around? Why do you fuss so much? Why are you so busy? Why do you carry around such anxiety? You can just put the bags down. You don't need those burdens anymore. He wants you to rest.

You're saved. You're clean. You're forgiven forever. Jesus wants your soul to be at rest. So I want to challenge you to stop acting like Jesus wants you to be anxious. Stop telling yourself that you haven't done enough yet. He has done enough. And he has done that. He's laid down his life so that you can find rest for your soul.

Don't pretend like he wants something different, that he wants you to be anxious. He wants you to rest. He wants you to feel the freedom then to love. Listen, if you are bothered by others a lot, if others aren't doing enough for you, if others are threatening your status quo, maybe it comes out for you and being agile.

Or being angry. Maybe it comes out in being nervous or quiet or anxious. There's a good chance that it all stems from this: that you aren't resting in Christ. My kids love it when I finish writing my sermon every week. I'm different. I'm a different person after I finish.

The burden is off. You know, it's like a vacation just started. Spiritually, the same can be true for us, right? If we'll only come to Jesus and rest in Him first and stay in that rest, well, then suddenly trials don't scare us as much. It's okay, I'm resting in Christ, anyways.

Suddenly, people don't bug us as much. It's okay, I'm at rest in my soul. My soul, because of the rest that Jesus has provided, He's paid for everything negative. Now I'm on this foundation where it's only positive, I can only do things that are rewarded. My soul then is free to love others.

Our gentle Savior has promised, I will give you rest. The second promise is, I am gentle and lowly. Look at verse 29. He says, 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.

Come to me, take my yoke, learn from me. Why? He says, I'll give you rest, and I promise I am gentle and lowly. When you come to me as your Savior, when you come, I'm not going to slam you all of a sudden. This is not a bait and switch where it's rest at first, but then I'm going to become a harsh taskmaster and your slave for the rest of your life.

That's what the Pharisees offer, and later that's what the Judaizers offer. Remember, Paul says of the Judaizers, this is Galatians 4:17. He says, They make much of you, but for no good purpose. They want to shut you out, that you may make much of them. Not Jesus. That's not what Jesus does.

Jesus says that when you come, what you're going to find is exactly what he's promised. You're going to find that he is gentle. He's gentle. He also says, I am lowly in heart. I'm humble. I haven't come to exercise my right to always be served as king. Instead, I came as a servant.

I came to serve you. I came lowly. And so I'm easy for your soul to be with because I'm gentle and lowly. When you come, because I'm gentle and lowly in heart, when you come, you're going to find that you are at home with me. So learn from me.

I'm a better teacher than the Pharisees. They want to distort and confuse. They want to make much of themselves. And when you go to them, you're going to find that the lessons they teach will never satisfy you. So learn from me. I'm the one who can teach you to have true rest.

Are you a beginner? It's okay. I'm gentle and lowly. I'll be patient. I'll put up with your mistakes. I'm gentle and lowly. But come, learn grace. Come and learn the truth. Come and learn my commandments, which are not burdensome. If you're an unbeliever in this room today and you've never come to Jesus, this is an invitation from the best teacher, the gentle and lowly teacher, the kindest teacher.

It's an invitation for you to come and learn from him. He is the only one who truly knows the Father, and he teaches what no one else can teach. And he's telling you, you can come, you can learn, you can be forgiven. If you're already a believer, the question for you is: have you stopped learning from Jesus?

And I don't just mean doctrine, I don't just mean filling with head knowledge. Of course, growing in knowledge is something that we emphasize at this church, but I mean something different. I mean, have you stopped learning from Jesus about the grace and the rest that he offers? Maybe you remember when you first became a believer and it washed over you that you had this mountain of sin, and in Jesus Christ, you are forgiven of all of your sin.

And you can remember that glorious freedom that you felt, and you can hardly believe it, that all your sin is paid for. And then it's like you just slowly started to forget that. And you started to think, I still need to be anxious about this. I still need to work about this.

The burden of your sin has grown heavier and heavier. You've forgotten that you're forgiven. That burden is gone. You've forgotten to come and learn from him. You've started to treat him like he's a harsh and distant teacher. You've started acting like he's taught you to live an anxious life.

You stopped rehearsing the gospel to yourself, reminding yourself of how far. Forgiven and free, you are reveling in your closeness to Jesus who loves you and is gentle and lowly in heart. Well, let today's passage be a call to you to come back to your gentle and lowly teacher and be close to him.

He wants you to remember, he wants you to find rest for your soul again. Third, the third promise from our gentle Savior is, My yoke is easy. So, why is it that you will find rest for your soul when you come to Jesus? Verse 30, he says, For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

The Pharisees lay on a heavy burden. Matthew 23:4 says, They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger. It's the empty promise of religion, a rest that never arrives. It's the yoke of the law.

Remember later, the Galatian church, they're tempted to come back under the law and start to do things like circumcision and other marks of the law. And Paul writes to them and he says, For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

That's Galatians 5:1. Legalism, the idea that you can earn. God's favor by works of the law. That's a heavy burden and a hard yoke. Jesus is the opposite. He says, take my yoke. It's easy. Why is it easy? Because he's taking care of everything. There's nothing left for you to pay for because he's paid for all your sin on the cross.

Why is a baby's life easy? You know, I just spoke with a couple who was pushing their baby around our neighborhood. It's easy to be that baby, right? When the baby is up at night, waking up the parents again, the parents don't then spend the next day shaming the baby.

How dare you? Everything negative is taken care of. It's the blank check of love. Parents are happy to take care of those negative things. So that all that's left is positive. The parents can simply delight in the smiles and the laughter of their baby. It's easy to be that baby.

What about for you? If every stain of guilt in your life has been removed, then I don't need to keep spending all my hours trying to scrub that stain and getting it out. It's already gone. I don't need to spend all my hours trying to hide that stain from others.

The stain is gone. It's forgiven. Everything negative has already been paid for, so now I am free to use my hours for love. All that's left is positive. God can simply delight, like a parent. God can simply delight in me loving others. That's an easy yoke. That's a light burden.

So Jesus says, Take my yoke. Reject the yoke of the Pharisees. Reject the yoke of false religion. Reject the yoke of trying to earn this yourself. Come under me. Take my yoke. Now don't get confused. This is not a less moral yoke. Jesus is not saying something like, oh, those Pharisees, they're always fussing with righteousness.

My yoke makes it so we can all have a little fun and be a little bit naughty. That's not what Jesus is saying, right? It's the opposite. The Pharisees are not actually righteous at all. They're self-righteous and they're arrogant and they're doing what God despises and they're pretending like it's what God wants, just like every false religion sense.

It's Jesus' way that's righteous. It's the most righteous because when All of our sin is paid for, then I'm no longer doing any righteous deed for myself. I'm already paid for. Instead, I'm doing those things out of love. I'm doing those things because I've been freed. I've been released out into the world to pour out love.

I have a blank check of forgiveness, and now I've been set free from my cage and given the freedom to sacrifice for others, love others, pour myself out for others. Jesus's easy yoke is not less moral, it's more moral, but that morality is coming from a place of rest.

It's not anything that I owe, it's my joy now to take up that yoke and serve Him. I keep His commandments, but His commandments aren't burdensome. I keep His commandments because I love Him. That burden is light, and that's what Jesus offers to all of us. What does it look like when you choose to live the opposite way?

When you choose to live with the heavy burden and the hard yoke? Well, first, you're robbed of joy. If you let your heart trick you into thinking that Jesus has a heavy burden, you're robbed of joy. You're robbed of the relief and relief. And the rest that you can have in Jesus Christ.

Second, you become selfish. If you succeed in lifting up this heavy yoke that you think you need to earn, well, then you're just going to become arrogant and selfish. More likely, you're going to fail, and then you become self-centeredly bitter. Remember what we read earlier about the Judaizers: they make much of you, but for no good purpose.

They want to shut you out that you may make much of them. So, when you try to live with this heavy yoke, not the one Jesus offers, you're robbed of joy. You become selfish. Third, you start putting burdens on others. If I have to live with this burden, then so does everyone else.

Others need to follow the rules and the expectations that you have because you follow the rules and you do it right. Just like the Pharisees, they tie up heavy burdens hard to bear, lay them on people's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger.

So, when others don't abide by your rules, they need to hear about it. You expand their sin so that it can be examined and you can feel a little bit of the justice that you long to feel because you follow the rules and they didn't. When you remember to live under the easy, Yoke and the light burden of Jesus Christ.

You are free in your soul. You don't have to go there at all. You have lightness and an abiding joy because you are resting in Christ and your burden is light. When others sin against you, you don't expand their sin, you shrink it and you forgive it and you forget it.

Relationally, you want it to be an easy yoke to be your friend. You want others to have a light burden. You want to be quick to forgive and say, no worries, Jesus made it easy for me to know Him. When I sin so much against Him, I want to be that kind of blessing to others.

I want it to be easy to know me. I want people to be at rest around me. That's what we want. That's the best way to live. There's so much joy in that way to live. Experiencing that easy yoke and light burden, so that then we get to give that to others.

We get to bless them. It's such a blessing to be our friend. Not because we're special, but because we have an easy yoke. There's a way worse way to live as a Christian. And it's meeting some kind of religious minimum, whatever it is that you made up. Maybe for you and your family, it was you have to attend church every week, or maybe it's you had to give 10% of your income because somebody told you that that was a rule.

And so you're meeting some kind of religious minimum, and you're not killing anybody, and you're not committing adultery, you're not lying, or cheating, or stealing. To be frank, that's a pretty low bar of Christian maturity, isn't it? It's pretty pathetic. But the worst mistake than setting that bar low is that even with that low bar, you're still not living in the rest that Christ provides.

It's the worst way to live as a Christian. It's setting the level to some very easy kind of Christianity and then acting like that's enough to labor and please Christ. But there's no closeness to Christ. And so you don't even see that that's not what he wants. That's not what he said.

There's a better way to find your rest in him, to stop earning anything. Find your rest in him. Preach the gospel to yourself again. Read Psalm 103 again. Remember that your sin is removed from you as far as the east is from the west, and rest in him.

Find rest for your soul. Then you're free. To not put the bar away down here anymore. Because you're totally free and forgiven. And so you can put the bar way up here: I want to pour myself out for others. I want to live my life for others. You're standing on this rich, joyful foundation of freedom in Christ.

So that then, from that place of rest, you can just pour yourself out for others. There's freedom, there's margin, there's space, so that you can love and serve and give and bless. Last week, we read a little bit from Exodus 33. God had revealed himself to Moses in such a special way.

Moses said, You know me, but I don't know you. And God revealed himself to Moses and declared his name. Well, what's interesting is in the middle of that passage, God says this to Moses: He says, My presence will go with you, and I will give you, singular, I will give you rest.

That's what he says to Moses. We looked at it last week because this knowledge now that Moses has with God makes it so he can be the revealer. And we looked at how it's infinitely more with Jesus. Only the Son knows the Father, only the Father knows the Son.

They have this depth of relationship, so Jesus is the exclusive revealer of who the Father is. But if that's true, if it's true that Moses reveals truth about God and that God provides this rest in him, then it's even more true that Jesus, who reveals the closest knowledge with God, also invites us into that rest.

We can find rest for our souls as he reveals the truth. He wants you to have the easy yoke. He wants your soul to be at rest. So if you've never come, I want to invite you again to come today. Come to Jesus. Rest from your labor. Stop trying to earn your salvation.

Rest from your labor. Jesus is gentle and lowly in heart. But if you've come before, and let me close on this, okay? If you've come before, stop forgetting that this is what Jesus offered you. Stop pretending like the call was to come and rest, but now start to get busy and start to get anxious and start to try and earn yourself back into God's favor.

Don't mess with that. Maybe you're a dad and you're feeling the weight of providing for your family. You're feeling the weight of authority and leading your family. And so you've started to just plow into every day, laboring to try and stay faithful to God. Well, don't start like that.

Rest first. Come to Christ. Let your burden be light. I'm forgiven. And then from that rest, you have the freedom to love so that you're loving from freedom and joy and rest, and then you're seeking to be faithful. Maybe you're a mom and you worry about your children and you worry about what the other moms think and you worry about the future and you have all these bags that you're carrying and they're heavy.

Just put them down. You're laboring. You're heavy laden. Jesus wants you to just put those bags down and feel the rest that you have in him. Feel the freedom that you have in him and then use that freedom to love and serve with a carefree heart. Your king wants you to be at rest, whoever you are.

Remember what Jesus said last week. He said, I'm the only one who knows the Father. Father is the only one who knows me. I am the revealer of who the Father is. Remember, he revealed this Trinitarian pleasure and who can come to the Father. And what He's revealing today as the Great revealer, as the one who is the truth, as the only one who can reveal who the Father is and what the Father wants, what does he reveal?

He reveals that the Father wants you to rest. That the whole Trinity, this miraculous project of hiding from the wise and revealing to the simple, what are they revealing? What is this grand, glorious plan that they're revealing? They're revealing that they want you to rest. Come to me.

That's what your gentle and lowly Savior says. Come to me. Take my yoke. Learn from me. Pray with me. Father, we've heard this so many times and it just doesn't sink in. And we just get anxious again. And we just start laboring again, and we forget grace, and we're blind to the grace we've received.

We forget our salvation. We forget the joy of standing on this wonderful foundation with all of our debts paid. We start pretending something else is true, like we have all these burdens again. And just pray, Father, that you'd help us. us be free from that help us remember that Jesus wasn't tricking us when he offered this rest for our soul rest for our soul so I pray Father that Each and every one of us in this room, I pray that you would cause us to strive to enter into that rest.

I pray that if there's someone here who's never done that before, that they would come and rest from their works and come and trust you as the one who forgives. Come to Jesus Christ as the teacher, the one they can learn from with the easy yoke and the light burden.

I pray that people would come. But for all of us, for Redeemer Baptist Church, for our church body, I pray that you'd help us all remember. You've offered us rest. And inside that rest, there is joy. Joy. And there's freedom. Help us remember to come and rest. Walk with a light burden and an easy yoke.

In Jesus' name, amen.