The Great Promise - Rest for Your Soul (Matthew 11:25-30) - 9/14/2014

By: Tim Keller

                At that time Jesus said, "I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure.
                "All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.
                "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."

This is a very famous passage, "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest...rest for your souls." This passage takes to the heart of what Christianity is all about. It is to remind us of who it is we are serving, what we are about, who it is we are lifting up. It tells us a lot about Jesus and what he offers. So, it's about "rest for the soul". And we are going to learn 3 things about that rest, deep inner rest, not just rest of the body, it's rest of the soul. We are going to learn:
1. Why we need it - The need for it.
2.  What it is - the character of this rest.
3. How to get it.

1. Why we need it - The need for it.

                It starts by saying, "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest" The question is, "Does he talking about a discreet group of people? the hurting people? Burned out people? And the rest of us, who are more normal, we don't need it? or is it something for everyone?" It's such a solemn statement that it seems like it's an offer to everyone. But how do we understand that then? Horace, a Roman poet, says, "No one lives content." It's hard particularly for younger people to believe that. Most younger people think, if I get a professional success, and I find somebody to love, and I do good in society, I would feel a deep satisfaction, and peace of my life; And I'll be happy with my life. I will be happy with myself. But when you get older, even if you get a professional success, love, and do good for the world, you come to realize that you are discontent, and it's a lot deeper than we think.
                Even though some of us have started to see that some people's lives go better, some are worse. But even though to some of whose lives are better, realize that as the years go by, I am still looking for something. So, Horace says that "No one lives content." While Stephen, who's a more modern writer, says, "Even in contentment, I still feel the need of some imperishable bliss." What it means is, as you get older, even if you are enjoying something, what tends to ruin the enjoyment is the thought that I'm gonna lose this. So, if I'm having a love relationship, the person is going to leave me, or they will die. And as you get older, everything just seems to go away, and life is constantly taking away from you. And he says, "the older I get, the more I can't be content with anything. Because if I am enjoying it, I can't help to think that this is going to perish. And it ruins my enjoyment of it." And if people say, Well, just live for the moment, enjoy it for now. And you are saying, No, no! That's just like an animal, who lives by instinct. I am a human being. I am thinking about things. And I want to think. And the more I think about it, and the older I get, the more I realize everything is going to be taken away from me. And the harder and harder for me to actually be content. Henrik Ibsen, a Norwegian playwright, says, "When you take away the life's lie of anyone, they lose all their happiness." What it means by the "life's lie" is that everyone spends their years being happy in anticipation. In other words, most of us can actually deal with life when we say someday I will be happy, but not now. But there is a possibility that I will be happy. And the "life's lie", according to Ibsen is, you say If I find Ms. or Mr. Right, if I get the professional success, if I can just get this done and I make enough money...you tend to say, If I can just get to 'this place', then things would be okay. And the life's lie is, if you think "this" or "this" or "this"... is going to make you happy. And you get there, and you find out, it doesn't. And when the life's lie is taken away, you lose all your happiness. 

                Jesus is saying, I am the only one that can give you the deep inner rest that you are looking for in all these other things. What does it mean by "rest"?? Does he just mean "fulfillment" in general? Probably not. Because when he says, "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened..." Later on, in Matthew 23:4, he says, "The teachers of the law ... tie up heavy loads and put them on men's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them." which means, they can't practice what they preach. He is talking about a kind of religion that the teachers of the law put on people and they're burdens. And the burdens were, "if you do all these commandments, regulations, then God would love you, and bless you, and take you to heaven, and favor you, and hear your prayers." And Jesus says, That's an incredible crushing burden. Because you have to lift up and everyday you will never be sure you are moral enough or religious enough, or good enough. And it's a terrible burden. And you says, Well, fine! But I'm not an orthodox Jew. I don't bound myself to all the mosaic ceremonial laws, and all that rules and regulations. But some years ago, Judith Shulevitz, wrote a great article on New York Times magazine, in 2003, which later turned into a book, called "Bring Back The Sabbath". And even though she's a Jew's woman, writing and trying to tell the workaholic Manhattanites taking time off is great, but she knows, the Christian, the Biblical idea of Sabbath goes beyond just taking a day off to get rest. This is what she says, "Most people believe, what you have to do to stop working, is to not work. But the machinery of self-sensorship must shut down too, stilling the eternal murmur of self reproach." Even if you are not an orthodox Jew, we all have inner self-sensorship....self reproach...the eternal murmur. What does it mean? Everybody is trying to live up to a standard, maybe your parents' expectations, or maybe you got a church background or some kind of a religious background that fills you with guilt even though you are trying to get over it, but you still feel guilty, because you are not living the way you were raised. Maybe the reason of a restless feeling that I am not good enough, is not because of your parents or your church background, but maybe it's because you just moved to New York City.  Do you know the history of the colony? Massachusetts was found as a place to live. People in Europe says  I want to find a place where we can live life and practice our religion and our way of living freely. So, people started with Virginia. They started to South Carolina to live. Do you realize why New York City was started? It was started as a trading post, a place to make money. People did not originally come here to live. They came here to work hard and make money. And guess what? We have not escaped our history. This is not a particular easy place to live. It is not a place that is not set-up to make it easy to live. It's a place set up basically for professional success. It is set up for work. And some years ago, in New York Times, by a writer, a young guy's trying to make it by coming to New York, trying to be a writer. The competition, expectations, the emphasis on success, on work, were driving him crazy. And he said, "...the quality of my work became the measure of my worth." He was being crushed under the need to live up. And Judith Shulevitz's saying, well you don't have to be an Orthodox Jew, to have a deep inner restlessness, a burden. We are all trying to live up. We are all trying to have the "eternal inner murmur" of self reproach. And Jesus says that I am the only one who can actually give the solution to that. The scientist tells you that if you sleep all night, but if you don't get REM sleep, you would wake up exhausted. And Jesus says, you are taking time off, taking breaks, going on trips, and you still can't get the deep spiritual inner rest, the REM of the soul. Only I can give you that. And he's saying that to everybody in the world, not just to the Jews at that time, not just religious people, but to everyone. I can give you, and only I can give you, a complete rest from the machinery of self-censorship, the eternal inner murmur self-reproach.

2.  What it is - the character of this rest.

Jesus is going to tell you that our culture is absolutely counter intuitive. You couldn't make it a more outrageous statement in our society than what He is about to say. So, let's ask Jesus, "What is this rest?"
And He says, "Take my yoke upon you and learn from me and you will find rest for your soul." See, come to me, and I will give you rest for your soul. "Take my yoke upon you" is a synonym. What is a yoke?

A yoke is something that you put on a burden, or oxen in the old days, and they carried wagons, or they carried plows, they were piece of burden, because every yoke attach you to a burden. That is why He can say, All of you who are burdened, come to me, and take my yoke upon you. This is astounding. Because Jesus Christ does not just say, Come to me and believe in me... or Come to me and pray to me, and I will just take all your troubles away. He says, You must yoke yourself to me. In the old days, all teachers, when the disciples came to be with the teacher, when Jesus says take my yoke upon you... means be my disciples - which is not a new idea created by Jesus. In those days, when you decide to follow a teacher, you were said to be yoked to the teacher. Here is the reason why. If you are in NYC, you want take a couple of courses, you may show up, and you will to know the teacher, the teacher grades your papers, etc; But in those days, when you want to be a disciple of a teacher means, you want to live with the teacher; And you serve the teacher; And you live in a community with other disciples; And the teacher completely dominated your life. Jesus is saying I want you to come and let me be the complete master of your life. I want you to center all you entire life around me. I want you to let me dominate your life. And that is how you find rest for your soul. If He just said, "Come to me and I will give you rest." we all will imagine some kind of spiritual experience, right?! But then He says, what I mean is take my yoke upon you, become my disciple, let me dominate your life. Give up your right to self determination. Give up your right to live a life you want, and let me completely dominate your life, and then you will find rest for your soul. You understand why it is astounding for our culture. Because our culture says that You must not give authority of your life over to anyone. You must be the master of your own life. No one has the right to tell you how to live. No one has the right to tell you what is right and wrong. You have to decide for yourself. You have to stay in control. You need to be free, to be absolutely free! And you can't possibly get it and become a Christian and now you lost your ability to decide what is right and wrong for you. No way! So, it sounds crazy to Jesus when He says, If you want inner freedom, to no longer be proving yourself. To be a complete peace with yourself. To be happy with your life. To be satisfied with your life. That's inner freedom. And Jesus says You will never get that kind of freedom, unless you let me be the master, unless you completely make me Lord.  And we say It's crazy. The only way to be free, is to be free! Now, what is the answer to that? It is actually in there, but not that easy to see, unless you emphasize the word. If you see Jesus' saying, "Take my yoke upon you..." it sounds like it's saying Well, if you want to be free, you need to come and lose all your independent and let me be your Lord or your life, and we go Thanks! But no thanks! What is the implications there? What He is saying is, all of you are already burdened. Everybody is restless. And what does it mean? It means, you are already yoke to something. Jesus is not saying you are independent. Give up your independent and come to me.  What He's trying to say is Look! We need to be politically free. But nobody is spiritually free. You are already yoke to something. What do you decide to live for? Everybody has to live for something. And whatever you decide to live for, you are yoked to. You are not free anymore. You gotta have it! Let's just say, you are living for some kind of relationship, whether it is a love relationship, or a spouse or partner, the main joy of satisfaction of your life is that person. Do you realize that you are yoked to that person? Do you realize that you are being mastered by that person? Because if that person's love and happiness is the main thing in your life, first of all, you will be emotionally over dependent on them, you will not be able to take criticism from them, it will devastate you. You won't be able to give criticism to them or be honest with them, because you can't take their anger. If they have a problem, you can't take it. Then you say, Oh yeah! I heard that co-dependence is bad. So, let me live for my job, my career. I won't be emotionally dependent on anybody. I will be a self-sufficient person. If you are living for your career, you are not a self sufficient person. You are yoked to your career. You make the quality of your work the measure of your worth. That's burned out! That's terrible!!! Then you say, maybe I'll live for my children. Many people look at me right in the eye, saying Pastor, I live for my children. If I don't have my children, I really don't have any good reason to live. Well, you're destroying your children then. If you live for your children, either they do whatever they can to get away from you, because you are dominating their lives, or worst than that, maybe they are not trying to get away from you but you are dominating their lives; and you are living your lives thru them , and they never grow independent self-sufficient adults eventually. Then you say, Alright, I should depend on my children. I shouldn't live for love or romance, I shouldn't live for my spouse.  I shouldn't live for my career. I will be a good person. I am just going to be a great person. Maybe I'll be religious. I will come to church. I read the Bible and I'll pray. I clean up my life and I'll help  other people.  And you know what that means? if you decide to make the quality of your morality, whether liberal or conservative, the measure of your worth, so that you are feeling I am living a good life. I am living out my standard. I am better than most people, then you would become self-righteous, and people will hate you, and you deserve it. And if you are not living up to your standard, you will hate yourself, and you'll beat yourself up. In other words, your soul will be either shrunk or frozen. You are not independent!! You are not in control of your life! You are living for something. You are yoked to it! We should be politically free and independent, and self determination. They are very important. But spiritual self-determination is an illusion, and it's fatal if you are trying to get it.  Because you think you are in charge of your own life, but you are being driven by career, by pleasure, or by love/romance, or something. And Jesus says Take my yoke. I am the only master that if you yoke yourself to me, I will forgive you when you fail me. And I will satisfy you when you embrace me. I am the only one like that. The only way for you to be truly free is to let me be your master, because otherwise something else will be and you won't be free. That is so absolutely basic understanding what the Christian life is about; what is the Christian messages about. And if you say Boy! The idea of making Jesus Christ my Lord, my Master, so that I have to do only what is in the Bible, I can't live my own life. Suffocating! Horrible! I want to be free the way I want to live.  You are in the veil of illusion.  It is an illusion!! It is not true. And you need to see the truth.

3. How to get it.

How do we get this peace? Interestingly enough, it's up here. You may not be looking at it. The center of gravity of this passages is obviously v. 28, 29, 30. It is so lovely, so soothing, so wonderful. And you tend to miss what is before. But look at v. 25, At that time, Jesus said, "I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure. Now in v. 20-24, Jesus's warning a certain town that had rejected the messenger and the Gospel. He's warning them, then he turns to v. 25, says Who is it that does receive my salvation?? Not the wise and learned, not the self-sufficient, not the people who feel I've got it together, it's little children. These are the ones who understand the Gospel; who receive and get revealed to them; The truth of the Gospel and who actually enter into My rest. Now, what does it mean to become like a little children? You know that this is a very common way that Jesus talked about becoming a Christian. For example, in Matthew 18:3, "...unless you change and become like little children, you will ever enter the kingdom of heaven." To come to Jesus, to become a Christian, to be converted, and to become a little child, they are all synonyms. Why then, would He use 'become a little child' to be a synonym? You have to think about the metaphor, and of course if you go thru the rest of the Bible, you realize that it does not mean that to become childish. But there are at least two characteristics in little children for you to become a Christian, and how to receive this Rest. First of all, little children know that they are helpless. It means that you have to swallow your pride. You have to be somebody who knows you can't be like the wise and the learned. You can't say Well, I have done good things, but I've done bad things. So, I need a little help from God. NO!! A Christian is somebody who says, I've done bad things, and I have done good things. But the good things were done for bad motives in general. And therefore, I need a complete grace salvation. I need forgiveness. I can't save myself. I can't make good my debt. I can't earn my salvation. I can't pull myself together. I need grace. I am spiritually helpless!! That's an extraordinary hard things for modern people to say. But that's the first thing you have got to do - to become a little child, and admit the spiritual helplessness. Secondly, they are exceedingly confident that you love them. You know that you can be with a little child, a two year old, for example, and they are just a pain to be with. They are crying , and they want this, and they want that. Then you give them that, then they don't want that, and throw it away. And they are just incredibly difficult. They will outgrow this eventually. But no matter how big  of a pain and awful they've been, they are sure that you love them. It's astounding. That's the second aspect of being a Christian. I have seen plenty of people who come to admit that they are sinners, have screwed up, and done very, very badly, and need God, then you just have to believe that Jesus Christ loves you, that He forgives you. Then you  can rest in His love. A lot of people just can't go there. They just can't believe Jesus loves me.  Therefore,  you are not a little child yet. Then how do you get there? Jesus, himself, says, I want you to take my yoke upon you, I want you to be lord of  your life. And I won't abuse you. I know you are afraid if you give up your independence I will abuse you. But, I am gentle and humble in heart. That little addition, "I am gentle and humble in heart", is critical to understanding the salvation of Jesus Christ. In the beginning of Matthew 11, John the Baptist was offended by Jesus, because of his weakness. John the Baptist said, I thought the messiah is going to be a strong man, that he come together and put together, at least a political movement, or maybe an army, because the job of the messiah is to bring judgment on evil. And because you are supposed to bring judgment to evil, why, in the world, aren't you a strong person? Why are you gentle and humble? Why are you surrounded by weak people? Why do you hang out with the poor and oppressed? Why aren't you with the strong? He was offended, and Jesus turns to him and say, I didn't come as a Messiah to bring judgment. Because if I brought judgment on evil, nobody would be left. I came in weakness to bear your judgment, to bear you punishment. And if you want to become a little child, watch Jesus Christ going to the cross and you notice something - compare Him with other Christian martyr stories, such as Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley who were burned at the stake for their faith at the monument in Oxford. As the flame were licking up, evidently, Latimer turned to Ridley and said something like this:  Don't worry, tonight we are going to have a merry supper with the Lord. (we shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out. - Wikipedia) There are lots of stories of Christians who went to their death in peace are filled with rest. Why? Because they knew God was with them. And they knew they were going to be with God. Jesus Christ did not go to the cross that way. Think about it! He was in the Garden of Gethsemane with bloody sweat, the agony; when He was on the cross, He was crying out My God, My God! Why have Thou forsaken me? He had no rest on the cross. He was cosmically restless, because God was not with Him. God abandoned Him, because He was taking the penalty that we deserved. He was getting a taste of the cosmic restlessness that we deserved. So that He can turn to us and say, Come now. I took your restlessness, and I can give you rest. It is not achieved. It is not something you earned. It is a gift! You become like a little child when you say Lord, Jesus, if you would do that for me, not just die on the cross, not just simply lose your physical peace, but Your spiritual peace; experienced that cosmic infinite restlessness and agony for me, I know You won't abuse me.  I can take on Your yoke, because of Your gentle way, and humble in heart. You died for me.  In that minute, you, not only, admit that you are helpless, but also you finally rest in His love, assured in His love. Once you realize that you do that, you take off the great burden - the burden falls off your back of having approved yourself. See, Jesus is saying If you try to rest in your own works in order to prove yourself, to God, or to your parents, or to whoever or whatever, you never have rest in your heart. But if you rest in My work, you have rest indeed - As the hymn goes,

                Lay your deadly doing down
                Down at Jesus' feet
                Stand in Hi, and in Him alone
                Gloriously complete.

You have a burden of guilt of something you did in the past? Here is another hymn,

                The terrors of law and of God,
                With me, have nothing to do
                My Savior's obedient and blood
                hides all my transgression from view.

As Paul says, in Philippians 3:9 ... I want to be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ - God, now, looks at you, and He sees you are righteous in Christ; He sees absolute beauty - no more proofing of yourself - that is how you receive this rest! That is how you destroy, for good, that internal self-censorship, constant internal murmur of self-reproach. Don't say You are not good enough! You are not good enough! But My Savior's obedient and blood hides all my transgression from view. Finally, you are free!! And don't forget this, to be a Christian is to receive this free of salvation. But then, you are supposed to be a disciple. Jesus wasn't just talking to people then. What does it mean to be a disciple? It means Now, I am learning the Bible, learning to pray, leaving with other disciples! I am accountable! If you just show up at church, and you are not seriously being instructed in the Bible; you are not seriously in any kind of accountable Christian community; if you are not a disciple, you are not having this piece of God work at every corner of your life. Come to me, all of you who are already weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learned of Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart ,and you will find rest for your soul. Because, only My yoke is easy, and only My burden is light.