Eighth Sunday after Pentecost
July 6, 2008
The Rev. Charles Henrickson
Rest for the Weary (Matthew 11:25-30; Romans
7:14-25a)
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.
Jesus here issues a wonderful invitation and makes a
wonderful promise. Come to me is the invitation,
and I will give you rest is the promise. And to
whom does he address this invitation and this promise?
To all who labor and are heavy laden. What is it,
then, to labor and be heavy laden, to be weary and
burdened? What does Jesus mean by that?
Jesus speaks to those who are weary of trying to
please God by their own efforts. He is speaking to
those who labor under the law. Those who are burdened
with their weight of guilt. Loaded down with all the
weariness and the burdens that life in this vale of
tears lays upon people. Jesus speaks to those who are
heavy laden with loads they are unable to carry. To
them, to those who realize their weariness and
burdened state, Jesus says, Come to me, and I will
give you rest.
Is Jesus speaking to you? All who labor and are
heavy laden: Is that you? Are you weary and
burdened? Then, yes, Jesus is speaking to you today.
He is inviting you to come to him, to learn from, and
to receive from him, receive the rest he freely
offers.
Jesus words back then addressed people who knew what
it was to labor and be heavy laden. The Pharisees,
you see, loaded a heavy weight on the peoples backs.
For they thought, and they taught, that the law was
something--if you worked hard enough--you could keep.
That was how you could be accounted righteous before
God--by your works. And thats a heavy burden to
bear. Only the best and most dedicated could hope to
live up to that standard--oh, people like the
Pharisees.
The Pharisees thought they could manage the law and
master it. Of course, what they did was to take the
teeth out of the law and make it just an external,
superficial keeping of the law in its outward form.
For instance, instead of really keeping the Sabbath
commandment, which had to do with resting from work in
order to hear Gods word, they would instead make up
their own regulations about how many steps you could
take on a Sabbath days journey, that sort of thing.
A manageable kind of law. And that really sidesteps
the main issue, which is that the law is to show us
the sinfulness of our heart. It exposes us as sinners
who do not want to hear Gods word and hold it sacred.
In this way we come to see our need for Gods
forgiveness and his righteousness. But the Pharisees
deluded themselves into thinking they were keeping
Gods law and thus were righteous.
To make themselves seem righteous, they had to look
better than everyone else. So they devised a lot of
man-made laws, a lot of regulations, and developed a
whole system of minute rules that, if you really put
your mind to it and worked really hard, I suppose you
could keep in some outward fashion. Other people, of
course, those who were not so attentive to these
rules, would come off looking less religious, which in
turn made the Pharisees look good by comparison. That
was their game.
Now what was the effect this had on people? They felt
weighted down, burdened. Jesus would later say of the
Pharisees, They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear,
and lay them on peoples shoulders. By directing the
people to the law--whats more, to their own added-on
human regulations--the Pharisees tied a heavy load on
peoples backs. It was more than they could bear.
This issue came up again later, in the early church.
In the Book of Acts, we read that there were some who
were saying the Gentiles--that is, the non-Jews--had
to keep all of the Jewish law in order to come into
the church. The Gentiles must be required to obey
the law of Moses, they said. But the apostle Peter
got it right when he said: Why are you putting God
to the test by placing a yoke on the neck of the
disciples that neither our fathers nor we have been
able to bear? But we believe that we will be saved
through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they
will.
The law is a heavy yoke that you and I are not able to
bear. Keeping all the commandments of God is an
enormous weight, and we are not strong enough to lift
it. The apostle Paul realized this about himself, as
we heard in the Epistle from Romans 7: For I do not
do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. . . .
For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in
my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right,
but not the ability to carry it out. . . . For I do
not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is
what I keep on doing. . . . Wretched man that I am!
Who will deliver me from this body of death?
Paul himself had been a Pharisee. He knew something
of the burden of the law. And here we can hear him
straining under that heavy weight. He knew now that
he was nowhere near good enough or strong enough to
carry that load. He couldnt do it. And if Paul
couldnt do it--and he who was about as zealous and
religious as they come--guess what? You and I cant
do it either.
This is the battle within that Paul describes here.
It is a battle raging within every Christian: our
inability to do all that we know we should do,
according to Gods law, and our corresponding tendency
to do things we know we ought not to do. We keep
falling into the ditch on either side: sins of
commission, actively doing wrong things, and sins of
omission, our failure to do the right things. This
battle within, the conflict between the new man who
wants to obey God and the Old Adam who serves only
self--this battle, and the fact that it weighs upon
our conscience--this too is the labor and the heavy
burden that Jesus is talking about.
Do you feel it? Do you realize that you have not
loved God as you ought? Do you realize that you have
not loved your neighbor as you ought? That you have
not kept Gods commandments in all your thoughts,
words, and deeds? Do you realize that this law of God
condemns you as a sinner and sentences you to death?
And that there is no escape, no way out, nothing you
can do to get out from under the crushing weight of
the law that comes crashing down on your head? Pauls
question remains relevant today: Who will deliver me
from this body of death?
Thank God, Paul knows the answer to his own question!
He joyfully declares: Thanks be to God through Jesus
Christ our Lord! Yes, dear friends, it is through
Jesus Christ our Lord that you are delivered, that the
load is lifted, the burden removed. Thats why Jesus
can say, Come to me, and I will give you rest.
Jesus Christ is the only one who can do this for you.
He is the only one strong enough to carry the load
that is the weight of the law. Thats what Jesus did.
He lived the life we do not live. He kept Gods law
perfectly, in our place. His love for God was total,
his love for the neighbor complete. Nothing was left
out or fell short of the mark.
Then Jesus did something more. The crushing weight of
the law, the sentence it pronounces on sinners, the
verdict it declares, Death to all those who do not do
all that is written therein--the death sentence we
deserve Jesus suffered in our stead. The sinless Son
of God did the unthinkable--he died the death of
sinners, hanging on a cross, suspended between heaven
and earth, mocked by men and abandoned by God. That
is a heavy load to bear, nothing heavier.
In ancient Greek mythology there was a fellow named
Atlas. His job was to carry the world on his
shoulders. Well, dear ones, Jesus is our real-life
Atlas. He carries the weight of the world on his
shoulders, he really does. The heavy, unbearable
weight of the whole worlds sins. That is the load
Christ carried to the cross. He lifts it off of your
shoulders and puts it on his own.
Remember how Jesus entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday:
Humble and mounted on a donkey. A donkey is a beast
of burden. For Jesus came into Jerusalem so that he
himself would bear the burden of our sins by carrying
them to the cross.
My friends, the weight of your sins has been lifted,
the load has been removed. That heavy load is gone
just as surely as the huge, heavy stone was rolled
away on Easter morning. The heavy millstone of
judgment, the enormous tombstone of death--these have
been rolled away. Sin is forgiven, death is
destroyed. Jesus lifts these burdens from you. And
now he says to you, in warm, inviting tones: Come to
me, and I will give you rest. Quit struggling on
your own. Lay down your burdens at foot of the cross.
See my nail-pierced hands. I have done the job for
you. Now you are free.
In his book, Pilgrims Progress, John Bunyan tells
the story of a Christian on a journey, carrying a
large bundle on his shoulders. He arrives at a place
somewhat elevated above the surrounding area. On that
hill there stands a cross, and below the hill there is
a grave. As the man comes to the top of the hill with
his heavy burden, the load is suddenly released from
his shoulders. It drops to the ground, rolls down the
hill, and disappears into the empty grave. That is a
picture of what Christ has done for us. We labor
along, carrying a heavy load. The cross appears
before our eyes. We lay our heavy load down there,
and it is rolled away.
What a relief! What rest for our souls. As St.
Augustine once prayed to God, Thou hast formed us for
thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find
rest in thee. Here then is the rest you need. Jesus
Christ is our Sabbath rest. He gives us rest and
refreshment from our labors. Our hearts are restless
till they find their rest in thee. And we find that
rest in Christ.
The yoke of the law is a load too heavy to bear.
Jesus bears it for you. But notice what he says:
Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me. . . . For
my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. What? Is
Jesus just giving us one yoke in place of another?
No, not as though he were some new lawgiver. Rather,
Jesus yoke is really an invitation to discipleship:
Come to me. Learn from me. To take his yoke
upon us is to be his disciples, to follow him in faith
and receive rest and new life from him. Thus it is,
paradoxically, an easy yoke, a light burden.
Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I
will give you rest. Come to Jesus, and find the rest
you need. Rest for the weary, those worn out by their
sins and the effects of sin we labor under in this
fallen world. Rest for the battle-weary, Christians
who feel and are grieved by the internal battle
within, as the new man has to contend with the sinful
flesh. Rest from just all the burdens we
feel--sadness and pain, sorrow and loss.
Jesus is speaking to you today: Come to me, and I
will give you rest. Yes, come and lay your burdens
down. Find true spiritual rest in Christ, both for
this life and for the age to come. We have this rest
now--peace with God and the forgiveness of sins. And
we have the sure hope of eternal rest in the promised
land of heaven. Soon, soon to faithful warriors
cometh rest; sweet is the calm of paradise the blest.
And that, my friends, is the rest of the story.
Charles Henrickson
4749 Melissa Jo Ln
St. Louis, MO 63128
(314) 845-8811 (home)
(314) 779-8108 (cell)
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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