Rest for a Restless World.

7th Sunday after Pentecost
July 3, 2005
Matthew 11:25-30

^11:25At that time Jesus said, "I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; ²⁶yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. ²⁷All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.

²⁸"Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.

²⁹Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. ³⁰For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." (NRS).

We live in a restless world. I don’t mean that most of us can’t sleep well at night, nor do I mean that we never get days off. We just had a holiday. I mean that we very rarely have a sense of complete peace, security and ease. I speak of the kind of peace of mind you get when you get a good job that you believe will last you to retirement; or the sense of relief and release you get when you make you’re the last payment on your car or house; or the feeling of accomplishment when you complete some project, like we’ll have when we finish the renovations at our new church site and move in. Those kinds of feelings together make up a sense of rest. The work is over; everything is prepared and set in order for a long time to come. We cease to anxiously or maybe greedily strive for a goal. Instead we enjoy the attainment of the goal and the state of rest it provides: ease, security and peace.

But as I said, we live in a restless world. We attain goals from time to time but never all our goals at once. Nor do they last. There’s always something to worry about or struggle for, something that keeps us from being at rest. We’re always searching for that state of rest.

For example, you no doubt have some financial needs and goals. You may need enough money to go to university or to a vocational school or help your children do that. Maybe your goal is to buy a house, to start a business or to retire with enough income to travel and do the kinds of things retired people like to do. So you make a plan and start working, saving and investing. Maybe you even call in a professional financial planner. You get it all set up with a nice portfolio. You feel somewhat at ease, at rest. Then you watch the news. This past week Nortel had a stockholders meeting. Nortel stocks have gone from $124 to about $0.69. Stockholders are worried that they will never get back the money they counted on for different things. If they were at rest a few years ago, they are not now! The fact is, it is very difficult to rest financially. Few of us have great wealth that cannot be lost.

Take another example of our restlessness. This week I read an article about a new threat to American and perhaps Canadian military and political security. The article was titled about EMP, Electromagnetic Pulse. If a nuclear weapon is detonated in space, its energy will react with the atmosphere to cause an “enormous pulsed current of high-energy electrons that will interact with the Earth’s magnetic field. The result is the instantaneous creation of an invisible radio-frequency wave of uniquely great intensity—roughly a million-fold greater than that of the most powerful radio station.” The result could be huge electrical currents in power lines and everything connected to them, like when lightning strikes I guess. This has the potential of causing a national blackout, shutting down communications, computers, etc., and bringing us to a halt. And it doesn’t take a superpower to do this. A small country or terrorist organisation could do it. So we have one more thing to worry about. More restlessness!

We could cite many other examples—like health issues and relationships—to show that we don’t really live at ease in a state of peace and security. We can never relax, once for all, knowing that everything is in order and that our future is secure. There’s always something for which we must struggle. We are always in some sense weary and burdened with heavy loads, like the Jews to whom Jesus spoke. They were an occupied nation which gave them economic and political restlessness. There were those who advocated revolution and those who simply gave into the pagan culture of the Roman world. There was John the Baptist telling them to repent and the Pharisees loading them with the burden of religious rules. Like our own situation, it all seemed a far cry from what we think God intends for us. And it is! That’s why Jesus says, Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.

The idea of rest weaves its way through the Bible. There are especially two concepts of rest that stand out and bring us to Jesus’ words. First there is the Sabbath, the day of rest. God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all their multitude. And on the seventh day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation. (Genesis 1:31-2:3).

The Sabbath day was a day of rest because God had finished a perfect creation. No creature in the world, including man, lacked anything. There truly was a state of rest, a state of peace and security. So the commandment for Israel to observe the Sabbath was a gift from God. He was ordering them, every seventh day, to stop their frantic activity and enjoy the peace and security that he—the Creator—would provide for them. That was rest, a total sense of well-being knowing that God had everything under control.

The other concept of rest has to do with the Promised Land. In Egypt the Israelites were slaves. They had no ease, no peace or security. They could not rest. So when God brought them out of Egypt, out of the land of their slavery, he took them to a good land where he would give them rest. God would be with them, care for them and protect them. His words to Moses were, My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest. (Exodus 33:14). That is the kind of rest God intended for Israel. And that is a model of what he intends for all of humanity.

So where is this rest? We lost it! We turned our back on it. God told Israel to go into the land of Canaan, to take it and enter his rest. But they refused to believe and obey. They didn’t trust God. They were afraid. So God punished them and in his anger swore that they would not enter his rest (Ps 95.11). That generation wandered in the desert forty years and died. They never knew the peace and security God wanted to provide. Their children entered that rest. But it didn’t take too many generations before God kicked them out. They served the Persians and Greeks and finally the Romans. They were slaves again all because they had not trusted and obeyed God. They brought this restlessness on themselves.

It isn’t too hard to see that this rest of which God speaks depends on him. Man can have rest only when he is in God’s presence. My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest, God said to Israel. Our world in general has no sense of the presence of God. We are in bondage to a constant struggle to provide what we need and want with no thought of depending on God, no thought that he can give us peace and security. We trust in financial planners, military defence systems, and our understanding of the physical world. But they leave us hanging!

Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Jesus can give the peace and security that we crave. How? By bringing us back into God’s presence.

All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. Jesus truly knows God. He came from God; he is God. When we see him we see the image of the invisible God and we come to know God. We see the God who not only looked with pity on the Israelite slaves in Egypt and brought them out with mighty miracles, but who looked with pity on all of humanity and gave his son to save us from our slavery. Jesus Christ, true man, faced every problem and temptation we face yet never wavered in his trust in God. He was at rest. He went to the cross to pay for all the ways we have disobeyed and not trusted God. And then God raised him from the dead and exalted him to heaven. By doing all this for us, Jesus has revealed God to us. We see that God cares for us and is able to give us the rest, the peace and security we seek, even in the midst of life in this age.

Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, 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. Jews spoke of the yoke of the Law. They took on the yoke of the Law which meant that they took on the obligation to keep the commandments. They saw this as a good thing and rightly so. The Law of God makes us wise and teaches us to trust him.

But they seemed to have put too much on their obedience. Jesus invites them to put on his yoke, the yoke of grace and truth. It’s a yoke of grace and truth because he bears the yoke for us. He provides the perfection we need. He makes us acceptable to God and gives us access to God. He invites us to take this yoke of trust so that we can have God’s presence and be at rest.

A Chinese Christian named Watchman Nee told about a new convert who came in deep distress to see him. "No matter how much I pray, no matter how hard I try, I simply cannot seem to be faithful to my Lord. I think I'm losing my salvation." Nee said, "Do you see this dog here? He is my dog. He is house-trained; he never makes a mess; he is obedient; he is a pure delight to me. Out in the kitchen I have a son, a baby son. He makes a mess, he throws his food around, he fouls his clothes, he is a total mess. But who is going to inherit my kingdom? Not my dog; my son is my heir. You are Jesus Christ's heir because it is for you that He died." We are Christ's heirs, not through our perfection but by means of His grace.

That baby has rest! He has rest not because of what he does but because he is his father’s son. In the same way, we have rest, not because of what we can do but because of the yoke of Jesus Christ, the yoke that binds us to him. He has conquered God’s judgement, sin death and the devil. Those things are the real source our restlessness. Convinced that our future, our eternal life in safe in the hands of God, we can rest. We must become like infants who trust and cease to work things out for themselves. That’s why Jesus said, I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants.

None of this means you shouldn’t make use of a financial planner. Just realize that he or she cannot give you true rest. A Nortel can still crash! Nor does this mean that we can’t think about how to defend ourselves against an Electromagnetic Pulse attack. Just realize that we will always be vulnerable in some way to enemies. We will always be restless. Instead, Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Jesus rose from the dead. He is with us to the end of the age and will raise us from the dead. That assurance gives rest.