Matthew
11:28-30
Have you
ever considered these words carefully?
They may make you do a kind of mental double-take. They may cause you to ask, “What is he
saying?” On the one hand, Jesus promises
rest but then invites us to take a yoke.
“Rest”
usually involves a break from work; taking on a “yoke” means there’s work to be
done. You don’t have to be a farmer to
know that a yoke is that wooden frame placed on the back of two draft animals
so they can pull a plow or a wagon. But
during difficult times men and women have pulled plows. If the oxen or mules die, there may be no
other way to prepare the ground for planting.
Perhaps you’ve seen the picture of the sixteen Doukhobor women yoked
together pulling a plow through the Manitoba prairie. Or maybe you’ve seen the
poster from World War I depicting “heroic women of France” pulling a plow so
the crops could be sown. The picture shows
three women struggling to get the plow to break up the tough soil. Put on a yoke and you’re in for some hard
work.
With that
in mind, let’s take a look at the truths behind Jesus’ great invitation to come
to him and take his yoke.
We need to
remember the invitation is issued against the background of Jesus’ conflict
with the religious leaders of the day.
While there were leaders who were sympathetic toward Jesus, there were
many more that saw him as a threat to the establishment. He challenged their monopoly on the spiritual
life of the people. So, they made the
vilest of accusations against him. In
the next chapter, they even suggest he was in league with Satan.
In the
midst of this conflict, Jesus extended his invitation and made his
promise.
28 Come to me, all
who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 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. 30 For my yoke is easy,
and my burden is light.” [1]
Who were
those who labored and were heavy laden?
Over the years, many commentators have taken these words literally. According to them, Jesus is speaking to those
who were on the lowest rungs of the social ladder. He was addressing the
peasants who had few possessions and little hope of ever improving their lot in
life. They sometimes worked for
landowners who had little sympathy and only had eyes for profit. They were
asked to work from sunup to sundown, carrying back-breaking burdens or doing
exhausting tasks. At nightfall they
would head to their homes, eat a simple meal, sleep, and rise the next morning
to begin the routine again. Only the
Sabbath gave them respite.
There’s no
doubt Jesus had concern for such people, but is his promise of a continuing
Sabbath really addressed just to them? I
don’t think so.
All around
him, Jesus could see those who spiritually labored and were spiritually heavy
laden. It is to these people Jesus
offers the invitation.
The
religious leaders told the people that pleasing God, living a truly holy life,
demanded they follow a seemingly infinite list of rules.
In the
interest of fairness, let me say something about the Pharisees. Writing a few decades later, Josephus
estimated there were about 6000 Pharisees in Judea. They were highly regarded as spiritual heroes
by many people. While the Sadducees came from the upper classes, the Pharisees
were often farmers or tradesmen. Ironically,
though the Pharisees were admired by the common people, by the time of Jesus, the
Pharisees seem to have had little respect for the ordinary people whom they saw
as unlearned and cursed (John 7:49).
When the
movement began, those Jews who would become the Pharisees were somewhat like
the Puritans of the sixteenth century. They
began with a noble intent of purifying religion but time warped their
strategy. They codified the law so as to
deal with almost every imaginable contingency.
Though this was originally designed to be an aid to the faithful, in
time this system of rules became a burden.
Their strict rules lost touch with the needs of humanity and went beyond
the demands of the Law. The conflicts
Matthew portrays between Jesus and the Pharisees revolve around these rules,
especially the laws regarding the Sabbath.
By this time, many of the Pharisees had elevated their traditions to the
authority of the Bible.
The next
chapter of Matthew presents two of these incidents. In one, the Pharisees
accuse Jesus’ followers of violating Sabbath when they picked some grain from
the edge of the field to eat. The law
allows the hungry traveler to do this but the Pharisees saw the disciples as
breaking the prohibition against harvesting on the Sabbath. In a second incident, the Pharisees are indignant
that Jesus healed a crippled man on the Sabbath, insisting he should have
waited until a weekday. In each incident, Jesus countered with an appeal to Scripture
and compassion.
Jesus was
offering the hope of salvation that did not depend upon effort, but upon trust
in a loving Father who offers forgiveness to the sinner. Compared to the struggle of self-salvation, Jesus
offered the “rest” of grace. What is implicit in Jesus’ words, Paul will make
explicit in his writings. We are saved
not by works but by grace.
In
contrast to service to the law, service under Christ’s yoke is rest. Robertson says the word “rest” implies more
than merely ceasing to work; it is a rest that results in “rejuvenation.” It’s
the word that was most used to describe the Sabbath rest. Keep the Sabbath properly and you will be
ready to get back to the work-week with a renewed energy, if not
enthusiasm. Another Greek scholar, James
Strong offers another perspective on the word:
Christ's "rest" is not a "rest" from
work, but in work, "not the rest of inactivity but of the harmonious
working of all the faculties and affections, of will, heart, imagination,
conscience, because each has found in God the ideal sphere for its satisfaction
and development."[2]
Of course,
if you’ve put on the Lord’s “yoke,” committed yourself to his service, you’ll
discover he is a different kind of master.
He is “gentle and lowly in heart.”
He is no potentate who demands his followers crawl on their knees over
stones to appease him. His interest is in
our good.
The phrase
“my yoke is easy” doesn’t capture all the meaning. The word translated “easy” also suggests it
is kind and good. When oxen are put in a
farmer’s yoke, it is for the good of the farmer. Being in Christ’s yoke is for our good. This is
why Clement of Rome, writing at the end of the first century, said the Christian
believer comes “under the yoke of His grace.”
It is not
that being a Christian is easy. Rather,
when we compare the fruitless labor expended in trying to win God’s favor
through our own efforts with simple trust in God’s grace, being a Christian become
a matter of simply accepting that we are accepted—through Christ.[3]
Peterson’s
paraphrase puts it this way: “Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it.
Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting
on you.
Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”
Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”
There is
something in Jesus’ statement we shouldn’t miss. The Jews believed the Messiah, God’s Anointed
Redeemer, would usher in God’s rest. The
nation’s wandering would be over, its struggle for existence would be past; the
final Son of David would fulfill God’s great promise to the nation. The prophet Jeremiah hints at this as he
called the people to repent and turn to God.
Thus says the Lord:
Stand at the crossroads, and look,
and ask for the ancient paths,
where the good way lies; and walk in
it,
and find rest for your souls. [4]
Some who
heard Jesus speak these words would have heard in them a claim to be that
Messiah. It would have infuriated some,
given hope to others.
The great
Baptist scholar A. T. Robertson said in his comments on Jesus’ promise: “No sublimer words exist
than this call of Jesus to the toiling and the burdened to come to him.”
Through
the centuries men and women who were crushed and weary beneath a weight of
grief and sorrow, regret and shame, sin and guilt, have found relief through trusting
Jesus and taking his yoke. Taking Christ’s
yoke, becoming his disciple, gives us a whole new perspective on life. Through his Spirit, we are refreshed when we
ought to be exhausted, ready to go forward when others might sit down.
Above all
we discover that he has dealt with our burden of sin in a way we could never
have done on our own.
John
Bunyan was a seventeenth-century Baptist preacher in England. He spent several years in prison because it
was illegal for any but Anglicans to conduct worship services. While in prison, Bunyan stayed busy
writing. In many of these writings, he
used his imagination to portray the gospel message. His best known work is Pilgrim’s Progress. The book
records a dream about a man named Christian who becomes aware of the great
burden of sin and guilt he carried, a burden that threatened to crush him. He tried many ways to be rid of that burden
but they all failed. But finally Christian
found relief. Bunyan tells describes the
moment.
Now I saw in my dream, that the
highway up which Christian was to go, was fenced on either side with a wall,
and that wall was called Salvation (Isaiah 26:1). Up this way, therefore, did
burdened Christian run, but not without great difficulty, because of the load
on his back. He ran thus till he came at a place somewhat ascending; and upon
that place stood a cross, and a little below, in the bottom, a sepulcher (an
open grave).
So I saw in my dream, that just
as Christian came up with the cross, his burden loosed from off his shoulders,
and fell from off his back, and began to tumble, and so continued to do till it
came to the mouth of the sepulcher, where it fell in, and I saw it no more.
Then was Christian glad and lightsome, and said with a merry heart, “He hath
given me rest by his sorrow and life by his death.”
Through the
centuries we have continued to try to find spiritual rest through our own
efforts. Down through those same
centuries Jesus’ words have continued to echo: “Come to me, all who labor and
are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
Have you
come?
[3] Paul Tillich described Luther’s view of
justification by faith as “accepting that we are accepted.”
[4] The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version.
1989 (Je 6:16). Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers.
