Episode 333: Come To Me | Dave Sloop

Introduction

Good morning. So good to be together today. We are in Matthew's gospel in the eleventh chapter, and we're gonna be looking today at a passage that I would suspect is familiar to many of us. In fact, Matthew eleven twenty-eight, along with John three sixteen, in our Anglican tradition, is referred to as the comfortable words of Jesus, and they are comfortable. And I would suspect that many of you have heard these words quoted because they're familiar.

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.

And while these are familiar words, my suspicion is that it might not be as familiar to us, the context in which these words were spoken. If you saw in verse 25, the first thing that Matthew writes is, at that time Jesus said. And that is his way of telling us that the words that will follow are informed by the words and the events that preceded those words. And so we should ask the question, what was happening at that time? And for us to know that, we gotta look back just a little bit at verse 20.

The Context of the Passage

So if you're following along with me, listen to what Matthew writes in verse 20 of chapter 11.

Then Jesus began to denounce the cities in which most of his miracles had been performed because they did not repent. He's gonna say, woe to you, Chorazin. Woe to you, Bethsaida. Woe to you, Capernaum. Why? Because you saw the miracles. He's gonna use that word three times, or mighty works. You saw the miracles, but you did not repent.

Jesus came teaching a message, and his message was about the kingdom of God. That's what Matthew's gospel, that's the theme. It is the kingdom of God. And he came teaching this message, but that is not primarily what set Jesus apart from other teachers. Did you know that? What set him apart was that his words were accompanied by signs, miracles, and wonders. We are meant to see the power of Jesus, and it's supposed to teach us something about the person of Jesus. His words validate—sorry—his works validate his words.

Maybe the clearest place that we see this is in Mark chapter two. Jesus is in one of those cities, Capernaum, and he heals a paralyzed man. Do you know this story? Do you remember what he does before he heals the guy's legs? He forgives his sins. And the religious leaders in the crowd that day, and they're thinking in their head—they didn't say it out loud—they said, who is this fellow who speaks this way? Only God can forgive sins. And Jesus, their thoughts, which is the first sign that we should pay attention: knowing their thoughts, he says to them, what's easier for me to say to this guy? Is it easier for me to say, your sins are forgiven, or to say, get up, take your mat, and walk?

But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins, I say to you, get up, take your mat, go home. And he did. Can you imagine how fun that moment must have been for Jesus? It's like the ultimate mic drop.

You see, the works prove the words. The miracle validates the message. And what was the message that day? Pharisees actually got it right. Only God can forgive sins. And Jesus says, I agree with you. I just happen to be here today in flesh. And if you want proof, get up.

They were meant to see that and go, he must be who he claims to be. But they did not believe. How many people saw that miracle that day? It said so many gathered that there was no room, not even outside the door. It says that they all saw it and were amazed. And they, listen to this, praised God, saying, we have not seen anything like this.

Have you ever thought to yourself, I wish that I could have lived back when Jesus was alive so that I could have followed him around and seen his miracles because then it would be so much easier for me to believe and trust in him? Not so fast. You see, because these three cities—they didn't just see some of his miracles—they saw most of them. And John's gospel tells us, at the very end, the very last verse, he says, if we were to have written down everything that Jesus did, there wouldn't be room in the world to contain the books that would be written about him. He did a lot. And it says that most of what he did happened in those three cities, a 10-mile radius right at the tip of the Sea of Galilee. It wasn't just that individual people saw the miracles, it was that everybody they knew saw them too. Everybody saw, and yet somehow still they were stuck in their unbelief.

The question is, is it possible to sit under the proclamation of God, to witness the power of God, and be surrounded by the people of God, but to be completely unaffected by it? It is.

See, before we get to the comfortable words of Jesus, we have to heed his uncomfortable warning. And the warning is this: it is possible to be surrounded by Christian activity but to not know Christ personally. It is possible to have a head that is filled with information and knowledge about God, but to have a heart that is void of any real authentic love for God. And it is possible to go through the motions, paying lip service to a God that we do not know. They praised God, saying, we've never seen anything like this. They were amazed.

See, the people of Capernaum were at the same time amazed and unrepentant. Now it is not my intent to send us into a state of perpetual insecurity about where we stand with God. That is not my goal. It's also not the goal of the scriptures, and the scriptures are—they're doing the opposite. They want us to know that if we've trusted in what Christ has done on the cross, we can rest, we can relax, it is finished. It's his work, not ours.

In fact, 1 John 5:13 says precisely that:

I have written these things to you so that you may know that you have eternal life.

However, I also don't want to assume that just because you're in this building, no matter how long you've been coming to it, that you have believing faith—that you have a heart that believes, which Jesus seems to indicate will always show itself in repentance. Not perfection. See, it's a heart that still falls. It's a heart that still sins, but we're grieved when we do. It's a heart that is still prone to wander, but not for too long because eventually we go, what am I doing over here? This is this is not who I really am.

This is the context of Matthew 11:25–30. Jesus is dismayed. He's shocked at disbelief in the face of so much evidence. And he's gonna teach us a little something about the character and the shape of belief. He's gonna show us what prevents belief. He's gonna show us what enables belief. And then he's gonna show us what the believing life looks like.

What Prevents and Enables Belief

Let's look together in verse 25. Matthew says,

at that time, Jesus said,

and then here's what he said:

I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned.

He says, you've hidden these things. When he says these things, what's he talking about? He's talking about the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven. It is the message that Jesus was speaking everywhere. It's the message that last week he sent his disciples out to preach. It's about the kingdom and his miracles validate that message. And they missed it completely.

But even more than that, they missed the one that the miracles and the message pointed to. They missed Jesus. John's gospel, in the first chapter, verses ten and eleven, it says:

He was in the world, and though the world was made through Him, the world did not recognize Him. He came to that which was His own, but His own did not receive Him.

Jesus came preaching a message about the kingdom. He came to a world that He created and a people that He made, but He was neither recognized nor received. Why? Because these things were hidden, Jesus says.

Now when we read that, it could almost give the impression that God doesn't want to be found, that he's made it difficult to see him. But that could not be further from the truth, especially on the heels of what we just read about these three cities for whom Jesus went out of His way to communicate who God was and how you could find him.

In fact, there's a person in this verse, the end of verse 25, who can see him quite clearly. You might say that these things are hidden in plain sight, but there's a certain kind of person for whom it will be difficult to see. Now I am the kind of person who often cannot find his keys or his wallet. Okay? In fact, if you're in this congregation and I've been to your house, chances are when I left your house, I returned thirty seconds later to look for the keys that I left somewhere in your home. And I might be tempted to say, my keys are hidden from me.

But you see, there's one person to blame for that inconvenience, and it's me. Jesus is saying that these things are hidden from the wise and the learned. It is possible, Jesus says, to be too smart for your own good. The smarter you are, the harder it will be to see me. And when he says that, he's not praising your intellect. He's not impressed. Okay? It's sarcasm.

It's the same line of argument that Jesus is gonna use with the Pharisees when he says to them, it is not the righteous that I've come for, but the sinner. It is not the healthy who need a doctor, it is the sick. And when he said this, he was not suggesting to the Pharisees, you guys, you're righteous. You're healthy. What he was saying to them is, you think that you are, and your self-righteousness has blinded you to your obvious need for a savior. And in the same way, your intellectual pride will keep you blind from being able to see the truth about these things. You're just you're too smart. You're too prideful.

See, the reason that those three cities, in the face of overwhelming evidence, still couldn't see it, was not for lack of information or data. They had plenty. It was pride in the heart. It was not an intellectual hurdle to overcome. It was an emotional one.

See, pride in the heart in two different ways. It could be pride in the heart that says, that couldn't be true. That's not how the world works. That's so far-fetched, which is to say, I know better. I know better. Or it's pride in the heart that says this, for me to adopt or accept or acknowledge that belief, it would cost me a great deal. And so we look for reasons in our subconscious to resist what would otherwise be obvious. If you want to dig deep on your own life, you can see that we do this. We don't primarily disbelieve with our mind as much as we do with our heart. That's what Jesus is saying here.

But there is a kind of person who can see, Jesus says. At the end of verse 25, he says, you have revealed them to little children. That word in the Greek for little children is, literally means, not speaking. What kind of child doesn't speak yet? It's a baby.

Jesus says, the way to see me is to know nothing. That's what babies know. They bring nothing to the table. They don't know anything. And Jesus says, if you want to put yourself into the condition where you can begin to see truth for the way it really is, you have to surrender it all. You have to lay down what you think you know.

He would say it in Matthew 18:3 like this, unless you change and become like these little children, you will never enter the kingdom of God. He would say it to Nicodemus in John three. He would say, unless you're born of water and Spirit, you cannot enter the kingdom of God. This is when he's talking to Nicodemus about having to be born again. You gotta become like a baby, Nicodemus. He said, you cannot enter the kingdom of God, and you will not ever enter the kingdom of God. Those are emphatic, strong words. Why? Because your pride has blinded you. You have to become like a baby in order to see.

This is the upside-down kingdom of Jesus. We win through losing. You get rich through becoming poor. And you start to see when you know nothing, he says.

How many of you remember Easter egg hunt when you were a kid? Or parents, like, I remember as a young parent taking my kid to the Easter egg hunt, and there's like different divisions, you know, for the older kids, they're like in the trees and in the bushes. But then for the toddlers, where do put the eggs? They just—it's like someone comes with a bag and just throws them out in the grass. They're everywhere.

And I remember coming as a dad the first time and thinking, I could crush the competition. I I would get every egg. These two-year-olds have no chance. Okay? Now, here's what Jesus is saying. Our pride, it blinds us.

Imagine being at that Easter egg hunt, but you got a thick blindfold on, and you got noise-canceling headphones, and you got your hands tied behind your back. Who's gonna find the eggs now? It's the kids. Jesus is telling them, your pride has blinded you. And if you wanna see, you gotta become like a little baby. And he says, it's a good thing that that's the way it is.

Did you notice in verse 25, he says, father, I praise you that you've hidden these things from the wise and that you've revealed to little kids. In 26, it's even more uncomfortable. He says, yes, father, for this was your good pleasure. It made you happy to hide it from the wise and show it to the baby.

Why is it a good thing that he hides it from the wise? I'll tell you. It's because God is not going to let your pride be an ingredient in the recipe for knowing him. He's just not gonna do it.

In 1 Corinthians 1:18–31, Paul is saying the same thing. He says, the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us, it is the power of God. Do you know why? Because God is frustrating the intelligence of the intelligent, and he's destroying the wisdom of the wise.

He says, think about who you were when you were called. You weren't that much. You weren't that smart. He's like, that's precisely why I called you. I chose you because I chose the foolish things to shame the wise. I chose the weak things to shame the strong. And then in verses thirty and thirty-one, listen to what he says:

It is because of Him that we are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God, that is our righteousness, holiness, and redemption. Therefore, as it is written, let anyone who boasts boast in the Lord.

What Paul is saying, what Jesus is saying is this: you bring nothing to the table. That's what grace is. It is grace alone. It was not a partnership. You did not help God to discover him. It was not a team sport. It is all Him.

In fact, in verse 25, did you hear the word that Jesus said? He says, father, you have revealed these things to them. Revealed. That word is apokalupto, and it means to take off the cover. You take off the blindfold. That's how we get to see. If little babies are gonna learn to talk, they're gonna get some help from the parents. If you and I are gonna see divine truth, we're gonna need some divine help. We cannot see on our own.

Jesus is gonna make this even more clear in verse 27. Look at what he says:

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.

He says, you got a blindness that you cannot fix. You know, this is one of the hallmarks of Jesus' earthly ministry? He was restoring sight to the blind. Andy Fetzer, the first service, told me that this is one of the only miracles that Jesus does that is not also shown in the Old Testament. That this was one of the miracles that showed that He was the Messiah. He was opening eyes. And what Jesus did physically during his earthly ministry, He does for us spiritually. He opens eyes.

And with that context, listen now to verse 28. Let me just recap. There's a kind of person that cannot see because of their pride. There's another kind of person that has the ability to see because of their humility. But you can't see unless I reveal it to you because I'm the only one that knows the Father truly.

Come to me.

You wanna see? Do you wanna know truth? One step, just come to me, He says.

And now, for the rest of what we're gonna read today, let's take a look at what the believing life produces. What does it look like? What is the what is the solution? What is the product of coming to Him and letting Him bring our spiritual blindness to turn it into sight? What happens? Jesus says, come to me, verse 28, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.

The Promise of Rest

Okay. First of all, notice who the invitation is extended to. It's pretty broad. All you who are weary and burdened. Okay? You can't come unless you're somebody who's tired, stressed, worried, and exhausted. Anyone?

Jesus says, come to me if you're human and you're breathing. Because the human life is the restless life. The human life is the striving life. And for all of our technological advances—which are supposed to give us more time and freedom—these little hacks for our productivity, have they led to more rest? It has done the opposite. We are the most stressed-out, depressed, worried, anxious, medicated generation in the history of planet Earth.

I'm pretty sure that that is, like, statistically true. Jesus says, come to me—and I'll give you rest.

In the Greek, that word means refreshment. Could that be, like, one of the best words in the English language? Refreshment. That's what we're longing for. I mean, think about how we live our life. You go to work on Monday, about halfway through the day, you start looking at the watch. I can't wait to get home so I can rest. And maybe you get home, you open the fridge, you grab a beer, you pour a drink, it helps you rest. Then you're like, it's fun to hang out with your kids. Then they start fighting. You're like, man, I can't wait for my kids to go to bed so I can rest. So I can turn on Netflix and rest. The next day, come back to work and you start thinking about the weekend so you can rest.

If you're a college student, you're looking to fall break, Christmas break, summer break, so you can rest. You can't spring break. Thank you. I forgot one of the breaks.

If you have a family, you think, I cannot wait for the summer so we can go to the beach together as a family. I take my kids down to the beach and never rest at all. The least restful thing you could ever do on vacation? The point is this: we all live our lives this way. We are constantly searching for some rest that we just can't seem to experience. I mean, sometimes in these moments, like maybe you're sitting around the table and like you're just enjoying the people that you love the most and it's like this little window into a rest that you know you were made for, but it just doesn't quite satisfy all the way. Like a thirst that never gets actually quenched or an itch that never gets completely scratched.

C. S. Lewis says, if you find in yourself a desire that no experience in this world seems to satisfy, the most probable explanation is you were made for another world. Jesus says, come to me. I am the rest that you've been looking for your whole life. You just didn't know. You've been looking in all of the wrong places. Come to me, he says, and I will give you the rest—the kind that does last, the kind that you were created to experience. That is the promise, verse 28.

In verses 29 and 30, it's the exposition of the promise. It's the explanation of what he says in verse 28. He's gonna tell us what it looks like to come to Him. He's gonna tell us what we can expect from Him when we do come. And then in verse 30, he's gonna say, this is why it leads to rest.

In verse 29, listen to what he says.

Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart.

Take my yoke upon you. You know what a yoke is? A yoke is something you put on your neck. It's this big heavy thing that joins two oxen together, and because they are linked together, they can pull more weight. Jesus says, come to me for rest. Put this yoke on. It doesn't sound restful, but the picture is not that Jesus is behind us, steering us, tilling the field. This is the picture: He's in half of the yoke, and he says, come here, take my yoke because I'm gonna carry the weight. You come in this side.

Did you guys have a dad that when he was driving, when you were a little kid, he put you up on his lap? You felt like you were driving. Your feet couldn't even reach the pedals. Your hands were on the steering wheel, but you knew it wasn't you—it was your dad doing the driving. Jesus says, you come, take my yoke. I'm gonna carry it.

And then he says, here's what you can experience when you come to me. He says, learn from me. And here's what he wants us to learn: learn about my heart. He says, my heart is humble and gentle. My heart is gentle and lowly.

The heart, in the Bible, whenever you see the heart talked about—if you could just hang on one second—I'm hearing you tuning that guitar. It's totally distracting me. I'm really sorry. It's me. It's me, not you. It's me. Okay. When Jesus says, I wanna tell you about my heart, the heart in the Bible is the functional core. It is—the center of something. It is the place from which all activity springs. That's why Proverbs 4:23, Solomon says, guard your heart with all diligence because it is the wellspring of life, where out of it flows the issues of life. If you wanna know what's in your heart, look at what comes out. Jesus says, every kind of evil is in the heart. It comes out of the heart. The mouth speaks.

Jesus is telling us here what we can expect to come out of his. He said, my heart is gentle and lowly. I read a book a year ago called Gentle and Lowly by Dane Ortlund. I commit it to all of you. I think this is the only place in the Bible where Jesus talks about his own heart. It's where he talks about his functional core, his center. And he said, it is gentle. Nothing makes Jesus tick and come to life more than when someone comes to him in need of grace, in need of his gentleness. Someone who least deserves it and least expects it.

Who could have written this? That the God of the universe would become a little baby, first of all, but instead of being born in a palace, he's born in a stable. And instead of hanging out with important people, religious people, kings, politicians, he hangs out with the greedy, the immoral, the prostitute. That's who he loved being with. Do you know why? Because nothing makes him come to life more than being with people who need it and who need to experience his gentleness and his grace.

Come to me, he said. That you're not gonna upset me. See, the reason we need to learn about his heart is because if we don't learn about his heart, we'll assume that his heart is like our heart, and our heart is not gentle. Our heart is prideful, it's arrogant, and it's irritable. And if we don't know what his heart is like, we're going to assume that he will respond to us like we might respond to someone who's coming back for the fifteenth thousandth time to confess the same sin that we just can't figure out, that we can't learn. He says, I'm not like you. I don't have your heart. My heart is gentle. It is lowly. It's lowly, meaning it's not high and mighty. He is high and mighty. He's the king of kings, but he's the king who comes gentle. What he means is, I'm approachable. I like to be interrupted. Come to me. He's telling us what we can expect when we come.

Why His Burden Is Light

The question that still remains is, how is it that this leads to rest? Why do we rest when we come to Him? Look at verse 30. Jesus says,

my yoke is easy.

He says, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Why is it that Jesus' yoke is easy? Do you know what a yoke is shaped like? It is a wooden crossbeam that goes on the shoulders. And there is a wooden beam attached to that crossbeam. In fact, I have a picture of it.

Jesus says, you come to me. My yoke is easy because my yoke is the cross. I want you to hide yourself in my cross. And why does it lead to rest? Because my cross is a finished work. There's nothing more to be done.

What were the last words on the cross? It is finished. Meaning, there's nothing more for you to do. You don't add to this work. It is a completed work. All you do is come and you just hide in it. You rest in it. It leads to rest because there's no more striving. We don't come to get ourselves cleaned up. We're not earning his love and acceptance—they're already ours. You come and you rest in his completed work. He says, I took the punishment so that you could take the reward. I took God's wrath so that you could experience God's rest. Come to me.

And can I tell you one last reason why his burden is light? Jesus says that in three days when I raised from the dead, that power that rose me, I'm gonna take it and I'm gonna put it in your functional core. I'm gonna put it in your heart. And now the life that pleases me, I'm giving you the power to do it.

See, you don't have to learn how to do it. You just have to learn about me, learn about my heart, and then I'll do it in you. I'm gonna change you from the inside out. Come to me, and you will have rest.

Conclusion

If you are here today and you are not experiencing his rest, it is because we have forgotten who he is. He hasn't changed. We have forgotten. Either we have started to believe that he wants us to work hard for acceptance, we're forgetting that the cross is a completed work, or we know that we've been out of step and we have forgotten that he is gentle.

If there's one thing that I could hope every single person in this room could identify with—because even as a almost 47-year-old person who's been following Christ for a long time—I still often forget. He's not mad at you. He's not disappointed. When you close your eyes and you imagine what his face towards you is, it is not a scowl. It is a gentle smile. Even if you're coming back for the millionth time with the same confession, he's not mad.

Come to me, he says. I will give you rest.

Let's pray.

Father, thank you for your word. Thank you for how it instructs us. Thank you for how it reminds us of the truth, the divine truth that we need your help to understand and to see. God, I pray that as I’m praying right now, eyes would be opened. Lord, reveal it to people that have not known the truth. God, that even under my prayer right now, that scales would be falling off because they're lowering their pride. They're saying, do not understand. I humble myself. Lord, open eyes. And for those of us that might have been following Christ for a long time but have forgotten about your gentleness and your humbleness, your humility. God, I just pray that we would remember, that we would receive what has already been purchased. We'd live in the reality of it because if that would become the rhythm of our life, then all of life would be rest.

These curved rails are gonna be open for a little bit for you to come and pray. And at the straight rails, we would love for you to come and have someone pray for you. It's in Christ's name. Amen.