Consider this portion of scripture with me today:
Matt 11:28-30 “Then Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary (labor) and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble (meek) and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.”
For this week can we look a bit closer at verse 28: “Then Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary (labor) and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.”
Some key words for us today:
Come: come here, implies leaving one thing behind and advance toward another.
Come, speaks to the urgency, come today, come now, not tomorrow, not next week
All: all, whole, every kind of, not a few, not some, not a select or chosen one, but all may come
Weary, Labor: toil, work with effort, bodily or mental labor, labor till worn out,
To me, labor means work, It has its focus on what I must do, what I must work at.
Heavy Burdens: Not just burden but Heavy burdens, to overload, weigh down.
This phrase comes from the custom of loading animals. The load or burden is bound up and then laid on the beast, animal.
Rest: to cause or permit one to cease from any movement or labor in order to recover and collect his strength
I will: Jesus is the source of ones rest, no one else can give the rest that I can give
As I have looked at this, I have found several thoughts on this passage. For today can we consider how this verse relates to salvation? The one who is weary and heavy burdened by their sin.
Some scriptures as we consider this:
Matt 23:4 “They tie up heavy, cumbersome loads (religious demands) and put them on other people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them.” (NIV)
Luke 11:46 “Jesus replied, “And you experts in the law, woe to you, because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them.”
Gal 2:16 “Yet we know that a person is made right with God by faith in Jesus Christ, not by obeying the law. And we have believed in Christ Jesus, so that we might be made right with God because of our faith in Christ, not because we have obeyed the law. For no one will ever be made right with God by obeying the law.”
Gal 5:21 “I do not treat the grace of God as meaningless. For if keeping the law could make us right with God, then there was no need for Christ to die.”
Hear the invitation of Jesus:
“Come, then, ye laboring and heavy laden, leave your legal labors, leave your self-reliant efforts, leave your sins, leave your presumptions, leave all in which you hitherto have trusted, and come to Jesus the Savior” (Spurgeon)
This rest that Jesus gives is not a “reward” for being good, getting it right. Reward has a reference to works. You who do good, then I will reward you. The rest that Jesus gives can’t be earned or purchased. The rest Jesus gives is given by coming to him in faith. I might say Jesus rest is a “gift”, freely given by Him to those who accept his invitation to come to him.
Eph 2:4-9 “But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast.”
This Rest that Jesus gives can be yours now, you don’t have to wait, you don’t have to come again, come back another day. Jesus bore your unrest that you might have Rest, come to him today, receive by faith, His rest today”
Act 4:12 “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.”