Matthews 11:28-30 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, 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.”

Back in the 60’s it was predicted that advances in technology would radically change the number of hours a week people would have to work. It was estimated that the average American would be working 22 hours a week within 20 years. They believed that the great challenge then, would be to figure out what to do with all the excess time. Here we are over 40 years later, after major advances in technology and how many of us are wondering what to do with all the excess time on our hands? Our technology in many ways has actually served to enslave not free, instead of being untethered we are actually tied. Our world has become that of the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland: “Now here, you see, it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that.” Do you feel like this? Humor me for a moment and lets do a little quiz together, just fill in the blanks:
I’m ready to throw in the…
I’m at the end of my…
I’m just a bundle of…
My life is falling…
I’m at my wit’s…
Stuck in the rat…
Amazing how many phrases we have and how many you know. Life in the relentless rat race
can wear us out, just when you think you might get ahead, along come faster rats. But remember even the one who wins the rat race is still a rat! Yet we were not called to be rats but the Redeemed. Unfortunately our lives have become filled with going and doing, accomplishments and appointments, so there is no slack in our schedules to stop and be still. We have become more consumed with our calendars than Christ. The sad truth is that His body has become a busy body, we may be busy but are we blessed? Our schedules have stolen our solitude and stillness, robbing us of rest. Yet we are not alone in the business of busyness, or the first to become trapped in its web of lies, Jesus spoke to this very issue over 2000 years ago. In Matthew 11:28-30 His words peirce our weariness, “come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”
The call of Christ is to come, when your heart, mind, and the inner depths of your soul are worn and weary, when it feels like you are carrying the weight of the world, flooded with physical and mental distress, when the demands of others overwhelm, Jesus calls us to come.
We need the call of Christ, the call to come to Him, but will we heed it? Yet the problem with Matthews 11:28-30 is that we hear His words just not His voice, its one of the most famous yet misunderstood and most ignored passages of scripture in the bible. Are you being dragged through life? Today Jesus is calling you to stop running and start resting, recovery is only found in the rest that the Redeemer offers. When Jesus says “I will give you rest” He is providing an opportunity for pause, and we need Him to press the pause button in our lives. His call goes against the culture, in our industrialized society we are pushed to be productive, we see pausing as a problem. We hear the words but do we really rest? Jesus offers us the promise of pause but
we have been programed to see pausing as a waste. His call is problematic to our “productive” society. Even as I write this I am confronted with a culture that calls me to accomplish something. The irony is that I am actually on a retreat in England at an abbey along with others also seeking rest, but here was the question posed to me this very morning at breakfast, “what do you have on your scheduled today?” To which I replied “nothing.’ This was greeted by puzzled looks, and that awkward unspoken silence, yet filled with the loudly disapproving body language of “oh that must be nice” In those moments of perceived disapproval by our peers many of us immediately felt less than, as if it were our turn to clear some imaginary bar of achievement and we failed miserably. My immediate thought in the past would have been to try and think of some sensible schedule I could blurt out in the desperate hope of rejoining the group. Me the marooned moron isolated on my island with “nothing to do”, shouldn’t I dive in and frantically thrashing around in a desperate attempt to swim back to the sensible ship of schedule, and once on board find something to do and get on with it. In the perceived disapproval of our peers, when we feel like we don’t measure up many of us are moved to go because of guilt. Of course this uncomfortable silence only lasted a moment before someone loudly proclaimed, “well we better get going as we have a lot to do today”, like an unspoken agreement they all got up and left. I was abandoned to my nothing as they hurried of to do! We may think we are not driven by our culture but even in a place built for rest we feel the need to run, to do instead of be. To stop, to truly listen to the Lord and pause means swimming against the current of culture. The supposed waves of progress beat and batter our bodies, pounding our minds and swamping our souls. Its in the storm that Jesus offers stillness, a rest for the stressed, a refreshing for the soul. In Christ’s call we often miss the three commands that lead to rest.

1. COME TO ME
Jesus regularly invited people to come to Him, to meet their needs. Jesus did NOT say, “come to church to find rest” We often forget that Christianity is about meeting Christ personally. Going to McDonalds does not make you a hamburger, going into a garage doesn’t make you a car and going to church does not make you a Christian. You become a Christian in that moment you answer His invitation to turn from your own ways and come to Him. The question is can you look to a time when you decided to answer His call to come. Some of you my say “but my life is a mess, I’m not ready, but His invitation is to come as you are, come one come all. We often waste time trying to clean up our lives before we come to The Lord, we want to present a healthy, holy and happy person, but what does Jesus say “come to Me, all you who are what “weary and burdened” Jesus is calling me not because I’m wonderful but because I’m worn and weary, the Messiah is ok with my mess. Jesus is saying I know you, you are bankrupt, you have nothing to offer, come anyway. But in our pride we want to come to Jesus with something more than a broken weary soul, we want to come with strength. But Jesus doesn’t need our energy we need His! Don’t miss the command here, its not just a call to come its a call to come to Christ. I’m not saying don’t go to church, I’m just saying when you come to Church are you looking for Christ? Its only in relationship with Him that we find real rest. Today many come to church but fail to come to Christ. If you feel like your not good enough your right your not, its not about being good its about grace. Jesus will meet you where you are: If you’re hungry, “Jesus said, “I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me shall not hunger.” John 6:35. If you’re thirsty, John 7:37-38 says, “on the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, “If any man is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ’From his innermost being shall flow rivers of living water.” John 5:39-40 reminds us that eternal life is found in Jesus, “You search the Scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is these that bear witness of Me; and you are unwilling to come to Me, that you may have life’ The search to satisfy our needs on our own leads us down many empty and lonely roads. How many are stranded today on the empty highway of self satisfaction, or security, on the road paved with personal self help books, where the only sign posts point us to read just one more with the promise that then we will be better! This is the time consuming and tiresome search of the soul, coming up empty after all of our effort and this is what Jesus is speaking to. God has a gift to give us, the gift of spiritual rest. It is rest for those who have labored and experienced the exhaustion of self effort. Jesus is speaking to our conscience, to those of us trying to balance the scales of good works vs bad. Those trying to be accepted by God and acknowledge for their good and great deeds. But when it comes to the banking of the soul according to elf effort you will never know the true balance of your account at any given time. Human effort falls far short of God’s standard, that is why God sent the Savior. The cross is the place of exchange where what I am is placed on Him and what He is, is given freely to me. Only when Christ is credited to your account will you know the true balance. It is also a rest for those who are heavy laden, burdened under the heavy weight of sin and self. We living in a society that promotes living for yourself, our progress is measured by our possessions, prominence and pleasure. Here we find another desolate road, where enough always falls short, a road that keeps going but never arrives. Drawing us further into the wilderness, only to discover there is always another hill of progress to scale and more possessions to procure. Jesus is calling to those lost in the wild expanses of progress, possession, power and pleasure. His words couldn’t echo any louder in our “evolved” society. I look around and see that there is a hole in the soul of my generation, like a vast army of lost locusts, consuming yet forever empty. Lonely they wander in search of something more, filling their bellies on a culture of consumerism while they choke on the bile of their burdens. A generation who have inherited the American dream, lets be honest here we didn’t earn it, but what good is it, we have it all and we have nothing. Disillusioned and depressed, they are the walking dead, living empty joyless lives, like zombies shuffling along through life.
It is to these that Christ calls, what we really seek is not possessions, position and power but peace. We grab at other things in a vain attempt to satisfy the soul, but what we hunger for in our inner being, what the soul desires to pursue is simply peace. In Jesus the penalty has already been paid, you can have that peace, you can begin life anew and have the page wiped clean. God did not send Jesus to rub our sins in, but to rub them out. He bore the guilt and paid the penalty, today don’t just hear the words, hear His voice, Come and rest in the Redeemer.

Job 3:26 – “I have no peace, no quietness; I have no rest, but only turmoil.”

We all will at some time in our life suffer a crushing crisis, no matter who you are you can’t win them all. So what do you do about the challenges you don’t win? What about the devastating defeats, like the hopelessness that comes when your health fails. What do you do with the punishing pain, overwhelming sorrow and suffering that seems to snuff out life? When your dreams die and you sink under the heaviness of the hardship? When your ambitions are replaced with agony? Or when that fond hope you have cherished and nurtured for years, will never be realized? What happens when your smiles are stolen and life slips away? What do you do? The greatest measure of a person isn’t in how they handle things during the fair weather but when it all falls apart. Its often the decisions we make during the defeats that determine who we will be when we come out of the difficulties. Our attitude in the agony is one of life’s greatest challenges. Some look at Job as a book of answers but really it is a painful yet powerful revelation of the human experience. Job is an ordinary man facing extraordinary life circumstances, crushing ones he has no control over. Sooner or later in this life something big enough will surface and swallow you, something that you can’t control or fix, and it is Job that gives us the insight into the how not the why. Job’s reality was recorded to give us insight into how to handle the tragedies of life, both ours and others for we are not the only ones suffering. It shows us the positive as well as the negative and what not to do as we comfort and counsel. The problem is that for many of us we miss the teaching of Job because we get hung up on the why Job suffered, and missing the how he handles adversity. One of the greatest questions of life is “what will you do with defeat?” Defeat can either cause you to discover a deeper dependence on God or or drive you to despair. For many the only thing they gain from defeat is discouragement and depression. None of us like the devastation of defeat yet I have always learned more through the losses. We can glean and grow through the trials or we can give up. For the righteous rest can be found even in the relentless pain because helpless does not mean hopeless. Our challenge today is that we try to rest on our own results, we believe it is up to us, we are a society stuck, mired in self effort. A phrase that is often quoted and many even think is in the Bible is, “God helps those who help themselves.” not only is this not in the Bible but it is also not consistent with what the Bible teaches. All of us face situations in which we are powerless to help ourselves and if God only helped those who helped themselves, then we would all be in deep trouble. Helplessness is endemic to the human experience, it begins at birth and usually precedes our death. And although helplessness can come in a whole variety of ways we can have hope in our helplessness because of God’s holy hand.

When you look at the life of Job two things stand out:
First suffering is not always the result of sin. In the first two chapters we learn that Job was blessed with great fortune and family and if it were not revealed to us about what went on in heaven, we might assume that Jobs affliction was the result of him disobeyed and displeased God. Yet the very opposite was true, Job was faithful to the Father, his wealth didn’t keep him from worship. He lived a righteous life yet, attackers carried off his wealth, raiders killed many of his servants, stealing his livestock. Fire fell from Heaven and burned his sheep and many servants, a tornado took his children, his health failed being afflicted with painful sores from head to toe. Yet we read in Job 1:22, “In all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing.” Suffering is not always the result of sin, what if God were to punish us today for the sins we’ve committed, how many of us would be in the hospital or if you are like me the grave. Not one of us would be well enough to even walk into a service to worship. What most of us miss is God’s grace and goodness, we miss His patient kindness. The second observation is that when God doesn’t answer our questions, we already have enough for the test. Have you ever taken a test and in the middle tried to ask the teacher for the answer in some way. When we were younger we tried but as we grew older we realize that the teacher was not going to give the answer because they had already given us enough prior to the test. In chapter 3 we find Job asking God why he is going through such a hard test? Job asked, “Why did God allow me to be born? Why didn’t I die at birth? Why can’t I die to escape this anguish?” When we are in the midst of life’s test, we often ask, “Why me? Why do I have to have this illness?” “What is the purpose of this? Why can’t I learn this lesson some other way?” Often when no answer comes the response is to turn from God and stop trusting. Job did not curse God, he did not leave God he stated in Job 2:10, “Shall we accept good from God and not trouble?” The truth is that even though Job had questions during the test he knew enough about God’s goodness before it came to answer his own heart’s questions. What about us do we know enough of God’s ways and goodness to answer our own heart’s questions? May be you are in the middle of the test right now and you are frantically demanding an answer from the Almighty, have you looked at what God has already said in His Word, the Bible? Knowing enough for the test does not always mean that we will apply what we know to the test. Applying what we know requires recall, yet during the test, most of us draw blanks and forget what we know. Job also forgot the specific ways God was good to him because life’s tests have a way of blurring God’s blessings. Job’s lamenting and questions reflected his helplessness but not his hopelessness. Helplessness is a feeling often based in the fact of our powerlessness to help ourselves. Our wealth, our work, our support systems found in family and friends, and even our will to live can be taken from us. In these moments of helplessness only our hope in God will enable us to recover and be restored. Where we place our hope determines our help, Job placed his hope in God, he chose to rested in God’s:

Sovereignty. In Job 42:2 we hear Jobs heart when he says “I know that you can do all things; no purpose of yours can be thwarted.” God’s sovereignty reflects who is in charge, it is our submission to this sovereignty that reflects to the world who is really in control. When we say that God is in charge this does not mean that we are like puppets pulled and played on a sovereign string, rather God’s sovereignty assures us that even when the earth quakes, when the doctors can’t help, when life’s dreams become nightmares, and everything seems out of control, God is still in charge. God’s sovereignty has been my security through the storms, His sovereignty has allowed me to be steadfast when everything else seemed to shift. For me there is no attribute more comforting than God’s sovereignty. Knowing that He is in control in the midst of the chaos brings me reassuring rest. Regardless of the adverse circumstances, in spite of the severe trials, God is still in control. Sovereignty has ordained our afflictions, sovereignty overrules them, and sovereignty will sanctify them. Job was helpless, but he was not hopeless, he didn’t know he was the subject of a test between God and satan, but he knew God was in charge.

Second, Job chose to rest in God’s righteousness. In Job 4:17 he says: “Can a mortal be more righteous than God? Can even a strong man be more pure than his Maker?” God’s righteousness means that He will always do what is right, He fully understanding the situation, His motives are pure, His evaluation is accurate, and His knowledge is complete. We do not know the future and may not see our situation in light of the complete picture, for our moment of helplessness may turn out to be the foundation for our triumph. Regardless of the unknown we can rest in the truth that God will always do what is right in our lives.

Third, Job chose to rest in God’s redemption, in Job 19:25-27 Job states: “I know that my redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand on the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see him with my own eyes—I, and not another. How my heart yearns within me!” God is the One who will justify or pay back what we’ve lost in life, no matter how we have been treated, wether abused, persecuted or served an unfair hand, those who hope in God’s redemption will see His power revealed. It may not be in this life, but for sure in eternity. Unfortunately, many turn from God during the test because we demand instant gratification. We want our situation to improve immediately, but hope shouldn’t be hurried. In a materialistic and instant society, it is hard to hope in the unseen and to believe in what is yet to become. Yet if we are to have courage, strength and perseverance to move through helpless times, we must have hope in God’s future redemption. Paul said, “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us…. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently” Romans 8:18, 24-25. What is your hope resting on? Are you resting on the character of God, His sovereignty, righteousness, and redemption.? Let me encourage you to remember and recite aloud today the words of Isaiah 40:28-31, “Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom. He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.