Our New Testament reading this evening comprised verses 20 through to 30 of Chapter 11 of Matthew's Gospel. However, I wish to focus on that verse 28, which is one of the best-loved and most-quoted verses of the whole Bible. Come to me all you who are weary and heavy burdened, and I will give you rest. This verse is often taken to offer solace and comfort and peace to all who have gone through a hard time, and are left physically, emotionally or spiritually drained. I don't want to deny that our Lord does offer so graciously this comfort to the hurting. As we read through the Gospels we see time again phrases like 'and Jesus had compassion', and indeed everywhere where we read these words we then find Jesus doing something to bring relief to a suffering person.
But if we look at that verse in its context, then it does seem to have a more particular bearing. So, let's put those words under the microscope, and ask that God's Holy Spirit would enlighten our understanding and that we don't conduct a purely human analysis.
Come.
How much there is contained in that one word: 'come'. Jesus invites. He
invites sinners into his presence. His association with the notable
'sinners'; prostitutes and, yes, tax-collectors. Yes to be a
tax-collector was to be branded a sinner. I don't know what sort of
reception we would get if we walked into the local Tax Office, demanded
to see the Inspector,and said to him, “You sinner!”
But it was the notorious, the outcast, the ones society rejected whom
Jesus welcomed into his presence. He had time for them; he had
compassion for them. Consider his graciousness; the One who came to
earth from heaven's throne and made sinners welcome; he who had the
right to add to the denunciation by the Pharisees, by all 'respectable'
people his own! But no! He welcomed them, he invited them, he spent
time with them. Oh how blessed those hours must have been! We are his
followers and ambassadors- his representatives. Do we extend the same
welcome to the outsider.
Come
The One who uttered that word was the incarnate Son of God. This,
actually, is one of the things that makes the Christian faith unique.
And in a multi-faith age, where the religions of Mohammed, or the
Buddha (to name but two) are all seen to be as equally 'valid', let us
not hesitate or fear to maintain the absolute uniqueness of our
Christian faith. All other faiths, all other religions are man reaching
out toward God. For that reason they must fall and they must fail. For
man is sinful and God is of whom the prophet Habakkuk wrote Your eyes are too pure to look on evil.
But 'come' says Jesus. The Christian faith is alone in that God reaches
down to fallen, sinful man. He reaches down and he invites; 'Come'.
Whoever we are, whatever we have done, Jesus says 'Come'.
Come to me
He invites us to himself, and he invites with authority. In Matthew's
Gospel, we have the account of the writer's own call by Jesus. It's
there in verse 9 of chapter 9.
As he went from there he saw a man named
Matthew sitting at the tax collector's booth. ”Follow me”, he told him,
and Matthew got up and followed him. There was no hesitation in
that call, because it came with divine authority. Jesus has the
authority to invite. His 'Come' is a gracious invitation, but it's also
a command; actually a command which, too, is gracious. It is our
Creator, the Lord of heaven and earth who both invites and summons. And
he has that authority just because of who he is. Just go back and look
at what is in verse 27:
All things have been committed to me by the
Father. No-ne 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.
The words of Jesus are breath-taking in their awesomeness. We get to be
familiar with them, but how did they sound to those who heard them?
Here is this man claiming authority from God and the authority to make
God known. He is the One who is the self-revelation of the Father and he
says. Come to me.
Let us here not fail to take note of the possibility of rejecting Jesus
and his gracious call. For to reject the Lord Jesus Christ is a matter
with grave consequences. Our passage tonight began with a denunciation
of certain cities where Jesus had been and among other things had
performed various miracles. Tyre and Sidon says Jesus would have
repented long ago in sack-cloth and ashes, and the day of judgment
would be more bearable for those cities which had rejected Jesus. What
about Capernaum. It would be more tolerable for Sodom on the day of
judgment.
Come to me all you who are weary and burdened
What sort of burden prompted this call “Come to me”? The people whom
Jesus addressed lived under the burden of the Law- the Law of Moses.
Those who base their lives on moral goodness will always fail and it
will become a burden to them. We all, surely, must know times in our
past (or even our present) where we have relied on our own goodness and
moral rectitude until it has become a burden weighing us down. But for
the common people of Jesus' day they had a double burden. The
Pharisees, who were concerned with moral rectitude as the way to usher
in that Kingdom of God that they looked for, and through which they
sought relief from the yoke of Rome. But so concerned were they, and do
certain of their own standing before the Law that they added hundreds
of extra requirements on; requirements which came not from the throne
of God but out of their own devising. And this earned Jesus' strongest
condemnation.
We see this most clearly in Matthew's twenty-third chapter. There we
have Jesus saying this as he spoke to his disciples and the crowds in
the Temple:
But do not do what they (that's the
Pharisees) do, for they do not practise what
they preach. They tie up heavy loads and put them on men's shoulders
It was with this burden that Jesus was particularly concerned. It was
from this burden that he promised rest. He saw a people weighed down by
the restrictions of Pharasaic law. Jesus went on to speak about his
'yoke' Take my yoke upon you...and you will find rest for your souls.
The sort of yoke here mentioned was most likely the yoke that bound two
oxen together.
The essence of Jesus' call is to take up his yoke. All yokes which
we place on ourselves or other people place on us will weigh us down
and weary us; we become bound up with the particular demand which we
can never fulfill. Any idea why there are so may weary-looking
Christians? But no! Jesus is saying. Take my yoke. Be bound together
with me. Come to me, link your life with mine. That is the way that
leads to freedom and to rest. You do not have to struggle; all you need
to do is to 'come to me'