Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript: Matthew 11:28-30 – Work and Rest

Sermon text for today is Matthew 11:28 through 30. And the topic for today’s sermon is work and rest. Work and rest. Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

Matthew 11:28-30: “Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 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. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for the wonderful truth contained in these words. We thank you for bringing us here today to rest in the Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you for this very personal invitation to come to him, and we wish to do that now. Lord God, may your Spirit bring us to Christ, to his word, that we may find rest for our souls. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen. Please be seated.

In two weeks from today, I’ll begin a series of Lenten sermons on cities. Next week we’ll continue on the theme of work. And actually, the order of worship today has a chart on it that will be talked about next week, not today. So if you saw this, we’re excited about it, but not today. It’s homework, as it were, I guess is the way it’s worked out. We’ll be talking next week about exilic discipleship. And you know, how do we go about it? What difference is there in terms of our understanding of work based upon the fact that we can be seen in some ways as analogous to the times of Jeremiah, when God’s people were in exile in a foreign land?

So that’s where we are, and we’ll talk next week about some of these things. This chart on this order of worship is actually taken from the epilogue to Tim Keller’s book *Every Good Endeavor*. The epilogue is actually written by someone—I don’t remember her name—who’s the head of their faith and work ministry. And that’s where this chart comes from. It’s not original to me. But today, we want to talk about work and rest.

This idea of exilic discipleship can be seen in the context of work and rest because we live in a world increasingly that doesn’t really acknowledge the Lord’s day, the Christian Sabbath, and the rest that’s found in it. And so we sang songs earlier that we’re in a protected, right? We’re in this blissful place on the Lord’s day of resting in Jesus. And our culture is kind of banging away at that.

It’s interesting that for thousands of years, the seven-day week has been a fact of human history, and this is in spite of attacks in modern days. The French Revolution, you know, wanted a decimal system. They wanted a ten-day week, tried to do it, unsuccessful. It reverted to seven. After that kind of revolution, we had the communist revolution in Russia and then the Soviet Union, and the communists as well tried to obliterate the seven-day week and replace it with something else. And again, this was unsuccessful. The pattern of seven days that God has established from creation keeps coming back.

The attack on the seven-day week today is more interesting. Maybe it’s not as overt. We noticed as we parked this morning in front of the church that there was a United States postal service truck delivering a package somewhere here. They’re starting to deliver on Sundays now. And so what we’re doing today in this culture is we’re trying to obliterate the idea of a seven-day week through no day making any difference. So it’s not replacing it with a ten-day week; it’s replacing it with a no-day week. That the week is insignificant, and so every day is like another. And so there’s really nothing special about Sunday, the Lord’s Day, the Christian Sabbath.

Now, we believe at this church that you can—the church can have alternate days for worship—but that the normal pattern is the Lord’s day or Sunday. And so there is this attack. Now, what’s the purpose of it? Well, I think it’s primarily the god of mammon. It’s the attempt to sell more things, deliver more things quickly. It’s really money, as opposed to communist ideology or class warfare of the French Revolution. And it’s a much more successful attack, I think, on the work week.

Now, why am I talking about the Lord’s Day? Because the context for these verses today that we just read, where he’s going to go on in Matthew 12:2, is to talk about there being two narrative descriptions. The first is when he and his disciples are walking along picking grains of wheat, and he’s accused of Sabbath violations by the Pharisees. And the second is where he is going to heal a man, and again he’s accused of Sabbath violations.

So what we have in the text before us can be seen in one way as an introduction to those Sabbath narratives, and it’s Jesus talking about the relationship of his commands, which are easy, as opposed to the Pharisees, who built up the Sabbath legislation into all kinds of stuff that was burdensome to people. Now, the import of today’s verses is broader than just that, but that’s what it immediately leads into.

So my tactic here today will be to talk about these verses from Matthew 11 and then make some comments after we look at these verses to talk about the significance of all this to the Lord’s day, or what the Westminster Confession of Faith calls the Christian Sabbath, because that’s kind of what the narrative goes on to talk about.

So let’s talk about these verses as a way of opening up this topic of work and rest. He talks about work here, and he talks about a kind of work that’s quite toilsome. And as he talks about that, he instructs us about his being the one that we come to for rest.

One other thing by way of introduction: You know, Moses—the book of Deuteronomy is, I think, from one perspective a series of sermons on the Ten Words. And so the sections of Deuteronomy are marked out in relationship to the Ten Words. And so I think that’s what it is. And in the section on the Lord’s day, I believe that the arcane or unusual law, “don’t boil a kid in its mother’s milk,” is actually the introduction to then a discussion of Sabbath in Moses’ sermon.

So he begins with the illustration. What’s the point of the illustration? The point of the illustration is that you don’t take something that’s supposed to be nourishing for the offspring of a sheep or a cow or whatever it is—excuse me, using the word child, but for the offspring—it’s, you know, the mother’s milk is supposed to be nourishing, and instead you’re going to use the thing of nourishment to kill it. You’re going to boil it in that milk. Okay?

So the idea of the law “not to boil a kid in its mother’s milk” is: don’t take what’s to be nourishing and yet use it to hurt or kill your children. And then that’s an introduction to the Lord’s day, or the Sabbath rather, in the Old Testament in Moses’ sermon.

And you see, that’s exactly, I think, what Jesus is doing here. This discussion of burdens and burdensome laws and regulations from the Pharisees that he’s alluding to is a way of taking what was good. What in another narrative Jesus will tell us is that the Sabbath is made for man, not man for the Sabbath. The Sabbath is nourishing. It’s a good thing. It’s a day of rest and gladness, right? “Most beautiful and bright,” the Christian Sabbath, the Lord’s day is that. And when we take it and add a bunch of rules or regulations, it’s to boil a child in his mother’s milk.

And if we take it and get rid of the light yoke of the actual rules of the Lord Jesus relative to the Lord’s day, then we’re also taking something to be nourishing and removing it. If we try to obliterate the idea of the seven-day week with the Lord’s day—a day of rest and days of work—again, we’re taking what’s to be nourishing to the next generation and we’re removing that nourishment. We’re starving people to death.

And so you get the analogy, right? So I think that’s kind of what’s going on here. And that’s a good illustration—boiling a calf in its mother’s milk. It’s a good illustration of what I think we’re to avoid and what we’re to embrace in this idea of the Christian Lord’s Day as a day of rest and gladness and a great source of blessing to us.

One other thing before we begin. It’s probably good we handed this out early. In this epilogue of Keller’s book, *Every Good Endeavor*, this woman who leads the faith and work ministry says that there’s kind of a three-fold action to what they do and how they set up their faith and work ministry. And it has to do with teaching, discussing, and then mobilizing. Okay. So, you know, the idea is that instruction is being brought. This is the 18th sermon on work. So this is the teaching part, right?

And we may have—and if you had a faith and work ministry going on, there would be classes about biblical perspectives on work. And we’ve talked a lot about that throughout these 18 sermons. But, you know, you don’t—the second phase that they see as useful is discussion. And so this is why I want to urge you to get involved in one of our community groups. It’s not the only place you can discuss the instruction either through my sermons or reading books or Sunday school classes, whatever it is about work, but it is a very useful place to have ongoing regular discussions of the teaching relative to your work.

You can’t reconstruct work just by getting some ideas and that’s it. No, the ideas have to be talked over and discussed, and then you can move to implementation. And the community group is useful for discussion and for holding it to some degree of accountability for implementing changes in your vocation. You know, I heard about a community group discussion last week about passion and how does that look, and what do you do when the work you’re doing doesn’t seem to be very passion-inspiring, et cetera. And that’s a good discussion to have of what I taught last week from the scriptures—a community group so that you can then move to mobilization.

These sermons do no good if they’re just an interesting intellectual exercise, as accurate as they might be. And you know, there’s always varying degrees of that. But if I’ve done a decent job of being accurate to the text, I don’t think—unless you move through discussion to mobilization—this does any good. And in fact, if you’re here today and you hear things, for instance, about the Christian Sabbath or Lord’s Day, and if you don’t move to mobilization to make some degree of changes to your life, it’s just reinforcing your current pattern. Then it’s actually worse for you. You know that, right?

When you come here, it’s a bad thing potentially for you because when you hear the word of God, you’re under increased obligation to respond to that word with obedience. So if you just end with the intellectual component and don’t move through community life to discuss and implement what the scriptures teach us, right, then actually it’s not just no good for you. It’s actually negative for you. You’re in a worse state than you started with because now you’ve got knowledge that you haven’t owned, and you’re culpable for that.

So I—you know, I hope you understand that already. But it’s important that we talk about that here.

All that we’ve said about work really can be boiled down to what this text says. What do I mean by that? We have here the simplest, most personal gospel message, evangelism statement in the Bible. I believe it’s quite simple. It’s very personal. And it is evangelism. What is it? “Come to me.” That’s it. That’s the essence of the Christian message: that God’s people, the creation of God’s hands, humanity, are supposed to come to Jesus, right?

And now there’s lots of implications. What happens when you come to Jesus? He says he has a yoke. He says you’ve got to learn from him. So there’s the idea of submission as you come. But at the end of the day, what you’re doing here today, whether you’ve understood it or not, we’re all—you, me—we’re all coming to Jesus today to hear his word, to be filled by his Spirit, to be ministered to by that Spirit so that the heaviness, the difficulties, the troubles that we experience in our lives can be lifted, and that we can find rest.

Rest. So what we have here is a very personal evangelistic message. We can say, and ultimately, 18 sermons on work—it’s all about coming to Jesus when we go to work, right? Passion is driven by serving Jesus. If we don’t come to Jesus and find him in our workplace, then we’ve kind of lost the whole origin of everything else that happens. And so when we come to Jesus, he teaches us about what our work is to be, why he’s having us work, what the significance of it is.

You know, you can talk about the two great deeds: providence and culture-making, right? We build culture through our work. We’re part of a tremendous network throughout the world of advancing culture, and we’re part of a tremendous network providing for people, right? Providing for their necessities, providing for their joys, providing for the things that’ll make them more productive in culture-building and providing for other people. And what we’re doing is love.

Now, those are all truths we’ve talked about in this series. And it’s the result—those are not abstract concepts. Those things happen because Jesus is the culture-builder. Jesus is the provider. Jesus and the triune God is the source of all love. And so as we come to Jesus in our work, as we bring Jesus into our work, then it’s going to transform it, and the end result will be better than it started. And the end result here—what’s the end result of this call to “come to me”?—that he says, “Well, the end result is given to us a couple of times. He says, ‘I will give you rest.’”

Is the end result rest? Yes, the end result of this highly personal evangelism phrase—when you talk to your fellow workers or your friends or members of your community about Jesus—this text, hopefully, will be one that you’ll remember. Sometimes you won’t say, “Repent of your sins.” Sometimes you won’t say, “Confess your faith in Jesus,” urge people to do that. I mean, those are good things. Sometimes you won’t say, “Be a follower of Jesus.” That’s a good thing too. And that the text goes on to imply it.

But the message is really as simple as urging people, in the midst of their heaviness, in the midst of difficulties, in the midst of being heavy laden and burdened, to come to Jesus so that they can find rest. Rest for their souls. It’s as simple as that.

All I want to do here is just go through some of these basic terms that are used in the text before us that follow this invitation to come. We have three verses. We’ve got maybe eight words that are used in these three verses. It’ll be helpful to us to kind of understand what these words are. And implied, of course, is that true rest—the kind of deep, satisfying rest which we’ll talk about in a couple of minutes—is only possible as we come to Christ. Apart from him, there is no rest. There is no what God calls rest. All right?

So what does he say? He says, “Come to me.” That’s the invitation. And who are the ones who come? Well, you have two conditions going on: those who labor and those who are heavy laden. And those who labor and are heavy laden who come to Jesus—he gives them rest.

What does it mean to labor? Well, this word is used in a variety of ways. It can be just simple work, or it can become and it can also be used to describe those who are wearied by work, or wearied or oppressed by other particular situations. Labor isn’t necessarily always a bad thing. Let me read a couple of verses here that explain this. And actually, let’s start with one in Matthew 6 in the Sermon on the Mount that we can expand out a little bit and talk about the implications of it.

Listen to this. This is Matthew 6, and the teaching of Jesus relative to the powers of the field, right? Let me just read this entire section.

“No one can serve two masters, for either he will love the one and hate the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.”

Now, that’s a verse for our age. You know, I think that’s the root cause of the disintegration of the sort of rest—the weekly cycle of days working, one day of resting in Christ—of being obliterated, because the culture is trying to serve mammon.

“Therefore, I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow or reap, nor gather into barns. Yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?”

Now, we can blow past that and we usually do. But what is he talking about? He’s talking about the relationship of work to the kind of rest that we’re talking about: labor and rest. And he’s using agricultural terminology, which remember is the metaphor for all work, all culture-building activities in the scriptures. And he says you got these birds that neither sew or reap or gather. Okay? So they’re not engaging in vocational labor, and yet God takes care of them, right?

The implication is, of course, we are to gather and sew and reap. But God will take care of us—is the point that he’s trying to make here. So in our work, okay, in our planting and sewing and in our reaping, there’s to be a deep rest at the bottom of that work that knows that ultimately God will take care of us, even if those things can’t be done for a particular season. You understand? So underneath our work, this text is telling us—it’s a vocational text—and it tells us at the base of your vocation, where you’re going to find energy and passion for the work that you do is to understand the value you have to the heavenly Father and how underneath it all, even if those things are taken away through unemployment, national catastrophe, even your own moral difficulties and shortcomings, if you lose work, your Lord God is going to take care of you still.

Okay? And that ultimately he’s the one taking care of you in your work, not you. Okay? Even though you’re working away. So I think that’s what this text is talking about.

“Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature? So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They neither toil nor spin.”

There’s our word: labor. “The lilies of the valley neither labor nor spin, and yet they’re arrayed in beautiful clothing,” our Savior tells us.

So again, we can blow past that as just sort of a general statement, but make it personal. Understand that your labor to produce things that’ll be good for your body and protective in a beautiful way for your body—clothing—that ultimately there’s a rest underneath that because you don’t need to do those things for that to be accomplished. Or better: that God is empowering you with energy to do that work so that you don’t do it in a way that thinks somehow you’re going to do it, you’re going to provide for yourself somehow.

Okay? Worry, anxiety—that’s the kind of heavy ladeness that we don’t want to have, and that our Savior is telling us about in Matthew 6 that we should not engage in.

What does he go on to say? “Of course, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. All these things shall be added unto you. Therefore, don’t worry. Seek the kingdom. Okay? And all these things will be added, normally through your work, your vocation, but underneath it all is a deep rest knowing that God is going to provide for you, okay? And your loved ones if you do what? If you seek the kingdom.

What’s the other way that Jesus talks about that? If you come to him. “Come to me, and you know, you’ll find rest. All you that labor and are heavy laden, come to me.” “Seek the kingdom.” Seek the kingdom is one way of phrasing salvation, and “come to Jesus.” But this nice, simple, personal way that Jesus talks about it here is very significant. I think this is the only place in the Bible where it’s given in that kind of simplicity of form.

He says “come” and “follow me” sometimes, but this is “come to me.”

So underneath all these other expressions: if we think seeking the kingdom is the answer and we see the kingdom somehow detached from the king, then we’ve messed up. You see, Jesus says if you’re going to seek the kingdom, it means you’re coming to the king. You’re having a relationship. You’re loving him and embracing him. And as a consequence of that, his will for your life, his word as it helps you as a disciple of his to follow him. But that discipleship follows coming to him. That’s the root thing that’s going on in Matthew 11.

Now I don’t think you can come to him if you don’t submit to him. But the point is the emphasis here is on this personal coming to the Lord Jesus Christ. And those that come are those who labor. Okay.

A few other quick verses about labor, right? So in Luke 5, “Simon answered and said to him, ‘Master, we have labored. We have toiled all night and caught no fish.’” So fishermen labor. So labor is used of normal vocational work that’s done, you know, with heavy exertion. It’s used that way in John 4:6. “Now Jacob’s well was there. Jesus therefore, being wearied from his journey, stops for water.”

So Jesus is one of those who labor and becomes wearied through the work that he’s doing. So all you who labor doesn’t necessarily mean you’re laboring improperly, okay? Or in a bad way. Labor is used of positive work as well. And even our Savior labored and became weary through his toil in doing his ministry. Okay. So no matter what state we find ourselves, coming to Jesus brings us rest.

So the point here is this term labor is fairly expansive. It’s fairly broad. A lot of other scriptures that we could talk about. For instance, in Acts 20:35: “I have shown you in every way by laboring like this that you must support the weak.” So part of our labor is to support the weak. And later we’ll read in the epistles that the thief who stole, let him steal no longer, but work with his hands, labor with his hands, that he may have to give to those who are poor. One of the major reasons we work or labor: the rest underneath that is the idea of extending the grace of God to the poor.

So this first term—”come to me, all you who labor”—that includes, you know, exertion through vocational calling as well as all kinds. It’s a broad term, in other words.

And those of you who are heavy laden. There’s only two places in the Bible where this “heavy laden” comes in. This is one of them. And then later, a ship that Paul warns: the goods of a ship, the cargo of a ship are going to be lost in a storm at sea. And the cargo—the word that’s translated cargo in some versions, those goods in the cargo—that actually means the laden place. So a ship is heavy laden with a bunch of material, right?

So you get under the docks here in port, and you see them put those big container ships on there. And so the ship is laden, heavy laden, with the things that are put upon it.

So you take these two terms together: all of those who are weary through their trials—that’s kind of an internal condition—and those who are heavy laden with external things being placed upon your back. Those people come to Jesus, and he will give us rest. Okay.

Now, in the immediate context here, as I said, he’s just kind of rebuked the Pharisees and teachers for their extra rules they’ve placed upon the law. He’s rebuked them for their unbelief and for wanting other people to be heavy laden with regulations that God doesn’t place. So in the first instance, what Jesus is talking about here are people who labor and are heavy laden under the added laws of the scriptures that the Pharisees brought.

If we wanted to make an analogy today, you know, you could look at people who say that you should never drink, that you shouldn’t dance, shouldn’t go to movies. Those are extra, you know, laws placed upon Christians, and I don’t think there’s much laboring going on about that today, but there probably was at various times in history. So man-made additions to the laws of God—the immediate context of what he’s saying.

And but as well, we can see in this the effects of sin, right? Sin produces a weariness of life. The burden on the back is the image in *Pilgrim’s Progress* of the debt, the weight of sinfulness. And so this is a perfectly acceptable verse in terms of conversion. But I think it also has application, as I said, to our work and to the heaviness that we can feel.

Now it has a lot broader application. What Jesus is telling you here today is: you’ve come here, you’ve got problems. Maybe they’re health problems, maybe they’re money problems. Almost always there’s relationship problems, right? Maybe you’re being persecuted by a bad boss at work, or maybe you’re laboring and are heavy laden under your own sin. You can’t get away from certain sin patterns, right?

So as you come here today, when you come to worship, you know, I think this verse is what worship is all about by way of application. We’re coming to Jesus. He’s assuring us that our life is hid in him. We’re seeking the kingdom, and he assures us that all the things that we’re worried about, heavy laden, weary over, he’s going to give us rest for those things.

Now, he may not change the external conditions. Frequently, he doesn’t. But he puts a different mindset in your life, helping you to see your state of salvation in him, and that he’s using everything together for your good. And that he’s using even the labors you perform in the workplace for a lousy boss—you’re using that to build culture, to provide for people’s needs, and to enhance love in the ultimate long-term results of work.

And so he tells you that. And so this sermon series on work is part of coming to him, hearing what he has to say through the word, and having our heaviness, our weariness, and the loads that we suffer under removed from us. So today, that’s what I want to call you to do in worship: as we sing songs, as we hear the word of God, as we partake of the table, all of this I want you to see as you coming to Jesus, wearied, heavy laden, and he is providing you rest.

Now, this term “rest” is comprehensive. So he’s not just talking about physical rest. He’s talking about much more than that. Let me read a few verses that use this term “rest” in the New Testament.

We read in Matthew 26, in the garden, he goes to his disciples and he says, “What, can’t you stay awake? Are you still sleeping and resting?” So rest can refer to physical rest, and actually sleeping rest. So he provides a degree of physical rest for us.

In Matthew 11:28, excuse me—wait, I’m thinking of another passage. Let me start over.

In Mark 6:31, he says to his disciples, “Come aside by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while.” Now, the emphasis there is not that you’re going to have the normal kind of rest from your labors through sleep, but you sort of take a break and you refresh yourself, right? And you kind of reconsider what you’re doing, and you rest. So it’s not just physical. That’s the point here: that isolation from work for a period of time—vacation, family camp, whatever it is—produces a rest that you go back to work with, substantial rest.

Let’s see. In 1 Corinthians 16:18, Paul says, “For they, the saints, refresh my spirit and yours.” Okay. So rest is seen here in the context of other believers. One of the things we’re supposed to do—and sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn’t on the Lord’s day—is there to be a refreshing of our spirits, a resting of our spirits. When we come to Jesus, acknowledging our heavy ladeness, acknowledging our labors, our need for refreshment, he refreshes us.

Certainly through the context of the worship service and what he says to us. But clearly this text, as well as others that Paul wrote, tells us that rest comes from community. It comes from people. You’re here today, perhaps probably, to refresh somebody. Okay? Paul does this several times in his epistles. He talks about people who have refreshed him, and the need for saints to refresh one another.

Now, what we’re talking about here really has a lot to do with the Lord’s day and the Christian Sabbath, as I said, right? What do we see in Exodus 20, in the Sabbath commandment? We see the command to rest one day out of seven—this cycle of work and rest. And certainly the idea there is to rest physically, so you’re not laboring hard that day. That’s certainly there. But beyond that, what we see then in the legislation that accompanies Exodus 20 and Leviticus 23, we read that every Sabbath day was to be a day of holy convocation.

We get it wrong if we think that the Sabbath ever was meant to just be a day where you’re off by yourself somewhere worshiping God by yourself. That’s not refreshing, I mean, it can be. But what God wants us to do is to enter into community for a period of that day because we’re going to find refreshment through the communion of saints. Okay?

So Jesus refreshes us through causing us to put off the normal physical work we do that day. And he refreshes us—as these texts show us—he gives us rest as we refresh one another in the Lord. Which means we’re to speak to one another not about just any old topic that comes up, but our refreshment, Paul says, comes in the Lord. So we should be refreshing each other, discussing things of the Lord that he’s doing in our lives, trying to be an encouragement to one another, and to seek out somebody today that needs refreshing. Okay?

And you’ll find that if you need refreshing, if you try to refresh somebody else, then you’re going to be refreshed by that activity as well.

So coming to Jesus has as its implication that you’re going to find rest. And the Bible teaches us that part of the rest you find is the refreshment of other believers. And so what we see here, again, is that when you come to church, when you come to worship God, there is the rest that he provides for your souls by assuring you of the forgiveness of sins, right? By assuring you that he accepts you. It’s that simple. And you find rest for your souls through the refreshment that we give to one another.

We put off the heavy ladeness of whatever work we’re doing, the labors of that. We put off any expectations that other people may put on us that are unrealistic. For many of us, the rest that we find in the Lord’s day is by telling ourselves, “God has accomplished all things for my salvation and my well-being.” In other words, it’s not necessarily an employer or an enemy who puts unrealistic expectations on you and makes you heavy laden. Frequently, it’s yourself, right?

“Why didn’t I do this? Why didn’t I do that? Gosh, I’m a jerk.” Right? You get that voice in your head all the time. I saw *Birdman*, and he’s always being told, “You’re no good. You’re a lousy guy.” I hear that voice all the time. I assume some of you do as well.

And so some of the things that we need rest from when we come to Jesus in worship is to quiet the voices of self-condemnation, right? And to not tell ourselves how horrible we are. Not listen to it, actually, right? We’re to speak to ourselves what the sermon and the liturgy of the church speaks to you: that your sins have been forgiven, that you’re accepted in the Lord Jesus Christ. And as you come to him, he will give you rest from all of those expectations, all of those difficulties, right?

So he gives us physical rest. He gives us refreshing rest through the community of saints. And then he gives us the rest of knowing that our sins have been atoned for.

It’s interesting because in Exodus 20, the Sabbath regulation says you’re to rest because God rested on his work. By the way, one other thing about that: before we get to Deuteronomy 5, in Exodus 20, what did God do when he rested on the seventh day? Did he just sort of take time out and just sort of chill? No, I don’t think so. I think what God was doing through his work and then primarily on the Lord’s day or on the Sabbath, rather, was to see the delight of what he had done.

I think that part of our rest is looking back on the work that God has accomplished through us and saying, “Praise God for this.” Right? Whatever I did successfully this last week—building relationships, in my work product, whatever it is—the rest is, of course, physical rest. It’s refreshment from other people. But it’s also taking delight in what God has made and your perhaps very small part in that as well. So the rest has that aspect to it too.

So that’s Exodus 20. Deuteronomy 5, on the other hand, is the regranting of the Four Ten Words. And the fourth word in Deuteronomy 5—the entire thing now is based upon their being redeemed from Egypt, right?

So in Exodus 20, God worked six days, rested the seventh. You do too. Deuteronomy 5: God has redeemed you from Egypt. So rest as a commemoration, as a reenactment, as it were, of that. So that’s creation in Exodus 20 and redemption in Deuteronomy 5. And so part of our rest that Jesus is talking about here is creation rest, recreation rest, but it’s also redemptive rest. It’s rest knowing that God has accomplished salvation for us. He’s saved us from our sins. He’s made final atonement for those things, and he’s delivered us from unjust economic systems.

Okay? What do I mean? It sounds like a Marxist now or something. Well, but that’s what he says. Remember that what he brought him out of was a place where there was no Sabbath. Just like pagan worlds, they had to work because they were not regarded with—they worked seven days a week, and they worked hard. They were simply units of production in a materialistic building project that Pharaoh had demanded that they do. They were slaves.

Okay? And this culture is moving back toward that by obliterating or trying to obliterate the Lord’s day or Christian Sabbath. We stop work one day out of seven, and we tell ourselves: God has freed us from the enemies of Christ who want to turn people that can be controlled into units of production and nothing more. He’s redeemed us out of those situations, and ultimately he’s redeemed us from our sins—is the clear implication.

So when Jesus says, “Come to me, you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest,” that is a summation of history. That’s a summation of who you are, what happened to you through the fall, and what God has now accomplished—the reversal of in the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ for us.

He calls us today to come to him. All of us who are weary, heavy laden, he gives us rest. The implications of this are dramatic, and they’re implications for our work, because it’s people who have that kind of assurance—that God has rolled away our heavy ladeness of the kind of toil that would oppress us and provided us rest for our souls—that’s the kind of people who go into the week tomorrow with Jesus, and as a result of that, having passion for their work, being able to work quickly, right, and with discipline in the context of the workplace.

The Lord’s day sets up the rest of the blessings of culture that God has created you to be through your work and your labor. So when we talk about Jesus’s rest for us in Matthew 11, we’re talking really about the whole gospel message, the whole of human history, and what he has accomplished for you.

We should read the next couple of verses. He says, “Take my yoke upon you.” So there is submission. There is a yoke. And you know what he’s going to do: he’s not going to obliterate the Sabbath or Lord’s day, but what he’s going to do is say that yoke—applying it to the fourth word—is easy. It’s light, and in fact it actually produces refreshment for your souls. Okay? As opposed to what the Pharisees are laying upon you, which produces heavy ladeness for your soul.

“Take my yoke upon me. Learn from me. Why? Because I am gentle, I am meek, and I am lowly in heart, and you’ll find rest for your souls.” Again, the rest will now extend into your very souls—the whole person of who you are.

So Jesus in that short summation goes on to expand it a bit and tell us some of the details. Coming to Jesus means accepting his yoke, his instruction, his interpretation of how God wants us to live. And in that interpretation of how being disciples of his will, we’ll find rest for our souls. And then he says, “My yoke is easy, my burden is light.”

So Jesus is that.

Now, it’s interesting because in the Old Testament, in Exodus, Moses is talking to Yahweh, and Yahweh tells him, “Follow me, and I will give you rest. I will provide rest.” Jesus is declaring here once more that he’s Yahweh. He’s the one who will produce and give us rest for our souls.

Secondly, in the Old Testament, wisdom frequently called people to herself, right? In the Proverbs, “Come to me,” right? And in the book of Sirach, the Wisdom of Sirach—which is not an inspired book, but it’s old literature written primarily by faithful followers of Yahweh—it says the same thing. And in fact, it has language very similar to what our Savior tells us here.

“Become a disciple of the master, right? And in that discipleship, you’ll find rest for your souls as you move through coming to Jesus, becoming his disciple, learning what he says to you, taking upon yourself the yoke of a disciple, then you’ll find rest for your souls.”

Now, he’s contrasting himself with the Pharisees. Again, what does he tell us in other gospel accounts? They put burdens upon people that they could never bear. In Acts 15 of the Jerusalem Council, “Let’s not put burdens upon people that they can’t bear. Let’s not teach people that they have to work their way to salvation.” That’s a burden the Pharisees put upon people that couldn’t be borne.

So he’s contrasting himself with that. You don’t have to do anything ultimately for salvation, but come to Jesus. And as you come to him, he forgives your sins. And then you walk in his ways, and you find ongoing rest for your souls. Why? Because his character is gentle. That’s what—the Bible tells us about Moses, by the way. And so Yahweh telling Moses he’ll find rest for, he’ll provide rest for his people, lines right up with what Jesus is telling us here.

Jesus is the greater Moses, the great Moses. Jesus is Yahweh. Jesus is wisdom calling us today to follow in his paths. And he gives this tremendous blessing and assurance that as we simply come to him, be his disciples—as this sermon series is about what work is about—we’ll find rest for our souls. And that rest will provide the kind of energy and passion and ability to work in the workplace with the understanding of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Eric Liddell, in that great old movie—I know a lot of young people haven’t watched it, but *Chariots of Fire*, right? So he’s a guy that’s a true story. He ran in the Olympics in the last century, and he’s contrasted in the movie with another runner who was also a historic personage who was Jewish. Liddell is a Christian, Scottish, and there’s this contrast between the two. In the screenplay—at least in the movie—the Jewish runner says, “I want to win so I can justify my existence, so I can just justify my existence.”

I don’t know if the actual man actually said that, but that’s the way the screenplay was written to reflect what was being talked about. Liddell, on the other hand, doesn’t need to justify his existence at all. He runs because God has made him fast. It’s that simple. He tells his sister, “His sister says, ‘Oh, do important work. Do missionary work. Don’t do running work.’ He said, ‘Look, God made me fast. I feel the pleasure of God when I run and run fast.’

That’s you at work, folks. God has made you for the task you’ve been called to do. That’s you in your family setting. That’s you as a wife. That’s you as a husband. That’s the way God has made you. Delight in that. Not in a way to find your acceptance with God. Come to Jesus in your role at work, in the home, in your community, and you’ll find rest for your souls. And it’s a rest that’ll make you run fast, that’ll give you accomplishment.

Liddell famously refused to run on Sunday, the Christian Sabbath. Could have had a gold medal that day. He says no. And in the movie, there’s this tremendous picture imagery. Liddell is preaching in a church someplace on Sunday, and the guys that do compete on the Lord’s Day in the Olympics, they’re falling in the mud. It’s raining on them. They’re struggling. They are heavy laden. They are toiling. They are burdened. Right?

So you have this contrast between people who come to the rest that is Jesus Christ, as amplified, or as epitomized in the Christian Sabbath, the Lord’s day. You have Liddell in that position, and he then goes on the rest of the week to win more medals than they thought he would win. He’s rested. He’s ready because he’s sought the kingdom first, which means he’s come to Jesus.

And the other, who was seeking to justify existence, doesn’t hear how many gold medals that guy gets. He’s never going to justify his existence. That is a hard taskmaster. God says that Jesus is the one who paid the price for our sins. We can have a deep rest under our work—not working to justify ourselves, to prove how important we are, to meet some demands of our heart or our brain or the culture upon us.

Ultimately, we go to work because we love it, to serve Jesus in what we do. And we have the deep rest of knowing that we take this day off because of God’s creation and God’s redemption. And as a result of that, we go into the work week tomorrow with renewed passion.

Let’s pray. Father, we pray that today we would remember this message: to come to you, to come to Jesus, your Son, and to you through Jesus. That this is the only source of rest and peace. Lord God, you know that there are people here today—probably many of them—who feel heavy laden, who feel that they’re under some burden, who are toiling, Lord God, in situations they can’t figure out a way out of or a way through.

I pray you would bless them, Lord God, that they would come to Jesus even now, recognizing that in him all things have been accomplished for their salvation. Bless us, Lord God, as throughout the rest of this service, by ministering rest to us, refreshment, and assurance that the Lord Jesus Christ loves us and his hands are upon us for blessing. In his name we pray. Amen.