If you have never felt weary, overwhelmed, fatigued, overloaded, stressed out… please stop reading. However, if you have at some time in your life felt weary, overwhelmed, fatigued, overloaded, stressed out, my prayer is that these next few minutes will be both instructive and comforting.
There are a few verses in Matthew that are very well-known – maybe so well-known that we can lose the beauty in them. They blessed me again in re-reading and here we have them with a few thoughts.
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.
Matthew 18:28-30
Sounds so nice and comforting and cosy doesn’t it? Can it be so easy? Let’s take a closer look at these few verses so that indeed we will experience this REST that Jesus speaks about.
RESPOND to His call
In John 20, we read about Mary’s encounter with Jesus after His resurrection. It’s somewhat strange that Mary did not recognize Jesus straight away. It seems as though she didn’t really raise her head to look into the presumed gardener’s face. But when Jesus spoke her name, that made all the difference. She responded; she turned and fell at his feet. When Jesus speaks, the onus is on us to respond. He will never force us. Yes, he takes the first step. He calls us. But if our ears are deaf to his voice or if we are so busy that hearing him is no longer our priority, or there are too many distractions around us, or …. Or… we won’t even know He has called us. Here His Word is clear, “Come…”
EMBRACE the promise of rest
Does that mean we lie in a hammock all day? Gaze up at the stars at night? Do nothing? Absolutely not! Man was made to work (if you don’t work, you don’t eat – 2 Thessalonians 3:11). So what kind of rest is Jesus offering here? A good question! Glad you asked! This is soul rest.
How do we embrace it? We stop striving to please God by our own actions… The Amplified Bible puts it like this: Come to Me, all who are weary and heavily burdened [by religious rituals that provide no peace], and I will give you rest [refreshing your souls with salvation].
But how can you say that? I’m born again. I know that I can only be saved by the grace of God. I cannot save myself. I don’t follow rituals! Don’t we? Don’t we often, somewhere in the back of our minds think that by praying a certain number of hours per day, knowing all the books of the Bible, fasting a couple of days a week will make us more presentable to God? It’s a human thing. We still want to have some kind of control even though we find it heavy going. It’s like we want to say, ‘Yep, look! All my work has been rewarded. I can have some rest.’ That’s not how it works, people! Jesus is saying, ‘Come… and I will give.’
SUBMIT to His teaching
Often we read these verses and gloss over the part ‘Take my yoke upon you AND LEARN FROM ME… FOR I AM GENTLE AND HUMBLE OF HEART… We’ll appreciate the rest and the easiness of the load but the learning part? Mmmmm….. yeah, maybe not so much. Especially when the words gentle and humble are used. Words that in today’s society are despised and thought of as weak.
God’s promises are not just handed out willy-nilly. There are conditions – we come, we learn. If we really want that rest of the soul, learning at the feet of Jesus with an attitude of submission is the place to be. Do we always stay there? Nope! Do we always obey? Nope! But we always need to return to that attitude of ‘He is the Master. I submit to His teaching.’ And if we ask the question, ‘What is His teaching?’ we will be here for a long time with the answers!
We can start with the Gospels and all the words Jesus spoke! We could then go through the epistles written to the different churches. We could also delve into the book of Proverbs (great wisdom for life there!) If we learnt and applied what is in between the covers of the book known as the Bible, the REST that we long for would be ours. May we never tire of learning from the One who is gentle and humble of heart. In this scenario, there is never a time when the student overtakes the Master. If He is gentle, then we also are gentle. If he is humble then we also are humble. If He is the Servant of all we also are servants. And we could go on…
TRUST His process
Verse 30 seems to contradict what Jesus says in verse 28 – Come ….and I’ll give you rest. In verse 29 He alludes to the yoke and then in the next sentence He quantifies what He means. I won’t assume that we all know what a yoke is so let’s check it out: A yoke is a wooden crosspiece that is fastened over the necks of two animals and attached to the plough or cart that they are to pull. It is also possible to use it on one animal only with the farmer holding onto the guiding rope to keep the animal in line.
In fact, the yoke is both a picture of work and servitude. What? Here I was thinking I was going to get some rest and Jesus talks about taking on a yoke? You see, whether we like it or not, we are yoked to something. When we think of how we live our daily lives, we have to admit that there are things that we are attached to that do not bring us rest – especially rest for our souls. And when we are yoked to those kinds of things the guiding rope is not held by Jesus. Either we are trying to guide ourselves or someone else is doing it – the enemy does not want us to come and have rest. He will do His best to distract us with things that are not healthy for our souls; offense, anxiety, worry, unforgiveness, anger, bitterness, jealousy, guilt. And they weigh us down. They are burdens that we should not be carrying!
That’s why Jesus says to come! ‘Trust me!’ He says.
We can look at this a couple of ways:
1. Often, when two animals were yoked together, a strong one would be yoked with a weaker one. The strong one would obviously do most of the pulling, carrying the load of the weaker one. What a picture of Jesus! His strength compensates for our weakness! Yes we are attached to him, but He takes the load! That’s cool!
2. And if we are looking at one animal who has a yoke and is being guided by the farmer, it’s another beautiful picture. Jesus holds the guiding rope so that we walk in the path that he has ordained for us – if we are not guided, we would be making crooked lines all over the field of our lives.
Whichever way we look at the yoke, we see that Jesus’ love for us and His longing that we live a life of rest are palpable.
There is a saying that says, ‘Trust the process’. It sounds good! But I would like to rephrase that and say, ‘Trust the God of the process’. In Him and in Him alone, true rest is possible.