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Matthew 11:28-30
Excerpted from: God's Promise of RestIn Matthew 11, verses 28 through 30 we have Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, repeating a message to us in back-to-back scriptures. Is He trying to get our attention? I think so. He is giving us a promise of how we can have rest in this chaotic, burdensome world.
Let us first note the back-to-back promises in two scriptures, 28 and 29. "I will give you rest" and "you will find rest." Now, I want us to look before both of these promises. And what word do you see before both of these promises? You see that little word "and" which connects the promise to the action just before it. Jesus is telling us, here is how we can have that rest.
In verse 28, we have an invitation first from Jesus Christ, who sits at the right hand of God. He says, Come to Me at the beginning of each day, throughout the day, at the end of the day. Come to Me and put your focus above the sun. He is telling us we will never find rest in this physical world, but when we come to Jesus with our thoughts and prayers continually, He will give us rest.
Again, in verse 29, Jesus promises, we will find rest for our souls if we do our parts. What is our part? To take Jesus' yoke on us and learn from Him how to develop a heart that is like God, a heart that is gentle and lowly, meek. There is a choice here. Jesus is telling us you have got two yokes. You have got to pick one or you are by default going to have the other. And He says, take My yoke so that you are not overcome from the heavy burdensome yoke of Satan and sin in this world. And when we take His yoke, we are actually hitched to Him and we have the opportunity side-by-side with Him throughout the day as He helps us pull the load.
When we come to Him and take His yoke, then and only then does He provide us rest. When we choose to take Jesus Christ's yoke each day, we gradually learn to overcome our carnal, evil heart that is so self-focused in this dog-eat-dog world. When we take Jesus Christ's yoke, we are keeping our focus above the sun, to trust in God and ask for His help to lead us to the rest from the burden and toils in this world.
In verse 30, Jesus explains that contrasted to the burdensome yoke of Satan and sin in this world, He says, "My yoke is easy and My burden is light." His yoke is gracious, kind, merciful, not harsh, overbearing, and oppressive. His laws are not only reasonable and easy to obey, they are designed for our own good. His burden is light.
Matthew 11:29
Excerpted from: God's 'Heart Measure'Let us stop here for a minute. Jesus tells us to take His yoke and learn of Me. What is He saying? Well, a yoke was used to control the power of an animal. Horses, oxen, donkeys, all have a lot of power, but without a yoke to guide them and control that power, they were downright useless.
Jesus is telling us to take His yoke. Take the yoke of God's Holy Spirit so that we can learn to restrain and control our powerful minds and put them to work to become just like Him. Remember, being poor in spirit is unnatural to the human mind. The carnal mind is self-focused and wants to consider itself rich in spirit, just like the Laodicean. It is only through God's Holy Spirit that we can develop a heart that is restrained and under control at all times.
And now get this, brethren, because this is very significant. God is now describing His own heart to us. And He starts with the "I am" preface, and I do not think that is an accident. He is trying to get our attention. He is trying to draw us in here.
He uses two words then to describe His heart. He says, "I am meek and lowly in heart." God's heart is meek. Strong's 4239, praus, an adjective form used only here, meaning gentle, humble, meek. It is a form of a primary Greek word, praos, Strong's 4239, meaning mild, humble, gentle.
Now get this: Meek is not weak. It carries with it the meaning of great power, enormous power that is held back in restraint, and the image here is of a father so angry with their son because they did something so stupid and wrong. They rear back to give their son a massive whipping, and just as they are coming down, they see his eyes and the tears and the sorrow, and they hold back the hand. And they give him a mild slap on the bottom, a mild correction.
And God's heart is lowly. Strong's 5011, tapeinos, an adjective used 18 times in the New Testament to mean depressed, base, cast down, humble, of low degree, lowly. Thayer adds, lowly in spirit, humble, lowering oneself to serve others. It might be difficult for us at times to think about God as lowly, but did He not lower Himself into the form of human flesh to serve us to the point of death?
Matthew 11:29
Excerpted from: Choosing Our YokeLet us unpack this first. So we get an invitation here. Jesus says, "Come to Me." Who is to come to Him? Well, He is calling out His people who are weighed down by the yoke and cares of this world, the people who He has called to come out of this world, but are struggling because they are still in this world. The calling is to us, brethren. What is He promising now here at the end? He is promising rest from the heavy burden of this world and the yoke that comes with it. Reading on now in verse 29,
Again, let us unpack this one. "Take My yoke upon you." Ah, right there is a clear choice here. So there must be more than one kind of yoke. He says, take My yoke, that means there is some other yoke out there, right? There is a choice that we have to make and that choice is we either take His yoke voluntarily on ourselves or we by default are wearing the yoke of Satan, who owns this world that we live in. We have to choose to accept, to put on His yoke, Jesus Christ's yoke. He says, take My yoke and become attached, hitched to Me all day, every day.
Then He says, "learn from Me." He says, let Me tell you about My heart. Let Me tell you about who I am as a Being. I am going to show you My way of life. Jesus describes the very heart of God using two descriptors. We looked at this before. Meek, remembering the meaning here, is gentle, humble, mild, but not weak. Meekness is a great power held back in restraint. And Jesus' heart is lowly, meaning cast down, humble, of low degree, a heart that lowers oneself to serve others. Jesus' heart is not self-seeking. He is always doing the will of His Father. He lived to serve; He died to serve; and now He lives at the right hand of the Father as our High Priest to serve and guide us in living His way. And again, Jesus repeats His promise, when we take His yoke, He leads us to rest from the burden.
Matthew 11:29-30
Excerpted from: Have You Become an Example to All Who Believe?We find great comfort and encouragement from Jesus' credible promise that He is gentle and humble in the way that He works with us.
So Jesus Christ provides a reason why we should follow His teachings. He is not harsh, oppressive, or overbearing like the Pharisees, but humble and patient in how He governs. His laws are reasonable, making them easy to obey. Where the gentleness of Christ exists, everything is calm, even peaceable and orderly, and the reason for this is that the work of righteousness is peace, and the effect of righteousness is joy.
Matthew 11:28-30
Excerpted from: Government (Part One)It is not God's government that is burdensome. It is Satan's, and man's. What is so difficult is overcoming the enmity against God—the attitudes, and the character, instilled in us by living under those governments of Satan. In our lives, we have followed the patterns exemplified before us. That is, we see these things happening all the time by our leaders. And the vanity, and the competitiveness, and the greed, and the deceitfulness—we have picked that up, from the leaders of this world.
Matthew 11:29
Excerpted from: Pure in HeartGod's heart is both meek and lowly (we looked at this last time), and when we put on Jesus Christ's yoke—the power of His Holy Spirit—we are able then to control our heart to become more like His, in a spirit of meekness, lowliness, gentleness, ready to suffer wrong, ready to forgive and forbear because peace and unity and being godlike is what we treasure most.
Matthew 11:25-30
Excerpted from: Four Views of Christ (Part 3)The section ends on almost a plaintive note, and that is, in Matthew 11:25-30, He thanks God that God is doing it the way He is doing it. He invites others to become subject to Him. He is assuring them there is peace, and there is a Kingdom which cannot be moved.
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