Sermon text: Matthew 11:25-30
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen. Amen.
What is it to be weary and heavy laden in the way in which Jesus talks about it? It’s clear that Jesus is issuing an invitation. He speaks to those who are weary of trying to please God by their own efforts. He speaks to those who labor under the law. Those who are burdened by the weight of guilt, loaded down with the weariness and burdens that life in this veil of tears lays upon us. Jesus speaks to those who are heavy laden with loads that they’re unable to carry. To those who realize their weariness and their state of burden, Jesus calls each of us today to set down our good works and rely solely on him alone. “Come to me,” he says, “and I will give you rest.” Jesus is speaking to you — to all devout Christians who come to church and who offer here their worship and praise and above all their confession of sin and receive holy absolution.
He is inviting you to come to him and to receive what he offers: rest from a heavy labor. Jesus’s words back then address people who knew what it was to labor and be heavy laden. The Pharisees would load heavy weights upon the backs of the people. They thought and taught that the law was something that if you worked hard enough, you could keep it. That was how you could be accounted righteous before God: by your works, by your devotion to the rules and regulations of the Pharisees. And that was indeed a heavy burden to bear for the people of his day. Only the best and most dedicated could hope to live up to the standard. They would have to be similar to those Pharisees whom are so often condemned in the scripture. The Pharisees thought they could manage the law and master it. But what they did not take — but what they did do — was take the teeth out of the law and make it an external, superficial kind of keeping of the law: keeping the law in an outward form without inner devotion. Take for example the Sabbath commandment. People should rest from their work on the Sabbath in order to hear the word of God. But instead, the Pharisees made it up and devised it according to their own regulations. How many steps could a person take on a Sabbath day journey? They prohibited activities like lighting fires, carrying objects in public, harvesting, and performing various forms of work. That sort of thing was what they were all about. They missed the whole point. They turned it all into a manageable kind of law, one that they could master if they just had enough strength.
But that really sidestepped the force of the law. God’s law was given intending that we use it to measure up our spiritual and moral value in light of his law. It exposes us as sinners who do not do what God’s will wants us to do. In this way, God shows our need for his forgiveness and his righteousness. But the Pharisees deluded themselves into thinking that they were keeping the law and that they were righteous men by their own works and deeds and good intentions. To make themselves seem righteous, though, they had to look better than everybody else. So they devised a lot of man-made laws, a lot of regulations, and developed a whole system of minute rules that if you put your mind to it and worked really, really hard, you could keep it in some sort of outward fashion. Other people, of course, those who were not so attentive to the rules, would come off looking less religious, less devout, less Jewish. That was the gain. And what was the effect? The people felt weighed down. They were burdened. Jesus said of the Pharisees, “They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people’s shoulders” — by directing people to the law, to their own add-on human regulations. The Pharisees tied heavy loads upon the people’s backs, and it was far more than they could bear.
The issue came up in the early church, the first 300 years of the church. There were some who were saying that the Gentiles, that is non-Jews, had to keep the Jewish laws in order to be permitted to attend church services. The Gentiles must be required to obey the law of Moses, they said. But Peter got it right when he said, “Why are you putting God to the test by placing a yoke on the neck of the disciples that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear? But we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will.” The law is a heavy yoke that you and I are not able to bear. Keeping all the commandments of God is an enormous challenge, that we can’t possibly keep even one of them. We’re not strong enough. We’re not disciplined enough. We’re not sinless enough.
The Apostle Paul realized this about himself. And he wrote in Romans chapter 7, the epistle lesson: “For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” Paul had been a Pharisee, a Pharisee of all Pharisees. He knew something of the burden of the law. Here we can hear him straining under the weight of the law to do what is right, but the inability to do it. He knew now that he was nowhere near good enough or strong enough to carry the load. He couldn’t do it. And if Paul couldn’t do it, and he was about as zealous and religious as they come, then you and I certainly can’t do it. Paul describes here the battle waging within every Christian heart and mind. He gives voice to our failure to do all that we know we should do, as well as to our corresponding tendency to do things that we know we ought not do.
We keep falling into the same ditch over and over again, on one side or the other: actively committing sins, our failure to do what is right. The battle is real. The battle is within us: the conflict between the new man who wants to obey God and the old Adam who wants to serve self. This struggle and how it weighs upon our conscience is too heavy for us to bear. I don’t know about you, but I feel it daily. Do you realize that you have not loved God as you ought? You have not loved your neighbor as yourself? That you have not kept God’s commandments in thought, word, and deed? Do you also know and realize that the law of God condemns you and me and all of humanity as sinners and sentences all of us to death, and there’s no escape, no way out according to the law? Nothing you can do to get out from underneath the crushing weight of the law when it comes crashing down on your own head. Paul’s question echoes yet even today: Who will deliver me from this body of death? Paul knows the answer to his own question, and he joyfully declares, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” It is through Jesus Christ our Lord that you’re delivered, that the load is lifted, the burden is removed. That’s why Jesus came and says to you, “Come to me. I will give you rest.” Jesus Christ is the only one who can do it. He does it for you. He’s the only one strong enough to carry the load of the weight of the law. And that’s what Jesus did. He lived the righteous life that we cannot and do not live. He kept God’s law completely in our stead, in our place. His love for God was total. His love for the neighbor was complete. Nothing was left out and nothing fell short of the mark. Jesus did something more than all of that, too. The crushing weight of the law, the sentence it pronounces on sinners, the verdict it declares — death to all who do not do all that is written therein — the death sentence we deserve: Jesus suffered in our place. The sinless Son of God died the death of sinners, hanging on the cross, suspended between heaven and earth, mocked by men and abandoned by God the Father, all for a burden too heavy for you and I to bear.
In Greek mythology, there’s this god, demiurge, sub-god named Atlas. And you know his job: his job was to carry the world on his shoulders. Jesus is the real-life Atlas. He carries the weight of sin of the world upon his shoulders and takes it to the cross — the heavy, unbearable weight of the whole world’s sin. And John the Baptist declared of him, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.” That is the load Christ carried to the cross. He lifts it off your shoulders and puts it on his own. The weight of your sins has been lifted and the load has been removed. The load, the heavy load, is gone. Just as surely as the huge and heavy stones were rolled away from the tomb on Easter morning, the heavy millstone of judgment, the enormous tombstone of death — these have all been rolled away and thrown into the depths of the sea. They’ve been cast as far as the east is from the west. Sin is forgiven. Death is destroyed. Jesus lifts these burdens from you and now says to you in a warm, inviting tone, “Come to me and I will give you rest.” Quit struggling on your load on your own. Lay down your burdens at the foot of the cross. Listen to the Savior who says, “See my hands. See the work that I have done for you. You are now free from sin, death, and the power of the devil.”
In his book, Pilgrim’s Progress, John Bunyan tells the story of a Christian on a journey carrying a large bundle on his shoulders. He arrives at a place somewhat elevated above the surrounding area, and on top of that place a cross, and below the hill there is a grave. And as the man comes to the top of the hill with his heavy burden, his load on his shoulders, the load suddenly is released from his shoulders and it drops to the ground. It rolls down the hill and disappears into the grave. It’s a picture of what Christ has done for you and for me and for the whole world. We labor along carrying a heavy load. Crosses appear before our eyes. We lay our heavy load down in there and roll it away. What rest we have for our souls. St. Augustine once prayed to God, “Thou hast made us for thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in thee.” Here then is where your rest is: Christ Jesus, he is our Sabbath. He gives us rest, refreshment from our labor. Jesus bids you: “Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
Come to Jesus and find the rest you need. Rest for the weary, those worn out by their sins and the effect of sin we’ve all experienced in this fallen world. Rest for the weary, Christians who are troubled by the internal battle: the new man has come to contend with the old sinful nature. Rest from all the burdens we feel: sadness, pain, sorrow, despair, loss. Jesus is speaking to one and all, to you: “Come to me and I will give you rest.” Yes. Come and lay your burden down. Find true spiritual rest in Christ, both in this life and for the life of the world to come. We have this rest now: peace with God and the forgiveness of sins. And we have a sure and certain hope of the resurrection of the dead and an eternal life in the promised land of heaven:
I heard the voice of Jesus say,
“Come unto Me and rest;
Lay down, thou weary one, lay down
Thy head upon My breast.”
I came to Jesus as I was,
Weary and worn and sad;
I found in Him a resting place,
And He has made me glad.
Amen.
May the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.