Podcast Summaries

But actually, it's been increased. So this morning's reading is from Matthew chapter 11, verses 25 to 30. At that time, Jesus said, I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants. Yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by the Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. Come to me, all of you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, 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. This is the Gospel of the Lord. Thanks be to you, O Christ. Thank you, Jonathan. Do take a seat. It's great to see you here. Let me add my welcome to Simon's. We're going to pray. Loving Lord Jesus, we thank you for those truths that we've declared already in our worship to you, that you are with us, that you are with us whether life feels easy or whether it feels like the hardest thing we've ever gone through. We've got people here today who feel in both of those camps and everywhere in between. Lord, would you speak to us this morning words of power, words of hope, words of encouragement, so that we might leave here changed by you. In Jesus' name. Amen. So as Simon said, this is the final week in our series. And so far, we've covered these things. So we began the series with forgiven. So we were thinking about knowing God's love when we feel guilty. Then we moved on to being held, knowing God's sovereignty when we feel afraid. Then it was safe, knowing God's wisdom when we feel confused. Then it was connected, knowing the community of God when we feel alone. And then it was purposeful, knowing the call of God when we feel directionless. And you can catch up online if you want to listen back to any of those. And today, we're finishing with empowered, knowing God's strength when we feel weary. And those verses, those final verses, 28 to 30 of Matthew 11, that we just heard are so often quoted in isolation. But even then, they are powerful and they're beautiful. But what I hope we can explore this morning is that when we understand them within the context of, really, the whole Gospel, but in particular, the whole of Matthew chapter 11, they take on an even greater dimension. Because on the surface, these verses, they soothe our frenetic hearts and minds. And we long for peace and refreshment at the deepest level. And if we're following Jesus, then we know that ultimately, we find these things, rest and refreshment, in him and him alone. Jesus' invitation is to experience rest in him. His way is not tiring or burdensome. He's come, he said, that we would have life in all its fullness. Now, of course, none of that is wrong. But I do have a bit of a concern with these verses. And it's what we might be implying if we boil Jesus' invitation here down to this. That if you are busy or tired or somehow experiencing less than the life that Jesus wants you to have, might that actually make you feel worse? Might it lead you to conclude that busyness and tiredness are sinful and that real Christians are the ones who have somehow found a way to live that stops them from ever getting tired or weary or weighed down? If we'd have had my slides, you would have seen a slide that showed about 12 different types of tiredness. And I can't remember them all. But they were things like weary, broken, grieving, shattered, exhausted. And there were other ones as well. And all of us at different points in our lives would have experienced different types of tiredness, probably all 12 of those different types. And sometimes it's our own choices and our own motivations that lead us to feeling tired. And sometimes, I know from my own experience, it stems from my sinfulness that I kind of take on too much or, you know, do things for the wrong reasons and that leads me to be tired. But tiredness is universal to all human beings and it can be exacerbated by so many different things that are all outside of our control. So, grief, illness, other people's expectations, the culture simply in which we live, and so much more contributes to our tiredness and our weariness. I want to be really, really clear. Being tired is not a sin. Okay? Probably some of you are like, yeah, okay, yeah, that's really obvious. But actually, it isn't obvious to me. So, I'll just assume that there are some people here that might feel at times like they're sinning if they're tired. But we're all designed to sleep, aren't we, for like roughly a third of every 24-hour period. And also, in addition to that, to have some hours of being awake but resting because that's what our bodies need. So, tiredness is that normal cue that our bodies give us to ensure that we, in turn, give our body what it needs and our minds. But for me, maybe for some of you, when I get overtired, properly worn down, then what happens is my thinking changes and I can start to lose sight of what Jesus is saying here. And that is, I lose sight of his welcome and his invitation to come to him, all of you that are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. And this is what my frazzled mind hears instead. Look how tired you've got. You failed to carry that easy load that I've been offering to you. What a sinner you are. Try harder to live my way of life in all its fullness. Now, friends, those are not Jesus' words. Okay? They are not Jesus' words to me or his words to you. They are lies of the enemy which distort this wonderful invitation from God and they turn it into something that we actually have to work hard for and earn. And in fact, that is the exact opposite of what Jesus is saying to us through these verses. What he's saying is that we don't have to live under that burden. He's not placing an extra burden on us. He's taking a burden away and taking it onto himself. And I share this messed up thinking with you as we kind of begin because something very similar was happening to the people to whom Jesus first offered this invitation. And so it's that that we need to really understand in order to appreciate how incredible Jesus' words are here in Matthew 11. So I'd really encourage you to grab a Bible from the chair in front of you or from nearby and open it to the New Testament section towards the back and find page 20.

11 to 12 in that New Testament section of the church Bibles, or Matthew 11 if you're looking at it on your phone or another device. And what we're going to do is we're going to have a lightning speed tour of the whole of Matthew chapter 11, okay? Now, a good title for that chapter would um Would be that uh maybe something that was on my slides, because my notes don't make sense. Um it was, it's addressing the fact That Jesus is not doing what people expect him to be doing. And the chapter begins With these messengers from John the Baptist asking Jesus, Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another? Okay, so John the Baptist, Jesus' cousin, he's been there. He's been prophesying that Jesus is the Messiah, but now John has been imprisoned by King Herod. And John is really evidently quite confused by the things that he's heard that Jesus has been doing. Okay? John and his followers were, like many people, expecting the Messiah to come with worldly power, with might, and with influence, okay? If we were to think back, some of us will be familiar um with a passage in the Old Testament where the prophet Elijah was asked to um get his God to display his power. And there was this kind of competition between uh Elijah's God and the the the false god Baal that lots of people were worshipping at the time. And um I'm not going to go into the story, but uh there was this massive pyrotechnic display of God's power, fire coming down from heaven and setting alight this kind of water-soaked altar and burning up the offering that was on it. That's the kind of thing that people were thinking that the Messiah, who they've been waiting for, was going to come and do. And Jesus hasn't done anything like that. And he also hasn't done the other thing that they were expecting the Messiah to do, which is confront the earthly, worldly powers, like King Herod in this example. What Jesus has been doing is very intentionally going around befriending tax collectors and sinners, basically the people who um were considered to be outsiders. Now these people um who Jesus had been going around befriending were Jews, Jewish people, so they were technically insiders, God's people. But because they were tax collectors or sinners, um that demonstrated that they weren't keeping the Torah, the Old Testament law, properly. They'd failed to follow that law to the letter. And so the religious leaders said they are actually outsiders. They're insiders kind of by birth and by culture, but actually they've failed to keep the law, so they're outsiders. Many of the prophecies in the Old Testament about the promised Messiah point to him being the one who will come in power to proclaim God's judgment and condemnation. To proclaim God's judgment and condemnation. But Jesus has been seen and John's had this report that Jesus has been healing the sick, bringing freedom, restoring lives, proclaiming good news to the poor. And John's sitting there in prison thinking, well that doesn't sound like judgment and condemnation. Did I get it wrong? Is Jesus not the Messiah? No, John, he didn't get it wrong. But Jesus hasn't come in the way that anyone expected him to. He's come to inhabit the values and the characteristics of a life beyond judgment and condemnation. And that life is a life of freedom and restoration. It's not denying that God will judge the earth. But Jesus comes to show through who he is and what he says that mercy and forgiveness and freedom and wholeness that come after judgment are already in fact breaking into the world because of him. And right at the beginning of this series, I've kind of bookended it, so I was preaching on the prodigal son right at the beginning when we were thinking about being forgiven. That's a story that Jesus told. He made it up in his head. And we heard about the prodigal who had tasted the bitter effects of his own sinful choices. But he returns to the father and instead of being begrudgingly allowed back home as a slave, he experiences mercy and forgiveness and is drawn into the celebration. And we're reminded too of the older brother in that parable, the insider, he hadn't left the family home, who is looking critically at that returning prodigal, unable to understand, wrap his head around the mercy and the grace that is being extended to him. And what Jesus is doing and saying here throughout his ministry is so unexpected in every way. And he wants everyone to realise how much they need him. So much more than they need to be reliant on status, good works, or rule-keeping. Now throughout the Old Testament we hear another repeated refrain. It's a warning. Get it lots of times. The warning is, beware the false prophets. And the false prophets are the ones that will try and lead you astray. And I just wonder whether John is sitting there in prison thinking, is Jesus actually a false prophet? Maybe he's thinking also of these words from Deuteronomy, part of the Torah, the first five books of the Bible. Deuteronomy 21 verses 18 to 21 says, Beware the rebellious son, the one who refuses to obey his parents. He will bring evil on Israel and his parents must bring him to the elders of the town and have them stone him to death. Now that is a harsh commandment instructing the parents of such a rebellious son to accuse him using some very specific words. They were to say, this son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a glutton and a drunkard. He must be stoned to death. Think back to the parable of the prodigal son. The rebellious younger son accused of squandering his inheritance through gluttony and greed and the ceremony of Ketatza where that returning son should have been cut off from the community, maybe even stoned to death rather than welcomed back home. And yet here in Matthew 11, people use those same words to describe Jesus. He's a rebellious son. We've already had the, I don't know my mother and my brothers. And he's a glutton and a drunkard. Therefore, he must be leading Israel astray. And in their minds, the religious leaders, I'm sure, were thinking, let's stone him. But the threat of that comes later. John the Baptist had led this life of self-denial. It was a life of locusts and camel hair clothing and deserts. And Jesus has come and he seems to be living quite the opposite sort of life. He's throwing parties which speak of God's lavish and generous love and forgiveness. People then and people now generally don't like to be challenged to think about the world in an entirely different way. God's people through the ages have not always found it easy when God's love breaks through into the world in a new way.

and a fresh way, like a breeze blowing through a garden and shaking old blossom off the trees. And the chapter, Matthew 11, and I hope you've still got it in front of you, continues with Jesus's warnings on some communities who he knew really well and who knew him. So Capernaum, Chorazin, Bethsaida, people would have known Jesus by name in those towns, okay? And his warnings are so sobering. Woe to you who have seen but not believed. So people in these towns had seen Jesus do the powerful healings and the miracles, but because Jesus was familiar to them, the son of the carpenter from Nazareth, and they were expecting the Messiah to be a certain kind of person, they didn't believe. And they couldn't get on board with a Messiah who was calling people to love their enemies and pray for those who persecute them. And so Jesus does what he does best, and he turns what might have been frustration within him that people just weren't getting it, and he turns it into a prayer, and that's where we picked up this morning at verse 25. And this prayer is, I wonder, perhaps the most intimate and revealing prayer of Jesus in the whole Gospels. It gives us just a tiny amazing glimpse into Jesus's soul. And there's a deep mystery here that takes us right to the heart of what it means for Jesus to be Jesus, because his prayer is a reflection of his awareness that he, Jesus, knows the Father God better than anyone else who ever has or ever will walk the earth. Neither his own followers or the religious leaders had the same awareness of Father God as he did. And even worse, most of his contemporaries didn't even seem to want to hear the message of love and freedom and healing and restoration that he was sharing with them. The wise and the intelligent seem to be struggling to grasp what Jesus has come to show us. And yet tiny, tiny children are drawn to him and he to them. Those who seem the least and the weakest are the ones, says Jesus, with the deepest and greatest insight. The religious leaders at the time of Jesus and for probably a thousand years leading up to that would have taught a lot about wisdom. It was really highly valued. And Simon talked to us about wisdom a few weeks ago when we were thinking about living within the safety of the embrace of God's wisdom and his plans for us. And the Jewish writings indicate that God gives wisdom to those who devote themselves to learning the law and teasing out all the finer details of that law. And so ultimately, that leads to the conclusion that it's only the wise, says the religious leaders, who can truly know God. And that puts the vast majority of people out of the running when it comes to wisdom. They couldn't hope to even get close to being wise or knowing God because in order to fully understand the law, you'd need to be a scholar. You'd need to be trained in language and literature and you'd need to have the time and the money that meant that you didn't have to do manual work. You could just sit around all day reading and discussing the law with other people. And if you can't be wise, then the implication is that you can't know God. Imagine just for a moment how kind of out of reach it feels for most of us, although perhaps not all of us, to be a brain surgeon or perhaps an astronaut. Think about how out of reach that feels. That gives us a tiny idea of how impossible it would have felt for an ordinary person to conceive that they might be wise or that they might know God. And so now we are beginning to understand how astonishing and revolutionary Jesus's invitation was. He's saying that all we need to do to know God is to come to him like a child who comes to know their parent. A child comes to know their parent because they are around them all the time. They live in their presence. They listen to what they say and they learn from their parent like an apprentice learns from a master. And when it comes to understanding Jesus and really grasping what he was doing, it's these little people who have really got it. The ordinary people, the sinners and the tax collectors who really got it. The learned, the wise, the follow the rules to the letter people were the ones who were missing the point. If it had been King Herod or the chief high priest or someone else with worldly power or status that was saying you can only come to know your Father God through me, it would have felt daunting and unachievable. But it didn't feel that way when Jesus said it. Jesus was approachable. Jesus was like us. Jesus was in the world amidst its mess and brokenness, not aloof on a throne in a palace and set apart from it. And so when he says, come to me and you will know God, suddenly that feels like the most welcoming and most encouraging invitation ever offered. The religious leaders used to speak of people being called to carry the yoke of the Torah, the heavy burden that was the Jewish law with all its commandments. And I need you to imagine in your minds, because I've not got my slide, a two cattle yoked together with a wooden harness, sort of an old fashioned way of pulling a cart. Very familiar image for people in Jesus's day. Jesus is offering a different kind of yoke that comes from his mercy and his love. And that yoke is easy to bear. Could following Jesus and knowing God really be that easy? Didn't Jesus also say that people had to be prepared to leave behind their family and their possessions and even their own life and take up their cross and follow him? Yeah, he did. The path that we walk with Jesus isn't an easy one, one without sacrifice. But the yoke that binds the cattle together, when we're yoked with Jesus, he is carrying the burden. It's like he is the older, more experienced of the cattle team and we say yes to a childlike relationship with him that can't be earned and that is open to everyone. And so then as we walk side by side with Jesus, yoked to him, the master, the one who's carrying the weight of the burden of the yoke, it doesn't mean that we won't get tired, but it does mean that we're empowered by him, that we're not weighed down by the burden of guilt or of needing to follow the law to the letter or of having to earn God's approval. I am gentle and humble in heart, says Jesus in those verses. And that is the only time in the Bible that we hear Jesus describe what his heart is like. Friends, he's not a police officer standing over us, ready to arrest us for the slightest slip up. He's not an angry schoolteacher forever disappointed by work that just isn't quite good enough. He's a loving father who sweeps you up, his wayward child, into his arms and he showers you.

With forgiveness and gifts and status and security that you never in a thousand lifetimes could earn. If you want to do a deep dive into these verses, this is a whole book based on Matthew 11, 28-30. It's called Gentle and Lowly, The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers. It's brilliant. You can have a look at my copy, but you can't have it, but you can get yourself one. And I would really recommend it, just a beautiful, quite devotional written book that takes us really deep into these amazing words. So God is the one who provides for his people everything, everything that we will ever need. Forgiveness, security, safety, community, purpose, and the power to live in a way that confuses the world around us. All those people that Simon showed us on the screen and points to what will one day come. God's kingdom reigning here on earth, the kingdom of goodness and mercy and peace.