“Come to me, all 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.”
Matthew 11:28-30, (context, vv. 25-30)
I have thought some on these two verses; I’ve come to the conclusion that it really must be understood as a holy ‘invite.’ A gracious bidding to come to Him, to find much needed rest, and discover meaningful work. This is a gentle summons to blend both rest and work and then live it out in our lives.
Jesus is aware of my weak and faltering steps. I stumble a lot, I weave and trip often. Yet He never criticizes me, He finds no fault, but matches His steps to mine. On His own, Jesus could do the work much faster. But He insists we stay yoked, connected with each other. This amazes me.
The moment we do this we’ll understand that the combination of these two will always balance and correct us. It will pour out of us love, grace and gentleness. The fruits of the Spirit can be seen, and we become salt of the earth.
He invites us to come and be yoked, and to enter into true rest, and true work.
“Thou hast created us for Thyself, and our heart is not quiet until it rests in Thee.”
“The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look at him! A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is justified by her deeds.”
Matthew 11:19, (context, vv. 16-19)
What part does excessive “eating and drinking” don’t we understand? It doesn’t seem entirely ‘religious,’ especially in the thinking of us who observe the life of a pastor or a shepherd. We demand a certain restraint, a standard of separateness from common sinners. That’s seems to be our personal view anyway.
Is gluttony wrong? Is getting a bit tipsy also unacceptable, especially when it comes to “true” religion? Quite often it seems, we have a pious approach toward what we think is ‘true’ faith. We often believe that truth equates to being an ascetic, separate from common sinners. We believe if we are truly holy we will segregate from the ungodly.
It seems that Jesus doesn’t relate to, or accept this viewpoint. He’s single-mindedly serving the Father, in perfect holiness and in true connection with Him. And yet we see Him cavorting with tax-collectors and sinners. We observe Him actually sitting with those we reject as ungodly or unholy.
I must say this before you start looking for rocks to stone me with!
Scripture clearly tells us that we’re to live holy lives. We’re to be wise and have self-control in everything. We should always remember our own ‘black hole’, and begin to see our new life as really incredible. We must allow the “fruits of the Spirit” to grow inside us. And lived rightly, it’s a place of real holiness; and certainly not the ‘pretend’ righteousness of the Pharisee.
Listen very carefully: The Pharisees reject and label those who seem to flaunt the religious norms, but broken believers will truly forgive others, like those who have been radically forgiven themselves. There is a stark difference.
But think about it, aren’t we all a tiny bit ungodly?
Don’t we somehow grade people by their outward appearance and the level of their attainment? It absolutely astounds me that Jesus seems far more comfortable with the outcasts than He does with the Pharisees of His day. He sits with them, and eats and drinks in a fashion that we would regard objectionable.
Jesus loves every person. He loves the unmade, and the unvarnished. He loves being with the ungodly. Yes, He does understand the awful nature of sin; the horrible damage it inflicts on a person’s soul. And yet I’ve come to the conclusion that all my righteous and holy religion is nothing but a very bad smell in God’s nostrils.
Jesus isn’t afraid that we will somehow taint Him by our words, conduct or behavior. He passionately loves those who we deem as outside the norm of our religion. Jesus loves being with ‘nasty’ people. I think He purposefully seeks out the wrong ones!
It fascinates me that Jesus is never afraid that the leper will corrupt or defile Him. He isn’t fearful that somehow He will be contaminated. That’s exactly what the Pharisees thought. But instead it’s the reverse with Jesus. He heals us, and it’s always a one-way current. He touches us, but we’ll never ‘poison’ Him!
Just maybe our awful failure in evangelism is due to our inability to really relate with the lost. We withdraw and then wonder why the unsaved don’t understand the things of God. Have we become so religious that sinners don’t feel comfortable with us, or Him? Could it be that we’re a bit off course? Are we really filled with His Spirit?
“The greatest form of praise is the sound of consecrated feet seeking out the lost and helpless.”
“And blessed is the one who is not offended by me.”
Matthew 11:6, (context, vv. 2-6)
Being “blessed” is much more than having lots of money, a nice home or a fancy new car. First and foremost being blessed must be a spiritual word–it seems sometimes we have to rescue the true definition and then bring back its real meaning. The old hymn exhorts the enriched Christian to “count your many blessings, name them one by one.” Singing this will work something inside us.
We become spiritually prosperous when we begin to embrace the reality of Jesus–His words, actions, even His very person becomes the dearest thing we could ever dream of possessing. We’re also blessed when we receive deep inside us the many challenging things He says. We really must absorb these harder words without any reservations. It seems that He doles these things out very carefully.
We have to admit that being scandalized over Him is always a possibility. It can happened to a pastor, or a ‘newbie’ in the faith. No matter who we are, we’re always in the arena, being watched, and our faith in Jesus will be tested. Is it real? Will we be insulted or affronted by the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ? That dear one, it a very real possibility.
Jesus still offends people. There were those who embraced Him, and yet it seems to me that most ended up resisting and rejecting Him. He was a ‘wrench in their machinery,’ an obstacle in their theology. He was constantly doing things that didn’t seem right or proper.
Does Jesus offend you?
“When Jesus came to earth, demons recognized him, the sick flocked to him, and sinners doused his feet and head with perfume. Meanwhile he offended pious Jews with their strict preconceptions of what God should be like. Their rejection makes me wonder, could religious types be doing just the reverse now? Could we be perpetuating an image of Jesus that fits our pious expectations but does not match the person portrayed so vividly in the Gospels?”
“Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. 38 And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.”
Matthew 10:37-38 (context, vv. 34-38)
It’s funny, but we never realize that the challenges of following Jesus are never more than the cost of not following Him. The cross leads to death, most certainly. But let’s never forget that there is a resurrection that does happen after that death. We’ll never live unless we die first.
The problem is that we don’t want to die!
We cling to our lives with the intensity of a drowning man clinging to a ‘life ring.’ We dare not let go. We dare not simply give up and really call out to Jesus. We hang on to the old life, and as a result, will never, ever experience the new. We believe that we will really drown. We are afraid.
Jesus is demanding from us a preeminent love for Him. A love that ‘nullifies’ anything earthly; a love that surpasses anything “good and proper.” He wants it all! There will be no competition, no contesting our love for Him. Jesus is either all, or He will be nothing.
Yes, there is a “cross.”
There will be a awful terrible death to everything we think brings us life. The “disciples” understood crucifixion. A Roman general once did it to the members of a Jewish rebellion. He lined the highways with 2000 crosses, to declare the iron-clad sovereignty of Rome.
Yes, the disciples knew. They remembered the horrifying deaths of so many. They undoubtedly passed by these insurrectionists who hung on these crosses and died. They vividly understood that a cross wasn’t a piece of jewelry, but it meant an awful bloody death of a human being. They knew. The cross was gruesome.
Following Jesus means this kind of death.
It ends everything dear to us. It irrevocably ends life as we know it. Life now consists of having a first love, a renouncing everything else that we hold dear. The relationships we thought were good, are now stumbling blocks to the path to our cross.
Yes, there is always a resurrection. Life will be given back to us. But death comes first, and it is incredibly painful. Sometimes we preach and teach, we embrace a “resurrection” life that excludes a cross. We jump right into a Christianity that has circumvented a terrible death. We are now officially, “cross-less Christians.”
“Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. Beware of men, for they will deliver you over to courts and flog you in their synagogues.
Matthew 10:16-17 (context, vv. 16-24)
We are being sent into a dangerous place. There will be those who hate us, they take us and lead us into courts and they will bring out a whip. The world is not a kind place for believers in Jesus. He warns the disciples of a definite persecution that they face as His disciples. This deep darkness has teeth.
The servant of Jesus will never be “above His master.” Since they called Jesus, “Beelzebul,” they’ll certainly “malign those of His household” (Matthew 10:24-25). We must accept this. At best they will criticize, and at worst they will kill us. We are facing a hostile world who hates our faith.
If a Christian is not having tribulation in the world, there’s something wrong!
And yet Jesus still sends us. We dare not step away from this viciousness. It’s part of the package He gives. We should expect to be treated this way. Jesus warns us honestly of the terrible things we can expect, He does not sugarcoat things. The Lord is well-acquainted with what the world is capable of.
When sheep and wolves meet each other it becomes a slaughter house. And yet there is another side to all of this. We are called to think like a serpent, to have a definite wisdom of all that must be faced, and what we must do to faithfully survive this persecution.
It troubles me somewhat that believers are called to be snakes. Somehow, that doesn’t seem to equate to an innocent faith in Jesus. (Snakes are bad, at least in my thinking). And yet Jesus clearly welds this holy innocence with a wisdom that is very much aware. I suppose that there is a thoughtful balance here, we must find it, and then live it out.
He calls us to vulnerability, most certainly, but mixed into this we need a grasp of being aware; a holy shrewdness (but never a naïvety) that knows how to face the darkness without becoming apostate. We need to use our brains, but be led by our hearts. We are His witnesses, but we must never become His victims.
“It has become a settled principle that nothing which is good and true can be destroyed by persecution, but that the effect ultimately is to establish more firmly, and to spread more widely, that which it was designed to overthrow. It has long since passed into a proverb that “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.”
“And proclaim as you go, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons.”
Matthew 10:7-8, (context vv. 5-15)
Heal. Raise. Cleanse. Cast out. What a job description for Jesus’ disciples! He truly believes that those who follow Him are ready, and it’s time for them to go to work. I suppose they could keep sitting at Jesus’ feet, just soaking up His teaching, and watching Him do His miracles. But this isn’t what they’re called to do. They’ve sat long enough.
Don’t get me wrong. It’s vital that we absorb His words to us. It’s absolutely critical that we hear His voice and really do find our rest in Him. We must intimately listen to Jesus and be filled with His Spirit. Yet it strikes me that far too many disciples think their life is an inward one; a concentration on personal growth and one’s own spiritual attainment. But I don’t think this is the case.
The disciples must go to work.
Jesus ‘commissions’ them to go out and proclaim the ‘Kingdom come.’ The labors of Jesus must be done by these inadequate (and sinful) men. Heal. Raise. Cleanse. Cast out. It’s time for them to go out and meet the desperate needs of the world. But stepping out can be a scary thing.
The works that these disciples are to do are truly marvelous. They now have an ability and an anointing to do remarkable things. Jesus is comfortable that His disciples are ready, and yet knows that when they return they will have much to learn from Him. It seems however, that we are waiting for a certain amount of “perfection” before we step out.
Most of us, I suppose, are ‘hamstrung’ by our own sin. We see know our inadequacies and deep weaknesses. Most of the time we feel completely unworthy. Seldom do we think we’re ready to spread the Kingdom news to a needy world. Our own sin, we believe, disqualifies us from ministry to others. It seems Satan is very quick to neutralize us, and to annul the “work” of the Father. He accuses us, and we listen.
We’re overwhelmed by what we see within us, and as a result we seldom see the needs around us.
It seems we shelf His work and replace our faith into some sort of personal rehabilitation program. “When we are finally holy enough, we will hit the streets.” Until then, we will try to get enough personal purity to work His miracles. Commendable I suppose, but I don’t think this is what Jesus intends. I’m convinced the work itself is a vital part of our sanctification.
“The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”
Matthew 9:37-38, (context, vv. 35-38)
The issue here is laborers–this is our work, plain and simple. The fact is that there isn’t enough workers. It’s funny, it seems God is constrained by our prayers–earnest prayers for a harvest to be brought into the barns. But there aren’t enough hands. The harvest will be ruined if help doesn’t come soon.
God must have our help if it’s going to get done.
The harvest seems contingent on our prayer life. We decide what is going to happen. Prayer is the work of the authentic believer and our hearts must be for the fields. We are the people who work, who sweat, and get tired. That is our call. That is the true work of discipleship.
Mother Teresa once commented that what we see in front of us is our “Calcutta.” We have got to open our eyes and look, we must see the incredible needs of desperate people that surround us. We must have eternal eyes–God’s eyes. We do our work on behalf of others. I really do believe that it will be ‘sweaty’ prayers that will move the hand of God.
I think ‘prayer’ is the real work in evangelism.
Prayer is our effort that gets combined with the Holy Spirit’s great passion of lost souls. Our “earnest” prayer for the harvest will call workers to the fields. Every generation is responsible for their own part of the field.
For some reason God has chosen to limit Himself by our decision to pray. He patiently waits for us to intercede. Everything seems contingent on us, we can point no finger at God, or accuse Him of ignoring the work that must be done. We must make the decision. Evangelism, and missions, is God’s intense passion. He now shares with us this responsibility.
All of Heaven is standing on its tiptoes, waiting to hear our pleas for the lost.
“Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as though everything depended on you.”
“I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. And if you had known what this means,
‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’
you would not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.”
Matthew 12:6-8 (context, vv. 1-8)
Do we honestly want to see mercy? To give it is much harder than making a sacrifice. Mercy often entails forgiving or helping someone, and that’s usually difficult. We do better by making a religious offering, than having to reach out in love and touch someone we really don’t like. To let someone “off-the-hook” grates us.
Mercy is commonly defined “as compassion or forgiveness shown toward someone whom it is within one’s power to punish or harm.”
Wow. Isn’t this hard sometimes? We really do excel when we try to “punish” those who hurt us, we are experts at this. We ‘automatically’ lash out at those who we feel defy or somehow cross us. I find that I can get quite defensive very fast. And usually that thing is very trivial.
Jesus said to him,
“I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven.”
(Matthew 18:22.)
On our own, it seems we just can’t be as compassionate or forgiving like Jesus. We vastly prefer religious duties over forgiveness. Jesus told Peter to forgive 70 x 7, whenever a ‘sinning’ brother asks for leniency, we have to give it. If we forgive, then we’ll be forgiven!
“But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.“
Matthew 6:15
He wants to see our mercy. That outweighs any spiritual sacrifice we might make. One of Jesus’ own beatitudes hits the nail on the head,
“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
Matthew 5:7
We can’t evade this. We may try but He will keep bringing us back to it until we can pass this test, and even then we can anticipate “surprise” tests. That typically kicks us out of a false sense of maturity, and our ‘spiritual’ arrival.
We think we’ve got mercy down pat, and yet He wants to take it deeper still. Mercy for us will always be a spiritual action to a physical situation. And He brings these situations to us, to see what we do, and to reveal what is truly in our hearts at the time.
Sacrifice was a critical definition in the Pharisee’s dictionary, and Jesus more or less destroyed that entire religious concept. Sacrificing without real love, can never be part of a believer’s vocabulary. Jesus wants every disciple to show an outrageous mercy to everyone they meet.
The most miserable prison in the world is the prison we make for ourselves when we refuse to show mercy.
Luca Giordano Naples; 1634-1705 The Calling of St. Matthew, c. 1685 oil on canvas; 78.5 x 100.5 inches
“As Jesus passed on from there, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him,
“Follow me.”
And he rose and followed him.”
Matthew 9:9
Another “tax collector.” (Why won’t Jesus ever learn?) It really does seem that He has a definite preference for the scum and the outcast. For some very odd reason that’s the sort of person He likes. But really, do we dare question His wisdom in this? Do we think we have a right to pass judgement on Jesus’ choices?
I have to think that Jesus is showing us His deep fondness for the ‘ungodly.’ Tax-collectors, egads!!!! I don’t really understand, until I consider my own ‘wretched’ life. Until Jesus comes to me, calling me, I will continue to set in my dreary booth, taking money from other dreary people.
So what does it really mean to really follow Jesus?
I think of Matthew, a wicked man who has no qualms about betraying his people for money. It’s always been odd to me, that Matthew’s name meant “pure.” (What were his parents thinking? Maybe they grasped his future destiny as an apostle? IDK.) But I am certain that Matthew’s call to follow meant he had to leave something ‘behind.’
We follow Jesus. We’ve accepted the call that we must turn away from our past life. We’ve left behind all the money and just walked away from our table. We understand that we can’t bring it along; we have renounced its claim on us.
Following Him means taking up our “cross,” and everything that it might entail. We really do need to leave it all behind. What a deal, huh?
“And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”
Jesus states that He draws His strength from the Father’s will. His “food” is exclusively His own (not the ‘disciples’). He gains power from doing all that God is asking Him to do. Jesus’ personal strength comes from accomplishing or fulfilling that which the Father reveals as His will.
Why can’t we be more like Jesus in this? We have the daily option (and it’s indeed ‘optional’) to do the things that the Holy Spirit has laid out for us. Will we fulfill His will or do we decide to go our own way? What is our “food?” Where does our strength lie?
The Spirit reveals what God’s will is to our particular path. The decision to do the things He has laid out for us is necessary for us to grow up, to advance His kingdom, and to reveal God’s glory to a watching world. This is what we have been created to be. This is our truest calling.
His purposes are to be our food.
Doing God’s will can be optional, and a decision has to be made ‘moment-by-moment’ and every single day. Our precious time with Him, through prayer and the Word, quite often will lay out the direction we’re to take. We definitely need to hear His voice, that is critical. Becoming attentive and aware to His purposes reveal a true intimacy with the Lord.
Doing God’s will is the exquisite adventure of a faith that is really alive. Our witness blossoms when we decide that we will obey Him. I don’t think it needs to be dull or tedious. It’s the grand call of the authentic believer. Doing the things He wants for us is to be our “food” for each day. His will is our ‘nourishment.’
I believe this is what Jesus was teaching His disciples.
“If you keep my commands you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love.”
The Red Letters of Jesus 