Matthew 11:28-30 – God’s Solution for A Heavy World – Bible study

Matthew 11:28-30 Gods Solution for A Heavy World Matt 11:28 Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. I am not sure where Jesus was when He spoke these words. Most are agreed that He was somewhere in Galilee, but I am not sure where. In my mind, I see Him standing up in a large crowd (hundreds, maybe even thousands) and calling these words to them. In truth, He could have been a much smaller group, only a handful of people. Why? Because there are wore out people in every crowdeven inside every church. I. The World Is Heavy A. \#28\ Jesus used two terms that all speak of our hard, condition. 1. "labor" – That is work. 2. "heavy laden" – burden, load B. With these words, Jesus painted a picture: We, the human race, are all laboring to carry a heavy load. 1. What is our heavy load that is hard to carry? 2. There are many. a. Life is a heavy load. (1) That is an all-inclusive term. Most everything that has to do with life is heavy. (2) For most, work is heavy. (a) Actually, God intended that work be a heavy load. He made it that way in the curse. Ge 3:19 In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. (b) For most of the world, working is what they do just to live. i. Sadly, most people, even in America, do not like their work. However, we should consider just how hard others have it. ii. Most people do not know what a savings account, a 401(k), or even food for tomorrow is. They just work for this day and the survival of their family. iii. We are blessed not only to be able to work for out tomorrows, but to be able to select what kind of work we do. aa. My advice has always been, find something you like to do to make your living. Doing so takes so much of the labor out of work. bb. But no matter what job we perform and no matter how much we might like it, there are times when work becomes hard to bear. (3) However, some have found out that NOT working is hard too! We are indeed strange creatures. We live most of our lives wanting to get out from under the bondage of work only to finally get out and realize it wasnt as bad as we thought! (a) After reaching retirement, many dont like it. For some its too boring or too lonely or even too busy. becomes empty (or too busy!). (b) And if the way you reached not working was by a disability, you find out that is too painful. b. Family is heavy. (1) I love my family and my family loves me but that doesnt mean there are never any problems. (2) Ask the stay-at-home parent who is caught in the endless cycle of cooking and cleaning. (3) Ask the working parent(s) who have to work so hard to pay the bills. (4) Ask the parents who have smaller children they are trying to direct down the paths of godliness and sound reasoning or the older parents who have children living in wrong ways. (a) As hard as it is to have small children, as your child grows, you keep getting pushed further out of the drivers seatand that is hard. (b) As some point, you must scoot over into the passenger seat and let your child have the drivers seator they will never learn. Thats hard, especially when you know they are making mistakes. (c) Then they get married and you are pushed way back into the back seat. (d) Then they have children and you get pushed into the trunk! (e) It is all hard but it is the way it is supposed to be! (5) Ask the grown-up children who have become their parents keepers. c. Aging is heavy. (1) Few will spend much time thinking about it before it comes but getting old is no picnic. (2) Dimming eyes, failing hearing, aching joints, sagging flesh, waning muscles, lost memories, thinning hairand those are the early stages of that dreaded disease. d. Sin is heavy. (1) No doubt. That is what Jesus was referring to when He made this statement. (a) I see Him walking through some crowded street, filled with people who were broken, battered, and bruised from sin. (b) That is not hard to find. You can see it on every street and road in the world that has people on it. i. People problems – There are those who cannot get along with their boss, their mate, their parents, their children, their neighbors, their co- workers, even strangers. ii. Addiction problems – Those entangled in addictions to alcohol, tobacco, pornography, drugs, sex, and food. iii. Dream problems – Those whose dreams and hopes have been beaten down by a seemingly endless line of rejections, refusals, denials, and bad circumstances. (2) I think it must have been that way on the last day of the Feast of Tabernacles \#John 7:2\, when Jesus stood up on a crowded street of Jerusalem and shouted. John 7:37 In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. 38 He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. e. Even righteousness is heavy. (1) Jesus never told us that doing right was going to be easy. In fact, He told us the opposite. Matt 5:10 Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 11 Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. (2) Doing right has never been easy but it gets much, much harder when society no longer knows what wrong is. II. Jesus Offer A. Rest! 1. That is a common word but what does it mean? 2. Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines it as repose, sleep, freedom from activity or labor, peace of mind or spirit, freedom of anxieties. 3. That is a large definition for a four-lettered word. B. In a nutshell, rest means we dont have to carry all of our burdens all of the time. 1. In Christ, there are some burdens we can SHED. a. We dont have to carry the burden of guilt (1) Guilt is what we feel over the wrong things that we have done. (2) As we have all done wrong things, we all have some guilt that we could carry, but rest means we do not have to carry it any longer. b. It means we do not have to carry the burden of regret any longer. (1) Regret is what we feel over the right things we failed to do. (2) Guilt and regret are like Siamese twins. (3) They follow us around, ever burdening our spirit. (4) But, in Christ, we can shed both of them. c. It means we do not have to carry the burden of discouragement of its big brother, depression. (1) It is impossible to have an accurate count on the number of people who are discouraged. (2) But the CDC says 4.7% of Americans are depressed. https://www.healthline.com/health/depression/facts-statistics- infographic#Types-of-depression (3) I know something about depression, and Im here to tell you that Jesus can help you with that, 2. In Christ, there are some burdens we must SHOULDER. a. Rest does not means we never carry any of our burdens. (1) It means we do not have to carry all of them all of the time. (2) But even with rest, there are loads that we must bear. (a) Earthly responsibility and cares do not just disappear. i. Christ offers us rest not death. ii. As long as we ae alive, there will be burdens we must carry. iii. What Christ offers is rest, a break, a place and time to catch your wind. (b) For example, we will still have to carry the responsibility for our past. i. Decisions of the past are like ripples in the pond. ii. They reach out in all directions touching everything and everyone they come into contact with. iii. Our past may have limited our future and hurt others. iv. We cannot expect those repercussions to be undone in this life. (3) What does Jesus offer to help in these burdens? b. God gives an amazing grace. (1) Grace means that God steps in to help. (2) Whatever rest does not relieve us of, grace helps us to carry. (3) Grace is a different topic, and I will not go it tonight; but I will say that with these two gifts (rest and grace), the human soul is able to enjoy the heaviest of lives. 3. In Christ, there are some burdens we SHARE. a. Share? With Whom? With Him. b. This is what the yoke is all about. (1) A yoke is a harness that goes around the neck of a beast of burden. (2) The kind of yoke Jesus spoke of was a dual yoke, one made to harness two beasts of burdens at the same time. (a) Jesus did not offer us a travoy to lay our burdens upon so that we could do nothing (sled or sleigh). (b) Rather He offers to get in the harness with us to help carry our burdens and let us rest. c. You do not have to carry all of our burdens all of the time because we are not alone in the harness any more. III. Our Acceptance A. Jesus offers to trade our heavy burden for rest! B. How does that work? 1. \#Matt 11:28\ The first part of the invitation is to "COME." a. That is it. b. We must want it. We must come and receive it. We must accept it. c. There is no one who does not understand the concept of coming. d. If there is something we want, when we are called, we go get it. (1) When we are called to the table to eat, we go get it. (2) When our paychecks are ready, we used to have to go get them. I doubt that is so any more, but it was. e. If you want rest, go to Jesus and get it. 2. \#Matt 11:29\ Take my yoke upon you. a. Jesus is inviting us to get into the harness with Him. b. The harness is there. c. He has provided it and invited us to get into it with Him; but as in most earthly endeavors, the final choice rests with us. 3. Learn of Me. a. Jesus was saying that there are some things we must learn if this is going to work. b. Such as: (1) For Jesus to help carry our burdens, we must be going His direction. (2) For Jesus to help carry our burdens, we must be in step with Him. (a) If you are in the lead all the time, you are still carrying all of the weight. (b) If you are behind, then He is having to carry your load and you. (3) Unless you want to carry it, you need to dump the burdens that you were supposed to shed for Jesus wont help you carry those. c. Christians need to learn these things. I saw a commercial years ago. You probably did too. It showed how a lumberjack had to train horses how to carry fallen timber. I dont remember the purpose of the commercial, but I remember how it worked. They start training these large horse to carry something light. In the commercial, it was a tire. They did that because the horses are often afraid of a load. At one point, the announcer says, "A horse that can pull 9,000 pounds lacks the confidence to pull a 25 pound tire." So the trainer must teach the mighty horse how to carry the burden. Friend, God never promised us an easy life, but He did promise that if we would join with Him, Hed help us carry the load.