Matthew 11:28-30 – The Great Invitation – Bible study

Matthew 11:28-30 The Great Invitation Someone wrote, "Some burdens are meant to be SHARED, some burdens are meant to be SHOULDERED, and some burdens are meant to be SHED. That true. We all have cares, duties, responsibilities–burdens–that we must shoulder, but if we are Christians, we have a Savior that both desires and will help us. I. Things are hard. A. Jesus used two terms that all speak of our hard, condition. 1. labor – That is work. 2. Heaven laden – burden, load 3. So here is Jesus picture: We, the human race, are all laboring to carry a heavy load. B. What is heavy and hard to carry? 1. Life is. a. That is an all inclusive term. Most everything that has to do with life is heavy. b. For most, work is heavy. (1) Actually, God intended that work be a heavy load. He made it that way in the curse. Ge 3:17 And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; 18 Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; 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. (2) For most of the world, working is what they do just to live. (a) Sadly, most people, even in America, do not like their work. However, we should consider just how hard others have it. (b) 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. (c) 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. i. 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. ii. 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. (c) 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 wasn’t as bad as we thought! (1) Retirement becomes empty (or too busy!). (2) Our disability is painful. 2. Family is heavy. (a) I love my family and my family loves me but that doesnt mean there are never any problems. (b) Ask the housewife who is caught in the endless cycle of cooking and cleaning. (c) Ask the father (and today you can ask the mother too) who have to work so hard to pay the bills. (d) 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. (e) Ask the grown-up children who have become their parents keepers. 3. Aging is heavy. (a) Few will spend much time thinking about it before it comes but getting old is no picnic. (b) Dimming eyes, failing hearing, aching joints, sagging flesh, waning muscles, lost memories, thinning hairand those are the early stages of that dreaded disease. 4. Sin is heavy. (1) No doubt. That is what Jesus was referring to when He made this statement. (a) This passage does not tell us where Jesus was when He made this statement. (b) I see Him walking through some crowded street, filled with people who were broken, battered, and bruised from sin. (c) 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. 5. Even righteousness is. (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. What is Jesus offering? 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, it means one will not have to carry all of their burden all of the time. 1. There are some burdens we can SHED. a. It means we do not have to carry the burden of guilt any longer. (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 should 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 that we failed to do. (2) Guilt and regret are like Siamese twins. They follow us around, ever burdening our spirit. 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) Statistically, as many as 1 in 10 are depressed. http://www.cdc.gov/features/dsdepression/ 2. There are some burdens we must SHOULDER. a. I do not mean to say that we will have nothing to carry for we will. b. Even with rest, there are loads that we must bear. (1) Earthly responsibility and cares do not just disappear. (a) Christ offers us rest not death. (b) As long as we ae alive, there will be burdens we must carry. (c) What Christ offers is rest, a break, a place and time to catch your wind. (2) For example, we will still have to carry the responsibility for our past. (a) Decisions of the past are like ripples in the pond. (b) They reach out in all directions touching everything and everyone they come into contact with. (c) Our past may have limited our future and hurt others. (d) We cannot expect those repercussions to be undone in this life. (3) What does Jesus offer to help in these burdens? c. God gives an amazing grace. (1) Grace means that God steps in to help. (2) Whatever rest does not remove, grace gives us the strength to carry. (3) Grace is a different topic and I will not go there this morning, but I will say that with these gifts which our Lord offers, the human soul is able to enjoy life. 3. So Christ offers to SHARE all of our burdens. a. Some He simply takes away but even those which which will be our responsibility, He shares. b. You do not have to carry these burdens alone any more. c. Jesus offers you rest. III. So Jesus invites us to trade in our heavy burden for rest. How does that work? A. \#Matt 11:28\ The first part of the invitation is to "COME." 1. That is it. 2. We must want it. We must come and receive it. We must accept it. 3. There is no one who does not understand the concept of coming. 4. If there is something we want, when we are called, we go get it. a. When we are called to the table to eat, we go get it. b. When our paychecks are read, we go and collect it. 5. If you want rest, go to Jesus and get it. B. \#Matt 11:29\ Take my yoke upon you. 1. A harness of wood or iron used to join a pair of work animals together. 2. Jesus is inviting us to get into the harness with Him. 3. This is not so that we can help Jesus with His load. (He needs no help.) 4. It is so that He can help us with ours! a. Notice that this means that Jesus is not just taking our load away. b. We are in the harness with Him. c. It means that when we cant carry the load, He will carry it for us! C. Learn of Me. Jesus was saying that there are some things He can teach us that will make the burdens we carry lighter. 1. Most are carrying more than they should be carrying. 2. Others are carrying their loads incorrectly. a. As a youngster, I was taught to carry those heavy loads with your legs and core, not your back. b. If you try to carry all of your burdens with your emotions, you are carrying them the wrong way. c. You can spend as much energy on frustration and worry as you spend on actually carrying the load! d. I saw an inspirational commercial about how a timber man had to train horses how to carry fallen timber. They start training them to carry something light, a tire, because the horses are often afraid of the 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 lumberjack trains the horse how to carry the burden properly.