I continue to
be overwhelmed by my consideration of the very familiar Scripture revealing the
way Jesus calls the weary and burdened to come to him for rest.[1]
My morning
began with great appreciation for a weekend break. This particular long weekend
holiday[2]
gives me much more time to spend alone with God in his word and prayer, a
highlight of my year. With all this enjoyment of an interlude from my regular
activities, I had plenty of time to enjoy the amazing connections between so
many thoughts of Scripture.
For starters,
I became intrigued with this partnership between, “I will give you rest,” and “you will find rest for your
souls.”[3] At first, it was the consciousness that Jesus was telling little
children what he would do, and what we would experience. He will give rest, and
we will find it, know it, live it.
From
there, it began to settle into my soul that Jesus wants to give an experience
of rest that is far beyond what many of us know. He wants us to have rest
inside our souls. The kind of rest he gives us produces this soul-rest the
little children are looking for.
What
I realized was that, anything my sarky-soul wishes would happen for my
happiness or satisfaction, is wearisome. It doesn’t matter whether I feel a
need for a certain response to something I am doing, or for certain people to
be in my life, or for certain things to happen in the world around me. Neither
does it matter if I am trying to make sure that particular responses, people,
and experiences stay out of my life. The very fact that I need those things to
happen in those particular ways makes life exhausting.
It
is in such lives as this that Jesus speaks about a kind of rest he gives that
causes us to find the rest we long for. He wants us to have rest for our souls.
He gives us this rest. We find this rest in him. It is his gift to little
children.
Suddenly this
connected to something else that had already blessed me this week, and that is
the expression of God’s will that we understand and know him.[4] He
does not want us boasting in our wisdom, strength, or wealth, but in this
experiential reality that we understand and know him. He does not want us
trying to deal with him and his Father through our own ingenuity, the ignorance
of the wise and understanding, but by coming to truly understand and know him.
This means
that God wants us to understand that Jesus gives rest to little children in
such a way that those little children find rest for their souls. But, it also
means that Jesus wants us to know this by experience. He wants more for us than
that we understand the doctrines of soul-rest in Jesus Christ. He wants us to
know that soul-rest, and to know him as our soul-rest.
This is a
monumental expression of interaction between those who are dead in their
trespasses and sins, and the holy and righteous God who could damn us to hell.
This is the gift of God’s grace, where the Savior comes into the world,
expressing holy and righteous living in the flesh of man. He comes with mercy,
and justice. He stands against the wicked and evil doers, who are a different group
of people than the general populace would have imagined. He treats sinners as
sinners, and calls them to himself. He does not condone prostitution, or adultery,
or drunkenness, or thievery, but calls sinners to repent and enter his kingdom.[5]
I find that
this whole thing about God giving us rest stands against things our sarks think
we need, things we strive for, long for, wish for, and hope for. These are things
that are contrary to God’s plans for us because they are an expression of our
flesh, not of our new hearts in fellowship with the Spirit. There are unmet
needs from childhood that will not be met by trying to relive our childhoods,
or have just the right people in our lives, or fabricate a relationship with people
who don’t really want to be in our lives. We cannot go back and recreate things
that we lost a long time ago.
Instead, there
is this thing called, “take my yoke upon
you, and learn from me.”[6]
There is a way in which repentance is breaking our ties to every other yoke
so that we can replace it with the yoke of Jesus Christ. Other yokes enslave
us, because they create an impossible burden of trying to satisfy ourselves.
In fact, the
message to the little children is that every other yoke we have tried leaves us
laboring and heavy laden. We are weary and burdened. We are overwhelmed with
the incessant demand to keep doing things to make ourselves feel good, even to
make ourselves feel good in relationship to God.
The little
children are weary and burdened because they are yoked to the world, the flesh,
and the devil. The option is to take Jesus’ yoke upon us, replacing all other
yokes, repenting of and renouncing all other yokes, and settling into a
lifetime of learning from Jesus.
It is interesting
that it does not tell us to learn lessons, or learn knowledge, or learn
information, but to learn from Jesus. This is a yoke-relationship in which
little children learn from their Big Brother because they are attached to him
in faith.
Here is the
problem for the wise and understanding. They cannot let go of the yoke of their
own righteousness and achievement, and so they would never bear the yoke of
Christ. They would never admit that they are not wise and understanding, and so
they would never be able to learn from Jesus.
Case in point
is Saul, the Pharisee.[7] He
saw the Church as a sect, a cult, a false religion he had to extinguish. He was
filled with his own wisdom and understanding, and could not see that he was
yoked to his own pride, and his own self-dependence.[8]
When God
confronted Saul on the road to Damascus,[9]
Saul was on his way to express his angry and violent character upon innocent
disciples of Jesus Christ.[10]
He was doing what his own wisdom and understanding dictated. He had already
approved of Stephen’s murder,[11]
and was quite willing to participate in many more, whatever it would take for
his own wisdom and understanding to be satisfied with the extinction of the
Way.
Saul was yoked
to his own righteousness, and all his beliefs about righteousness, so that the
only way he could feel rest was if he obliterated Christians. It is similar to the anger and
violence of present-day terrorists who want to see Christians wiped off the
face of the earth. They think they would be happy if they took over this world.
They are so yoked to their own wisdom and understanding that they will only be
happy if they get their way, and get rid of someone, and have the government
the way they want, and the rules the way they want.
When we yoke
ourselves to ourselves, which means we are yoked to something of the world, the
flesh, and the devil, we can only feel rest when we get full satisfaction from
whatever we are yoked to. If we are yoked to approval from peers, we can only
be happy when we are doing things of which our peers approve. When we are yoked
to sinful pleasures, we can only be happy when we derive all the pleasure from
sin we can imagine. Prostitutes, drunks, and tax collectors were all yoked to
variations of sin that gave them pleasure.
However, there
is a way in which repentance is breaking this yoke, denouncing and renouncing our
yoke to sin. We cannot yoke ourselves to Christ and to sinful passions at the
same time. It simply doesn’t work. We repent of whatever yokes make us weary
and burdened, and welcome the yoke of Jesus Christ that gives rest to our
souls.
While the wise
and understanding yoke themselves to whatever makes them feel good, whatever
they decide is best for them, the little children are those who know that they
are sinners in the hands of a wrathful God.[12] They
are the ones who want to repent and enter Jesus’ kingdom. They want Jesus’ yoke
instead of whatever they have yoked to themselves.
The conclusion
for me is simple: in whatever ways God reveals that I am not at rest because of
my sarky goals and desires, I must repent of these things, renounce any yoke I
have to those experiences, and yoke myself to Jesus Christ my Lord so that I
can learn from him. It is that relationship that gives rest to my soul, so it
is the one relationship I must have working and growing in my life.
© 2014 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517,
Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8 ~ in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted,
Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English
Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good
News Publishers.)
[1]
Matthew 11:25-30
[2]
Labour Day weekend here in Canada
[3]
Matthew 11:28-29
[4]
Jeremiah 9:23-24
[5]
Matthew 4:17
[6]
Matthew 11:29
[7]
Acts 9 shows how Saul became the apostle Paul after his conversion to Jesus Christ.
[8]
Philippians 3:1-11 shows Paul’s contrast between his old desires and his new
desires.
[9]
Acts 9:1-2
[10]
I Timothy 1:12-17 is Paul’s testimony of the kind of man he was before Christ,
and what Jesus did in his life.
[11]
Acts 7
[12]
Hebrews 10:31
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