Judgment and the Restful Yoke of JesusMatthew 11:20-30

I hate being bored, having nothing productive to do. I love being busy. I long to stay active and remain constantly mentally engaged. I have yet to learn to nap as an adult. Burning the candle at both ends is just the way I roll. But…rather than rest, satisfied with my work, I am quickly looking for the next project, the next task, the next thing that I can work on. Why rest when there’s so much to do? I’m grateful that my grandfather taught me and modeled for me a strong work ethic. But the intensity of my personality risks taking a good work ethic to an extreme.

My wife has guarded me from actually being a workaholic. I love her and enjoy spending time with her, so that I really have learned to take a break from work. But, at the same time, I really still can’t rest! I feel pressure to work more; I have difficulty shutting my mind off at night (or any other time). I’ve got multiple trains of thought constantly competing for my attention. What would rest really look like for me? Does rest look the same for everyone? What kind of rest does Jesus offer to us? Part of our passage this morning is very familiar, a favorite to many. Jesus’s great invitation, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden,” followed by his great promise of rest is a sweet and savory word indeed. But this wonderful invitation and this wonderful promise comes after a terrible pronouncement of judgment, and it’s attached to two of the deepest, most mysterious, most wondrous truths taught in all of Scripture: the doctrines of election and the union of the Father and the Son within the Trinity. Since Jesus ties these things together—judgment, election, the Trinity, the invitation, and the promise of rest—perhaps the key to experiencing this rest can be found in clearly hearing what Jesus has to say.

Would you follow along with me as I read Matthew 11:20-30. I want to get the whole passage in front of us at first. Last week, we explored the earlier part of Matthew 11, and we learned about John the Baptist and his confusion and disappointment regarding Jesus. At the end of that passage, in verse 16-18, Jesus commented quite negatively about “this generation,” illustrating the Jewish people’s stubborn rejection of both John and Jesus. As we press on from this point in Matthew’s Gospel, we’ll find the opposition, rejection, and hostility against Jesus increasing rapidly. In these verses this morning, we’ll get Jesus’s theological reflections on that rejection.1 So, let’s hear what he has to say. Matthew 11:20-30: Then he began to denounce the cities where most of his mighty works had been done, because they did not repent. “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I tell you, it will be more bearable on the day of judgment for Tyre and Sidon than for you. And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? You will be brought down to Hades. For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I tell you that it will be more tolerable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom than for you.” At that time Jesus declared, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows

1 Cf. Donald A. Hagner, Matthew 1-13 (Word Biblical Commentary 33A; Dallas: Word, 1993), pg. 316, who writes, “The unbelief of the Galilean villages and their rejection of Jesus and his message lead now to a kind of theological assessment of this turn of events.”

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the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. 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.

So, after Jesus compares “this generation” to stubborn children, he gets a bit more specific, announcing judgment “woes” upon three particular Jewish towns, Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum. Matthew indicates that the people of these towns saw “most” of Jesus’s miracles, up to this point. We haven’t heard anything about Jesus ministering in Chorazin or Bethsaida in Matthew’s Gospel, but that shouldn’t surprise us. Matthew isn’t telling us absolutely everything Jesus did or absolutely everywhere Jesus traveled.2 The apostle John supposed that the world couldn’t contain all the books that would need to be written to record everything Jesus did.3

Here, Jesus reveals that the people of these three towns have not repented. That reminds us that the purpose of Jesus’s miracles was not simply to help these particular individuals, to heal them of diseases, to free them from demonic control, or even to restore them to physical life after they had died. The miracles pointed to the need of these people to repent, to turn away from their sinful rebellion against God, and to turn to Jesus as the Savior with faith. The majority of the people who saw his miracles and perhaps even many who were the beneficiaries of his miracles did not repent. So, Jesus pronounces judgment on them. Last week, we said that John the Baptist was disappointed in Jesus because Jesus wasn’t bringing the fire and brimstone that John had expected. Here, Jesus carries John’s announcement of judgment further. Jesus’s message fits quite well with John’s message.

His pronouncement of judgment comes in the form of “woe oracles,” modeled after the judgment oracles of the Old Testament prophets.4 But most of the “woe oracles” in the Old Testament were directed against pagan, Gentile nations; here, Jesus is using those same words, those same forms to condemn the people of Jewish towns.5 Then, he adds insult to injury by saying that, on Judgment Day, the people who had lived in the most infamous wicked cities of the Old Testament period of history will experience less severe punishment than these Jewish people. Tyre and Sidon were infamous for exploiting the weak, engaging in polytheistic idol-worship, and sexual immorality, but the Old Testament prophets pronounced judgment against these cities (mainly Tyre) primarily because of their pride and arrogance due to their extravagant wealth.6

2 Cf. Leon Morris, The Gospel according to Matthew (The Pillar New Testament Commentary; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1992), pg. 288, who writes, “It is a reminder of how little we know about the life of Jesus that we have only this one reference to what was evidently an extensive ministry during the course of which a number of miracles were performed (the previous verse states that ‘most of his mighty works’ had been done in these cities).”

3 See John 20:30-31; 21:25.4 Cf. Jeannine K. Brown, Matthew (Teach the Text Commentary Series; Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2015),

pg. 125, who writes, “As Chorazin and Bethsaida have been paired here, so too are Tyre and Sidon, cities that had oracles of judgment spoken against them in the Old Testament Prophets (e.g., Jer. 25:17–22; Ezek. 28:21–22; Joel 3:4–5; Zech. 9:1–3). With great irony, their fate is favorably compared to the cities that have seen Jesus’ miracles but have not repented.”

5 Cf. Douglas Sean O’Donnell, Matthew: All Authority in Heaven and on Earth (Preaching the Word series; Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2013), pg. 295, who writes, “Thus in verses 20–24, following the pattern of the oracles against the nations in Isaiah 13–20, Jeremiah 46–51, Ezekiel 25–32, and Amos 1:3–2:3, Jesus pronounces the coming woe of judgment upon these Jewish (!) cities.”

6 Cf. Isa. 23:1-18; Jer. 25:22; 27:1-11; Ezek. 26:1-28:19; Joel 3:4-8; Amos 1:9-10.

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And Sodom’s destruction, narrated in the book of Genesis, is hard to forget.7 The people of Sodom were notoriously wicked, so much so that the city and its historical judgment by God became a paradigm for later judgments of other places. When the prophet Ezekiel describes the wickedness of Jerusalem and the coming judgment of the southern kingdom, Judah, he compares Jerusalem with Sodom. The sins of Sodom that Ezekiel mentions are not what we would expect from remembering the awful story recorded in the book of Genesis. Ezekiel 16:49 says, Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy. And so it was that God destroyed the city of Sodom and its neighboring towns; the people living in these towns were proud, wealthy, and uncharitable. From Genesis, we can add that they were sexually immoral as well.

Jesus says, “Woe to you, Chorazin and Bethsaida!” A “woe oracle” is basically the opposite of a beatitude.8 A beatitude is intended to assess a person’s circumstances positively. Jesus just spoke a beatitude back in verse 6 of Matthew 11: Blessed is the one who is not offended by me. The one who is not offended by Jesus is to be congratulated, fortunate, happy, in a good place, blessed. But to those who are offended by Jesus, to those who refuse to repent, even in the presence of Jesus, even after hearing Jesus teach and preach the gospel, even after witnessing and experiencing his miraculous power, Jesus says, “Woe!” People who reject Jesus are not to be congratulated; they are to be pitied; they are not fortunate; they are miserable; they are not happy, not truly happy anyway.9 While the people of Tyre and Sidon and Sodom will certainly not be blessed, will certainly not be happy on Judgment Day, their punishment will be less severe than the people who had the opportunity to respond to Jesus directly.

Why is that? Well, there’s a principle at work here: the greater the revelation, the greater the responsibility.10 It’s not that the people of Chorazin and Bethsaida committed worse immorality or had greater pride or broke more of God’s commandments. These towns are not major cities; they’re not particularly famous or infamous in Jewish history. They’re just ordinary towns with ordinary people living in them. One writer describes them as collections of “perverse normality.”11 These are normal, common Jewish people, but because God has chosen to send Jesus to live among them and to do miracles for them and to preach the gospel to them, their rejection of Jesus will cost them more than they could ever calculate. Jesus is commenting on the utter seriousness of rejecting him or ignoring him when he’s presented to people with such clarity.12

7 See the story in Genesis 18:22-19:29.8 Cf. Jonathan T. Pennington, The Sermon on the Mount and Human Flourishing: A Theological

Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2017), pg. 55, who writes, “A woe…is the opposite of a [beatitude] in that it describes the result of a way of being in the world that does not result in flourishing but in loss, grief, and destruction.”

9 Cf. Pennington, Sermon on the Mount, pg. 55 n. 47, who adds that a woe is “a kind of onomatopoeia, a cry of pain or distress, or a declaration of misfortune.”

10 Cf. Hagner, Matthew 1-13, pg. 314, who writes, “This passage vividly illustrates the simple truth that the greater the revelation, the greater the accountability.”

11 Stanley Hauerwas, Matthew (SCM Theological Commentary on the Bible; London: SCM, 2006), pg. 115.

12 Cf. O’Donnell, Matthew, pg. 296, who writes, echoing Hauerwas, “But why such woes for Capernaum, which had been Jesus’ base for missions thus far and even his adopted hometown? What had they done that deserved this?... Like most normal people in the world, they were not guilty of any notorious crime or of ‘anything particularly offensive or inhumane.’ Here we find no abnormal atrocities—genocide, ethnic cleansing, or the sodomy of the Sodomites. Here we simply have the normal perversity of disbelief in Jesus.”

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Listen: people will continue to exist forever and ever in a terrible place called hell. Each person in hell, however, will have their own unique experience of punishment and misery. I’m going to give you a lame analogy that I hope might help you grapple with this idea. The past couple of weeks here in Kilgore have been hot, many days well over 100 degrees. Some people were out working in it, all day, every day. They experienced the impact of the heat in a way that I did not. I spent almost all of my time indoors or in a car or in the shade, almost always with a powerful air conditioner protecting me from the impact of the heat. I still sweated; I was still hot; I still, for brief times, felt the indirect impact of the heat, but I never felt the full force of the heat. Even though the sun was blazing all around me, I didn’t experience the same level of misery as some construction workers I saw on the side of the road in the middle of the afternoon. Hell will be a place where each person has their own personalized, unique experience of misery, because each person has a different measure of accountability based partly on how much revelation they have received and partly on the fact that each person sins differently than everybody else, more or less often, with different kinds of rebellion. Sin is not equal before God and it will not be punished in equal measures.13 Every individual who has ever lived throughout all of history will get exactly what they deserve. Except for followers of Jesus. We’ll come back to that in just a bit.

Notice what Jesus knows. Sometimes, we might postulate on “what might’ve been,” and in our overconfidence we might even prognosticate about the future, saying, “if only this would happen, then this other thing would happen.” But Jesus actually knows that the residents of these Old Testament cities, Tyre, Sidon, and Sodom, would have repented from their wickedness if God had sent Jesus to them.14 That might raise the question in our minds, “Well, why didn’t God send Jesus to those people?” Charles Spurgeon crystallizes the issue here, and I’ll let you ponder his observation before Jesus elaborates on this mystery; Spurgeon writes, “God gave the opportunity where it was rejected, and it was not given where it would have been accepted.”15

Before Jesus explains this, I want to draw your attention to what Jesus says about Capernaum as well. Capernaum became Jesus’s hometown, his base of operations during his ministry. So, in many ways, the people of Capernaum were the most privileged of these towns that are being discussed. Jesus chastises them by way of a question; look again at verse 23: And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? You will be brought down to Hades. Jesus is using the language of Isaiah 14, where the prophet Isaiah condemns the king of Babylon for his wicked pride. Here, then, Jesus is connecting these Jewish people with the great enemy of God’s people, Babylon!16 The people of Capernaum may have become proud, ironically, because the great prophet Jesus spent lots of time in their community. “We must be special! God is doing all

13 For other passages teaching differing degrees of punishment in hell, see Matt. 10:15 and Luke 12:47-48. For clear elaboration of this point, see Millard J. Erickson, Christian Theology (2nd ed.; Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1998), pgs. 1247-1248.

14 Cf. D. A. Carson, “Matthew,” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Matthew, Mark, Luke (vol. 8; edited by Frank E. Gæbelein; Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1984), pg. 273, who writes, “[T]he Judge has contingent knowledge: he knows what Tyre and Sidon would have done under such-and-such circumstances.”

15 Charles Spurgeon, The Gospel of the Kingdom: A Commentary on the Book of Matthew (London: Passmore and Alabaster, 1893), pg. 81.

16 Cf. Carson, “Matthew,” pg. 273, who writes, “[T]he allusion to Isaiah 14:15 is unmistakable. The favored city of Capernaum, like self-exalting Babylon, will be brought down to Hades (see on 5:22). The OT passage is a taunt against the wicked and arrogant city, personified in its king; and Capernaum is lumped together with Babylon, which all Jews regarded as the epitome of evil.”

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these miracles through this man, Jesus, in our town! How highly exalted we must be for such a privilege!”17 Jesus says, “You are all going to die.” Hades is the realm of the dead; it’s the place where a person’s spirit goes immediately after dying. And, for the wicked, for unbelievers, it is an unhappy place of torment. It’s like being locked up in county jail while you wait for the judge’s sentence, which will be life in federal prison. Jesus is saying, “Don’t pat yourselves on the back because I’m here doing these miracles in your town to your citizens. I’m not here as a reward for your greatness.”

There is a significant warning in this passage that we need to hear, specifically as Americans. We are a privileged people. The freedom of religion we enjoy in this country is a good thing. And the facts that there are Christian churches in virtually every town in this country, and that there are Bibles freely and cheaply available to pretty much anyone who wants one, and that Jesus can be spoken of pretty much anywhere at any time with very little restriction, are things to celebrate. But…all of those facts mean that we have much in common with Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum. Jesus has been here. He’s been at work through his people. That means that the people of this country, our neighbors, our family members, our co-workers, are highly accountable.18 And I want to direct this warning to anyone listening to me, anyone in this building, who comes into this church regularly or once in a while, or even if this is your first time here:19 beware of ignoring this Jesus we’re talking about; beware of rejecting this Jesus we’re talking about; beware of delaying to turn your life around and follow this Jesus we’re talking about. You only have a few years on this earth, breathing this air, hearing this gospel; eternity is much, much longer, and how you respond to Jesus is the deciding factor in whether you will enjoy eternity or not. Don’t let this warning and this talk of judgment turn you away; keep listening to what Jesus says here.

In verses 25-26, Jesus turns to say a prayer, a short prayer, but a wonderful prayer of thanksgiving and praise to his Father, the Lord of both heaven and earth. In light of the rejection Jesus is facing, in light of the judgment that he has warned these people of, Jesus gives thanks and praises God for two things. And it appears that this was a public prayer of Jesus; he said this in the hearing of the crowds around him. First, he thanks and praises his Father—look in verse 25—that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding. Have you ever prayed like this to God? Have you ever thanked him for his hiding things from people? What things does he hide? Well, from the context of Matthew 11, I think it must be first the

17 Cf. O’Donnell, Matthew, pg. 302, who makes the point imaginatively: “After Jesus came through town and did all he did, they didn’t believe, but they did change the city sign from ‘Welcome to Capernaum: Fishing Capital of the Northeast’ to ‘Welcome to Capernaum: The City Lifted to Heaven—Home of Jesus the Wonder Worker.’”

18 Cf. David L. Turner, Matthew (Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament; Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2008), pgs. 300-301, who writes, “These Galilean towns serve as a warning to nonchalant people whose familiarity with Christianity has bred contempt of it. Being born into a Christian family, being a member of a church, or even being a citizen of a country where Christianity is prominent are blessings from God but do not take the place of personal repentance. Judas Iscariot is sad testimony to the fact that those who are nearest to the means of grace are sometimes the furthest from its end.”

19 Cf. Grant R. Osborne, Matthew (Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament 1; Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2010), pg. 435, who quotes Dale Bruner, “Christian communities are in special trouble on judgment day, not because Jesus has not really been in the communities, but because he has.… every member of a church has Jesus, for Jesus is present in his Word, fellowship, and sacraments. But Jesus does not have every member of his church; he has only those who, under the impact of his miraculous grace, are actually changing.”

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significance of Jesus’s miracles, and second the true identity of Jesus as God’s Son and Messiah. In the face of increasing rejection, Jesus is not discouraged. He praises God! He gives thanks for the rejection because he knows that it is a result of his Father’s work of hiding these things from people.20

Why is that something we should thank God for? And why does God do this? Why wouldn’t he reveal these things to everyone? Well, it seems that God’s work of hiding is an expression of his rightful judgment of those who are in rebellion against him.21 We might like to think that everyone deserves a chance to hear about Jesus, that everyone should have the opportunity to know the truth about God. Jesus’s prayer seems to imply the opposite; no one deserves the chance to hear about Jesus; no one deserves the opportunity to know the truth about God.22

Notice who it is that God hides the truth from: the wise and understanding. It’s those who think they already know how life’s supposed to work; it’s those who think they have nothing to learn; it’s those who refuse to admit that they actually know nothing about God and his ways.23 In other words, it’s the proud who refuse to humble themselves. The Jewish people in these towns who experienced Jesus’s miracles and teaching were surely impressed by the miracles, but they seem to have thought that they were receiving these blessings from God because they deserved it. “We are the wise and understanding; that is why Jesus has come to heal our sick and minister among us.”

Jesus thanks God for a second thing; look again at verse 25: I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have…revealed them to little children. So, Jesus also praises God for his work of revealing the truth to some people, to those he calls “little children.” Now, when Jesus refers to little children like this, usually he’s speaking metaphorically. He’s referring to those who are childlike, in the best sense of that word. Probably, he’s emphasizing how little children can be unpretentious, teachable, eager to learn.24 Not all little children are like that, but their naivete puts them in a natural position to be taught, even though lots of children I know are among the most arrogant human beings I know. Usually, we see that in teenagers, but I’m seeing it increasingly in younger children. At any rate, Jesus is referring to those who see him rightly, those who respond to his miracles and his preaching with repentance and faith.

20 Cf. Hagner, Matthew 1-13, pg. 321, who writes, “Confronted by resistance and unbelief, Jesus can yet praise the Father, for his will is being worked out both in those who receive and in those who reject the gospel. Nothing is ever out of the control of God, who is Lord of heaven and earth.”

21 Cf. Carson, “Matthew,” pg. 275, who writes, “Yet we must not think that God’s concealing and revealing are symmetrical activities arbitrarily exercised toward neutral human beings who are both innocent and helpless in the face of the divine decree. God is dealing with a race of sinners (cf. 1:21; 7:11) whom he owes nothing. Thus to conceal “these things” is not an act of injustice but of judgment—the very judgment John the Baptist was looking for and failed to find in Jesus.”

22 Cf. Carson, “Matthew,” pg. 273, who writes, “God does not owe revelation to anyone, or else there is injustice in withholding it.”

23 Cf. Craig L. Blomberg, Matthew (The New American Commentary 22; Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1992), pg. 193, who writes, “‘Little children’ refers to those who respond to God by acknowledging their dependence on him…. The ‘wise and learned,’ as the opposite category of persons, must therefore represent those who feel they have no need for God.”

24 Cf. Turner, Matthew, pg. 303, who writes, “Here the contrast is not literally between intellectuals and children but between those who are proud and those who are humble. The former refuse to repent when they are confronted with the words and works of the kingdom. The latter respond to the kingdom message in repentance, acknowledging their childlike dependence upon the heavenly Father.”

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But get the key thought here: the ultimate reason behind people misunderstanding and rejecting Jesus is the work of God’s hiding the truth from them, as an expression of judgment against them, and also the ultimate reason behind people repenting and believing in Jesus is God’s work of revealing the truth to them, enabling them to perceive Jesus’s identity and to turn to him.25 Jesus affirms in verse 26 that both God’s act of hiding and his act of revealing are expressions of God’s good pleasure,26 as the 1984 NIV puts it.27 Paul would later elaborate on this reality by saying that we were saved by grace through faith, so that no one may boast.

Jesus then turns away from praying and elaborates on the significance of his prayer for the listening crowd. In verse 27, we move further into the mystery. Look there again: All things have been handed over to me by my 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. The unity and intimacy of Father and Son within the Trinitarian Godhead is glimpsed in these words. So, in verse 25 Jesus indicates that the Father hides the truth from some and reveals it to others, but now in verse 27 Jesus explains that the Father has actually delegated that divine prerogative over to his Son, over to Jesus. Famously, at the end of Matthew’s Gospel, after the resurrection of Jesus, he will announce to his disciples that, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Here, even before the cross and the resurrection, the Father has delegated the authority of election over to the Son. And the reason that this makes perfect sense is because the Son is the only one who knows the Father perfectly and completely. Therefore, he is the only one who can actually reveal the Father to anyone else. The apostle John says something similar in John 1:18: No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known. That reference to “the only God, who is at the Father’s side,” is a reference to Jesus the Son! And so it is here that Jesus is aware of this utterly unique intimacy that he has with his Father, and, therefore, if anyone wants to know God, the only way to find him is through Jesus. Jesus must reveal the Father to a person for a person to come to know God. There is no other way.

In these verses, we have the mystery of divine election before us. How should we respond to such a word, to such a difficult concept, a concept that makes us utterly tiny and insignificant, completely unable in ourselves to find our way to God? We should respond like Jesus: with worship! Praise and thanksgiving to the God who chooses! If you find yourself squirming because this sure seems to take the power out of your free will, hang on and keep listening. But also keep squirming! To humble yourself is to recognize how weak your will really is. Do you really want to leave your eternal destiny up to the power of your will alone? Be careful that, in the face of this truth, you don’t swing over to the pride that earned the condemnation of Jesus in the previous verses. Put your hand over your mouth before you speak against the electing grace

25 Cf. Hagner, Matthew 1-13, pg. 318, who writes, “God’s mysterious sovereignty lies behind both belief and unbelief, yet without obviating the culpability of those who fail to believe. That some believed and others did not believe the message of Jesus can be described from this perspective as God either concealing or revealing the truth of that message.”

26 Cf. Turner, Matthew, pg. 303, who writes, “Jesus affirms that the basis of the Father’s concealing and revealing activity is the Father’s own desire. Nothing outside the Father has determined this course of action. The word translated ‘pleasing’ is εὐδοκία (eudokia; cf. Luke 2:14; Eph. 1:5, 9; Phil. 2:13…), which refers to God’s pleasure, goodwill, or favor.”

27 Cf. Hagner, Matthew 1-13, pg. 319, who writes, “God’s will is being worked out in both instances, and in retrospect God’s sovereignty can be described in terms of causation: a concealing and a revealing.”

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of God, the electing grace of Jesus! Instead, realize that if he hadn’t chosen you, you would never have seen him, known him, recognized him for who he is. If he hadn’t chosen you, the cross would mean nothing to you. If he hadn’t chosen you, you would remain in your rebellion for all eternity. If he hadn’t chosen you, you would never have found him. If he hadn’t chosen you, you would spend eternity in hell receiving exactly what you deserve for your rebellion against him. If he hadn’t chosen some, no one on the face of the planet would be saved. The ultimate reason followers of Jesus don’t get the punishment we deserve for our rebellion is because God has chosen to rescue us through the death of his Son. Jesus paid the penalty for our rebellion, so that God may be just—our sins have been punished fully, as they deserve—and the justifier of those who trust in Jesus, to paraphrase the apostle Paul.

Respond to the doctrine of election the way Paul does in Romans 11:33: Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgment and how inscrutable his ways! Praise Jesus, the great Chooser! Praise Jesus, who chose to reveal his Father to me, so that I could know God and so that I could enjoy life with him forever and ever. Praise Jesus, who chose to die for my sins, to erase my debt before God, to remove my eternal shame for my great failures. Praise him!

Immediately after speaking of his right to choose who he will reveal the Father to, he issues a general call and command for all people to respond to him! So, in the same paragraph that he describes the wonder of election, he engages our free will to respond to him!28 So, quit your squirming about free will in the face of God’s election! Of course, we freely respond to his call, but let’s not delude ourselves into thinking that our response is just up to us. No, no! God’s grace is still the decisive factor here, even as he works through our real, free choice. Let the tension stand!

Jesus invites, summons, commands “all who labor and are heavy laden” to come to him for rest. Who is he addressing? Primarily, he is setting his sights on his Jewish audience, people who have been carrying the burdens laid on them by the religious leaders, especially the Pharisees.29 But, I’m sure we can broaden this out to recognize that Jesus is addressing everyone, Jew or Gentile, who has felt the weight of trying to earn God’s favor. People work very hard to be good in this world, hoping that, if there is a judgment to come, their good deeds will outweigh their sins. But, I think Jesus’s invitation can be broadened out even further. Surely, Jesus recognizes that sin itself weighs people down; every human being on the face of the planet, throughout history, has felt the weight of guilt or shame to one degree or another, and none of us really feels that weight as much as we should. In fact, Jesus knows the truth about every human being on the face of the planet; he knows that all human beings are enslaved to sin, whether they know it or not. Jesus is the only one who can grant true freedom to human beings.

28 Cf. O’Donnell, Matthew, pg. 305, who writes, “First, the fact that Jesus chooses us does not negate our choice. Right after Jesus says, ‘No one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him,’ we find two imperatives: ‘Come to me... Take my yoke upon you.’ Which is it, Jesus? Make up your mind. Do you choose or do we come? He chooses, and we come.”

29 Cf. Frank Theilman, “Matthew,” in Gospel Transformation Bible (edited by Bryan Chapell and Dane Ortlund; Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2013), pg. 1286, who writes, “Within the context of Matthew’s Gospel, this imagery probably refers to the heavy load of religious observances that the scribes and Pharisees had bundled together and placed on people’s backs (23:4).”

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Here, Jesus addresses all people and says that he is the solution, he is the one who can provide rest. He promises to those who will come to him, “I will give you rest.” It’s hard for me not to see some Old Testament verses echoing in the background of Jesus’s promise here. In the book of Exodus, after the people of Israel had built and worshiped a golden calf at the foot of Mt. Sinai, God threatens to judge and abandon the people, but Moses prays for the people, intercedes for the sinful, idolatrous people, and God responds to Moses in Exodus 33:14, My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.30 The “rest” that God promised to the sinful people of Israel here was the experience of entering and settling in the Promised Land. Jesus is surely echoing this promise, putting himself in the place of God who has the right to promise people the full experience of rest, the experience of rest that the Promised Land only dimly foreshadowed, rest that will culminate for us with sinless perfection in resurrected bodies in a renewed, un-cursed, New Creation.

But isn’t there more to this rest? Isn’t there a real aspect of this rest that those who come to Jesus experience during this life?31 At one level, Jesus’s offer of rest here is simply the offer of eternal life, which begins the moment a person comes to Jesus and begins to trust him. But why the language of rest? Well, if we remember that he’s primarily addressing Jewish people who have been weighed down by heavy burdens from the teachings of the Pharisees, “rest” means that you don’t have to work to get right with God. Rest becomes the context in which true righteousness is experienced and enjoyed by followers of Jesus. Our work in obedience to Jesus, in obedience to God’s Word, doesn’t earn righteousness from God; our righteous status is settled in God’s book forever! But, does that mean, then, that we no longer have to work?

Look again at verse 29: Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me. What’s a yoke? This is what a yoke looks like, if you’ll put that slide on the screen.

30 This particular Old Testament connection was pointed out by John C. Laansma, “Rest,” in New Dictionary of Biblical Theology (edited by T. Desmond Alexander and Brian S. Rosner; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2000), pg. 730.

31 Cf. Osborne, Matthew, pg. 442, who writes, “This is not just rest from the oral tradition (though it includes that) but rest from all the labors of life. It is the eschatological rest promised for the kingdom age (4 Ezra 7:36; 8:52) and is closely aligned with the ‘rest’ theme of Heb 3:7-4:16, especially the ‘Sabbath-rest’ of 4:3-11. In the Hebrews passage as here, the rest is both present and future, both the present relationship with God and the eternal rest in heaven. In coming to Jesus, the disciple enters the rest of God (Heb 4:3, ‘we who have believed enter that rest’).”

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This is a human yoke; it’s designed to distribute the weight of a load to the outer ends in order to relieve the pressure from the person carrying the load.32 In the past, when I’ve read this passage, I tended to think of the ox-yoke, a similar device that is put over the necks of two oxen to enable them to work together to pull a cart or some other load.33 However, I think Jesus may have the human yoke particularly in mind here. Jesus invites, summons, commands “all who labor and are heavy laden” to voluntarily submit to his yoke. The image is that a person would come to Jesus, bow down in front of him, so that he may place his yoke over their neck. The yoke is a very common piece of equipment, and it became a very common metaphor in literature, a metaphor for slavery and hard work. A yoke helps you keep working; it’s hard to think of a “restful yoke,” a yoke that helps you rest. But, get what Jesus is saying; he promises, “I will give you rest,” and then immediately he says, “Come work for me.” It seems that Jesus doesn’t want us to stop working necessarily; that’s not his point. Instead, he wants us to work differently, to work in a way that doesn’t seek to earn anything from God.

The next command gets more specific; what kind of work are we to do? We are to learn from him. We are to become his students, his apprentices, his disciples. Learning from Jesus is at the heart of discipleship. Recall the Great Commission at the end of Matthew’s Gospel. How are we to make disciples of all the nations? By baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and then by teaching the ones we’ve baptized to observe everything, to obey everything that Jesus has commanded.34 Discipleship is primarily about learning to live as a slave of Christ, learning to obey Jesus’s commands. Said differently, discipleship is primarily about learning to work for Jesus.

Why would anyone volunteer for this? Why would anyone, especially us freedom-loving, independence-loving Americans want to submit to slavery to Jesus? Because Jesus is gentle and lowly in heart, and, from verse 30, his yoke is easy and his burden is light.35 There is a yoke; there is a burden to carry; but that burden is not the guilt of our sins, and that yoke is not working to earn righteousness before God. No, Jesus took up a yoke, of sorts, in order to carry the burden of our guilt. If you look again at those images of human yokes, see how similar it looks to a man carrying a cross-beam on his shoulders.

32 So explains O’Donnell, Matthew, pg. 307.33 And this image still makes a very preachable point and could be what Jesus was intending. Cf. Osborne,

Matthew, pg. 443, who writes, “There may be a further image that Jesus is in the yoke with us carrying most of the load. Since a yoke connected two oxen in tandem, the idea of taking Jesus’ yoke means joining him in God’s work.”

34 Cf. Osborne, Matthew, pg. 443, who writes, “The essence of true discipleship is hearing and doing all that Jesus teaches.”

35 Cf. Osborne, Matthew, pg. 444, who writes, “Following Jesus will not be easy in terms of the good life (secularly defined) because it demands radical surrender and involves the world’s hostility (7:14, ‘narrow is the gate and confined the road that leads to life,’ cf. also ch. 10), but it is easy and light because it involves union with the gentle, lowly King and produces a new dimension of ‘rest’ in him.”

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He has taken the hard yoke of obeying the law of God perfectly; he has carried the burden of fulfilling all of God’s righteous demands; and he has even gone so far as to carry the burden of guilt for sins he didn’t commit, all the way to paying the final penalty for those sins: death on the cross.36

Notice the reiteration of the promise here in verse 29: you will find rest for your souls. This is another direct quotation from the Old Testament. This time, Jesus reaches for Jeremiah 6:16; the Lord sends a message to the people through the prophet Jeremiah: Stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls. The Lord summons his rebellious people to repent, to turn back to the ancient paths, the paths of righteousness, as described to them in the Mosaic Law, to walk on the good path of God’s Wisdom, as described in their Scriptures.37 But, the Jewish people of Jeremiah’s day refused; at the end of that verse, we read, But they said, “We will not walk in it.” Jesus is facing the same kind of rejection from the Jewish people in his day, and that’s where we started this morning. As in Jeremiah 6, where God pronounces judgment on his rebellious, unrepentant people, so here in Matthew 11, Jesus pronounces judgment against those who refused to repent, even though they witnessed and benefited from his miracles and his preaching. But before he executes his final judgment, he tells them, one more time, where the good life can be found. The good life can only be found in submitting to Jesus’s yoke, coming to him, trusting him, and following him, orienting our whole life around who he is, what he’s done, and the work he commands us to do.38

36 Cf. Hauerwas, Matthew, pg. 118, who writes, “Yet it is surely the case that we can take on his yoke, because he bore for us the yoke that only he could bear. That he did so makes possible our sharing his yoke, which is now easy. It is easy because his yoke is a welcome alternative to the burdens we carry that give no rest.”

37 Cf. Andrew T. Lincoln, “Sabbath, Rest, and Eschatology in the New Testament,” in From Sabbath to Lord’s Day: A Biblical, Historical, and Theological Investigation (edited by D. A. Carson; Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 1999), pg. 202, who writes, “Jeremiah had told the people that they would find rest for their souls by learning again obedience to the law (Jer. 6:16), but now Jesus puts Himself in place of the law and claims that those who labor and are heavy laden, who find the law as expounded by the Pharisees and scribes too difficult to keep (cf. Matt. 23:4), will find that same rest in learning of Him.”

38 Cf. Carson, “Matthew,” pg. 278, who writes, “The entire verse is steeped in OT language…; but if this is intended to be not just an allusion but a fulfillment passage, then Jesus is saying that ‘the ancient paths’ and ‘the good way’ (Jer 6:16) lie in taking on his yoke because he is the one to whom the OT Scriptures point.”

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With this great invitation coming on the heels of such hard words about election, we might still struggle with how these can fit together in the same passage. Ultimately, if we need to address that struggle, we can recognize that whoever does actually come to Jesus in response to this invitation are people to whom Jesus has chosen to reveal God.39 Those who respond to Jesus’s invitation are those who humble themselves like little children, accept the testimony of Scripture about their identity as slaves of sin deserving of God’s wrath, by nature and by deed, and have had their eyes opened by God to see Jesus as the gentle and lowly Savior who has paid for their sin on the cross, risen victoriously from the dead, and ascended to sit on his throne, worthy of all worship and submission.

What then of the rest that Jesus offers? How should we think about it in our everyday experience? It’s no accident that the very next section in Matthew talks about Jesus working on the Sabbath and teaching about the true significance of the Sabbath Day. The concepts of rest and Sabbath are linked throughout Scripture. When we think of the Sabbath Day as simply a day to cease working, I think we’re missing the bigger picture, similarly to how the Pharisees missed the point of the Sabbath. Sabbath rest was not really about the absence of work one day a week because that’s a healthy and wise thing to do. Sabbath rest was always really about honoring God and trusting him with the outcome of our labor.

So, does this passage help me with my daily, weekly, monthly dilemma of failing to rest? Yes, but not like I expected. I had expected that I would learn how to reprioritize my life in such a way that ceasing from work could become a normal rhythm for me. And that might still need to happen. But as I’ve reflected on this passage and what the rest of the Bible has to say about rest, I’ve actually found another tension that I think we need to hold tightly. God’s choosing which sinners he will save must be held in tension with the truth that sinners must choose to respond to Jesus in order to be saved by God. Similarly, Jesus offers those who come to him the experience of rest, but at the same time calls and commands those who come to him to work for him. I don’t see him saying, “Sometimes you get to rest and sometimes you must work.” Instead, I see Jesus calling his followers to a life of restful work.40 This passage is not so much about the end of our labors, but it’s more about the way we go about our work. We shouldn’t work to earn anything from God; instead, we should work resting in the finished work of Christ, and we should work resting in his promises to make our work effective.

I’d like to close with three verses from Paul that spell out this tension in other terms. First, consider Paul’s understanding of his experience, recorded in 1 Corinthians 15:10: But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of [the other apostles], though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. Paul worked really hard, demonstrably harder than any other apostle, but he recognized, or he rested in the reality that it was God’s grace that was powerfully working in his

39 Cf. John Nolland, The Gospel of Matthew (New International Greek Testament Commentary; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005), pg. 474, who writes, “Where the failure of response in vv. 20–24 corresponds to the concealing activity, the fresh invitation in vv. 28–30 is probably intended to correspond to the revealing activity.”

40 Cf. O’Donnell, Matthew, pg. 307, who paraphrases Jesus’s words here: “Take my yoke. You’ll be working, walking, moving forward, carrying what I tell you to carry, even your own cross. Life might be uncomfortable, hard, and trying, but (irony of ironies) walk my way and you’ll find rest—the refreshment that comes with forgiveness, the renewal that comes with purposeful living, the rest that comes from working for me!”

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work, through his work, that brought such wonderful effects in the lives of the churches. God gets all the credit, but Paul worked really hard.

Second, Paul’s words in Philippians 2:12-13 have become among my most favorite in the Bible: Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now…work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. Paul commends the Philippians for their hard work of obeying what he had taught, and he challenges them to continue working hard, and he connects their hard work tightly with their salvation. We are not saved by our working, but we are saved in order to work. But, even as we work really hard to obey God, to obey the teachings of Jesus, to obey the words of the apostles, we can rest in the truth that God is working in us to enable us both to desire to please God and also to actually please God by what we do. We must work really hard, but, at the same time, we can rest, because if we ever even want to please God, it’s because God has produced that desire in us, and then if we ever are to do anything that actually pleases God, it’s because God has produced that pleasing effect in and through us.

Finally, I leave you with Paul’s charge that concludes 1 Corinthians 15. After expounding on Jesus’s resurrection from the dead, Paul commands in 1 Corinthians 15:58: Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. That is a glorious promise that you can rest in, even as you labor and work really hard to serve the Lord.

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