“Discovering Joy Amidst Toil (Matthew 11:20-30)” | 12/13/2020
Matthew 11:20-30 | 12/13/20 | Will DuVal
You may have noticed on your way in these past few Sundays the beautiful Christmas trees out in the foyer. What you may NOT have noticed, unless you look more closely, is that unlike the typical “pre-lit” trees you find in most stores these days - because who wants to have to string up their own lights separately?! - we DID in fact have to string on lights for all 3 of those trees. See, they USED to be pre-lit. But apparently, there are still SOME trees on which one little light burning out means the entire TREE goes out. And when ALL the lights go out, on a pre-lit tree, you’ve basically got 3 options: Either you get lazy, like I would, if I were in charge, and just throw new lights over top of the old ones, but it looks terrible; Polly ruled that option out. OR you trash the tree altogether and just buy a whole new one. That was Scott’s solution, for the tree up HERE on stage that burned out. But if you’re frugal like me, then you insist on using the EXISTING trees, which means you’re stuck DE-lighting the old burned out strands before you can RE-light them. Now, I don’t know if YOU’VE ever de-lit a PRE-lit Christmas tree. But at least on the 3 trees out there, I kid you not, every single individual branch, not just the limbs, connected to the trunk, but the tiny BRANCHES off the branches was wrapped 3 or 4 times around in lights. I think it took Kelly, Eric, Jesse, Stephen, Melissa and myself, all 6 of us, with scissors, over an HOUR just to cut all the lights off those 3 trees. There must have been, what, guys…? Well over 1,000 lights per tree I think. So on your way OUT today, you can stop by now and admire and appreciate those trees in a whole new light. Pun intended.
This morning is week 3 of Advent, the season in the church calendar in which we celebrate and anticipate the coming of our Lord Jesus. And our Advent sermon series is entitled “The Weary World Rejoices”; we’re focusing, this year in particular, on both the weariness of the world into which Christ came, 2,000 years ago in Bethlehem, and the world to which he has promised he will one day return again in the future, but we’re also focusing, more importantly, on the JOY that we can find IN Him, in the midst of our weariness. So 2 weeks ago we discussed the weariness of WAITING. God’s people waited 2,000 years for their Messiah, His first visit, and we’ve been waiting 2,000 years and counting since then for his return. But we await it, with hopeful JOY. Last week, we considered the weariness of MONOTONY, and the joy that can be ours even amidst the seemingly tedious, mundane, repetitiveness of life, because Christ brings meaning and wonder to EVERY aspect of life. And this morning, we’re talking about “Joy Amidst TOIL”. Toil is defined as “hard and continuous work; exhausting labor or effort”. And weariness itself is defined as “a physically or mentally exhausted state, from hard work, exertion, and strain”. So any sermon series aimed at dissecting the various dimensions of weariness HAS to deal with this topic of TOIL.
What comes to mind for YOU, when you hear the word “toil”? Maybe you’ve had a SIMILAR story recently, involving Christmas lights? Christmas decorating? Christmas shopping? Typically by this time in the season, mid-December, many of us are already beginning to feel the exhaustion of attending Christmas events, HOSTING Christmas parties… we tell ourselves every year that we’re gonna cut back, so we can simply ENJOY the season, but then the invites start rolling in: staff party, life group party, neighborhood party, family party… and you CAN’T miss all the great St. Louis traditions: Tilles Park, the Brewery lights, Garden Glow, historic St. Charles… before you know it, you’ve filled up every night of the calendar for the entire month of December, and you’ve worn yourself OUT. Maybe God is using THIS Advent season to slow us down, and give us REST from our typical Christmas toil.
And yet, I suspect many of you, like me, have faced NEW, unforeseen toils in 2020. The toil of rethinking your entire way of doing “church” during a nationwide shut-down. The toil of making church happen with a 25% capacity limit; basically needing half the people in attendance to serve as volunteers, to pull a Sunday service off. The toil of trying to plan a 2021 church calendar when you don’t even know what TOMORROW is gonna look like, much less where we’re gonna be in 3 months… 6 months… a YEAR?! Who knew life could be so TOILSOME, so “laboriously tiring”, during a pandemic when life paradoxically feels like it’s been put on hold?
But friends: do you know the remedy for toil? I want to suggest to you that our hearts this morning are crying out for the very thing that Jesus is offering us; it’s one of his most well-known, beloved, comforting invitations in all the Gospels: “Come to me, all who labor - who are WEARY - and are heavy laden, and I will give you… [WHAT?] REST” (Mt 11:28). REST. REST is the cure for toil. Is anyone’s heart crying out this morning for REST?
But we’re gonna see this morning that Jesus’ rest isn’t just about holiday busyness or pandemic stress .The context for Jesus’ invitation to rest in Matthew ch.11 sheds a lot of light for us on the kind of TOIL, that was rampant in the 1st c. Judaism of his day. Jesus alludes to 3 types of toil, specifically, in this passage, that correlate to 3 ways of responding to Jesus. And we’re gonna see that each of these toils are in no way UNIQUE to Jesus’ 1st c. Jewish audience; we still face them TODAY. And that makes Jesus’ offer of REST just as relevant for us still today.
So what are these 3 types of toil that our souls so desperately need REST from this morning? Let’s read and find out… Would you stand with me as you’re able, turn in your Bibles... Matthew 11:20-30:
Then Jesus began to denounce the cities where most of his mighty works had been done, because they did not repent. 21 “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. 22 But I tell you, it will be more bearable on the day of judgment for Tyre and Sidon than for you. 23 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. 24 But I tell you that it will be more tolerable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom than for you.”
25 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; 26 yes, Father, for such was your gracious will.[g] 27 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. 28 Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 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. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
This is the word of the Lord… Let’s pray…
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Point #1: Jesus offers us the joy of rest from our...
*REJECTION of Him; vv20-24 are addressed to the SKEPTIC.
““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… And you, Capernaum… if the mighty works done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day.”
Tyre & Sidon, in the OT, “epitomized Israel’s enemies” (Douglass O’Donnell, Matthew, 294) - you read Isaiah 23, Ezekiel 26-28, Amos 1; God had declared: ““Behold, I am against you, O Sidon… I will send pestilence into her,
and blood into her streets;
And… the sword against her on every side.” (Ez 28:22-23)
But Jesus said: it’s gonna be even WORSE than that, for Chorazin and Bethsaida! These towns where he worked so many miracles…
We should ALL remember the fate of SODOM - that was this summer, in our Genesis series. I’ll give you a hint: it’s where we get the phrase “fire and brimstone”. But Jesus rebukes Capernaum: “Hey, if you think what happened to SODOM was bad, just WAIT for what I got coming for you - if I had performed my mighty works in SODOM, they’d still be a thriving metropolis today!”
Here’s the point, speaking of “TOIL”: it was HARD WORK for these people, based on the MIRACLES they’d personally witnessed, to deny that Jesus was the Son of God! Like, the mental gymnastics you have to go through, to watch Jesus heal someone who you KNOW was born crippled, you KNOW was born blind, deaf, mute… to raise someone from the DEAD! Like, imagine you’re in the funeral procession, for the widow of Nain’s son in Luke 7, and you touched his cold, limp, lifeless body, you can smell his rotting flesh, then Jesus just casually walks up, touches the corpse and says, “Get up”, and he DOES?!
Listen: I don’t know if any of y’all are into magic? David Blaine… Criss Angel, Mindfreak… I could watch that stuff all day. But then it BOTHERS me so much, the amazing tricks these guys can pull off, that then I have to spend even MORE time searching for the explanations. The secrets - how’d they do it?! And the thing that makes it MAGIC is that there’s ALWAYS a secret. There’s always a rational explanation. But friends, Jesus didn’t DO magic tricks. He worked MIRACLES. He defied the laws of nature and science, right in front of peoples’ eyes. But then he warned them: “You better be careful; because you KNOW too much now, to just turn and walk away and pretend like you never saw anything, to try and forget that you ever MET me, because you know that if you were forced to really DEAL with what you’ve witnessed today, first-hand eye witness accounts, it might have MASSIVE implications for the entire course of the rest of your life.” This was a guy who called people to leave their fathers and mothers. Their spouses and children. Leave everything and everyONE they’d ever known and loved, to come follow him. That’s scary! It’s exciting, if he’s truly GOD in the flesh, and a few people jumped at the chance and never looked back. But for the VAST majority of people who came into contact with Jesus, who personally ate the bread and fish that he miraculously multiplied right before their very eyes, they returned home that night and probably tried to convince themselves that they were just seeing things. Because if it was REAL, then He was really the long-awaited MESSIAH! And if he was the MESSIAH, then they needed to FOLLOW him. Even if it meant going to THEIR deaths, taking up THEIR crosses, to follow in his footsteps.
And many of his CLOSEST followers did just that. And their deaths offer us today, 2,000 years later, perhaps the most compelling apologetic there is, the most convincing reason for believing in the TRUTH of the Gospel story. I’ve said this many times: “Sane people won’t die unnecessarily for something they KNOW is a lie.”
If you’re willing to go to your DEATH for a belief you hold so tightly, you’re EITHER:
-Insane, or brainwashed, like the Branch Davidians. David Koresh, Jim Jones.
-Or you’re Badly Mistaken, like today’s radical jihadists, who believe with all their hearts that their deaths will land them in Paradise with 72 virgins. They just don’t REALIZE that it’s actually a lie.
-Or you know it’s a lie, but you HAVE to die, for some ulterior, altruistic motive. Like a prisoner of war, captured and tortured, who refuses to divulge information. He knows he’s lying, he really DOES know where his troops plan to attack next, but he’s willing to die for the lie.
But “Sane people will not die unnecessarily for something they KNOW is a lie.” So when we consider the witness of the dozens… HUNDREDS of 1st c. Christian martyrs, who willingly marched to their deaths rather than renounce their faith in Christ - not “faith” like, “I believe without having seen”, I mean “faith” like, “I watched Jesus die and get buried on Friday, and then I watched him walk through the wall on Sunday and start eating fish with us… and you can kill me if you want, but he warned us that if we deny him before men he’d deny us before God, so I’m keeping the BIGGER PICTURE in mind here; ETERNITY!”
-There was no ulterior motive for the disciples to die for Jesus. That’s the most ridiculous theory a skeptic today can posit; Sure, it’s all fun and games, convincing people that Jesus was the Messiah and he was my best friend, so NOW, you need to follow ME, and give ME all your money… this idea that the “disciples were a bunch of greedy, power-hungry opportunists”; that theory works right up until the point that their NECKS were on the chopping block. But any SANE disciple, tied to stake, given one last chance to renounce his faith before he’s set on FIRE, is gonna come clean, if it’s all just a ruse.
-So maybe they were just BADLY MISTAKEN. Maybe the disciples THOUGHT Jesus came back from the dead, but they were wrong. He never actually died. The “swoon theory”. Or they wanted to believe in him so bad their minds just conjured the resurrection up; the “hallucination theory”. Maybe they all LOST their sanity; collectively, dozens of people, went crazy and started seeing things… the exact SAME things. That’s the problem - Michael Licona explains: “Hallucinations are like dreams. They are private occurrences … You can’t share a hallucination with someone any more than you can wake up your spouse in the middle of the night and ask him or her to join you in a dream you were having.”
The “stolen body” theory. The “mass conspiracy” theory. One by one, friends, they all fall apart, until you’re left with only one alternative: maybe it ACTUALLY happened. The resurrection of Jesus that these multiple, eye-witnesses went to their DEATHS rather than renounce what they’d seen - it’s either the biggest HOAX in world history, or MAYBE, just maybe... it really HAPPENED.
It’s the most rational explanation by far. Back to TOIL: it’s actually quite hard work to reject Jesus. You might be familiar with C.S. Lewis’ famous “trilemma”: the idea that Jesus was either “liar, lunatic, or LORD”. He can’t have been just a “good teacher”; that option went out the window the moment he started claiming to be God. So he’s either liar, lunatic, or LORD. The fourth option, of course, is that all of his followers who subsequently WROTE about him, were the lunatics. But unless you believe THEY were all certifiable, you’re left with the rather inconvenient truth, that perhaps Jesus was actually EXACTLY who he said he was. LORD. God in the flesh.
But today, rather than deal with the implications of that truth, that there really IS a God and I’m not him, many people not only reject JESUS; they reject the very notion of a transcendent God altogether. We are surrounded by people in today’s world, who would rather believe that the entire UNIVERSE could have popped into existence randomly, by blind chance, sheer dumb luck... that the same is true of planet EARTH, with all its unique, impossibly-precise conditions perfectly suited to sustain life... that humanity too was the happy accident of the unguided process of evolution, we’re just chimps who grew up, and therefore, there is no absolute truth or morality, there is no objective meaning to life, and there is no ultimate destination for which we should hope - the afterlife is a lie too. Who’s excited to turn into dirt and get eaten by worms? MILLIONS of people, who would rather believe ALL that, than to have to deal with the implications of a universe created and sovereignly ruled over by a GOD who isn’t THEM!
Friends: if you have eyes and a brain, it’s really hard to reject the truth that there is a God. Romans ch.1: God has made it BLATANTLY apparent, that He exists. And He has a son named Jesus, who died and was raised to save you from your sins. But if you reject Him, ESPECIALLY in the face of such overwhelming evidence FOR Him - evidence to which YOU have now been EXPOSED; you won’t have the benefit when YOUR name is called, and YOU stand before His judgment throne, that some of the unreached peoples who have never even heard the NAME of Jesus, and will have to throw themselves on God’s mercy, YOU NO LONGER HAVE THAT OPTION. You know too much. If you reject Him now, it will be WORSE for you on that day than for Sodom and Gomorrah. Don’t reject him. Don’t be a skeptic. Repent and trust in Jesus today, and you will be saved!
Point #2; Second Invitation: Jesus offers us the joy of rest from our...
*RESEARCHING about Him; vv25-27 are addressed to the SPECULATOR.
“Jesus declared, v25: “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… No one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”
Here’s the irony: it is absolutely ABSURD not to believe in God’s existence, when faced with the evidence. And YET, to KNOW that God, to really KNOW Him, not just know ABOUT him, not just look around the universe for clues, divine fingerprints, and see what we can piece together about what he must BE like; I mean like know his HEART. Know him like you know your best friend in the world - to know God like THAT, is impossible... IF left up to you, on your own. You can TOIL all you want, in your own wisdom and understanding, and you will never know God. Which kinda makes sense. Right? When you consider just how utterly OTHER God is, how supernatural, literally, BEYOND nature, not just outside of, on a higher plane of existence than nature itself, but beyond natural man’s ability to even comprehend such a God with our finite, tiny little pea-brains. As complex as our brains are, and they are far more complex than anything else in the universe, we are still very stupid compared to the God who designed us. Sometimes we make the comparison to an ANT trying to understand a HUMAN. But it’s a bad comparison, because at least ants can OBSERVE us directly, and we didn’t CREATE ants! Friends: we don’t have a PRAYER of knowing God.
Unless we pray to know God. James says, “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God… and it will be given him.” (1:5) Jesus said, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.” (Matthew 7:7)
It’s got to be “given TO” you, “opened TO” you. Because the knowledge of God can only come FROM God. As Jesus says here in Matthew 11, v26: it’s a result of God’s GRACIOUS will - grace is a free gift you don’t deserve. v27: Jesus must choose to REVEAL God to you. He actually uses that word “reveal” twice here. Friends, religion says “RESEARCH!” Religion says “study diligently.” Toil hard after the knowledge of God. You know there were Jewish leaders in Jesus’ day who literally had the entire Old Testament, the Hebrew Tanak memorized. And they didn’t know God one BIT. Not even a little. Because God chooses to HIDE himself from the wise and understanding, and REVEAL himself to little children.
Here’s how the apostle Paul puts it in 1 Corinthians 1: “Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach[b] to save those who believe. 22 For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, 24 but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than men… God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise… so that no human being[d] might boast in the presence of God.” (vv20-29) THAT’S why God singles out little children and says, “If you aren’t like them, you can’t get into Heaven” (Lk 18:17), it’s “so that NO ONE can boast in the presence of God”!
Contrary to the Greek’s extolment of the Sophic philosopher, contrary to Pharisaical Judaism’s exaltation of the learned religious scholar, stands Jesus, who says, “I am very unimpressed with your “knowledge”, your “religious speculation”, but what I AM interested in is your HEART. What I’d LOVE is a relationship with you. But you have to become like a child. I’m not just another rabbi you can debate. I’m not your PEER. I am God’s SON. And if you wanna know Him, you gotta know ME.
Friends, this isn’t just a 1st c. problem; can I just personally attest to you, from MY OWN first-hand experience, that some of the smartest, most “knowledgeable”, religious, people out there do NOT know God. Some of the people who know the most ABOUT the Bible of anyone I know, don’t know the God OF the Bible even a little bit. It is entirely possible - LISTEN to me, life-long church-goer: it is entirely possible, to have grown up around the faith, to have read the Bible cover to cover multiple times, to have all the Awana verses memorized, to graduate at the top of your class in the religion department from undergrad, straight A’s through Divinity school, and be TOTALLY estranged from God - I know because I DID it! And all along the way, I met people smarter than me, one of the world’s foremost scholars on “the historical Jesus”, who taught my New Testament class, who reviewed my master’s thesis paper on biblical inerrancy, who could quote most of the New Testament to you from heart, and she doesn’t believe ANY of it.
Friends: don’t confuse your knowledge ABOUT God for knowledge OF God. There’s a WORLD of difference. An ETERNITY of difference. Hell will be filled with people whose heads are full of knowledge ABOUT God. In fact, Jesus says in Matthew 11 it’s gonna be WORSE for those people. You don’t wanna be one of those people. Don’t be a speculator. Don’t settle for research ABOUT God; ask Jesus to REVEAL Him to you.
Lastly, #3, and perhaps the most common form of TOIL of them all, both in the 1st c Judaism at the time of Jesus’ FIRST Advent, as well as today, as we await his SECOND coming, we see this all too often even within the CHURCH…
*RELIGIOUS DOING for Jesus; and Jesus’ words in vv28-30 are a joyful invitation to REST, addressed to a SLAVE. To the person who THINKS she’s serving God, but she’s really a slave to her own SELF-righteousness.
“Religious DOING” had become a way of LIFE for the Pharisees of Jesus’ day. They made their LIVING off of public displays of TOIL for God. They made sure to wait til the Temple was at its most crowded before “sounding the trumpets” (Mt. 6:2) and coming to present their tithes and offerings in full view. They got out their soapboxes to perform their lengthy prayers loudly for all to hear. When they fasted, they would “disfigure their faces” and moan and groan to make sure EVERYONE knew they were suffering for God. Jesus said: don’t be like them. He called them: “hypocrites”. He said, “They do all their deeds to be seen by others. For they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long” but JESUS called them “whitewashed tombs” (Matthew 23:5, 27). He said, “you outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.”
Jesus said of them, ““‘This people honors me with their lips,
but their heart is far from me;
9 in vain do they worship me,
teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’”” (Matthew 15:8-9)
Reminds me of a conversation we had recently with the GOOCHES, Austin and Catherine, in our life group. They live a few streets over from us, and we both live real near the “Tpheris Israel Chevra Kadisha” synagogue right here in Chesterfield. But the Gooches live even closer to it, and their entire cul-de-sac is made up of Orthodox Jewish families, who have to live close enough to synagogue to be able to WALK there on the Sabbath, shabbat, Saturday, because driving a car is considered “work”. And the Gooches have developed a really cool friendship with them and they shared a funny, but very sad story with us the other day about one of the neighborhood Jewish children coming and knocking on their door late at night, 9 or 10pm, to ask if Austin or Catherine could come over and turn the LIGHT off in their bedroom for them, because the child had forgotten it was Shabbat and accidentally turned the light on, and according to rabbinic tradition it’s considered “work” to turn the lights on or off, so the parents had sent the child next door to get the heathen Gentiles to turn off the light for them so they could get to sleep.
We laugh, friends, but this is the mindset that people ALL AROUND us are living under. “Religious DOING”. But Jesus says, in the very next passage, as a matter of fact, Matthew, ch.12, “I am the LORD of the Sabbath”. Hebrews ch.4 says Jesus is the FULFILLMENT of God’s offer of Sabbath REST for us. We can now rest… in HIM.
Because it’s not just a 1st c. problem. And it’s not just a JEWISH problem. There are just as many legalistic churches right down the street as there are synagogues. Filled with “good Christians” have completely lost sight of the GOSPEL, the good news of Jesus, of what HE’S done for US, and replaced it instead with our own “religious doing” for HIM. But friends, let me just close by reminding you this morning of that good news, straight from Jesus himself. The BAD news, is that if you’re counting on your OWN righteousness, your own “religious doing”, to get you into Heaven, you are utterly doomed. Jesus said, “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Mt 5:20). And remember, they were PROFESSIONALLY righteous, in their religious doing for God. Moreover, Matthew 23:4, “They tie[d] up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on [OTHER] people's shoulders”. Because when you’re professionally religious, and that’s the CURRENCY you trade in, to exert power over others, and maintain your status and authority in the religious community, you need to make sure the common folk understand JUST HOW BURDENSOME the demands of the Law are, that everyone else is unable to fulfill, but you, in your pious faux-righteousness, are so much holier than them… so you saddle them DOWN with “heavy religious burdens” - don’t drive, don’t turn off the lights, don’t drink, don’t dance, “missionary position only”… all the DON’T of “religion”, whether you’re Orthodox Jewish or Footloose Baptist - it’s all the same, really. Works-based righteousness. Legalistic religiosity.
Maybe that’s the mindset some of YOU are coming out of this morning. Hear the good news of JESUS, his sweet INVITATION to you today: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 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. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (vv28-30) It’s still a YOKE. Still a BURDEN. Salvation only comes through faith in Jesus. But salvation comes, SIMPLY through faith in Jesus. That’s it. HE’S it. Believe and be saved. Religion says “DO!”; Jesus says, “DONE - it is FINISHED!”
Jesus plus nothing equals everything. His yoke is SO easy. And his burden, following Him, being YOKED to him, for the rest of your days, you discover in time, is really no burden at all! He does all the work! You contribute NOTHING to your salvation. It’s ALL grace, the free gift of God. And the good news for you and me, is that Jesus loves pulling dead weight.
Friends, don’t be a skeptic. Don’t be a speculator. Don’t be slave to your own self-righteousness. Come to JESUS today, and find SERENITY, find true peace.
His offer of “REST for your soul” can be YOURS this morning.
Will you receive it?
Let’s pray.