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 doesn’t 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 hair—and 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 can’t 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.
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