A, Post Pentecost 6 Proper 9 - Matthew 11:28-30 A Balancing Yoke

When you read or hear God’s Word, does God reveal His message to you? Does hearing or reading His Word leave you wanting to know more, or do you find yourself thinking, “I’m glad that’s done; now I can do something more constructive”?

If so, you may be weighing up God’s Word in the wrong way, and the depth of God’s power in His Word may remain hidden from you. Perhaps you are not allowing God the Holy Spirit to open God’s Word to you. Perhaps it is not important enough in the scheme of your life.

Or perhaps your stubborn, independent self-sufficiency is not allowing the Holy Spirit the time to work His will in you. Like stubborn Pharaoh placing a harsh burden on the Israelites through hardheartedness, you may be placing a harsh burden on yourself through your own stubborn self-sufficiency.

The question we must ask ourselves is this: “Do I want to continue in self-sufficiency, letting my heart become darker and harder through stubborn perception and deception, with the very real possibility that God hands me over to drown in my sins and their consequences?” No! I believe most of us don’t.

Next Sunday we’ll hear Jesus’ address what can happen to the Word of God when it has been sown in the heart. For now, He invites those who are weary from human hardheartedness to come to Him, take on His yoke, and learn from Him.

This invitation from Jesus is not simply a comforting saying; it reveals what God is doing with our weariness. He is drawing us away from the exhausting burden of self-sufficiency and towards the rest that comes from being yoked to Christ.

Jesus says, “Come to me, all who labour 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.” (Matthew 11:28–30 ESV)

We’ve all heard the saying, “there’s no rest for the wicked”.  This saying finds its origin in God’s Word where in Isaiah 48:22 we hear, “There is no peace,” says the Lord, “for the wicked.” (Isaiah 48:22 ESV)

But we’ve also just heard in Zechariah chapter nine, “Return to your stronghold, O prisoners of hope; today I declare that I will restore to you double.” (Zechariah 9:12 ESV)

We are prisoners from our wickedness, but ones with hope of restoration from the strength of God!

Chances are God is allowing your weariness to reveal something about yourself, just as He has done with individuals and groups throughout history. Perhaps God is teaching you how you relate to Him, especially when self-sufficiency leads you to forget or refuse to let Him be your God. Yet He remains the God whose kingdom, power, and glory are, were, and will continue to be.

God’s kingdom, power, and glory manifest themselves to us through His steadfast love. Our God is a God of generosity and mercy. So too are God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit invite us to receive Their generosity and mercy, and to live in the steadfast love of Their providence, salvation, and will.

We mostly think our heavy burden and weariness is a negative that has been inflicted upon us by the sins of others.  However, the reality is unlike Jesus, we are far from gentle and lowly in heart.  When push comes to shove from the sins of others our meekness or gentleness vaporises like an oasis in the desert, proving to be a mirage or deception.  Any lowliness of heart hardens in the heat of the moment.

Yet Jesus invites you to take on his yoke. A yoke still sounds like a burden to us. Most of us picture oxen yoked to a plough in the paddock, or a dray hauling heavy loads up a hill while the bullocky breaks the sound of shackles and chains on straining cattle with his most colourful language.

Jesus is not like a coarse bullocky, nor does His yoke make beasts of burden. No! “The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. The Lord is good to all, and his mercy is over all that he has made.” (Psalm 145:8–9 ESV) So too is our Lord Jesus since He and the Father are one!

But what is His yoke if it is not a beastly yoke? Another yoke is similar to that which rests on the neck of the beast, and it does carry things. However, the focus is more on balance than burden. In fact, if the balance is not right on a yoke the burden can be unbearable. So, what can we learn from Jesus about His yoke and the balance of what He bears and how He bears it? In other words, what does Jesus invite us to learn from Him?

As humans, we tire and weary ourselves with the old knowledge-of-good-and-evil narrative. As we all know, this is as old as humanity itself, reaching back to Adam and Eve. Since then, we have embellished this knowledge in countless ways. Unfortunately, these embellishments exhaust humanity more and more, as each of us uses this knowledge on others while it’s used on us.

As humanity prides itself on advancement in technological, social, academic, and practical knowledge, how much do these advancements become the very things that create a greater burden upon us? The things we thought would make life better often make us more anxious and burdened about living. This tiredness ends in eternal death when the knowledge of good and evil remains as one’s yoke.

What we learn from Jesus is that our balance is way out of whack! Judging ourselves and each other with a yoke of good and evil misjudges and misunderstands the yoke of Jesus. His yoke is a yoke of holiness built on the Law, that shows us that both the good and evil deeds that come from our natures are wicked. Our wickedness is that we do not fear and trust God but that we would prefer to fear and trust the desires of our hearts above God.

Jesus’ yoke rebalances the holiness of God in human life. In His meekness and humility, He removes the burden we place on ourselves and each other. Jesus’ yoke took Him to the cross, and He calls us to bear our cross. Yet the yoke of our cross is not the yoke Jesus bore in His death. That yoke has already been borne.

We learn from Jesus that bearing our cross is about putting off the very things that weary us. What we learn from Jesus is not that we must be good like Him and use Him as a method for our salvation. That would place Gospel before Law: Jesus did it, showed us what to do and how to do it, and now we must do it to be saved. Put simply, this is just a revised version of the knowledge of good and evil.

Paul shows us the reality of trying to make ourselves self-sufficient in Romans chapter seven, where he cries out, “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.”(Romans 7:19 ESV)

In the exhaustion of Paul’s good and evil he celebrates, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:25a ESV)

What we learn from Jesus while on earth, during life, ministry, cross, death, and resurrection is that He rested His divinity as the Son of God and was wearied with what worries every human being. But in the weakness of yours and my flesh He remained holy and without sin. Unlike us He was not wicked, and unlike us He lived life solely to please God the Father, setting Him aside in all holiness. And He did not do this from His own divinity but was led by the Holy Spirit in hallowing God and His name before all.

This is what it truly means to be gentle and lowly in heart, or meek and humble in heart. Where we become soft and sin making us hardhearted, Jesus was hard against sinning while becoming soft towards those who know their reality and call on the name of the Lord for help.

Jesus now yokes us with His Word of Law and Gospel. The Holy Spirit uses that Word to show you the weight of your sin and the weariness it brought upon Jesus Christ on the cross. Yet the same Word gives you the gift of His sinless life, which did not deserve the cross. By the power of God’s Word, you are made holy and given rest in the holiness of the Father’s presence, in peace.

Since this yoke balances yours and my debt with our Father, surely it gives you and me the will to walk in meekness and humility, to love others as Christ loves us, and to serve others as Jesus served us at the cross and as He continues to serve us before the Father in Heaven. Amen.

Heavenly Father, we bless You for blessing and balancing us with the yoke of Your Son, Jesus Christ. Help us to speak of the glory of Your kingdom and tell others of Your power. Let the Spirit dwell in us so Your power is made manifest in meekness and humility to others. Let us make known the glorious splendour of Your everlasting kingdom, now and forever. Amen.

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Sermon Summary

This sermon calls hearers to recognise how easily God’s Word can be treated as something weighed, judged, and managed by human self-sufficiency rather than received as the living Word through which God reveals Himself. The burden addressed is not only the suffering caused by others, but also the heavier burden created by stubborn independence, hardheartedness, and the old knowledge-of-good-and-evil narrative by which people judge themselves and one another.

Against this weariness, Jesus’ invitation in Matthew 11:28–30 is presented as more than comfort. It is the gracious call of Christ to come to Him, take His yoke, and learn from Him. His yoke is not beastly oppression but holy rebalancing. By His Law and Gospel, Jesus exposes the weight of sin and gives the gift of His sinless life, which has already borne the burden of the cross for us.

The sermon therefore moves from human exhaustion to divine rest. Christ, gentle and lowly in heart, does not leave sinners to carry the crushing yoke of self-justification. Through the work of the Holy Spirit, Jesus joins us to Himself, we’re taught meekness and humility, and willed to rest in the Father’s presence. To bear the yoke of Christ is to be freed from sinful self-sufficiency, rebalanced by grace, and drawn into a life of humble service.

Bearing the yoke of Jesus in the wider context on Matthew 11

Matthew 11 places before us the picture of children in the marketplace calling, “We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn.” Jesus uses this image to expose a generation unwilling to respond to God’s visitation, through Him and John the Baptist. John comes with the solemn dirge of repentance, yet they will not mourn. Jesus comes with the joyful music of the kingdom, eating and drinking with sinners, yet they will not dance. They reject both because they do not want God to set the tune. 

Reflection: What unrepentant things do I do to set the tune for my life?

This refusal is unrepentance. Christ’s mighty works are the music of God’s kingdom breaking into the world: the blind see, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor receive good news. Yet Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum remain unmoved. They have heard both flute and funeral song but answer neither. Their burden is not lack of revelation but resistance to it; their hearts remain yoked to themselves.

Reflection: What goods and evils need to be unyoked from my life with the yoke of Jesus Christ?

At that time Jesus rejoices that the Father has hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children. These little children are not childish in stubbornness, but childlike in dependence, receptiveness, and trust. They receive what the Father reveals through the Son. Here the mourning of the burdened becomes blessed: those who labour and are heavy laden know the dirge of sin, disappointment, judgement, and death, yet Jesus does not leave them under that load. He reveals the Father and calls them to Himself.

Reflection prayer: Dear Heavenly Father, send the Holy Spirit to move me to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ and to respond with thanksgiving when I hear it.  Help me to mourn over my sin, so in repentance I daily place it on the cross.

To take the yoke of Jesus Christ is allowing the Holy Spirit to teach and move us to respond to God’s music. His Law teaches and moves us to mourn what sin has done; His Gospel teaches and moves us to dance before God’s mighty works in Christ: His mercy, healing, forgiveness, cross, resurrection, deposit of the Holy Spirit, and promised rest. His yoke is not the heavy yoke of performing for God, nor the stubborn yoke of refusing God. It is the gracious yoke by which Christ brings mourners into joy and the weary into rest.

Reflection:  How does the yoke of Jesus encourage me to be humble in my blessings, and endure in the hardships, of this life?  How does the yoke of Jesus enable me to be “like Jesus” to my neighbour? 

A, Post-Pentecost 21 Proper 24 - 1 Thessalonians 1: 3 "Produced, Prompted, Inspired"

1 Thessalonians 1: 3 We continually remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labour prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.

The verse we have just heard, directs us to meditate on three things; faith, love, and hope.  These three are not uncommon to us from scripture.  We hear of them in many places throughout the New Testament.  But more on these three in a moment.

There are also another three things in this verse we can examine too; work, labour, and endurance.

Whether one works or not, all know what work is; all know what work they should be doing, whether they have done it or not.  Work here in this sense refers to one’s deeds or actions; to ‘do’ something. 

Then we hear of labour.  We might assume labour is the same as work, and when we labour at something we do work at it.  However, labour is more intense than work in the general sense.  Mothers, more than likely, have the greatest understanding of labour, as a more intense part of motherhood, over against the regular duties of a mother’s work.  So, labour here implies that there is hardship and difficulty, requiring commitment and passion, lest the labour not be finished.

The third word is endurance.  It too has something to do with work, as does labour.  However, with endurance we have the quality of constancy.  One might see endurance as something one has to keep at, grinding away bit by bit, until the outcome is realised.  Guts and dogged determination, stamina and inner strength are needed for endurance.  Patience, fortitude, steadfastness, and perseverance are what endurance is all about.

Saint Paul, on behalf of himself Timothy and Silas, writes to the church in Thessalonica after a hasty retreat from the multicultural trade route town.  The new converts are left to face verbal and physical persecution as a result of their newfound faith.  There’s concerned for the fledgling church as they work, labour, and endure amongst those who have rejected Paul’s proclamation of the Gospel.

So, he writes his first letter to the Thessalonians to encourage them in the troubles they’re facing.  We hear his encouragement for their work, labour, and endurance.  But specifically for their work produced by faith, their labour prompted by love, and their endurance inspired by hope.  The three-fold theme — faith, hope, and love — common in the New Testament is present here, but Paul now couples it with their deeds and lives amongst the transient community of Thessalonica.

In these days we too live in a transient and temporary society.  In communities where once everyone knew who was who, there was a consistent stability people could count on.  But no more!   Our world has gone and got itself a whole lot busier, and we have been caught up in the busyness of it too.  

Our society is changing in many ways.  We can now find out news from anywhere in the world with only a moment’s notice.  People are becoming migratory in search of the almighty dollar.  And those who stay put, can’t afford to sit still or they get left behind and buried under a pile of debt.

The church too faces this change and Christians within it face the very real pressures of the transient, live-for-the-moment desires of our age.  Once upon a time Christianity was the centre of most communities; you would see the who’s who of the district in a church somewhere.  And everyone made the commitment to be in church on Good Friday and Christmas day.  But today, friends and family are sadly missed from amongst the ranks.  The pews are empty; leaving us behind wondering if we should remain in something that seems like it might die.

The saddest thing though, is not that our society is changing, getting busier, or even becoming more and more heathen.  The Thessalonians came through it and so has the Christian church in other ages too.  No! The saddest thing is that as a result of these things we allow ourselves to backslide; producing less and less works, labouring in love is lost, and endurance becomes uninspired, bland, and boring. 

The saddest thing is we let the godlessness of our age have more power in our lives than our Father in heaven, fearing godlessness more than God, giving it greater and greater power in our hearts and minds. We see numerical decline and lose trust in God who has his plan for his church which he ultimately sustains through thick and thin. 

After the collection of the weekly offering, we pray for God to receive it for the sake of Jesus Christ.  We use various prayers, but usually they give thanks for what God has given us; ourselves, our time, and our possessions.  We go on to ask God to accept our offerings as a sign of his goodness and as a symbol of our love. 

The offering on the plate is a sign and a symbol, but it’s not the sum total of what we give!  And so we can ask ourselves, regardless of how much or how little we might put on the plate, “With what intention do I give?”

The state of our faith, hope, and love are quickly revealed when we match them next to the offering of ourselves, our time, and our possessions. 

Does the handling of our possessions speak well of our love, of God or of our neighbour?  What does our time management reveal of our daily, hourly, and momentary devotion and glorification of God Almighty?  And what type of faith do we radiate to others as a result of the faith we have received from God? 

Faith and ourselves, our time and our hope, our love, and our possessions; we ask ourselves, “What do they say about my intention towards God?”

Today, in the days of the Thessalonians, even back when the Israelites created the golden calf, and right the way back to Adam and Eve, humanity turns from the one true and living God to idols of one kind or another. 

Much work, labour, and endurance has evolved from the hearts and hands of humans to serve these idols we’ve fashioned.  But the question is; how do I turn from this habitual sin and idolatry back to the one true and living God, so faith in me produces work pleasing to God, I labour for the love of God prompted by the love of God, and I persevere, inspired with enduring hope of my eternal home, before those who seek heavenly moments in the fleeting pleasures of this world?

We could become better focused on our work, labour, and endurance; but that still would lead us on a path into idolatry.  Even if faith, hope, and love within are fed by work, labour, and endurance could we together build something special and great?  No! We couldn’t even make something as special or great as a golden calf or a tower of Babel, even if we tried really hard!  And we know what God thought of them!

Paul thanks God for the Thessalonians because they didn’t do that.  Rather they turned from their idolatry to serve the living and true God, waiting for his Son from heaven.  They looked to Jesus Christ and to him alone who chose them through the gospel, convicting them deeply by the power of the Holy Spirit.

God has chosen you and me.  Although the deep conviction to work, labour, and love might temp us to focus on these things and turn them into idols, it is the Holy Spirit’s intention with faith, hope, and love, to have us focus on Jesus Christ.  And in him we will be productive in faith works, prompted to love, and inspired by hope. 

You see faith, hope, and love are ours in Christ Jesus our Lord; we are in Christ because Christ is in us.  Faith, hope, and love are in us and can only come from us because they are in Christ and are of Christ as a result of the Holy Spirit.

So let us not even be tempted to run after these other things which might seem good, lest they lead us away from God into the idolatry of ourselves.  Let us fix our eyes on Jesus and run after him, so that in him, he in us will produce prompt and inspire, faithful good works, labours of love, and enduring hope, to the glory of God — the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen.