Law & Grace - Matthew 11:20-30 "Rest"
Matthew 11:20-30 · Vern Peterman · Dec 4, 2011
Law & Grace, No. 46
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/492625561962

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Good morning. For the passage that Connor just read for us here, we'll be starting that here today. Now I need to tell you there are three parts, audiences and messages. Each one of the three parts of this passage are said to actually three different audiences. So that there are three different messages, three parts, Three audiences and three messages? Well, that sounds like math to me. So that's three and three and three is nine, right? So there's nine different things to keep track of here. So count them, okay? So nine things, three parts, three audiences, three messages. All right.

Now, the first part is about the final judgment of the cities of Israel for their lack of repentance. And this corner red forest here, that included Corazon, which is a city just north of Capernaum, right near the Sea of Galilee. And you see it there on the map. And then there was also Bethsaida, which is a city just to the east of where the Jordan River pours into the Sea of Galilee. And then Capernaum, where Christ actually had his headquarters during his ministry there in Galilee, and also the home of Peter.

And so here you see those in the bigger picture here. They're all on the north end of the Sea of Galilee. As a matter of fact, they're all fairly close to one another. And so now Tyre and Sidon, I have here Sidon on the bottom, it should be Sodom, Sidon, Tyre and Sodom, Sodom on the south end.

These are three pagan cities that would be more tolerable on the final judgment day than for the Israelite cities, of course, in Bethsaida and Capernaum. Interesting, it'll be better off for the pagan cities than for those of the Israelites. So we have three parts, audiences and messages.

And then the second is Jesus' prayer to his father. So he first talks about the woes to these Israelite cities that don't respond. And then his second part here is directed to his father. He prays to the father and then makes a comment following that.

The third part is an invitation to take on Christ's yoke and find rest for one's soul. So that's the last of it. We'll certainly be looking at all three. Now, there are three areas of focus. That sounds like more math, doesn't it? Well, nine and three is twelve, right? So, yeah, twelve. So count them, right? So twelve. Okay. The focus of the first part is about judgment, and even the identification of an unbeliever with his sins is included in that.

We'll talk about that. The focus of the second part is about the eternal relationship of the Father and the Son, and we're included in that, ours with them. We having an eternal relationship with them as believers. Now the focus of the third part is about finding rest in Christ, and what that means. We'll be looking for what is similar in all these three parts, because we're going to do comparison and contrast. What's similar in all these parts as well as what is different.

There is a tendency as people read through this part of the New Testament to either just look at it and say, oh, that's all for me. and not understand, oh wait a minute, there's something different here because Jesus is speaking to people who are under law. We are not, right? And he is speaking specifically to the Israelites. So what part compares? What's similar? And then what is different?

So we look for comparison and contrast in order to know the truth about what applies specifically to us. Even things that contrast help us understand where we are at. We understand grace better by understanding law. So we'll compare what's the same and contrast what's not the same, right? Between different things. And by taking this approach, we're going to recognize the similarities and discern the differences that matter.

As people read through the Gospels, the tendency is for people not to understand the difference between what is spoken to Israel under the law and what is spoken to us in the church, and to make no distinction. The other extreme is to say, oh, that's all for Israel. I don't need to listen to that. Neither one of those positions is correct.

So we will compare what's the same, and we'll contrast what's different. We'll read what we're supposed to see in it. Alright, the first part there verses 20 through 24 is about the judgment of unbelievers. Salvation for all people of all times is based on faith. That is very important. The law never saved anybody and it's not going to. Is any of us good enough to get to heaven? Not going to happen, right? If it's by good enough, we're never going to get there.

Salvation for all times, for all peoples, is based on faith. It's true for Abraham. It's true for Isaiah, who stood there before the Lord in Isaiah 6. It's true for Courtney. It's true when the Lord comes again. Those who are born after the time when the Lord comes again, they will be saved by faith too.

Salvation for all people of all times based on faith. The kind and place of blessing and curses and of reward and also punishment varies by group, time, and other factors. There's a lot of variation. We are blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, in Christ, if you're a believer now, that's the case. That's not true for those who are of Israel under Moses, under the law of Moses. The judgment that Jesus is referring to in this passage is a still future time of judgment. Even now in our time, the judgment he's referring to is still in the future. It's at least 1,700, excuse me, 1,007 years from now.

Okay? It's the future time of judgment of all unbelievers by works. Okay? Now, you have this chart on page two. At least I sure hope you do. Right? You have this chart on page two, and you may be greatly relieved to hear we're not going to study it all today. Okay? I'm going to leave most of it to you to look at. The general statement is this, the Bible describes a lot of different judgments for different groups of people at different times.

And what we have is we have a couple of them here marked with church off in the note column. Let me just put that big so you can see it. The ones here with church, those apply to us here in the body of Christ in the church. Those are the three kinds of judgments that the Bible describes. And the first two are the ones that happen now in this life. Then there is a judgment for rewards. That's the second one that you see marked there.

What Jesus is talking about is the one at the very bottom in this passage. This is the judgment of unsaved people, unbelievers of all ages, after the end of the millennium, so 1,007 years from now at least. It's called the Great White Throne Judgment. And it's described in Revelation chapter 20, the last half of the chapter, about verse 10 through verse 15. So that's what Jesus is referring to as he's talking about these cities. And he's generalizing too, because are there people in these cities that believe? Yes, Peter is one of them. Peter lives his house, and it's been located by archaeologists, Peter's house was in Capernaum.

So he's not included. It's unbelievers are described here. Okay. So he's talking about the unbelievers here in this last column. Now the rest of this I'll leave it to you to study. Take it and put it under your pillow so it'll soak in while you're sleeping. Okay. Things like that. Anyway, there's a lot to look at there. All right. Now back to page one. This is after the split here.

Repent means to change one's mind. Now, don't think that because you changed your mind about something that you repented. That's not what I'm talking about, okay? Repent in the biblical terms is not when you come up here and I say, you've got to come back to God, right? And you come over here and you kneel down here, right in front of me, and I scream and yell at you, right?

My brother and I used to play a game. I'd go off to college, and then when I'd come back, he'd say, pain me, Vernie, pain me. And much to my mom's entertainment, I would take a pillow and beat him and start yelling and screaming about repenting. Anyway, it was all just sort of a little antic that we went through, and the worst he got was whacked with the pillow.

But that's not the kind of repentance we're talking about here. Repenting is a changing of one's mind from unbelief to belief. That's biblical repentance. has nothing to do with what my brother and I were doing. It's changing from unbelief to belief. That's what it is. It doesn't matter how bad you feel. This isn't the Christian blues. I feel so bad! It's none of that. And even if you go on with a little extra, none of that counts. It's changing from unbelief to belief. That's what Jesus is talking about.

Now the same phrase, did not repent, also appears four times in the book of Revelation. It's in the middle of this seven year tribulation period. So did not repent is a problem and it's of those who are not saved. They didn't repent That is, they didn't start from a place of unbelief and then change to belief.

That's the problem. It's not feeling really bad about the sins. It's not how you feel. It's a change of mind to end up with belief. That's the distinction. The words more tolerable are not talking about degree of reward, but degree of discomfort for the unsaved dead. What's the problem? The problem is what Jesus identified in the Gospel of John chapter 8.

And he told the Jewish leaders, actually about three times in there. He says, the problem you guys have is if you don't believe, you're going to die in your sins. See, an unbeliever will sometimes think, oh, I got away with this or that. Nuh-uh. You will die in your sins. They're in them. They think they walked through something and the sins, oh I got away with it and it's whew! No consequence. No. You die in them. As many as you carry out, they're there. You're stuck in them. That's the problem. Here's a principle.

Response to the truth revealed impacts eternal destiny. The first dividing line impacting one's eternal destiny is, do you believe God for his provision? For Abraham, it was a believing God's provision that was fairly simple. That will determine where and with whom one will spend eternity.

Right now, this issue has the content of the gospel. Do you believe Christ died for your sins? was buried and rose again. That's the gospel. Do you believe Christ died for your sins, was buried and rose again? If a person believes that, their eternal destiny is with the Lord. If they don't, it's not. It's what do you do with Christ? What do you do with what he's done?

The next issue is one of degrees of reward for those who are saved. See, when we go to heaven, passages like this, woe to Capernaum, that doesn't apply to you. The Lord's not there waiting at heaven's gates thinking, boy, I just can't wait until I get my hands on Vern. Boy, is he in trouble. He's going to really get a licking. That's not what the Lord's waiting for. His desire is to reward us, right? This desire is to reward us.

Discomfort for the ones not saved. That's the judgment that Jesus is talking about here. The doing of the sins, including the sin of unbelief, is the basis for their relative discomfort in eternity. They're in the sins that they committed. They're stuck there. That's why Jesus gave the warning to these Jewish leaders.

He said, I don't care how well you think you're carrying out the law. I don't care how good you think you are. And if you think you're good enough to get to heaven, you're not. Because why? Because you don't believe you're going to die in your sins, and that's not good.

That's his caution to them. Rejecting revelation from God is sinning. So here are these people, they're in Capernaum, the Messiah. God himself performs miracles right in front of them. And they just say, that's a neat trick, show me another one. Instead of understanding why he's doing it and what he's saying. Believers, and you have this as a slide on your handout, have five crowns and three rewards. None of these, though they are all offered to you, none of these will be offered to the people in Capernaum that Jesus is talking about and in Chorazin and in Bethsaida.

These are for believers, believers in the church. And this is the Stephanos crown, that the victor's crown in an athletic competition. All right. In the next section, 25 through 27, Jesus prays to the Father. Then thanks his Father who is sovereign because he has revealed truth, not to those that this world would count as the wisest ones, but to those who are open to his message and humble.

Had Jesus revealed truth to the people in Capernaum who didn't believe? Yes, he did. So what's the problem here? The revelation isn't just, was it done in front of you? It's, did it sink in? Right? And more so than just in the gray matter, did it sink in here? Did it sink in the heart? So this part of the passage is also about revelation. It's about revealing the truth.

As Jesus prays and speaks, he made clear he has a unique relationship with the Father. And he said something here, as well as other passages, that no other rabbi would say. My Father. No other Jew would say. Claiming a unique and personal relationship with the Father. was something that was completely in violation of the Jews' understanding of the law. And also, the Father and the Son each know one another. There is a mutuality in their knowing. That's spelled out in this passage here.

One of the things that's really key, and this is an introduction to this teaching, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are all involved in revealing truth to us. Isn't that interesting? We have this passage that says the Father and the Son have a place in revealing truth to us, but the Holy Spirit is also involved in revealing to us. We have several passages here, 1 Corinthians, Ephesians, and 1 Peter. Bottom line is this, revealing truth is one of a number of ways in which the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, the Trinity, the Godhead, are all involved with you. There was both a study in the main service some years back and just recently in one of the electives of the book of Ephesians. You know, eight times the book of Ephesians has the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit doing something together that's involved with you.

And I think that's one of the things for us to think about. All of God is involved with all of us. All of God is involved with all of us. God's not saying, you know, I think I'll pick this one and that one and do a little something over here with this guy. No. If you're a believer, all of God is involved with all of you, revelation included.

These verses also say, since God reveals Himself by faith, we can know Him. We can come to know God by faith in the gospel which He has deliberately accomplished and revealed to us because He loves us. We come to know him more and more as we behold the living word, Christ, in the written word, the Bible. This knowing him more, God uses to transform us. Now this is what we had on the screen at the outset. Knowing and believing leads to growing in and receiving what we already are and have.

What does that mean? When you believe, the very moment, the very day that you first believed in Christ, were you placed into Christ? Yeah. Were you placed into Christ's death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and seating in the heavenlies? Yes. Did the Holy Spirit and did Jesus Christ Himself come to indwell you? Yes.

You see, what is happening in the Christian life We don't know those things from the moment we believe. What happens is we are always catching up to what God's already done. That's what the Christian life is. From now until the time you pass through heaven's gates, and if you still got you here, you're supposed to be here, right? From now until the time you pass through heaven's gates, we are always catching up, growing into what God has already done. Knowing and believing leads to growing in and receiving what we already are and have. Ah, now this next and the last few verses here. Come to me all you are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and you will learn from me for I am gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls.

For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. And not this kind of yoke, okay? Not that yoke. Different yoke. Yuck. Okay. This yoke, okay? This yoke is one that you would put on, for example, oxen, horses, things like that, in order to pull something and to get something accomplished. So here's a pair of oxen, for example, with a yoke designed to pull things like a plow or a cart or something of that sort. That's the kind of yoke he's talking about.

And interestingly, Jesus said something in here that was what all the rabbis would say. They would give an invitation to take the rabbi's yoke upon them. But there was something also in what Jesus said that was like what no other rabbi would actually even dare say. There's something about this invitation that's shocking. It's this, a claim to be God. Exodus 33 14 and you have this on page 3 in your handout and he God said my presence shall go with you and I will give you rest boy those words sound familiar right God's very words are the same words that Jesus quotes again.

But as if that wasn't enough, Jeremiah 6.16 says this, Thus says the Lord, Stand by the ways, and see and ask for the ancient paths where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls. Both of the statements that Jesus made, I will give you rest and you will find rest for your souls, are statements that God makes in the Old Testament. So when Jesus says these words, the disciples around are, whoa, their ears are just tingling.

Why? He made a double claim to be God with this. So Jesus offers rest with the exact same words God had used and that only God could offer. My question is, have you discovered His rest? I hope you have. It's critical that we believers discover and enter into Christ's graciously offered rest. As a matter of fact, we have an opportunity and a special way to have that rest in a way that not even the Jews that Jesus spoke to did.

It's not a rest where we just don't do anything. We're not invited to be God's spiritual couch potatoes. That's not the point. If you thought that being a Christian meant you didn't have to do anything, sorry, you're out of luck. As we are resting in the Lord, we may in fact be very busy and active. We may in fact be doing a number of different things. So no, it's not a couch potato job. We're not doing things, however, for merit. We're not getting brownie points that count in heaven. We're not there to earn anything or to prove ourselves worthy. That's not the way the rest works.

Here's the way Paul wrote it in Colossians 1.28.

He started off with this. We proclaim him admonishing every man and by that way that doesn't mean males. Every person, and teaching every man with all wisdom so that we may present every man complete in Christ. And does he sort of do this casually as he has opportunity, when he feels like it? No. This is the way it happens.

For this purpose also I labor. And that Greek word there for labor means to labor to exhaustion. Striving, and that's a word for striving with athletic effort. according to His power, which mightily works within me." On the outside, you would have said, man, this Paul guy is just really working himself.

On the inside, he's resting. Isn't that an amazing paradox? Resting doesn't mean we don't do anything. We may, in fact, be empowered and motivated to do all sorts of things that we wouldn't otherwise. The difference is in the empowerment. The difference is in the motivation. Not because we're threatened under law. You better do this or...

But by grace. Forgive. Why? Because you've been forgiven. Empowered, energized, and enabled by the Lord. What an opportunity. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you as we look at this passage and see what Jesus said as he spoke to these different audiences. We thank you that you gave that invitation to rest. And it's certainly a puzzling and paradoxical rest from the world's viewpoint. It's not a rest that means, oh, I don't have to do anything. But it is a rest in which we may indeed accomplish a great many things. But we're motivated by grace, empowered by you, and given an opportunity. that has consequences and rewards and crowns forever to glorify you. We pray in Jesus name. Amen.