Come unto Me

[0:00] Really a very familiar passage of the Bible that you've probably likely heard before.! Some of the famous preachers of old have preached on this very subject numbers of times! because there's just so much truth here in just these short verses here.

[0:19] In Matthew 11 from verse 28 we read the words of the Saviour and he says this, Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.

[0:32] Take my yoke upon you and learn of me for I am meek and lowly in heart and you shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

[0:45] If you're feeling troubled, burdened with care, if you're carrying heavy burdens, hear the Saviour's invitation today. I put to you really the first point is to obey him. Obey him. Hear his voice and obey him.

[1:02] Rest comes as you obey Christ and his commands. For example, this says, this is the love of God. That we keep his commandments and his commandments are not grievous.

[1:15] So in other words, they're not grievous, they're not too hard, they're not too heavy or difficult. God's commands are for our good and for our help. They're not an onerous thing.

[1:26] And the command here is simply, come unto me. Come unto me. It's interesting, our Lord doesn't say, go to someone else. He doesn't refer us to a specialist.

[1:40] We don't have to go and get some appointments somewhere else. He says, come unto me. And he says, come to me. Come means to believe, to receive. You could see it in verses that speak about how we should hear him.

[1:55] How we should look unto him. How we should answer through him, the door. How we should touch the hem of his garment. There's that invitation. It's his word to us, isn't it?

[2:07] There's invitation after invitation. He says, come. Come to me. So consider this great invitation today. It's personal. He says, come to me.

[2:18] It's present tense. He says, come. Come now. Don't wait. I know when we go witnessing Saturdays at 10.30, come and join us.

[2:30] We go witnessing, knocking on doors, and it's a blessed time. And we're inviting them to come to him. And it's likewise the same sense of really urgency.

[2:42] Because we don't know how long that person has to face eternity. How long before they cross over. I know we were saying before, weren't we, brother, that life is a vapour.

[2:54] Talking about people passing away. Life is a vapour. It's like a mist that comes and goes, and it's gone. And we don't have no assurance of more than today.

[3:08] So come. Come today. Come now. Don't wait. The Saviour says, come unto me. And he wants our response. There's a great need here. This is our great need, to come unto him.

[3:19] If we're not saved, it's our great need, is to come to the great doctor of the soul. He has the remedy that we need. And he alone can heal that dread disease of sin.

[3:32] When you think the word disease, it means dis-ease. It's a lack of ease, isn't it? Dis-ease. That sin is the ultimate dis-ease. The dis-ease. That unease, that lack of ease, that lack of peace, is really sin in its very nature.

[3:50] And he says, come. He says, come all. It's interesting when you look at the sense of it, he says, come unto me. He's saying that the invitation is extended really to all. Come all.

[4:04] It's really God's answer to the all of Romans 3.23. Romans 3.23 says that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. So all have sinned, all have the need of the Saviour, and he says, come.

[4:19] It's wide open. Come all, come unto me. And all who have been burdened down with sin, the guilt of sin, the power of sin, he says, come. All you that are sick of sin, he says, come.

[4:31] Look to him. All are invited and all are promised rest. Simply come. If we come, he extends that grace.

[4:43] All ye that labour, it says. We think of our lost estate, who we were working for, what it paid, the wages of sin.

[4:57] You know, who was our ultimate slave master as a lost man. We were labouring in the service of religion, maybe even.

[5:08] You could be labouring in the service of yourself or the service of Satan effectively, isn't it? You're labouring, but there's really nothing to show for it other than nothing.

[5:22] And we're heavy laden. All you that labour are heavy laden. We can be heavy laden with sin. The Bible talks about the weight, doesn't it? The weights that drag us down, that burden us, that defeat us, that heavy laden with care.

[5:40] Heavy laden with sin, with temptation. So, number one, come to me. And then he says, secondly, receive the yoke that I give you. We see, it tells us, take my yoke upon you.

[5:56] Take that. Take that yoke. Join him. Now, a yoke, to try to picture it, if you can, as we see, the oxen in the field, they're joined together by this wooden beam.

[6:14] This, it's called a yoke, which holds their neck and the neck of the other animal. And he says, take my yoke upon you.

[6:26] In other words, join him. And a yoke, when you think, if it's two animals going together, they're going in the same direction. So, if we take the yoke of Christ, we'll go in his direction.

[6:37] Yoke speaks of direction. In other words, stop going your own way and yoke together with Christ and go his way. He's the one he wants to be yoked with, to yoke with you. So, in other words, team up with God and go with God.

[6:50] So, to receive the yoke I give you. And thirdly, another commandment he gives is learn from me. Learn of me. Learn from this one.

[7:01] The ultimate gentleman, isn't he? He says that my yoke is easy, my burden is light. He says, I am meek and lowly. In other words, gentle. I'm humble. I'm lowly.

[7:12] He is the ultimate gentle man. The one who is gentle and humble of heart. And there's no pride in Christ. He's that perfect humble one, isn't he?

[7:24] And we too, as we yoke together with him, we humble ourselves. We come under his yoke. We admit our need. We admit our sin. We admit our need of a saviour. And we can release our burden and come to the burden bearer.

[7:38] When we yoke together with him, it's a blessing. And the one of him that says we should learn from him, it reads of him, surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.

[7:51] And we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted. He's borne our griefs. He's carried our sorrows. He's carried the whole lot of all that burden.

[8:03] And yet we did esteem him stricken like he was the one that was abused and rejected and wounded and afflicted.

[8:14] And he is the one, the very one who carries our burdens, our griefs, our sorrows. So we see, obey him. And we see secondly, receive him.

[8:26] As we receive his yoke, there's some wonderful promises that we can receive. As we go back to that verse again, as we come to him, he gives us rest.

[8:40] We come to him, we receive the yoke, we learn of him. And there's things that not only do we obey, but there's things that we receive, the things that he will give us, that we can receive from him.

[8:51] There's wonderful promises here, just in these short verses. He says that I will give, firstly, we can receive his rest. His rest. He promises rest. Now religion will promise works.

[9:03] I know we sometimes make the point, as we're witnessing, at times we might mention, there's other people that knock on your door. But they're knocking, really they're trying to earn credit for their labours.

[9:19] They're trying to earn their salvation by works, which is vain. But Christ gives us rest, true rest. Receive his rest today.

[9:31] He promises rest. The devil would burden you with burdensome religion. But Christ promises rest.

[9:42] And his rest is a gift. He gives it. He says, receive it. Take it. My rest. He says to you, shalom. He says to you, peace. My peace I give to you.

[9:53] He is our peace, the Bible says. When we think of how he gives us peace, that rest, that peace, that resting from work, that refreshing, and that restoration too, that new energy and strength.

[10:07] It speaks of his reviving of supernatural rest. We know the Bible speaks of the Sabbath rest. It's that sense where Christ is the Sabbath. He is our rest.

[10:18] He is our rest. And the Bible talks as we've been touching on Wednesday nights in Hebrews, of entering into his rest. Entering into his rest. And we can know an absolute relief from the burdensome weight of onerous religion or encumbrances of man-made religion to know that rest that is in Christ, who is our rest.

[10:45] He is our peace, our refreshing. And it's rest, it says, for our souls. It's got the sense, as someone has kind of expanded the meaning of these words to say this, I alone will cause you to cease from labor and take away your burdens and refresh you with rest.

[11:04] It's got a whole lot of meaning packed into these words, that I will give you rest. In other words, we stop from our labor, from that labor of man-made religion and rules and onerous things.

[11:19] And the rest here is speaking of a ceasing from our labor and of a refreshing. When we think of our Lord, the Bible calls him the Prince of Peace. It says that he gives us eternal peace and that ceasing from striving, he himself is our peace.

[11:35] And his wonderful gift to us who are saved is that peace. As we read, for example, in John 14, 27, it says, Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you, not as the world giveth give I unto you.

[11:48] Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. His rest, his peace is forever. So those who know him have an absolute assurance of rest, and it's rest forever.

[12:00] It's eternal peace. It's God's peace. We see it tells us of the peace of God. It passes all understanding. It's beyond our human comprehension.

[12:11] And it says that he shall keep your hearts and minds, your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. When you think of the gospel, his very message is the gospel of peace. It's one of the descriptions of the gospel, the gospel of peace.

[12:25] And our gracious Redeemer provides us his rest. We think of his faithfulness. We can rest on that. He's been tried and found faithful. We think of his love. We can rest on his love.

[12:36] For he loves us to the uttermost. He loves us so. We can rest on his power. Because it is forever working on our behalf. His Holy Spirit power indwells us.

[12:49] We can rest on his power. We can rest on his covenant. For he has made everything that needs to be made for our saving. We can rest on his blood. That it speaks peace.

[13:00] It speaks pardon and acceptance with God. And we can rest at his feet. For there we are safe and can never be injured. Hebrews 4, 9 through 10 talks about a rest to the people of God.

[13:13] A rest to the people of God. And it speaks of them crossing over into that promised land. That there is a rest. We can enter into the rest. And we cease from our own works.

[13:24] So this rest comes as we no longer trust our own works. It's totally different from really man-made, man-manufactured religion that would say, You've got to work enough to please God.

[13:37] You've got to work, work, work in order for you to do enough. And I like to illustrate it to say, Like such man-made religion says, do, do, do.

[13:49] Christ says, done. Finished. It's done. Everything has been done. I've accomplished everything. Man would say, try, try, try to please God.

[14:02] Christianity says, trust. Trust. It's completely different, isn't it? It's such a contrast.

[14:13] So we have that rest. It's this absolute rest that we can receive that. So what we can receive, his rest. Secondly, we can receive his yoke. Now he says that his yoke is easy and his burden is light.

[14:29] So in other words, Christ's yoke is not hard. I like to think for myself sometimes, if I'm trying in my own well-meaning way to do something for God and it becomes heavy and hard, maybe it's not his yoke that I'm putting on.

[14:48] I'm just putting on something of my own doing, you know, because his yoke is easy. He gives us that which is easy in the sense that it's not hard. And his yoke is going to be good for you.

[15:00] The yoke that he gives to you is wholesome. It's not hard or pressing. Because when we think of it, his yoke, he carries the heavy end. He carries that heavy end for you.

[15:11] And we yoke together with him. He does the hard yards of, as it were, pulling that weight, that making those furrows in the field, so to speak.

[15:23] But he does the hard part. And so we're just joined together with him, trusting in him. We're joined. And really, when we think of his yoke, it's an ultimate purpose, isn't it?

[15:35] That we're joined to work together with God. The Bible talks about how we labourers together with God. We're co-workers. So, this real fulfilment there in spiritually doing something that's for God's glory, that God gives us some opportunity to serve, that it's a blessing for us.

[15:56] It's not an onerous, irksome thing. Whilst we are in subjection to him and in service to him, it's a blessing for us. It's not a burdensome yoke.

[16:08] And so, serving him is useful for you. It gives you purpose when you think, what can I do for the Lord today? In my workplace, in my home place, in wherever I go about my life.

[16:19] How can he work in me and through me for his glory? And it's a yoke that is a blessed thing. And so, here is grace's call today. His earnest call.

[16:31] It's simple. Come unto me. Come unto me. And receive his rest. Receive his yoke. And thirdly, receive his burden. He says that his burden is light. Again, it's not that thought of that which would weigh us down and become a drudgery and something that's just a heaviness, a load.

[16:53] He's not going to weigh you down as the cares and labours of life can do. But God can give you a burden. And that's a blessed burden. We see the prophets had a burden.

[17:04] The burden of the prophet such and such and such and such. He will burden you. He might burden you for souls. As we prayed for souls tonight, there's burdens for souls. People, our loved ones, people we care about, our neighbours, people, even our enemies.

[17:18] We can have a burden for them, can't we? We can have a burden for souls. That's a good burden. We can have a burden to pray, a burden to labour, a burden to share, to give the gospel, to extend ourselves.

[17:31] That's a good burden. And when God burdens your heart in that spiritual way, that righteous way, then that's a good burden. But it will not be beyond your capacity to bear it.

[17:44] And it will be a pleasure to give yourself for him. So just to quickly touch back where we've covered so far. Will you obey him? Come to me, he says.

[17:55] Receive my yoke, he says. Learn from me. He says, come. His call is kind, it's full of grace. He says, multiple times it says, come.

[18:06] Multiple times the Lord, the God of the Bible says, come. He says, come unto me. He says, come now, let us reason together. Though your sins be as scarlet.

[18:17] He says, they can be white as wool. You can have burden. You can have pardon. You can have grace. It's a merciful invitation. He offers that pardon, that free pardon.

[18:28] He offers that robe of righteousness. He offers you a new heart. He offers, come and be reconciled to God. And he says, learn from me.

[18:39] Now, if we want to learn from him, we need to be teachable too, don't we? We need to have that teachable heart. Like children, to be his disciple. So, let's make it personal here tonight.

[18:52] Will you receive him? Will you receive his rest? His peace can fill your troubled soul. And as believers, we can have troubled souls sometimes too, can't we?

[19:04] We're not immune to that. Every one of us. We're still human. But God extends that offer of peace to every man. That peace that you can know with your maker and be reconciled to God.

[19:18] In contrast, we read about those who know not the Saviour. It says, the wicked are like the troubled sea. When it cannot rest, his waters cast up mire and dirt. There's no peace, saith my God, to the wicked.

[19:31] So, what a picture there of waters casting up mire and dirt. It makes you think of some of these polluted rivers and streams, full of muck and mire and dirt.

[19:43] And it's a picture of the wicked. They're like this troubled sea. Just this horrible sight. There's no peace there. But we can receive his rest.

[19:55] We can receive his yoke to be joined together with him. To know that service. It's saying, take my yoke. Take it. There's a command there to take his yoke.

[20:06] We've got to make that volition. You know, we've got to use our conscious choosing to take. Take it. In submission to his will, take that yoke.

[20:19] Receive it. Really, it's what faith is, isn't it? What it is to believe. There was a time some missionaries were in Africa and they were working amongst a people group that didn't have the word for rest.

[20:36] And this missionary, as he was translating the gospel into the local dialect, he just couldn't find the word for believe. He couldn't find an equivalent word in the language of the tribe.

[20:49] And so when he came to the particular word believe, and he's in the gospel of John, he just left a blank space and he thought, I'll just have to think that one over a bit. And then one day this runner came into the camp, into the village, and they traveled a long distance to get there.

[21:05] And they had this very important message to pass on. And they shared the story with their village folk. And then he fell exhausted into a hammock nearby. And he muttered this brief phrase that seemed to express his great weariness, but also his contentment at finding a place of rest.

[21:24] And the missionary hadn't heard these words before. And so he asked a bystander what the runner had said. Oh, he's saying, I'm at the end of myself. Therefore, I'm resting all my weight here.

[21:36] And the missionary exclaimed, praise God. That's the very expression I need for the word believe. I'm at the end of myself. Therefore, I'm resting all of my weight here.

[21:47] There's that sense where we come to the end of ourselves, don't we? We trust, we trust, put our whole weight on that hammock, as it were, that whole weight of our trust is in Christ.

[21:58] And so he found the word that he was looking for. And so we find that rest, that true rest. And then again, to repeat again, the burden. He will give you a burden.

[22:10] He will give you a responsibility to carry out. He will give you a service that will not weigh you down. And his yoke is light. His burden is easy. He bears it for us and with us.

[22:23] And so as a believer, as we trusted, as we've fallen into that hammock, as it were, that trust, that rest that Christ is for us, we can surrender.

[22:35] It's not a resting as in a stopping of working, but we're yoked together with him. There's a work for us to do, every one of us. We've got that glad surrender to his will. And he puts us into his service in different ways.

[22:47] And so we have that peace with God. The question for all of us here and those that might be watching online is, do we know that peace in our soul? It's a critical question, isn't it?

[22:59] And as we read those verses and let them sit with us, those verses, and let that message be prompting us.

[23:14] Because his call, his gracious call is to all that can hear his voice. He says, come unto me. Let us pray. Lord, we thank you that you do invite us to come.

[23:25] And Lord, we know you're gracious in that invitation. Lord, that we could come and not go to others, but come directly unto you to receive your grace and love.

[23:36] By faith, we can know you've saved us by the virtue of your blood shed on our part. Lord, that we can know that great gift of salvation and that rest from our own labours and religion and working of our own.

[23:51] And to know that true, righteous religion, that faith in Christ, that saving faith, that salvation of our soul, that only can come as we come unto you.

[24:02] We pray that each one might have that trust, that rest tonight, that we might not shy away from the yoke that you call us to bear, that we'll not be afraid to make that personal choice to take that yoke upon us.

[24:17] Lord, help us to find your will and to do it. And give us the grace to live to your pleasure and praise, we ask in Jesus' name. Amen.