Last week we talked about misconceptions or misunderstandings about Jesus. We saw that people were having them even when Jesus was right there with them. And some of those misunderstandings at times are that Jesus is just a God of judgement and the old fire and brimstone message, but other times it’s that Jesus is just love without the judgement, without the wrath, and that leads to not really taking Jesus seriously. The reality is that Jesus will judge, and there are consequences, and He is loving, more loving than anyone you will ever know, and these things can’t be separated to different viewpoints, because we need to understand that God is both of these things, as well as many other characteristics, to help us understand Him better. Jesus is going to deal with both of these things today, so let’s get into our passage.
Read Matthew 11:20-30
There is a pretty extreme contrast between the beginning of this passage and the end of this passage. This starts out with Jesus literally rebuking entire cities. We saw that in verse 20.
Read Matthew 11:20
To rebuke someone means to express great disapproval or criticism of what is happening. Jesus is looking at these entire cities and He does not like what He sees, He does not like what is happening there. He starts calling these cities out by name, Chorazin and Bethsaida in verse 21, and even Capernaum also down in verse 23. Which is crazy, because as we have talked about before, Capernaum is kind of like their home base city, the home base for the disciples, they even have family there, they often came back to this town after going other places. Capernaum wasn’t just a short stop on their way to other places, this is a place that Jesus and His disciples were at quite a bit and I’m sure with Jesus being there regularly that plenty of teaching and plenty of miracles happened in this town.
And there really must have been a lot that happened there because Jesus goes so far as to say in verse 23 that if all of the things that He was doing in Capernaum had been done in Sodom, as in Sodom and Gomorrah in the Old Testament, that Sodom wouldn’t have been destroyed because of its sin. God rained down sulfur and fire onto Sodom and Gomorrah because of how sinful they were. And apparently the area where it’s believed that they once were, is still desolate, and a wasteland even to this day. Jesus was like, if I did there, what I am doing here, even Sodom would have been turned around. And that’s just crazy, were these people really not listening or paying attention to what Jesus was saying and doing? I mean they actually had the opportunity to see Him firsthand, live and in person, which just kind of blows my mind. And obviously it wasn’t just Capernaum, it was these other cities too.
And there’s something really interesting to note here, obviously Jesus is calling out these particular cities because as He said in verse 21 and 23 that mighty works had been done by Him in these cities. And we actually don’t really know exactly what all of these works are, the gospels aren’t anywhere near a record of 100% of Jesus’ time, there are lots of things that happened that weren’t recorded down for us to read and that’s even stated in one of the gospels. In John 21:25 it says:
“25 And there are also many other things that Jesus did, which if they were written one by one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.”
That’s a huge statement, that’s talking about an incredible amount of stuff that Jesus did as He ministered, and so like I said we don’t really know what all happened in these cities, but we know from Jesus’ own mouth here that plenty must have happened. And like I said, there is something interesting to note here. And that is, because He did things in these places, because He made Himself known in these places, then Jesus says that because of that happening, and people still ignoring Him there, that they will face a greater judgement when the time comes, because it was right in front of them, they heard the truth, they saw it all, and yet they still refused it.
And that’s interesting, it’s definitely something that we should pay attention to, but this is one of those areas where I don’t think the bible spells it all out for us. God doesn’t always fully reveal every little part of every little thing to us. There’s a lot of things that just aren’t ours to know. But even though we don’t have every little detail, there’s still something serious here. There’s an old saying that I have heard before that was something to the effect of “where there’s more light, there’s more responsibility”. For those that had Jesus standing right in front of them, or for those of us now, that have His word, have heard the Gospel, have been confronted with His truth, then for us there is greater responsibility, than there is for someone that has never heard or seen any of this at all.
There are still people in this world that have never heard the name of Jesus, that have never been confronted with their sinfulness, that have never heard of this Savior that rescues people from sin’s consequences. But that’s not us, we’re talking about Him right now. I’m sure someone could read this and be like, well I guess it would be better to never hear or see any of this, but recognize what Jesus says in verses 22 and 24, Jesus just says that the consequences will be “more tolerable” not that the result will in anyway be pleasant or good. When we can sit here and know and understand the goodness of our great God, what He has done for us, and everything that He promises, then the choice here is between wonderful salvation with God, or bad in never hearing about Him and still dying separated from Him, or even worst in hearing about Him and just denying Him. Why choose bad or worst, when we can have good with Him?
And so, in these first five verses, we see once again this very sobering reality of God, of God’s view of sin, and of judgement. We can’t just skirt on by these things, our put our blinders on in these areas and ignore things like this. This is real, everybody is going to stand before God one day, either not knowing Him, separated from Him, and still facing judgement, or knowing about Him and actually denying Him and facing worst judgement, or asking Jesus to save us, turning from our Sin, and being welcomed into His house for all eternity. There’s so much at stake for every person as we consider Jesus, so please don’t take it lightly and we’re here to talk about it if you have questions. All this talk of judgement can be rough, but we don’t skip it, because it’s real and we have to talk about it, but at the beginning I said that there is a pretty extreme contrast in this passage and so let’s read once again from verse 25 to 30.
Read Matthew 11:25-30
We started this passage with the hard talk of judgement, but it is now contrasted with this talk about knowing God and finding rest in Him. Rest for our very souls. And Jesus as He shifts the subject here takes a moment in verse 25 to thank His Father. Which is cool to see even the real relationship that exists within the trinity, because we have ONE GOD, but He actually exists in three different persons, in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And they all exist at the same time, all of the time, for all of eternity. It’s an incredible truth.
But here we find Jesus talking to His Father and what is He thanking God the Father for?
He tells His Father, thank you, thank you that He didn’t choose to reveal Himself to the, it says “wise and prudent” there in verse 25, and if we break down those words He is basically saying, “those that think that they are wise, or clever, or even self-righteous”. Instead, He chose to reveal these things to as it says here to “babes”, or to children, or to little people like us.
Jesus then says in verse 27, that the Father has basically entrusted all things to Him, that nobody at all knows the Father like Him, and nobody knows the Son like the Father, this talks about the incredible intimacy of their relationship and closeness as part of the Trinity, and so again Jesus said nobody knows the Father like Him, but then at the end of verse 27 Jesus adds, except the people that Jesus chooses to reveal the Father to. And this is a simple, but incredible truth.
Because of sin, we deserve every bit of that judgement, that Jesus was talking about earlier, and because of sin the relationship between God and people is broken. Jesus has a perfect, unbroken relationship with the Father, nobody knows Him like He does, but then now we see that Jesus has begun revealing His Father once again to the “babes”, or to children, or to little people like us. There was no way to really fix the relationship with God until God the Son, Jesus, stepped in and got to work. And so, Jesus, and we know from elsewhere the Holy Spirit as well, work in us as individuals to help us understand Who God is, the whole picture, even the judge and judgement side that we were going over earlier. We would never understand why we need Jesus if we didn’t understand that our sinfulness has consequences, and those consequences are terrible. To understand that there are consequences, we need to understand the judgement, that’s why we talk about it.
But that’s when Jesus the Son stepped in and was like I know you’ve messed up, I know you’re relationship with My Father is broken, but I’m going to take the fall, I’m going to take the wrath, I’m going to die on that cross, and if you believe in Me and Me doing those things for you, and turn from your sin, then realize that I came back to life so that I can take you back home to meet my Father and it’s all going to be worked out.
Jesus will later in this book, in Matthew 28, say that “All authority has been given to Him in heaven and on earth” and then in that authority, He says to His disciples, and to us, to go make disciples, but here in Matthew 11, we are seeing Him starting that process, we’re seeing His authority at work. He said a similar thing in this passage, that all things have been delivered or entrusted to Him and He is revealing His Father to us. He starts the chain of discipleship, He’s the one to follow. Jesus reiterates that same thing in John 14:6 and says “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”
He is the Way, THE ONLY WAY. But listen to how He describes it.
Read Matthew 11:28-30
We could deny Him and deal with the judgement of earlier, or we could come to Him only, to find a rest for our very souls. There’s a passage that always reminds me of this truth and I’ve gone back to it countless times and I want to go there together right now.
Read Psalm 116:1-9
The Psalm writer said, I found trouble, I found sorrow, I felt like I was going to die, but then I called upon the name of the Lord. He said that the Lord is gracious, righteous, and merciful. That He preserves simple people like him, he said I was brought to my lowest AND HE SAVED ME.
And then He makes a statement in verse 7 that has always stuck with me. He says, “return to your rest, O my soul, for the Lord has dealt bountifully (or graciously) with you”.
Listen. Jesus says, “come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden”. The labor part is like the, we ourselves, and all of the things that we are trying to do to ultimately work things out, the heavy-laden part, is talking about all of things that other people put on us too as we are trying to ultimately find our way and work things out. We’ve got all the work we’re trying to do and all the stuff on our back that we’re trying to carry, and Jesus is like, I can take care of all of that. So why wouldn’t we go to Him?
For some, maybe it’s pride, like I’m going to work this out myself, maybe that’s us still laboring towards nothing, or maybe we’re worried about what others would think, maybe we’re worried about what others will say or what they have said, maybe we’re heavy laden with the opinions of all of these people around us. But right now, all that of that just needs to stop, and we need to be concerned with one thing, and that’s not our own efforts, that’s not other people’s input, we need to be concerned about one thing, and one thing only, and that’s where we stand before the almighty God.
We’ve talked about fearing Him, we’ve talked about taking Him seriously, we’ve talked about people and maybe us as well having misunderstandings about Who He is. Today Jesus told us that yes, judgement is coming, we can’t ignore that side of things, but then He’s basically like, but I’m standing here too, and with Me and Me alone, instead of judgement you can find rest all the way down to your very soul. And that requires us repenting of our sin and believing in His salvation for us, but it’s there, and it’s free, and it’s amazing.
I know what that rest feels like, and times might still be hard, and we’re still going to go through some things. But I know and I have felt, and I have understood what the writer of that Psalm talked about when he said:
“Return to your rest, O my soul, for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you”
And I just want to make sure that you know that too. Our soul can only find rest, or find peace, with Him. We won’t find it anywhere else. And maybe you’ve been running around all your life laboring towards some ultimate peace, or you’ve been overwhelmed with everyone else’s opinions on where to find that peace or satisfaction or what they think is important, well you can lay that all down right now, because the only place that you will ever find it, is with Jesus. I’m not saying to expect a restful and easy life with Jesus, but even if everything else is going crazy, my soul can still rest in the salvation that I have in Jesus.
But notice this, that again Jesus didn’t say restful life, He said restful soul, and so one last point. Jesus’ easy yoke is still a yoke. His burden is light, but it’s still a burden. We find ultimate rest and peace for our soul in Jesus, but that rest doesn’t mean that it’s time to just sit back and run our days out. We’re not supposed to take a knee and run the clock down. In fact, the yoke is there to connect us to the work that needs to be done, just like a yoke on an ox connects it to its load that it is pulling. But the great thing is that we’re also connected to Christ and connected to each other and so we’re not working on our own. But there is so much work to be done in the world, and in our community, and as God uses this church, Base Church, in our mission statement, to broadcast Jesus, make disciples, and see lives transformed by His power.
We’ve got ultimate peace in Jesus, but we’ve also got work to do for Jesus.