In life sometimes we find paradoxes. A paradox is a self-contradiction that when we investigate it ends up actually being kind of true. It's funny things that happen the way we don't expect them to be. I've come to terms in my life that you will find paradoxes.
It's just this thing that happens in life. We also find them in scripture. Paradoxes are a thing that show up. We think about Jesus' statements that he makes about power, about how he speaks to a dramatic power, how he speaks to a life-giving power, about how he speaks to the power above all powers, but he doesn't seem to be that powerful of a person.
He doesn't have the things in his life that we normally would assume a powerful person would have. We also think of the statements that he's made several times about having a childlike faith that comes up in our passage today again. We don't expect people who have a childlike faith or people who exercise humility to be people of power. It just doesn't make sense in our ways of the world.
Also, paradoxes we're going to talk about is the way that Jesus speaks about our burdens, the things that we are carrying with us and the ways that we deal with those, the way that we experience those, the ways that Jesus interacts with our burdens in a way that we would not necessarily expect. That's what we're going to talk about today. What we're going to think about is this question that I've been on my mind a lot lately. It is a paradox.
We talk to people about Jesus. We have to ask ourselves that question sometimes. Is Jesus really easier? How is Jesus easier?
What is the content of that easier? Even inside of that, we find a bit of a paradox. Just a handful of verses this morning from Matthew 11, 25 through 30. This is what we read.
It's just two sections. We'll talk about how we hear about paradox inside of this. Verse 25, at that time, Jesus prayed this prayer, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, thank you for hiding these things from those who think themselves wise and clever and for revealing them to the child like, yes, Father, it pleased you to do it in this way. My Father is entrusted everything to me.
No one truly knows the Son except the Father. No one truly knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him. Then Jesus said, come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens and I will give you rest. I will give you my yoke upon you.
Let me teach you because I am humble and gentle at heart and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear and the burden I give you is light. When I was reading this passage over the last few weeks, first I realized that all the things are being talked about inside of Him. It's moving really, really fast.
We hear these statements about people who don't listen to Jesus and are not hearing these words. We hear statements about Jesus and His relationship to the Father. Then there's this thing about us being tired and worn out. There's a lot of stuff that's going on in here.
What does the bottom line of what Jesus is trying to tell us? He's speaking about our burdens. If we look at this, this is where this begins to get interesting where Jesus is alluding to things from the beginning of Scripture. The interesting thing is that these are burdens and the way He's talking about them, these are not the burdens that we have taken upon ourselves.
They're not necessarily the burdens that we have gotten ourselves into, but these are things that have been put on top of us. This whole passage, the way He's speaking of this is this is how we have to deal with a world that is just simply too hard at times. What are the heavy things that you're carrying that others have put on top of you? Another way that He also looks at this is this idea of rest.
We've talked about rest a lot in the last few months. We talked about Sabbath, this idea of rest being a steam that runs all across scriptures, really from Genesis to Exodus. This is the way that God speaks to the peacefulness of His people. But the way that Jesus is speaking about rest in this passage, it takes that down even further and He speaks of rest being to cause someone to gain relief from toil.
There's a specific action of alleviating a burden. The way that Jesus speaks about this, He's going back into Genesis 3 with the curse. After sin entered the world when God cursed Cain, God cursed Adam and Eve. Ladies, it's not about the curse that He gave the females, but the male curse, if you were going to have to work to get what you want, this is going to be back breaking.
Things will not be easy, but to rest as it caused someone to gain relief. We see inside of this is we're at a place to where we realize that things might be really, these are also things that are not necessarily our fault, not necessarily the things that we get ourselves into because we're fully capable of getting ourselves into the tough situations. I'll be the first one to say that. We're fully aware of that.
But Jesus, the way He's asking us this question, it makes us think more about burdens and where our participation is and where the world's participation is and what does it mean as Christians to live this life that sees Jesus for who Jesus says He is, for His relationship with the Father and just the absoluteness of who Jesus says, but also the relief that He offers us individually in these times. So where do our burdens come from? This is talking about, it's using a heavy, heavy agricultural language and I realize that we live in an area in a region where folks do work in agriculture. But this has to be something that's big enough for all of us, regardless of our station and life to think about, where do our burdens come from?
What are our burdens in fact? And this is where that childlike faith comes in where Jesus began speaking about this. Think about what we learned a few weeks ago that this childlike faith is about dependency. Children have to depend on others.
How are we depending on Jesus? How are we depending on the relationship that He claims to have with the Father? Having a childlike faith is about dependency. The second thing about having a childlike faith that we learned this year is that a lot of times kids are just simply happy to be there.
They're just happy to be part of things. They're not trying to lobby for position. They're not worried about where they are on the ladder. They're just really excited to be there.
So think about our burdens now, for real. Think about the things that you would like relief from now. One of the things that might keep you up at night. One of the things that make you not want to get out of bed in the morning because you realize, okay, when my feet hit the floor, the day it started and now these things are going to come real again to me.
What are we carrying? To continue the metaphor Jesus is using. What is weighing us down? What are we having to pull?
This is not essential to who we are. But also it makes us think of how have we convinced ourselves that it's only by our power that we can save ourselves. Because to be yoked, to be attached to something, pulling something. What's going on in our lives that we've convinced ourselves is so important that it begins to freak us out that much.
What has become such a burden that it's stopping us from living a full life? What's telling you to work harder? If we look in our life and we look in our world and we look at the way our culture is moving, this is not just the rise of the individual, of someone saying, hey, I have this ability. I can do this.
I'm excited about this. But now we've kind of hit this hyper-individualized state. We get so stressed out, we get so worked up over something that we feel like when we don't have the power to do it, that we have failed. Now, what is telling you that you're not good enough?
Or what's maybe telling you that you need to stand out more? Where do you find stress? Where do you find pressure? Or you're saying, I'm not individualized myself enough to stick out to succeed for what I need in life right now, not just one.
What has made me not good enough? Or maybe what's been telling you that you're simply not adequate enough? And I used this phrase with somebody else this week that we've got systems that promote people to the point of failure. How many of y'all have heard that used at work before?
How many of you have been fearful about that before? I wasn't going to share this this morning. And it's been on my mind all week long. But earlier this week, we had a United Methodist pastor here in Louisiana commit suicide because depression, no matter what we do for a living.
We ask ourselves that question, am I adequate enough? What is the space that I'm going into? Do I need to conform to this? I mean, our burdens are real.
We all carry them. But where do we feel the need to be self-sufficient? That's really what it is. Self-sufficiency is a very good thing.
Now, I remember one of the things I'm very happy with the way that I grew up in the phrase. I was really active in Boy Scouts. I was that nerdy guy who stayed in Boy Scouts until they were 18. It was really weird when they don't make shorts that fit you anymore, especially mid-90s.
I don't think anybody else was the nerdy kid who stayed in Boy Scouts until they were 18. But if you remember back then, the shorts weren't shorts. The shorts were like shorts. Self-sufficiency, I'm kind of prideful sometimes with the way that I can take care of stuff.
We like to be independent. We like to be independent. That's a mark with the downside of self-sufficiency is sometimes we can get to the point where we feel like I can't ask for anybody for help anymore because there's this value of self-sufficiency in our world now. I'm scared of what I will lose if I have to ask for help.
This is us realizing just the framework of our life and where Jesus is asking us to realize how burdens carry us. One of the things I tell people all the time that we have to be aware of where we're doing good and where we're doing not good in life because even if your life doesn't appear to be falling down all around you, your worst is your worst and your worst will affect you emotionally like it is your worst. Sometimes we're embarrassed to say somebody, hey, I'm having a hard time at work right now because I'm kind of worried I can't figure this one thing out. We know people around me are facing tremendous loss and death and all these major huge issues and I don't have major huge issues but your major huge issue is going to look very different from somebody else's.
If we pray so that God your kingdom come or will be done, the beauty of you Jesus is he's going to come to our worst no matter what our worst actually is because that's what we're experiencing at this moment. So we kind of had a real talk. It was kind of awkward for a while but we kind of think about burdens and what are the burdens that Jesus is asking us to share. But what's expected of us?
What's expected of us? Or more so to jump into an idea before we can talk about expectations though the thing that I love about scripture is we ask ourselves what is the character of Christ that we have seen? What is the character of Christ? We've seen this passage.
What is the character of Christ? We know just from our Christian life with him and the scripture tells us this. Jesus says it himself, let me teach you because I am humble and gentle at heart you will find rest for yourselves. My yoke is easy to bear in the burden I give you is life.
Jesus says I'm gentle. I think what gentleness looks like to you. When I think about gentleness, I think about my grandma sometimes. I think a lot of us go to that point when I was a little kid I thought God looked like my grandmother granny because she was the most gentle person I knew.
I thought granny was extremely gentle until I saw her ring of chicken's neck off one time. You ain't lived until you see a nine-year-old woman in a city in a movie like grab a thing, twist it around a few times. Then she popped the chicken head in her big pocket because she was going to, I don't know what she was going to do. What does gentle mean?
I'm a six-foot tall. I'm a kind of a bigger guy. I've got a couple friends that are bigger than me. I get a hug from them and I like it because very rarely do I get a hug from somebody who's bigger than me.
There's gentleness. This thing that our heart desires sometimes and Jesus says, I'm gentle. I'm humble. But gentleness is interesting.
And just gentleness, as Jesus is talking about it, is another paradox because the gentleness he's speaking of is someone who is not impressed by a sense of self-important. He would figure the Messiah would realize he's pretty important. Look at the truth of what Jesus is. He's like, I, the Father, or one, everything he does, I do as well.
But I have this lack of self-importance. This lack of being defined by what might burden me. This choice that I'm going to be defined by the positivity and the truth that I know in life, I'm not going to be defined by the things that worry me or cause me, cares. I am gentle and humble at heart.
I will give you rest for yourselves. And Jesus says, I am gentle. What he's saying is that self-sufficiency is antithetical to the gospel. That trust is what Jesus asks us to be.
You know, we want to become self-sufficient in case something bad happens. Before we trust, for when we might not have enough to do what we need to do, trust is the character that we are asked to have, that we are asked to simply witness in Jesus and that we are asked to replicate. And Jesus isn't speaking here about work. He's not talking about work work.
He's talking about our needs. Jesus is not using the language of vocation. He's using the language of psychology to us. What do you need?
What do you need? I know what you do not need is a copy machine that doesn't not work. What does your soul need? I want to provide that sufficiency for you.
Here's the thing. This doesn't lighten the message of the gospel. It doesn't lighten what Jesus calls us to. Trust doesn't demand the less.
Trust just demands differently. It's for us to begin to see the way that Jesus is moving in our lives in a different way. So when we understand the character of Christ, we can then ask, okay, what is expected of me here inside of this? It's not to work harder.
It's not to trust more. In the words of a great theologian, Bob Dylan, he says, you're going to have to serve somebody. You know, everyone, Jesus, you can't serve two masters. There's two worlds that we can choose to live in.
We can choose to live in the world of worry or we can choose to live in the world of trust. What Jesus is saying is I'm going to trust in something that is different. I want you to believe in a world that will not over-extend you to take this yoke on and learn from me. He says, I want to teach you this, to take this yoke from me.
When I was reading this passage earlier this week, I realized, you know, nothing fun happens when a yoke is involved. I remember when I was a kid, I tried to tie the dog to the red wagon because I thought that would be entertaining. We got a Springer Spaniel named Annie, a guardian hurricane Andrew, the appropriate name of the 11 year old gives a dog. I thought it'd be helpful if Annie could pull the red wagon around the yard while I was picking up sticks.
I probably read White Fang or something like that had a nominal concept of a dog sled. I was like, this is a great idea. It's all done. Never tried to tie a Springer Spaniel to a red wagon.
It doesn't work well. Nothing fun happens when yokes are involved. But Jesus, he's saying to us, and inside of this we're seeing a fuller understanding of him being here with us. The word became flesh, moved into the neighborhood, the incarnation of Jesus Christ, the full divinity and the full humanity of God dwelling in one person.
He's showing us something that's very deep about this that Jesus came to show us still way. And it's full sense of humanity. He's not asking us to do anything impossible. What he's saying is let me teach you the full extent and the bounds of what you are capable of.
And he does not remove himself from the yoke and then place it on us. He instead asks us to take his yoke, the things that he is doing, the cares that he cares about, the way he is choosing to live and what's his life. He's saying, come alongside of me. We think of the mechanics of a yoke.
It's attaching multiple creatures together to pull something easier. He's saying, I'm going to come right alongside of you. It's also in first century agriculture, what they typically did was they would always yoke two things together and you would put the more mature animal with the less mature animal. The more mature animal would teach, the old ox would teach the younger ox how to do this.
Jesus is simply saying, these are the burdens I'm bearing. These are your burdens I'm bearing. Come alongside of me and let me teach you how to do this in a different way and in a healthy way. He doesn't take the burden and give it to us.
He takes space alongside of us as he bears more of the way than we have to. The last thing that we realize is we begin thinking, what does it mean to hand these burdens over to Jesus is that our grace is found in full relinquishing. 2 Corinthians 12, 19 says, my grace is sufficient for you and my power is made perfect in weakness. When we realize that we are doing things that we're not necessarily good at, that are worrisome for us, that we have the ability to find and experience a fuller measure of the grace of Jesus Christ as we give those things to it.
My grace is sufficient for you. We don't have to worry about ourselves being enough. We trust in what he says that he is enough. He tends to read that Jesus empties himself and becomes made in human likeness.
An old hymn says, he emptied himself of all but love. He takes on the nature of a servant in order to come alongside of us. To experience that full grace just means us realizing that he has the capability and capacity and desire to take these things on. God becomes man.
That's a paradox in himself right there isn't it? What Jesus invites us is just to simply participate in the paradox of who he is. A couple of verses before our passage we read earlier today, we see some judgment, we see some things happening. This is part of the story of what Jesus is telling us when he's saying, hey, you don't have to worry about anything else just rely on me.
But Matthew 1120, we read this, Jesus began to denounce the towns where he had done so many of his miracles because they had repented of their sins and turned to God. What sorrow awaits you, coarsen and vercedia, for the miracles I did in you had been done wicked tired and siding their people would have repented of their sins long ago, clogging themselves and burlap and throwing ashes on their heads to show their remorse. I tell you tired and siding will be better off on judgment day than you. And you people have Capernum.
Will you be honored in heaven? No, you will go down to the place of the dead. For the miracles I did for you had been done in wicked Sodom, it would be here today. I tell you even Sodom would be better off in judgment day than you.
What Jesus is saying here is he's making this list of towns that in Old Testament are known for this multitude of moral sins. He's saying, y'all saw the fullness of my glory here among you and you chose to not recognize it and believe it. But since what Jesus is saying is, you thought you knew better. I shared a large measure of my capabilities with you and you simply thought it wasn't good enough.
You simply thought I would not be able to heal you from the things that stop you the most. These people, they did not need the paradox of Christ. They did not need the paradox of God becoming flesh and coming to our world as a human. What Jesus says is, come to me and find rest.
Come to me and find rest. Come to me and find relief from what actually is worthless. If you're worried about your weaknesses, I can fix your weaknesses better than you can. Come to me and I will teach you about rap.