Lessons from Matthew 11: Judgment
Jesus’s judgment is certain for those who refuse to believe.
If your life were a city would you be like the rebellious cities of Tyre, Sidon, and Sodom?
Jesus’s last judgment is slow in coming. It is slow, as we think of it, in order that He might draw others to Himself as we His people proclaim the good news. Matthew 11:28-29 is Jesus’s invitation to come to Him.
Four things we can learn from these verses:
The invitation is for everyone.
Jesus’s words are for people of all ages, all nationalities, and all temperaments. He calls them exactly as they are.
Though following Christ is, in a certain sense, the hardest thing anyone can ever do, at the same time it is possible for everyone. Christ Himself gives us all the will to persist in our calling.
What do you need to obey the call of Christ in your own life?
2. The invitation is for those who are burdened by sin.
The phrase weary and burdened does not refer to physical weakness or to what we might call the difficulties of life, though it may include them. It mainly refers to a sense of sin’s burden and those people who believe that God can lift sin’s weight and guilt and turn to Him to do it.
These are the people who listened to Him, trusted Him, and found salvation. It is sad that we have some of the largest churches in history and the most money being given to Christian causes than ever before and less attendees than ever before.
Less and less are the messages of the guilt of sin and more and more are the comforting words of “You’re ok” being preached from the pulpits. People don’t want to be uncomfortable and especially not convicted of their sin. They want, as the Bible teaches, to hear that what their itching ears want to hear.
This is not the truth of the gospel and any church that teaches anything but the truth will be held accountable for their wrongs and the wrongs of their people.
When people are sensitive to sin and turn from it by turning to Jesus they will find relief from sin’s dreadful burden.
3. The invitation is to learn about Jesus.
As His disciples we are called to follow Him and learn from Him as our teacher and our guide. This is a lifelong study course with Jesus the subject matter!
We enter into a personal relationship with God through His Son Jesus and through His Son we have access to the Father. How fortunate we are that Jesus has clearly revealed God to us, His truth, and how we can know Him.
4. The invitation offers rest for tired people.
In fact it offers rest twice. The first rest comes instantly when we first trust in Christ–rest from our burden of sin and guilt. The second is found as we take His yoke and learn from Him. That rest comes as we increasingly learn to follow Jesus in our daily lives.
Jesus promises rest for the weary and burdened ones who come to Him.
Jesus frees people from all their burdens. The rest Jesus promises is love, healing, and peace with God, not the end of labor. And though we labor, we also learn that a relationship with God changes meaningless, wearisome toil into spiritual productivity and purpose.
You and I were made to be yoked together with God. Jesus has made a yoke for each one of us; it is perfectly fitted and adjusted to the purpose for which we were created. He says. “For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
Are you tired of living your life as you have chosen? Will you confess that you need Jesus to give you life that is perfectly fit for you?
Accept Jesus’s invitation and promise and you will experience freedom, love, and forgiveness.
Terri Hamman
Faith & Fitness Coach