A Burden of Rest

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. [29] Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. [30] For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30)

The logic of Jesus’ words is startling: throw off your burdens to gain his rest and gain that rest by taking on a burden. Are we going in circles here? Jesus explains, “For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” Huh?

The Rest of God. What exactly does it mean to rest? Refrain from work, take a nap, veg on the sofa? “Rest” of course is a very common theme in the Bible. On the seventh day of creation God rested and he requires his people Israel to follow his example by resting on the seventh day of the week, the Sabbath. So what does it look like for God to rest, and why does he do it? God of course doesn’t rest because he needs a recharge. No, God rests because he is done, because his work is so complete that nothing else needs added, because his work of sustaining and ordering the life and energy in billions of galaxies comes easier and more natural to him than napping does to us. Not that God is bored. He is no more bored than an artist who has poured his whole being onto a canvass and stands back amazing even himself at how exquisite it all turned out. God’s rest is all energy and life and joy. It’s not lying still on a soft bed. It’s a dance.

The Rest of God’s People. God calls us to imitate his rest in the OT but not fully. Our rest, in a sense, is the opposite of his. God’s people rest by refraining from work and limiting their energy. A failure to cease is to reject the reality of God’s rest. More needs to be done. God does not quite have the cosmos under control. Throughout history the common conception of the gods is that they are great kings lounging on thrones sending peasant humanity out to do the dirty work. The true God, however, creates, delivers, fights, works for his people, so that they can lay down their weary bones and know the world won’t fall apart when they do. God is infinite and good. We are finite and needy. It’s a perfect union. That is until we muck it up by trying to be infinite and failing to trust God’s goodness.

Jesus’ Restful Burden. Jesus, however, brought in a new age. The Sabbath was just a road sign to God’s eternal rest: “God’s Rest - Few Thousand Years Ahead.” But now through Christ we can begin to taste that rest for ourselves. Through Christ our rest, like God’s, is not merely a cessation of activity; our rest is a dance. Thus, to find rest in Christ is not to find a burden-less, workless life. But his burden is easy and light. It is restful to carry. So a nap is rest, but not full rest. Not God’s complete rest. To experience that you have to be quivering with life.

The Way To Rest. How can we experience such a peculiar, thrilling rest? It is by taking up his burden. The next section (Matthew 12:1-14) shows us what that burden is. It is the burden of mercy and love for the hungry, the disabled, the needy. It is the burden that works with all its might to set this world to rights, to gather the broken to its Healer. Jesus states why this is possible in Matthew 11:27, “All things have been handed over to me by my Father.” This burden, though demanding, becomes a dance because Christ has all things in his hand. All that is broken, the world, the needy, me and my work, are all made well again by him and his work. I can rest today because Christ didn’t. I can rest because he carried the joyless, crushing burden of our brokenness, and because after it crushed him to death he rose, mission accomplished. The burden to bring healing to this world is now no longer a burden. To mingle with beggars, to converse with the hurting, to get our hands dirty with the filth of human lives becomes a joy-filled dance. Rest comes not by works but by faith, and yet it is a faith that works. Jesus said, “It is more blessed to give that to receive (Acts 20:35). It’s also more restful.