Good evening. Please turn with me in your bibles to Matthew chapter 11. We’re continuing in this series in which I am looking at the doctrine of heaven. And I’m looking at different biblical images and concepts that the scriptural authors use to describe the place and the experience of heaven. Last time we looked at the nature of a believer’s status as a citizen of heaven.
Citizens of heaven are not controlled by their passions, but instead are led by the Holy Spirit. They know that this world is not their home, that their home, their citizenship, resides in the heavenly places, and that leads believers to battle against remaining sin now, and prepare themselves for their eventual reception into heaven at the end of their journey on this earth.
Tonight, I want to look at another biblical image of heaven, and that is as a place of rest. In our text we have perhaps the sweetest promise that Jesus makes to believers, and that is the promise of rest. But we won’t simply be staying here in Matthew 11, because the Old Testament gives us much more information to fill out our understanding of the significance of what Jesus offers in the New Testament.
And this promise of rest is perhaps the one thing that people of every generation clamor for, but few people every actually find it in this life. Our generation especially seems to know this.
Despite all the technology, despite all the ease provided by cars and email and instantaneous communication, despite all the efficiencies gained in our work and the advances of knowledge in areas of medicine, there seems to be news everyday of another study showing that anxiety and depression are on the rise.
Rest-less-ness is pervasive. People are worried about this or that. People are anxious about the future, anxious about health, anxious about evil in the world, anxious about crime or the stock market or politics or war. To simply look at the world is to see that this entire existence seems dominated by pervasive restlessness.
But we know this isn’t a new thing. Experiencing restlessness is actually quite old. In fact, as we will see, it goes all the way back to the garden.
Let’s begin by reading Matthew 11:25-30, and then using that as our springboard to look more broadly at the scripture’s testimony of the rest of God.
25 At that time Jesus declared, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children;26 yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. 27 All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.28 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.”
Jesus in our text provides us with the sweet promise of simply coming to him in childlike faith, and receiving rest for our souls. And before we examine the nature of that rest, and the significance of it, I think it would be best to begin at the beginning.
We will start by looking at the giver of rest, then the loss of rest, then the earning of rest, and then a few concluding applications. The giver of rest, the loss of rest, and the earning of rest..
Let’s look first at the giver of rest, by turning to genesis 2. Genesis 2.
To better understand who it is that offers us rest in Matthew 11, we should being with asking who it is that is making the offer. And by looking at Genesis 2, we will see that he giver of rest is the one who is himself restful.
God begins his scripture with an account of the creation of this universe and everything in it. He chooses to take six days, recorded in the first chapter of Genesis, to go about his work of creation. But he doesn’t stop there.
His week is not concluded. He instead chooses to take another day to stop what he had been doing, and to rest, to Shabbat, where we get our word for sabbath. He ceases from what he had been doing, and chooses to instead rest and enjoy his creative effort.
Genesis 2:1-3 says:
Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. 2 And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. 3 So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.
God set the day apart, treated it as holy and blessed, a status not given to any of the previous days. This day of rest was special. In fact, commenting on this day of rest, Exodus 31:17 says that “in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested and was refreshed.’””
I haven’t fully plumbed the depths of what it means to say that a tireless God was refreshed, but I do think it indicates to us a special kind of satisfaction that God took in the day. He wasn’t tired and worn out by the creation work, but he did take a special delight in the rest.
And we shouldn’t skip over the fact that Adam’s first full day of existence, the seventh day, was a day of rest. Adam was made at some point on the sixth day, so the first time that he woke up in the morning, his first full day as a man on this earth, was a day of rest.
It seems as though Adam was not made primarily to work, even though work itself is a good thing. Rather, his vocation role as the image of God was to imitate his father, including by experiencing rest. In that sense, we can see that the idea of rest was built into the fabric of creation, even before the loss of rest that we see in the fall in Genesis 3.
Here in Genesis 2, the sinless experience of rest, and thus the foreshadowing of the rest we will experience in heaven, precedes even the presence of restlessness that now dominates the world.
Rest, which is a picture of our final destiny, is present in the narrative earlier in scripture than even our need for rest from the presence of sin. It’s almost as if God is telling us that His grace was present even before the need for grace ever emerged.
So, who is it that makes the offer of rest in Matthew 11? It is none other than the God who himself is restful. Who is satisfied in his work. This concept will come up again later. Let’s keep reading into chapter three and spend more time thinking about rest, and especially the loss of rest.
That’s the second point. The loss of rest. In Genesis 3 we see that Adam’s experience of rest in creation was, in terms of the perspective of the narrative, short lived. The serpent comes in and tempts Adam and Eve to disobey God, and by succumbing to temptation, they thrust, not only themselves, but the entirety of creation into the experience of restlessness.
Adam failed to image God as he should have, to faithfully execute his job of being fruitful and multiplying, of subduing the earth and having dominion over it, and therefore UNLIKE GOD, Adam could not attain to the fullness of rest that was before him. He instead earned the curse of restlessness for himself and all of his posterity.
And let’s take a few minutes to examine the nature of this restless experience that he had earned.
We can see, first, that there is now because of sin vocational restlessness. Vocational restlessness. Because of Adam’s sin, God pronounces a curse upon the work of Adam. Genesis 3:17 ends with: “cursed is the ground because of you;
in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life”
Likewise in verse 18: “By the sweat of your face
you shall eat bread,”
Rather than Adam working the ground and being God’s vice-ruler over creation, with the creation willingly yielding its fruit to Adam, Adam’s role will now be cursed. Subjected to futility. There will be anxious toil and inefficiency. Lasting Satisfaction and refreshment are no longer possible.
Restlessness will now characterize Adam’s vocational labors. This is certainly true for each of us. We work, but there always seems to be problems that pop up. It could be literal weeds in the garden, or it could be the problems that seem to constantly arise in your work. Machines break, parts wear out, systems grow sluggish.
Or the toil can manifest itself in other ways: the difficulties of rearing children, which can seem like an endlessly inefficient process. Whatever our vocation, we feel the vocational aspects of the curse.
Work goes from being a blessing and satisfying experience without sin, to being full of toilsome grief and wearisome restlessness. And this is intimately connected to a second aspect of the curse:
Creational restlessness. Creational Restlessness. It wasn’t just Adam’s work that was ruined by sin. It was the entirety of the created order.
Verse 17: ““Because you have listened to the voice of your wife
and have eaten of the tree
of which I commanded you,
‘You shall not eat of it,’
cursed is the ground because of you”
And again in verse 18, God says of Adam’s frustrated labor: “thorns and thistles [the ground] shall bring forth for you.”
It’s not merely that Adam’s work is no longer blessed, but that the ground itself will be fighting against him. Because of sin, the entire creation is now working against Adam, militating against his experience of restful satisfaction.
And we see all of this today. Hurricanes and tornados and storms bring all manner of unrest. Earthquakes, and pestilence, and plagues, and viruses. All of it goes back to Genesis 3.
Whatever gains mankind might have from technology and medicine, none of it will cure the root of the problem, because the problem goes back to the garden, and to sin. Creational restlessness.
Third, we see also in the fall, the curse of Relational restlessness. Relational restlessness. It wasn’t merely Adam’s work and the ground that were tainted by sin. It was also his most intimate relationship.
God says to Eve in verse 16: “Your desire shall be contrary to your husband,
but he shall rule over you.””
Rather than the sweet poetry that Adam expresses in the previous chapter, where he praises God’s work of Eve and says “She is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh,” sin now introduces a new dynamic. Relational strife will now dominate the marriage. She will want to reject her position as helpmate, and instead take the wheel.
And Adam will be tempted to dominate over her. All of mankind now suffers strife, relational strife, and restlessness in the one relationship that ought to be united and peaceful.
Husbands don’t love their wives well, and instead are sinful and selfish, domineering. Wives are tempted to reject their role, and instead be resistance and contrary to their husbands. Marriage goes from a sweet communion, to a restless realm of combat.
But this doesn’t just apply to marriages. Right after this chapter what do we see? Brother raises his hand against brother, and the first murder takes place. Blood relatives become enemies. Flesh and blood at war against flesh and blood.
But the relational curse doesn’t stop there. We see in the fourth aspect a Spiritual restlessness. Spiritual restlessness. Adam and Eve rejected God’s restful presence in the garden, and thereby earned for themselves ejection from the garden, and separation from God.
Look at verse 22: “Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—”23 therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken.”
God, in his mercy, expels Adam from the garden, lest he eat from the tree of life and remain in his cursed condition forever. And so, he lost communion with God. He’s now alienated from God because of his sin. Cut off from the God of rest who created him. Rather than experiencing God’s blessed rest, he’s sent out of the Garden “to work the ground,” the text says, ground that is cursed. No more rest.
And the history of humanity is a history of mankind contending with God, and clamoring for rest in any way possible. Trying to regain rest from anything in creation apart from the God of creation. We all know this experience.
We try to get rest from money, or from pleasure, or from status. But all of it is empty and void if it doesn’t address the root of the issue, which is communion with the God of rest. God alone is the only thing that can bring rest for our souls, and Adam’s sin made it to where we are born cut off from God, and alienated from the only source of rest for our souls.
And that culminates with the fifth and final aspect of restlessness: Physical restlessness. Physical restlessness. This includes the weariness of body that comes through toilsome labor among thorns and thistles, but what it climaxes with, is death.
Adam was made upright and complete, and death was not something he would have to experience. And yet because of his sin and the curse brought about by it, Adam and all his posterity would taste death.
Look at verse 19: “By the sweat of your face
you shall eat bread,
till you return to the ground,
for out of it you were taken;
for you are dust,
and to dust you shall return.””
Adam earned for himself a return to the dust. He would die. By his disobedience he murdered himself and all of his children.
Death and decay mark our existence in this age. It doesn’t matter how healthy or how sickly, how rich or how poor, how smart or how simple, all return to the dust from which we were created.
And it is that fear of death that drives much of the restlessness we experience in this age. People are afraid to die, and rightfully so, apart from saving knowledge of the God of rest.
Restlessness marks the lives of all the sons and daughters of Adam: vocational, creational, relational, spiritual, and physical.
But now let’s turn our attention to the solution to Adam’s sin, and that is the earning of rest. The earning of rest.
Here’s where we move further in scripture. I don’t have time to fully trace the theme of rest in the scripture, but I will make a few comments. We see in the history of Israel that God picks up the theme of rest in several places, and uses it to expand our understanding. Israel’s history points us forward to a place of rest and to an experience of rest, which we will fully see in heaven.
For example, from what were the Hebrews saved out of Egypt? They were redeemed out of grueling slavery in Egypt, forced to make bricks without straw, which is a perfect illustration of the futility of vocational restlessness. They were tasked with doing something that was inherently toilsome and futile. They were tasked with doing something that they could not do.
And God is the one who brings them out of slavery in Egypt, and into a promised land. A land that images heaven, and the undoing of the curse. How was the promised land described? A land flowing with milk and honey, which is quite contrary to a land of thorns and thistles. It’s as if the Promised land was to be a land with only blessing, not curse. A new garden we might say.
And what would they find in that promised land? Ah, they would find Houses they did not build, vineyards they didn’t not plant. Someone else did the work, and they experience the fruit of it.
And what would be the experience of their time in the promised land? God says multiple times in Deuteronomy and Joshua that they will come into the land of promise and God will give them REST FROM THEIR ENEMIES.
Physical and relational rest from the strife of war is what is offered to God’s people. So, they have vocational rest, relational rest, physical rest, rest of many kinds pictured as waiting for them in the promised land.
But what happened? We know the story. Joshua leads them into the promised land, but they would not obey God. They would not rid the land of idols. They would not fully expel the wicked Canaanites like God commanded them. They never experienced the fullness of what was offered to them. And why is that? And this is key. Why did they not experience rest in the land?
The problem was not with what God offered to them. And the problem was not principally with the Canaanites or the Philistines or the Babylonians or the Assyrians. The biggest problem of their persistent restlessness was not external to the Israelites at all.
The problem was the restlessness that they brought with them when they crossed the Jordan into the promised land.
The problem was their own hearts, which were restless. They were their own problem.
And so the Old testament ends with an apparent problem. Israel was promised the opportunity for rest, but none of them could actually provide it. Moses couldn’t provide the rest. Joshua didn’t provide the rest, as Hebrews 4 makes clear.
No, the Old testament closes with a question of who will provide the rest that is needed. And all of that backstory is what is in mind when Jesus comes on to the scene and promises rest. Jesus is the second Adam, the faithful and true Israel, the final Joshua, who succeeded where all of his ancestors failed.
Just think about the story leading up to Matthew 11. In Matthew 3 we have the baptism of Jesus in Jordan, just like Israel was baptized through the red sea. And in Matthew 4, Jesus is immediately taken into the wilderness, just like Israel was taken into the wilderness after the Exodus. But unlike Israel, who failed every test in the wilderness, Jesus didn’t succumb to the temptation of Satan Himself.
And then in Matthew 5, Jesus goes up to give his sermon on the mount. Like Israel, who was led to Mount Sinai to receive the law, we have more law given in Matthew 5. We could keep going, but all these parallels point us to the conclusion that Jesus is going through the same experiences of Israel, but this time he is succeeding.
Where Israel failed, he didn’t. Where Israel would not enter into God’s rest, the second Israel not only enters his rest, but provides it, lastingly, for all of his people. And how does he provide this rest?
Let’s think for a bit about how the New testament describes the work of Christ and the effects of it. And we can use the same categories as we described the curse in Genesis 3.
Whereas Adam provided vocational cursing, and Israel suffered under grueling slavery as an image of life under the curse, Jesus is described as the liberator of slaves. We don’t have to endure as slaves, like the Hebrews in Egypt, slaves to sin and slaves to our passions, because Christ has liberated his people through his faithful life and death in our place.
That’s part of his work mentioned in Hebrews 2. He came to “deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.” Christ emancipates us from slavery, all those who come to him in faith.
Romans 6:17, says “But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart … 18 and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.”
Likewise, verse 22: “you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God”
Christ is the great liberator, freeing us from vocational slavery, and bringing us under a new master, a new yoke, and as we read earlier, this yoke is easy and Christ’s burden is light.
That means that whatever we do, whatever thorns and thistles we may still encounter in our work, we can do all things to the glory of God. And as Ephesians 2 tells us, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”
We were made in Christ Jesus for GOOD works. The work we do is GOOD work, not vain and futile, if we do it unto the Lord.
But his work doesn’t just provide a new perspective on our work, it also provides creation-wide effect. Just as the whole of creation was subjected to futility and thorns and thistles, Christ’s atoning work will undue the curse on creation.
Romans 8 speaks of all creation groaning under the curse. We all feel it, and the earth itself is as if in the pangs of childbirth. But that time will come to an end. Because of Christ’s work, we await a new heaven and a new earth, an earth completely purged of sin and evil and the effects of the curse.
Peter says it this way in 2 Peter 3: we are “waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn! 13 But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.”
What will that new creation be like? It will be a place where Righteousness dwells. No more hurricanes and tornadoes and storms and death and destruction. That’s what awaits believers because of Christ’s work. That’s a glorious part of what God has in store for those that enter into his promised rest.
Another aspect of Christ’s work is also relational rest. Relational rest. Adam and Eve were cursed in their marriage because of their sin. The new dynamic was one of domination and submission, of contention within what should have been a sweet communion.
But because of Christ’s work, we too can experience relational rest. In Christ, we are given the Holy Spirit, who provides us with the ability to grow in our love and unity, both within our marriages, and within the church.
This is exactly what Shawn has been talking about the past couple of weeks. Unity and love in the church, relational peace in the church because each of us has relational peace with God.
We’re able to outdo one another in showing honor, to turn the other cheek when we’re sinned against, to forgive others as we too have been forgiven by God in Christ.
Relational rest, though imperfectly experienced now, can be truly be experienced now.
But also, when heaven comes, this relational rest will be perfectly experienced. No more bickering and fighting. No more jockeying for power and prominence. No more retaliation and giving the cold shoulder. Perfect relational peace. That’s what awaits believers in heaven, and that’s what we ought to strive for in the church.
And why can we have such peaceful relationships? Because of the spiritual rest that Christ has provided. Spiritual rest. Unlike the alienation that Adam and Eve experienced from God in the garden, in Christ we can experience reconciliation with God.
Romans 5:1, “since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” The atoning sacrifice of Christ’s life and death were offered by our great high priest, making us acceptable before God. But not merely acceptable, adopted by God himself. We’ve been made members of God’s own household.
And as members of God’s house, heirs of eternal life and presence with him in heaven. That’s how we know rest, by being brought back into the presence of the God of rest himself. And how can that experience of rest be forever?
Because of the final aspect of Christ’s work: the provision of physical rest by his defeat of death. Death was once the greatest enemy of man. Death was the inescapable reality, the climactic image of the curse.
But Christ has defeated death. He bore our curse on the tree, indeed, wearing for us a crown, not of Gold, but of thorns, the very image of the curse. And by tasting death in our place, he took away our sentence of death. And by rising again from the dead, he assures us that he has conquered our final enemy.
Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, again contrasting the work of the first Adam and the second Adam: “For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. 22 For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.”
Who is this one that promises rest? Who is this one who has earned rest for God’s people?
It is none other than the one who tasted the restless experience of the curse on the cross, who tasted death, and did so even though he didn’t deserve it. He did it in the place of his people. He conquered the grave, and He promises that all those who are united to him, who come to him, can have that rest for their souls.
Now, I want to conclude with some observations and applications.
First, if it wasn’t clear from what I’ve said so far, our experience of rest in this age is still incomplete. We experience rest in part, and we can have confidence from the Holy Spirit of our spiritual state, but we should not expect that we will taste of the fullness of this rest in this age. That’s one error that pops up throughout church history.
People say that “if you have enough faith, then you should have complete peace. Relational and financial peace in this life. If you’re strong enough in your faith, God will bless you with peace and rest now.”
That’s just not true. Yes, we can taste true and real rest for our souls, but we still live in a fallen and cursed world. We can know the joy of having our sins forgiven and our eventual destination secured, but we will all still suffer the thorns and thistles of this age.
So ,don’t go off the ditch on one side or the other. One ditch would be thinking that the presence of thorns and thistles means that you aren’t truly saved. Satan likes to tempt with that one.
To tempt you to think that the presence of sin or trials in your life means you aren’t truly saved, or that the frustrations of thorns and thistles mean that you’re necessarily not in Christ. Those things will continue until heaven.
But the other ditch is to think that just because sin will remain until heaven, that we don’t need to really strive for holiness. That’s the other side of the problem.
To say that there will always be thorns and thistles in this age, therefore we don’t need to labor, that just foolishness.
To think that because we’re not going to experience true rest now, that we can therefore just coast, to be lackadaisical with sin.
No. Read Hebrews chapter 4 for homework. God warns us not to be like the Israelites who failed to enter into God’s rest and were judged. The author says: “Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.”
Yes, we are saved by grace, but we must fight against sin. We must battle. Hear the warnings, which God uses to help us persevere in the midst of the fight. Don’t give up. Keep going. Turn away from Sin and trust in God.
The final rest is still to come, and we must battle for it, lest we give up and get distracted and turn away from God.
In fact, in God’s wonderful providence, the more you know of God’s rest in this life, the more you will be vigilant to fight against sin. The more you rest, the more you battle. That the upside-down logic of the kingdom. The more we rest in Jesus, the more we labor against our sin.
Trust in Christ, the author and perfecter of our salvation, and if you do that, you will know rest for your souls in this life, and perfect rest for all of eternity in heaven.
Lastly, if you have not trusted in Christ, then you need to know that the rest you may experience in this life, is the closest thing you will ever experience to rest for your soul.
What awaits you after death is punishment, which the bible describes in imagery that emphasizes rest-less-ness forever.
Hell is a place of eternal, unending, agonizing punishment. Wailing and gnashing of teeth. Fire. Destruction. These are the words used, and describe hell in terms that sound pretty much like the opposite of rest.
Don’t let that be your fate. Trust in Christ. Come to him. Hear his promises, and he will provide rest for your soul.
And if you do, if you’re trusting in Christ, then know that this age, with all its thorns and thistles, is the closest thing that you’ll ever experience to hell.
This life is the worst. It’s a wilderness. But ahead of you is a promised land, with a home prepared for you that you did not build, with trees and vineyards that you did not plant, and there you will be in the full presence of God, experiencing his rest.
