A Personal Invitation
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2013 · 3 March 2013
Our Lord came into the world to save sinners, to save them from wrath, to save them from hell, to save them from sin. And Jesus Christ expressed this purpose of the incarnation when He said in Matthew 18:11, "For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which is lost." That is the purpose and message of Christianity, salvation.
We can find the same invitation in Isaiah 55:1-3 which says: “Ho! Everyone who thirsts, Come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat. Yes, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. 2 Why do you spend money for what is not bread, and your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good, and let your soul delight itself in abundance. 3 Incline your ear, and come to Me. Hear, and your soul shall live; and I will make an everlasting covenant with you - the sure mercies of David.”
At the end of the Bible another invitation, in Revelation 22:17, “And the Spirit and the bride say, “Come!” And let him who hears say, “Come!” And let him who thirsts come. Whoever desires, let him take the water of life freely.” God is always inviting people to come for salvation. This is the character of our Lord.
In John 6:35, Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst.” When Jesus says, come He is saying, believe on Me. I am the bread of Life and I am living water.
Look at this beautiful invitation now in Matthew 11:25-30, “At that time Jesus answered and said, “I thank You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and prudent and have revealed them to babes. 26 Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Your sight. 27 All things have been delivered to Me by My Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father. Nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and the one to whom the Son wills to reveal Him. 28 Come to Me, all you 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.”
Do you understand this wonderful text in all its fullness? The key to understanding it is to know what Jesus is offering. When He says - Come to Me - what is the reason? Simply stated, I will give you rest. And He says in verse 28, "I will give it," and He says in verse 29, "You will receive it." But the promise of our Lord Jesus is for rest.
Now, just what is this rest? We don't understand the invitation unless we understand what the rest is. The literal Greek says I will rest you, or I will refresh you, or I will revive you, but of what does our Lord speak? Let’s go to Hebrews 3 to find the answer. Now, rest is a common Old Testament word. But the concept of rest was a Jewish concept. They thought of God's promise as a promise of rest.
Let us begin with Hebrews 3:7-9, “Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says (quoted from Psalm 95): “Today, if you will hear His voice, 8 do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, in the day of trial in the wilderness, 9 where your fathers tested Me, tried Me, and saw My works forty years.”
This is a warning. First of all, Hebrews is written to a community of Jewish Christians, but periodically through the book there are warnings for some Jewish people, who are outwardly convinced that this is all true but they will not commit themselves to Christ, because they fear their Jewish friends and family, and being kicked out of their synagogue.
And so, they sit on the fence and that is the place of a potential apostate who knows it all but never makes the right decision and finally hardens himself into the most severe kind of condemnation because he who knows the most will also be condemned the most.
So in Hebrews 3:10-11 it says, “Therefore I was angry with that generation, and said, ‘They always go astray in their heart, and they have not known My ways.’ 11 So I swore in My wrath, ‘they shall not enter My rest.’” Now rest to the Jews in the wilderness meant the land of Canaan, the land of promise.
We believe that there were some among them who were truly redeemed in history, but in the analogy that is being drawn here, He is saying - These people started to move in the right direction and they believed that there was a better land, but they wandered in limbo until they died without ever entering into that. And He says don't be convinced that the gospel is really true but stay in the limbo.
In His analogy rest means salvation. Now you show me a person who does not know God's ways, who always errs in his heart, a person who hardens and resists God and who doesn't hear His voice and I'll show you an unbeliever. These are unbelieving people who do not enter into rest, who are not saved.
Back to Matthew 11, so what is rest, then? We have the same concept here, Jesus says in verse 28: " Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” You shall find rest for your souls; Jesus is offering them salvation, saving rest. There are five definitions in the dictionary given for rest and they parallel what salvation rest is.
Number one, the dictionary says that rest is to cease from all action or motion, to stop labor and exertion. And that is the rest that our Lord offers. To enter into God's rest means no more self-effort to earn God's favor, no more fleshly works to seek His mercy. We rest from legalism, from self-righteousness. We rest in His consuming grace.
Secondly, the dictionary says that rest is to be free from whatever wearies or disturbs. In the spiritual sense, to enter God's rest means to be at peace with God, to possess the peace of God which passes understanding, to have a heart totally calm in the midst of a storm, to have no more frustration and no more anxiety over life and destiny, sin is forgiven, no more guilt anymore.
Thirdly, the dictionary says to rest is to be settled or fixed. To enter God's rest means to be positionally secured in God, no need to run from philosophy to philosophy, from religion to religion, from guru to guru. Fourthly, to rest means to be trustful and to enjoy faith without fear, to trust that our eternity is in His care and love.
And fifthly, to enter God's rest means from now on we depend on Him for everything. This is Jesus Christ's own invitation to people to come to Him. And how did He do it? Now let us look specifically at the first of these five reasons tonight, and hopefully we can discuss all four of the other ones next Sunday.
Our Lord knew the Jewish attitude was going to come to a full rejection on a national scale, and yet He reaches out to those who wish to come. The early days of popularity had passed, opposition has formed itself, but in the midst of it all, the Lord is still tenderly giving His invitation.
As the invitation starts please notice how it starts. Jesus says: “I thank You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and prudent and have revealed them to babes.” This is a recognition that all responses, negative and positive, are in the sovereign control of God.
Verse 26, “Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Your sight.” In other words, in all invitations there must be recognition that God is the one who must be praised, who will determine what happens. Whenever you introduce Christ, you must believe in your heart that God is the sovereign One behind everything. And His plan right on course.
There are five elements in His invitation. The first one is humility, or dependence, you can use either term. Verse 25-26 again, “I thank You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and prudent and have revealed them to babes. Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Your sight.”
Some people might take, “You have hidden these things from the wise and prudent” to mean that the smarter you are, the more trouble you're in because God just doesn't want smart people in heaven. That's not what it is saying. Look at the phrase "these things." We have to know what it is that He's hidden. What are these things?
He is talking about the things pertaining to the Kingdom, the teachings of Jesus about God, about righteousness, about salvation, the teachings of Jesus about obedience and submission, about deep, eternal and spiritual truth. Does that mean that deep spiritual truth is not available to the educated and the wise? It is only available to the babies?" Correct.
1 Corinthians 2: 9-14 says, "Eye has not seen, nor ear heard." Now that refers to empirical, external worldly study. God says that spiritual knowledge is not empirically or objectively available. "Neither has it entered into the heart of man." That is subjective, it is not internally perceivable, “The things which God has prepared for those who love Him.” There we are back to those things again. Those things pertaining to the Kingdom are not available through external perception nor internal rationalization.
“10 But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God.” And then in verse 14, “But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.”
Jesus is saying, these things regarding the Kingdom, are hidden from the intelligent people, meaning they're hidden from the people who think they can discover the truth with their intelligence alone. This really refers to one class of people who imagine that absolute truth can be known through the human mind.
The statement does not mean that God has withheld the truth from smart people, it just means that every person who thinks he is so smart he does not need it, is doomed. In fact, if you think you are so smart that you don't need the truth and you willfully reject it, God will then close your mind to it once and for all.
In John 12:37 Jesus had done so many miracles yet they believed not. Verse 39 says: "Therefore they could not believe." You see, it went from a personal choice to reject, to a divine affirmation of that. And in John 12:40 Isaiah says, "He blinded their eyes, hardened their heart that they should not see with their eyes nor understand with their heart and be converted and I should heal them.”
Now, who are the babes in Matthew 11:25? It is a synonym for a small child, one who doesn't have any intelligence, any education, who is just very limited. So, we have a helpless child, who can't speak, can't eat solid food, who is still nursing at his mother's breast and totally dependent.
Who are the ones who can enter into salvation? They are the dependent, not the independent. They are the humble, not the proud. They are the helpless and they recognize it. They are empty and they know it. They are aware that they have no resources in life. You have to reach the point where you abandon all of your own resources.
So, the comparison between the wise and the babes is not a comparison between smart and dumb people. It is a comparison between those who think by their own intellect they can save themselves and those who know they can't, and are totally dependent on God's grace.
In His Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5 Jesus teaches, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.” A begging spirit is a person who has no resources and knows it, who is ashamed to lift up his head. Yet he is the one who gets into the Kingdom. This was absolutely the opposite of everything that the Jews had been taught by the Pharisees and the scribes.
Further in Matthew 5: 4 it says: "Blessed are they that mourn." Who not only are aware of the poverty of their soul but who mourn over their condition. And then the next: "Blessed are the meek," who are humble. And then who are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness. They know they don't have it, they know they don't have righteousness. They know that and they hunger and they thirst for it.
And so it seemed good in God's sight. Good. Why? Because that glorifies God. And that is the supreme reason for everything in the universe. It would not glorify God if the conceited entered the Kingdom. That's why it's so very difficult, you see, to reach the prominent and famous, the people who already think they have everything, and so easy to reach the broken people by comparison.
Listen to Isaiah 57:15: "For thus says the high and lofty one who inhabits eternity, whose name is holy, I dwell in the high and holy place with Him who is of a contrite and humble spirit." Isn't that great? Man thinks that he must attain that by worshipping his intellect and his reason. And God is up there with the contrite, humble spirit.
And then he says, “To give rest to the spirit of the humble and to give rest to the heart of the contrite.” God says I give rest, but I give rest to humble people, people who are filled with contrition, brokenness, a sense of dependency. That's the kind of invitation the Lord offers. No place for pride.
In Luke 18, two men went into the temple to pray and the Pharisee said - I thank You that I'm not as other men are, like this tax collector over here. I fast twice a week, give tithes of all that I possess. He thought he was good enough with his religious intellectual pride. I'm not like other people, I'm superior.
And over in the corner was the sinner beating on his breast and saying, God, be merciful to me, a sinner. And he wouldn't even lift his head up. And Jesus said that man went home justified by God rather than the other. There's no place in God's Kingdom for pride, it's only for the humble, it's only for the babes and for the dependent.
And Jesus, the Son of God gave us an example of that! Listen to what Philippians 2:5-9 says, “5 Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, 6 who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, 7 but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men.”
8 And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. 9 Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name.” Let us remember that as we partake of the Lord’s Supper and are reminded again of His sacrifice for us.