Rest for Our Souls

Jesus understands our weakness and draws close to us in our need. Today, Sinclair Ferguson beckons us to come near to the One who provides rest for our weary souls.

Yesterday on Things Unseen, we were talking about how the gospel writer Luke emphasizes that Jesus grew in favor with God. Some Christians, I think, have found that a very startling statement, but in fact, it’s a very important statement about our Lord’s true humanity. He was truly man as well as truly God. His humanity had exactly the same properties as ours, sin apart. And we’d started to think about this because of this question: What is Jesus really like? It’s so important to ask that question. Otherwise, Jesus is little more than a figment of our imagination, our own personal Jesus invented in our own minds who doesn’t actually have much relationship to the person who’s described in the pages of the New Testament. That’s where we need to go, where we need to soak our minds and affections if we’re going to know the real Jesus. So where do we begin?

Of course, we can begin, as it were, at the beginning, and we got close to that yesterday, when we were thinking about what Luke tells us about Jesus when He was twelve years old. But here’s another place to begin: it’s what Jesus said about Himself.

And of all the things He said about Himself, perhaps Matthew 11:25–30 is the most obvious passage to look at. There, Jesus identifies Himself as the Son of God, the only One who knows God fully, the only One who can reveal the Father to us. “No one knows the Father,” He says, “except the Son and those to whom the Son reveals Him.” And it’s then that He adds these words: “So come to Me, all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn from Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”

I think I mentioned before that the old Anglican prayer book describes these as the “comfortable words” of our Lord Jesus Christ. It doesn’t mean that they wrap us in cotton wool. The word “comfort” comes from the Latin cum forte, “with strength.” That’s what Jesus offers to us here. He invites those who are conscious of their weakness and their sin to come to Him and find rest. The real Jesus understands our human condition. He knows all about our weakness and our need.

And He also invites us to wear His yoke and promises that when we do, we will find rest. You maybe know there’s an old tradition—I’m sure it’s without any basis in history, but nonetheless, it’s very telling—an old tradition that says that the sign outside Joseph’s carpenter shop in Nazareth read, “Our yokes fit well.” It’s a lovely picture, isn’t it? We are burdened, we are weighed down with our weakness and our weariness with our sin and with our guilt. And there’s a kind of yoke of conscience that says, “You need to do better,” but what we need to be is united, or yoked, to the Lord Jesus, and then we will discover rest for our souls.

That’s what the real personal Jesus is like. He’s a Savior whose yoke will fit well on us as we yield to Him. He is a Savior who brings to us all the blessings God has stored up for us, and Jesus describes that as rest. And I think if we can listen to that promise the way the original hearers probably did, it will become even more marvelous to us because what was lost in the fall was rest. And what was longed for—think for example, of Noah’s time. What was longed for when Noah’s parents gave him his name was rest. They actually seemed to have hoped that he would be the man promised in Genesis 3:15, who would bring deliverance from the evil one and, at last, give spiritual rest. And that’s why they gave him the name Noah, because it sounds like the Hebrew word for “rest.” And in a sense, they were given some rest, but not the ultimate rest they needed. So then later, God’s people were given another picture of rest—rest in the promised land—but it was only a picture.

So now at last, Jesus is saying, “The rest that people have longed for throughout the ages, the peace of mind and heart that they crave, the rest that can be found only in coming to Me and trusting in Me and leaving behind and turning away from everything else—that rest is now being offered to you, and it’s being offered to you by Me, and you’ll find it in Me.”

I’m reminded of the words of one of my favorite hymn writers, Horatius Bonar:

I heard the voice of Jesus say, “Come unto me and rest; Lay down, thou weary one, lay down Thy head upon my breast.” I came to Jesus as I was, Weary and warn and sad, I found in him a resting place, And He has made me glad.

That puts in a nutshell what we most need, doesn’t it? Rest. And when you know and trust the real Jesus, who speaks to you in Matthew 11:25–30, you find that peace and that rest.

So today, let’s come again to this Lord Jesus. Or perhaps you need to come to Him for the very first time and discover that He’s meek and lowly in heart, and He invites you Himself to come to Himself. Come then, let’s trust Him and find rest.