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Matthew 11:28-30
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.”
(ESV)
Redeemer exists to celebrate and declare the gospel of God as we grow in knowing and following Jesus Christ.
Well, good morning. It's good to be here this morning with you, and just to be able to worship together. My name is Michael Coggin. I'm so thankful just for this opportunity to serve here at Redeemer Community Church. It's hard to believe, just we've been here for 2 months.
Michael Coggin:And just, wanna say, you know, for myself, Sherry, my wife, and kids, just so thankful for your kindness, your encouragement, your words of encouragement just the past few weeks months, just very thankful for each one of you. So if you have a Bible, I'd like to invite you to turn to Matthew, chapter 11. Matthew, chapter 11. And our passage this morning is one of the most beloved passages in the New Testament. In it, the Lord summarizes his invitation to discipleship and what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ.
Michael Coggin:Just the Christian faith is different from every other religion in the world. Instead of trying to earn God's favor, which is what all religions seek to do in one form or another, the pages of scripture teach us that we can find our rest in Christ and Christ alone, that he is our salvation, that God has graciously provided for us his son. So in the midst of storms, betrayals, heartaches, or plagues, we can rest in Christ's love. That the final words, the last words of Buddha were, keep striving. Our savior, our Jesus, his final words were, it is finished.
Michael Coggin:And those are words that we can rest in. And in this passage, we'll be looking at this morning together. We'll be pressing into what it means to be in Christ, to be yoked to him, to find our rest in him and him alone. So let us look together this morning at the passage, Matthew 11 28 through 30. This is the word of the Lord.
Michael Coggin:Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart. And you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. This is the word of the Lord.
Michael Coggin:Let us pray. Father, for many of us here this morning, we're exhausted and tired. It's hard to imagine rest in this time as the anxiety understandably grows in our hearts in this season of disorientation and disruption. I personally struggle with rest for so many reasons. I pray for all of us, myself included, that you would help us to make changes in our schedules that need to be made and can be made.
Michael Coggin:Many of us here this morning, Lord, are near exhaustion and don't know it. Others of us here are truly weary and do know it. And so for those of us emotionally exhausted and mentally spent from relational challenges, disappointments, unmet expectations, betrayals, or breakdowns, even in our physical bodies, keep us from either giving up on hope or giving into foolish ways of dealing with our pain and longings of our hearts. For those of us here in this season of COVID who feel worn down, we pray that you would meet us where each one of us is at this morning. We give thanks that you pursue us and rescue us in our restlessness, that you are the Word that became flesh.
Michael Coggin:We pray that You would help quiet our hearts this morning, as we worship You. As we look to Your word, help us to hear with clarity. Help us to rest in Your love, and listen to Your tender, tender voice. In Christ's precious name, amen. So this morning, we'll be looking at just the reality that as followers of Jesus Christ, that Jesus rescues us from our restlessness.
Michael Coggin:We'll be looking at the first point, our pursuit of rest. And also in the passage that, as disciples, what it means to have a disciple's yoked heart, that all of us yoke our heart to something. And then finally, we're gonna be looking at that Jesus, and Jesus alone, heals us in our restlessness. So I wanted to start off our time by asking a question. When you hear the word rest, what are a few things that come to mind?
Michael Coggin:Maybe it's the perfect sleep number on your bed, an afternoon nap on the couch where you're finally able to relax after a long week, or reading a book at the beach or the lake. And and rest can be all of those things. And in reality, it is so much more. For all of us, it's also being able to feel safe, to be able to rest and let our guard down, to feel secure in something. And when I think back, it took almost 30 years to get back to Alabama, where we were serving at churches in Saint Louis and North Carolina.
Michael Coggin:I think back to growing up in Birmingham, and the playground of Highlands Day School, and being in elementary school, that that was not a place of rest for me, just as I was having to navigate the bullies, you know, on the on the playground in those years, the name calling, and the prospect of maybe being picked last for dodgeball, and, you know, over the years, just how that impacted my heart. But in middle school, starting to play football, and and hit my growth spurt, and just grow physically in in strength, and power just in playing football, just how slowly over time, even athleticism and physical performance really became something that I started to attach my heart to. That it was something that, hey, this is something I can rest in, that I can find some security in. Even some maybe sinful, enjoyment at getting to play some of those bullies at, high schools that will go unnamed, and getting that opportunity. But, you know, over time, I had moved from weakness physically to physical strength, and it slowly was something that I took comfort in.
Michael Coggin:And so strength was something I valued and connected my heart to, even into my early twenties. And so, you know, my wife and I, you know, just celebrated 21 years of marriage. And, and so Sherry and I talk about this, you know, thinking back to those early years in in our twenties, and think back to, you know, as I think about this passage today, really the first weekend that I met her parents, and they're actually watching, on livestream right now. This is a family favorite story that I wanted to share with you as my new church family. But just thinking about, you know, back to that weekend of wanting to impress them, wanting to impress her sisters and her brother, and, wanting to impress Sherry.
Michael Coggin:And so we drive up there, and we didn't have the day that we have today, where it's cool, and it feels like fall is right here right now, just the breeze. That day was around a 100 degrees. And my father-in-law, who loves to sail, very passionate about sailing, said, hey, why don't we go to Jordan Lake, take this my, you know, small sailboat out, and just spend the day on the lake? So we get there, and the plan was to, you know, take the boat out, and to cross the lake where there was a small beach, where we would have a picnic, and eat lunch, and kind of spend the day. So we get the boat out onto the water, and we get about 50, I would say 50 yards from the shore, and it just, the boat stops.
Michael Coggin:There's no wind, no breeze, and we're just baking in the sun. So we decide to jump in the water to cool off and swim around. And so I have to set the stage of this moment, because you have to know the Howsel family, you know, Sherry's family. The Howsel family is a swimming family. Her father swam at Oklahoma University.
Michael Coggin:Her sisters and Sherry swam competitively. So while the Housel family is a swimming family, the Coggin family is not a swimming family. We are a football family. So we're swimming around the boat, and I have this thought, like, my arms are getting tired. I probably should get back into the boat.
Michael Coggin:And as soon as I had that thought, this huge gush of wind hits the sail of the sailboat, and the boat takes off. And to this day, we laugh about this, because even though my father in law's back was termed to me, I could tell that he was smiling, and he was not looking back. And so the boat takes off, and it gets farther and farther away. And in this moment, I kid you not, it almost seemed like Sherry and her sisters seemed to kind of metamorphosize into almost like dolphins where they were like swimming and jumping out of the water, you know? And God did not design me for long distance swimming.
Michael Coggin:I would say I was divinely designed to be an anchor or a three technique for a defensive line. And so they get farther away, and one arm starts to cramp, and then another arm starts to cramp, and then a leg starts to cramp, and then the other one. And in that moment, I realize I am sinking, and I am about to drown in front of these people that I am trying to impress. And so I'm I'm presented with this, choice in this moment. Do I yell out for help, destroying this illusion of athleticism and physical dominance when I'm trying to impress Sherry's parents?
Michael Coggin:Do I cry out for help, or do I choose to drown? And I'd like to say that I chose the way of being rooted in my identity in Christ, and secure my love from Sherry, where I would call out for help. I did not cry out for help. I was like, I choose to drown. So I began to sink.
Michael Coggin:And in that moment, in Sherry's sweetness, and God is very gracious in giving me an amazing wife in Sherry, she swims back to me effortlessly, you know, like a dolphin, And it's swimming literally circles around me saying, are you okay? You know, I just wanted to check on you. And then I was presented with another opportunity to admit my position. I'm like, Oh, I'm fine. I'm just taking my time.
Michael Coggin:You know, I'm enjoying the beautiful day. And she's like, Oh, okay. And so she swims off. And so literally, I I resorted to Boy Scout water survival, troop 97, at Trinity United Methodist, in Homewood, Alabama. I'm gonna float, and then doggy paddle, float, then doggy paddle, and was able to make it across the lake.
Michael Coggin:And so when I hit the other side of the lake, they were had already started lunch, some of them had actually finished lunch. I collapsed on the beach in exhaustion, thinking, maybe I impressed them with my doggy paddling skills, and how well, I'm hyperventilating. And so why do I tell this story? I tell this story because it's so fitting for our passage today that that in my heart, and I think in all of our hearts here this morning, how we can attach our hearts to things that are not gonna satisfy. Things that actually weigh us down and sink us in life, that don't bring life, that ultimately can lead to drowning, exhaustion, and weariness.
Michael Coggin:And so why was my heart not able to rest in that moment? And if I'm honest with you, it was because of the restlessness of my heart. It was because of my sin and my need for the gospel. Need for my identity, my worth, my value, my security to be rooted in Christ and Christ alone. And usually, more times than not, you know, our restlessness is connected to idolatry.
Michael Coggin:For example, the workaholic sacrifices rest to the God of success, power, and productivity, even in marriage, parenting, or friendship, all of which are good, glorious things, we all can fall into the lie of believing that I have to be all things to all people all the time. We believe the lie that I can't be weak. I can't be vulnerable. I can't be finite. And it's the lie that we have been living under and under humanity for 1000 of years.
Michael Coggin:It's the lie of Genesis 3 where the great enemy said to us, if you eat this, you can be God. But God is greater. God has given us his son, Jesus Christ. And in so many ways, even though I've been a believer for 40 years, and it was almost 23 years since Jordan Lake, I still can take my hearts to things that don't satisfy. I still can exchange athletic performance and physical strength, where I can try to find rest in being productive.
Michael Coggin:I can find my hope, my value, even in good things, like who I am as a husband, trying to be a good dad, or even who I am as a pastor and how I care for people, or how I do counseling, where I'm seeking to find identity worth and value in those things as opposed to finding it in Jesus Christ and Christ alone. And so the question I have to be honest about, and the one you do as well, is where do I take my heart? And this is a pattern that we can see in all areas of our life. And the good news is, is that God is not silent with this question, that God is not silent about our need for rest. God's word is clear about our need for rest in so many ways that rest teaches us about who God is and who we are in relationship to him.
Michael Coggin:And so in this passage, we are presented with this famous promise by Jesus of rest. This promise is all the more striking when we think about the reality of our modern and fast paced world. You know, John Piper commenting on this passage says, The simplicity of Jesus's promise is both striking and refreshing. Jesus doesn't offer us a fourfold path to peace giving enlightenment, like the Buddha did. He doesn't give us 5 pillars of peace through submission, as Islam does.
Michael Coggin:Nor does he give us 10 ways to relieve your weariness, which we pragmatic, self help oriented 21st century Americans are so drawn to. Unique to anyone else in human history, Jesus simply offers himself as the universal solution to all that burdens us. And this is a simple promise that Jesus is giving us here. And it's actually, if we think about it, it's actually an extremely bold, bold statement. He's pretty much saying, come to me.
Michael Coggin:And the only way that this isn't a megalomaniacal lunacy is if Jesus is who he says he is. So either he is crazy and insane, power hungry, or he is who he says he is, that he is the Son of God who can give us true rest. This simple promise implies a power behind it more than sufficient to lift what weighs us down in our lives, that robs us of our peace and our rest. This imperative of Jesus, where he says, come, expresses the desire and the compassionate, loving, and tender heart of our savior. And his appeal for people to come to him as relief from the oppression and the weight of those things that we run to.
Michael Coggin:For those without a savior, it's a call to believe in him, not themselves, not other people, not things or objects, but a call for those people to believe in him. For those who are already believers, it's a call to follow him as a committed disciple. It's a call to completely turn our lives over to him. We see throughout scripture that God is calling us to rest in him and him alone, and that he is the one that brings rest. We see in Jeremiah 3125, where it says, I will refresh the weary and satisfy the faint.
Michael Coggin:In Exodus 33, it says, my presence will go with you, and I will give you rest. In Psalm 127, it says, it is useless for you to work so hard from early morning until late at night, anxiously working for food to eat. For God gives rest to his loved ones. God, and the beauty of his word, has shown us in the lives of these 3 men, in Jeremiah, in Moses, in King David, that these are human beings who experienced overwhelming seasons of stress, anxiety, and restlessness. I just want you to really hear, as I say this, that you would not be a human being if you had not felt deep, deep anxiety at some point in the past 6 months.
Michael Coggin:That this is a time and a season of disorientation, of disruption, that you are human as you feel that anxiety stirring on your heart. But throughout God's word, as well as this passage we're looking at today, we see God's promise to them is still his promise for us. I am with you, and I am for you. I am your peace, and I will give you rest. And such good news for heavy hearted days, really for any and every day.
Michael Coggin:And so me is an extremely important personal pronoun here, the me, that the Pharisees of the time, these teachers of the law that are listening to Jesus speak, that the Pharisees are basically saying, do as we say, obey this system. But the Lord Jesus said, come to me. And what's the importance of what Jesus is saying? The importance is one of the key concepts of Christianity, that Christianity is a relationship with a person of Jesus Christ. This is not a call to a program.
Michael Coggin:It's not a call to a system of a religion, nor to a church, and certainly not to some disciple or human leader. As we pursue rest, instead of going to the living water of Jesus Christ, we so often run to stagnant water and pools of our own making. And so what does it mean to be a disciple that rests and have our hearts yoked to him? And so we see in this next point that a disciple's yoke heart, that Jesus is inviting us to yoke our hearts to him, not to other things. And so what is discipleship?
Michael Coggin:It's a word that we use a lot in the church. But what does discipleship really mean in a nutshell? That discipleship is all of life more and more coming under the lordship of Jesus Christ. Whether it be our time, work, our relationships, our finances, our sexuality, leisure, all of that more and more coming under the lordship of Jesus Christ, and the peace and the fuller humanity that comes from that. We see in verse 28 where Jesus says, take my yoke.
Michael Coggin:And some of us here know what a yoke is, because maybe some of us here grew up on farms. For me, my grandparents lived on a large farm in Bay Minette, Alabama, and just have vivid memories of, you know, picking pecans and going to the barn to weigh the pecans in my grandfather's large, barn. And there being this large wooden yoke, kind of gathering dust on the wall, almost like an antique, because he had a John Deere tractor at this point. But yokes would have been something that very much the hearers of this passage, and hearers and listeners of Jesus would have understood as something that you put on a beast of burden. It attaches that beast of burden to do some work.
Michael Coggin:And every yoke attaches you to a burden. And the reality is, for us here this morning is, all of us have attached our heart to something. All of us are disciples of something. And so the question that comes up as we read this passage is, is Jesus offering us rest or work? As we look at this passage, we ask, what work must we do for him that supposedly will give us rest?
Michael Coggin:And that's an important question. And later on in John 6, Jesus answers this question where he says, this is the work of God, that you believe in him he has sent. And he also answered it in John 154 that Joel referenced several weeks ago in a sermon where Jesus says, abide in me. So the work is to believe and to abide. And that really is all the work that God requires of us.
Michael Coggin:That faith is resting on the hopeful promises of God. That this is the yoke Jesus calls for us to put on. And I think it's accurate that commentators and pastors talking about this passage really describe what's happening in this moment as a yoke exchange, where Jesus is giving us rest. Jesus is putting that yoke onto us and inviting us to take on that yoke. And he is taking the full weight of our sin onto his shoulders.
Michael Coggin:He is that sacrificial lamb that is carrying that weight of our sin, of our fear, of our shame, of our restlessness. He is taking that onto him. And he's saying, I will give you rest. And so Jesus in this moment isn't just speaking here of just physical burdens. Rather, it was the heavy burden of the system of works that the Pharisees had laid on the backs of the people that Jesus was offering to relieve.
Michael Coggin:And later on in Matthew's gospel, Jesus will rebuke the Pharisees for laying heavy burdens on the shoulders of the people. We see that in Matthew 20 3:4 verse 4. And so this yoke of the Pharisees, as it's described, is a heart that is about destroying self righteousness and legalistic law keeping. That it's said by biblical commentators and writers that this yoke of the Pharisees, that the Pharisees had added over 600 regulations just regarding what it meant to work on the Sabbath. That's not including all the other days of the week where they had added other regulations or little rules of their own creation and the the oppressive weight of that on the people.
Michael Coggin:And so for our modern ears, when we're talking about attaching ourselves to someone or someone else, it initially strikes us as a loss of our freedom, our independence to be yoked to someone else. And if we're honest, all of us here this morning, everyone we have ever known or will know is already yoked to something. And we believe, though, as Americans, that we are in charge of our lives. That it's up to us to kind of pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. Especially for us as Americans, that we take pride in our self sufficiency, take pride in our independence and our individualism.
Michael Coggin:But it's easy for us to believe the whisper of the enemy that comes from the garden in Genesis 3 that says, you do not need God. And where he whispers to us that where he says, you can be God, and you will find true freedom if you take everything onto yourself. That you can be all things to all people all the time. And so, no wonder why we're exhausted. No wonder why we feel almost like bicycle tires with a slow leak, where we get down the road, and we're kind of wondering, why do I feel totally exhausted?
Michael Coggin:Because in so many ways, the air has leaked out from our hearts and our souls, the whole person of who we are. We feel the weight and burden of thinking it's all up to us. And so, God calls us to say, no, you are not God. You are finite. You are a human being that is made in my image.
Michael Coggin:But I will give you rest. I will carry the burden. Writer and author Henry Nowron once said that, Jesus came to announce to us that an identity based on success, popularity, and power is a false identity. It's an illusion. Loudly and clearly, he says, you are not what the world makes you, but you are children of God.
Michael Coggin:But even though we are children of God, we can be so quick because of the brokenness of our hearts to descend, to yoke ourselves to so many other things besides Jesus. And Jesus is saying in this passage that he is the only one who can give us complete rest. And this is the good news of the gospel, that Jesus promises to all who come to him, that he will give them rest from the heavy burden of trying to earn our way. Rest from the oppressive yoke of self righteousness, of legalism, of performance, and the reality that we are more sinful and flawed in ourselves with our restless hearts than we ever dared believe. Yet at the very same time, we are more loved and more accepted in Jesus Christ, and rescued from that restlessness than we ever dared hope.
Michael Coggin:So Jesus alone is what brings whole hardness and true rest. In Isaiah 464, it says, even to your old age, I am he. And even to gray hairs, I will carry you. I have made and I will bear, even I will carry and will deliver you. And so finally, we see this, that Jesus heals our restlessness.
Michael Coggin:In Jesus, we have someone who heals our restlessness and understands our restless hearts. He understands our anxiety, our pain. He understands what it's like to be betrayed by friends that he's spent the past 3 years of his life with. And in a time of his need, in a time of his murder, they are nowhere to be found. He understands the sting of that betrayal, the sting of physical pain.
Michael Coggin:The reality that Jesus, because of his great, great love for me, for all of us, for you, Jesus entered into enemy occupied territory for his beloved children, for his objects of affection, and experienced this world as a human being, and yet was without sin. God's word shows us throughout the pages of scripture that he walks with us through the shadow of darkness, even the shadow of death. In the Garden of Gethsemane, we see Jesus experience a distress and a wait with what's about to happen as he moves closer to the cross. Jesus was so anguished in this moment that we who are familiar with this moment in his life, his sweat became like great drops of blood. And he fell to the ground in prayer.
Michael Coggin:Father, if you're willing, remove this cup from me. Yet still he said, nevertheless, not my will but yours be done. And he repeated this prayer 2 more times. I appreciated the writing. I read this recently from counselor and writer Zach Cooper, who said, recently, Jesus's response to the brokenness of this world shows us that psychological distress does not indicate a lack of faith.
Michael Coggin:I want to say that again. Jesus's response to the brokenness of this world shows us that psychological, emotional distress does not indicate a lack of faith. Instead, it confirms that we inhabit a world where we have much to feel distressed about. Helped by the Holy Spirit, Jesus brought his distress to his father, showcasing deep need and a dependent trust. Our response should be the same.
Michael Coggin:And that's what we see here this morning as we look at this passage. That is what we are reminded of in John 33 when he says, I have told you these things so that you may have peace. In this world, you will have trouble. But take heart, I have overcome the world. Jesus' great invitation for us is to come to him, to exchange yokes and find rest.
Michael Coggin:And that's not intended to happen in isolation. That God longs for us to do that within the context of community that is in the context of relationship, that change and healing takes place. It's in the context of relationship that we are reminded, and we hear the words of the Lord through other people, that you don't have to perform. That it took many years for me to rest and realize and hear and believe Sherry's words of her acceptance, her love. And that being this sweet taste and reminder of a greater love that God has for me, and that God has for you.
Michael Coggin:Being reminded that the life lived by faith is much lighter. It is a much lighter yoke, and much easier burden to carry than the heavy burdensome yoke of self righteousness that many of us continue to strive and perform under. So this morning, as we think about that, and as we think about this passage, let us, as followers of Jesus, take comfort in the words of a dear friend of mine who reminded me when he said, God pursues us in our restlessness. He receives us in our sinfulness. He holds us in our brokenness, and frees us from our lovelessness.
Michael Coggin:Let our hearts rest this day and all the days going forward in the finished work of Jesus Christ, and the tender love he has for us this day and every day of our lives. Let us pray. Jesus, we come to you this morning, and we give thanks for your Word. And on the cross that day, many looked and pondered what, if any good, could come from your death. And let us fix our eyes on you, Jesus.
Michael Coggin:Let Your Word transform us today. Let us fix our eyes on You, when it's so easy to fix our eyes on what's happening around us in the midst of the 24 hour news cycle, that we can so often be driven by fear and anxiety, shame, anxiety, and just distress. But Lord, let us rest and be driven by faith. Faith in your finished work, that we would be transformed by your love, that you have brought us life and hope and joy, that you enter enemy occupied territory to rescue and save your people because of your great love. And through you, Lord, we give thanks for that.
Michael Coggin:That we were once your enemies by our sin, and you have reconciled and won us over because of your life, death, and resurrection. Dear Lord Jesus, we praise, bless, and adore you for making peace between God and us. And through your finished work, we haven't just been reconciled to God, but we are now objects of your affection. That we are children of your delight. A people upon whom Abba's favor rests, and for heaven's joys are prepared.
Michael Coggin:So this day, we give honor, glory, and praise to you. In Jesus' name. Amen.