“Come unto me all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

                 My mission trip to Brazil in ’99 was unbelievable.  I thought I’d died and gone to heaven, for three main reasons: (1) Brazilians (almost) never go to bed at night, (2) they drive like maniacs, and (3) they kiss every time they come and go, even if it’s to the bathroom!  Kissy-face, kissy-face.  Being a night person, a fast driver and a hugger, well, this was too much like heaven on earth for me.  Oh yeah, it was spiritually profitable as well.  Global Missions Fellowship asked me to go with them for a trial run of my first book in a church-planting effort.  As a group leader and teacher, I had 5 different translators over 9 days.  We saw a great number of conversions.  My one contact, 70-year-old Antonio, came to Christ after I returned home.

Something from my mission trip to Brazil reminded me of Christ giving us rest, as he promised in Matthew 11:28-29.  It was their national beverage, a soft drink called guaraná.  They drink it for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and all the time in between.  They drink so much of it, I wondered if it was hooked up to IV’s for hospital patients.  And it’s sooo good!  It cools me down and refreshes me faster than anything I’ve ever had, even Gatorade or any other sports drink.

Now, what does this have to do with Jesus being the one who gives us rest?  Everything.  That’s what rest means: refreshment.  In fact, it’s translated “refresh” more often than “rest.”  But we must be careful here.  The prefix on the Greek root word gives the idea of refreshment in the context of work.  In Hebrews chapters 3 and 4, the “rest passage” in the Bible (used 11 times from 3:11-4:11, or twenty verses), has a different prefix, making it mean, “a stoppage of work.”  What Jesus said in Matthew is that he lightens the load, or refreshes us, making our tasks easier, sort of like renewing your strength after a hot day of cutting the grass.  We see the same in another passage, 1 Peter 4:14: “If you are insulted because of the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you.”  Being insulted is a blessing?  No, being refreshed because the Lord “rests” on you is the blessing.  He refreshes you in the middle of suffering for Christ’s sake.  He renews his people.  John Foxe’s The Book of Martyrs is the best classic historical testament to this spiritual reality.  Even my wife gives testimony of the Spirit’s resting on her, giving her the sense that she was being carried and cared for with 6 weeks remaining in her pregnancy, after her first husband was gunned down in a Middle Eastern country decades ago.  God keeps his word.

So specifically, how does Jesus give rest, or refresh those that come to him?  In Matthew 11 he calls “all who are weary and burdened” to come to him.  He will give them his “yoke” to put on so they can learn from him.  That sounds like trading one burden for another, and it is.  But they’re not equal burdens.  The burden they carried was massive.  First, Jews were under the Law, all 713 commands of the spiritual, moral and civil law.  If they used the law properly, then they would agree with God on their sins and shortcomings and bring the necessary sacrifices.  Used improperly, they would do as many did — and still do today — as a way to redeem themselves by their works.  (The book of Galatians destroys that argument.)  The Pharisees thought this way too, and could have been known as the “Xtreme Sect”, turning the 713 into a legal pandemic of thousands.  And then they trumpeted the notion that only they could keep every one!  Talk about over-inflated egos! No wonder Jesus reserved his harshest words for such deceivers.

Taking off this yoke would be great, but it doesn’t stop there.  Jesus doesn’t just forgive our sins and let us run wild.  He moves us from Adam’s family to his.  And for multiple reasons, one being he saves us for relationship.  So he gives us a yoke, which in his day paired up two oxen: one older and mature, the other a newbie, an inexperienced ox that needed to be taught, guided and trained.  That’s us.  But notice: Jesus is right in there with us, with the yoke on his neck.  What’s more, before putting a yoke on any animal, yoke makers would size up the animal and custom design the yoke to fit the each animal’s form to insure that there would be no irritation or chafing.  So with a custom-fit yoke, and Jesus doing the heavy lifting and pulling, we walk alongside, learning as we go, finding out God’s will, discovering godly character, watching the Master at work.  Clearly, his “yoke is easy and [his] burden is light”.

Do you see yourself yoked with our Savior?  Are you learning and discovering as you go, or are you chafing under the yoke?  Are you trying to pull back or take it off, or are you getting your refreshment?