Scripture: Matthew
11:25–30
One of the challenges of setting up the readings for the
Church Year is that the first half of the year seeks to tell the story of
Jesus’ life and his work to bring salvation to sinners and the second half of
the year draws our attention to Jesus’ teaching. This means that there is some
jumping around as we read through Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in the first
half of the year, while the second half of the year tends to run in order …
sort of. Sometimes we come to parts of the gospel we have already read. For
instance, we read Matthew 11:2-15 back on the Third Sunday of Advent. Parallels
to the rest of this chapter are read from Mark or Luke in other years. So we
moved directly from the end of Matthew 10 to Matthew 11:25-30 in which Jesus
describes faith, how we come to know God in him, and the life of faith. We
should notice that Jesus rejects the notion that human reason can understand
God’s will, identifies himself as the only way to know God, and offers us rest
using an image of work.
Teaching
Jesus begins this section with a prayer thanking God that he
has hidden, “these things,” from the wise and understanding. The “these things”
referred to here are all of Jesus’ deeds associated with winning salvation for
sinners. This is a challenging thing for our society. Recently the TED Radio
Hour posted a show on the Seven Deadly Sins, in which most of the traditional
deadly sins were explored and found by science to not be sins at all. This is
reflective of humanity’s wisdom always seeking to exert itself over God and his
Word. Human wisdom cannot grasp God’s will in its fullness and often seeks to
overturn it. It is only by faith that we begin to see the wisdom of God in his
Word. This is especially case in regard to the Gospel and the way Jesus saved
us from our sins.
Another challenging idea in this reading is that no one can
know God (the Father) apart from Jesus (the Son). Our culture often tries to
make all religions equal. The Coexist bumper stickers are an example of this.
While Christians would and should certainly approve of the idea of living at
peace with others, loving our neighbors as ourselves, the subtle message of
these stickers and those who sell them is that all of the religions symbolized
on the sticker are equally valid and equally able to help us to know God. In a
world that abhors exclusive claims to God, Jesus claims to be the exclusive way
to know God.
Life
Part of the problem with both of the worldly views described
above is that they leave people with no peace or rest. When God’s Word is not
authoritative we are constantly guided by the whim of public opinion and
subjective moralities for how we should live. If all religions are equal how
can we know how to live when different religious texts disagree with one
another? Jesus gives us a solid foundation to live from, and that foundation is
his forgiveness for our sins. He shows us who we are apart from him, and gives
us the forgiveness that reconciles us with God which allows us to rest knowing
that he has taken care of everything for us.
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