Audio Transcript

Christ is our Sabbath rest. We celebrate this beautiful truth every Lord’s Day, every Sunday. But what about on a day like today, on Monday? Is Christ my Sabbath rest today, at work? That’s Pam’s question for you, Pastor John, a good one. “Pastor John, hello,” she writes. “Christ is our Sabbath rest. A hearty amen to that wonderful truth — to the degree that I understand it, and I don’t think I fully understand it quite yet! This seems to mean a lot more than Christ has set apart one day of rest for us, the Lord’s Day, Sunday. At the very end of APJ 658, you called Christ our ‘eternal rest,’ and that means, you said, ‘pervading all our work . . . we are restful in Christ.’ Can you explain this to me? How is Christ our Sabbath rest even while we are working?”

If we had time, we would dig into Hebrews 3 and 4, because there, that amazing author presents an argument for the present rest of the people of God and the future eternal rest for the people of God. He urges us in Hebrews 3:19 and 4:1 to “fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it [the rest]” — meaning, “fear unbelief,” because belief is the only way into the rest of Jesus Christ, both now and in the future.

“The burden and the yoke of the lordship of Jesus is easy and light.”

But we don’t have time to do that — as much as I’d love to — and I want to go straight to Pam’s main question: “How do we experience the Sabbath rest of Christ at work?” In other words, what meaning does it have, while we’re expending great energy, to speak of enjoying the restfulness of Christ in that very moment of wearying exertion?

Christ’s Easy Yoke

The text that I have in mind now is not Hebrews, but Matthew 11:28–30, where Jesus says, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 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. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” The burden and the yoke of the lordship of Jesus is easy and light.

In the midst of our labor — our strenuous efforts to do our very best in our vocation — the submission at that moment to the demands of Jesus is called a restful experience. “You will find rest for your souls” precisely in the midst of your exertions to do your job with excellence for his glory. What is that experience like? I think that’s what Pam’s really asking. What is it like working as hard as you can and, in the very doing of it, experiencing Christ as our soul’s rest? Not just after it, not just before it, but in it — in the very exertion of our life’s work? Here are four ways that we can experience the soul rest of Christ as we are doing our work.

1. Justified by God

First, we work with the sweet assurance that we stand already justified before God — not on the basis of our work, but on the basis of faith alone in Christ’s work — even as we work. How sweet are these words: “Now to the one who works [and he has in mind working for justification, working to get right with God], his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. And to the one who does not work [for justification, to get right with God] but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness” (Romans 4:4–5).

If we don’t get this right, nothing will be right. Our souls enjoy the glorious, precious, sweet restfulness of knowing that we are right with God through faith alone and that the work we are doing — sweat on our face, weariness in our bones, exhaustion in our minds — is not done to get right with God. We are delivered from the horrible torment of soul that thinks, “I must work. I must do a good job so that I can get right with God, or so that I can get a right standing before God.” That kind of restlessness, anxiety, and striving is over. The verdict has been rendered by the King of heaven: “Not guilty, my son.” “Not guilty, my daughter.” So, go about your work with a deep restfulness of soul.

2. Loved by God

In Christ, we work hard with the thrilling energy that we are loved by God very personally and forever. Ephesians 2:4 is an amazing verse. Paul says that God’s “great love” — I think it’s the only place in his letters where he uses that very phrase — “made us alive together with Christ” (Ephesians 2:4–5). That means we were dead, and he made us alive because of love before we did anything to get that love. We do not work with the restless, nervous anxiety of trying to win the affections of a lover that we’re not sure of. If we’re alive in Christ, it was great love that put us there already.

Picture this analogy to feel what it means to work out of the thrilling energy of being loved. Suppose I have been dating Noël — who’s now been my wife for 54 years, but this was true once upon a time — for just several weeks, and I feel very strong affections welling up in me. I’m thinking, “This is the woman I want to marry,” but I’m not sure what her affections are yet. Then the day comes when she needs some heavy lifting done for her as she moves — a dozen boxes or so, books, furniture — from one apartment to another.

I go to her apartment to help her move, and as I start to go down the stairs to where she has everything packed up, she puts her hand on my arm, and I turn to look at her, and she says right into my eyes for the first time, “I love you, Johnny.” What happens to my exhausting work that afternoon? Oh my goodness, there flows into it a thrilling energy of being loved! There is in the exhaustion of the heavy boxes a restfulness of soul, of not wondering anymore, “Am I loved?” I am loved. I am loved!

Of course, the analogy breaks down a little bit because God doesn’t need any help with lifting heavy boxes. I get that, but the principle is the same. He gives me the privilege of serving his purposes in the world, and he takes away all of its burdensomeness by saying, “I love you. I’ve got you. I love you! I choose to love you.”

3. Helped by God

The analogy of Noël’s love, however, is not nearly good enough to capture the point. God’s love doesn’t stand by, like Noël stood by, and watch us lift the boxes of life — watch us do our job at work. He doesn’t stand by and watch, counting on us to muster the energy because we’re loved. His love commits him to help us. He steps into our lives by his Spirit within us and becomes the kind of energy that turns our work into something far greater than mere human achievement, even in response to love. It becomes a kind of God-wrought miracle that gets him praise and touches other people in ways we can’t begin to explain when we’re operating in the strength of God.

“There is a restfulness in work because God is an inexhaustible helper in our work.”

I say this because in 1 Peter 4:11, Peter says, “[Let] whoever serves [you could say works], [serve or work] by the strength that God supplies — in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.” In other words, there is a restfulness in work because God is an inexhaustible helper in our work, so that our energy is really — in a profound sense — his energy supplied to us.

4. Peace in Christ

Therefore, the obstacles that always meet us in our work and that formerly robbed us of peace and restfulness, and filled us with anxiety don’t have that effect anymore, because now we know that “nothing is too hard for [the Lord]” (Jeremiah 32:17). Nothing. He works everything together for our good (Romans 8:28).

For at least those four reasons, we can speak of Christ being our rest — rest for our souls — even in the very exertion of our daily work.

http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/14870022/does-be-angry-mean-make-sure-youre-angry

Although Jesus was not the first to use parables in his teaching, his extensive use of them was a distinct feature of his teaching style. But why? Some suggest that he simply harnessed the power of story to enhance his teaching. But Jesus himself explains why he used parables, and he grounds his explanation in a network of Old Testament texts, with Isaiah 6:9–10 as the star of the show.

Grasping Jesus’s purpose provides valuable lessons for our understanding and proclamation of the gospel.

Lest They Turn

Jesus’s explanation for why he teaches in parables is embedded within the parable of the sower and soils. (Although this parable is recorded in all three Synoptic Gospels, we will focus on Matthew’s version.)

The parable comes at the beginning of an extended section of parables focused on the nature of God’s kingdom (Matthew 13:1–52). After Jesus tells the crowd the parable of the sower (Matthew 13:1–9), the disciples ask him privately why he speaks to the crowds in parables (Matthew 13:10). Jesus responds by highlighting their privileged position as disciples: God has chosen to reveal the secrets of the kingdom to them (Matthew 13:11–12, alluding to “mystery” language used in Daniel). He then directly answers their question:

This is why I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. Indeed, in their case the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled that says: “You will indeed hear but never understand, and you will indeed see but never perceive.” For this people’s heart has grown dull, and with their ears they can barely hear, and their eyes they have closed, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and turn, and I would heal them. (Matthew 13:13–15, citing Isaiah 6:9–10)

Jesus’s statement that he teaches in parables alludes to Psalm 78:2 (which Matthew cites explicitly in Matthew 13:35), but the sensory malfunction language (ears that do not hear, eyes that do not see, hearts and minds that are dull) anticipates the quote from Isaiah 6:9–10. Why does Jesus turn here to explain his purpose to the disciples?

Unseeing Eyes, Unhearing Ears

In its original context, Isaiah 6:9–10 is part of God’s commission to Isaiah as a prophet. In response to seeing Yahweh exalted on his throne, Isaiah responds to Yahweh’s question, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” with an emphatic, “Here I am! Send me” (Isaiah 6:1–8). Verses 9–10 then give the content of Isaiah’s message to rebellious Israel. God commissions him to denounce their spiritual deafness, blindness, and hardness of heart — the realities that keep Israel from responding to God’s call to repentance and restoration.

This was not a new response for Israel. It had been this way since Moses’s day, who used similar sensory malfunction language to describe Israel (Deuteronomy 29:2–4). Elsewhere, Scripture connects this sensory malfunction language to the effects of idolatry. Those who worship idols become like them, having eyes that cannot see, ears that cannot hear, and hearts that do not understand (Isaiah 44:9–20; Psalm 115:3–8).

“The parables are more like thermometers than thermostats; they reveal a person’s spiritual condition.”

But when Jesus cites Isaiah 6:9–10 and applies it to the listening crowds, he is doing more than simply identifying a recurring pattern in redemptive history. Notice that Jesus introduces the words of Isaiah 6:9–10 by saying, “Indeed, in their case the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled” (Matthew 13:14). The sensory malfunction and hardness of heart directed toward Jesus is the culmination of that pattern. The climactic nature of God’s revelation of himself in Jesus leads to a heightened level of sensory malfunction and hardness of heart that fills up the significance of previous occurrences of this pattern.

Wrapping Pearls in Parables

Jesus teaches in parables in order to expose a person’s spiritual condition. The parables are more like thermometers than thermostats; they reveal a person’s spiritual condition more than they determine it. That is why Jesus repeatedly says, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear” (Matthew 11:15; 13:9, 43). Those who have been made spiritually alive and are now able to hear the voice of the Son of God (John 5:25–26) must respond by obeying Jesus’s word. They must be not merely hearers of the word, but doers (James 1:22).

By contrast, the parables further harden those whose spiritual eyes, ears, hearts, and minds have malfunctioned because of their idolatrous rebellion against God. “For those without ears to hear, parables seem to conceal more than they reveal, so that superficial hearing and seeing do not lead to true spiritual understanding or perception,” Craig Blomberg writes (Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament, 46). The parables are thus a way of speaking the good news of the kingdom to the crowds while at the same time not casting pearls before swine (Matthew 7:6). As D.A. Carson puts it, Jesus teaches in parables “in such a way as to harden and reject those who are hard of heart and to enlighten — often with further explanation — his disciples” (Matthew, 309).

John also uses Isaiah to explain the people’s rejection of Jesus (John 12:36–43). Despite all the signs Jesus did, they did not — in fact, could not — believe in him, which fulfilled the words of Isaiah 53:1. Indeed, the reason they could not believe in him is explained by a citation of Isaiah 6:9–10. After quoting the prophet, John explains that “Isaiah said these things because he saw his [Jesus’s] glory and spoke of him” (John 12:41). In other words, the exalted Lord whom Isaiah saw sitting on the throne of heaven was none other than Christ himself (Isaiah 6:1–5). Thus, Isaiah foretold the rejection of Jesus nearly seven hundred years before he was born.

Simply put, Jesus teaches in parables to demonstrate the need for divine revelation to understand the mysteries of the kingdom and to reveal the spiritual condition of his listeners. Both of these realities are grounded in his understanding of Isaiah 6:9–10.

Eye-Opening God

The way that Jesus and the New Testament authors use Isaiah 6:9–10 teaches us at least three important lessons.

First, the gospel was hidden in plain sight in the Old Testament but is now revealed through the person and work of Jesus Christ. On the one hand, the New Testament makes it clear that the good news of Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of the Old Testament hope. At the same time, the way that Christ fulfills the Old Testament hope is unexpected in many respects.

Second, God must open a person’s spiritual senses to rightly perceive the gospel. By fallen nature, we come into this world as spiritually dead sinners with hearts of stone (Ephesians 2:1–3; Ezekiel 36:26). Apart from God’s Spirit making us spiritually alive (Ephesians 2:4–6), giving us eyes to see (2 Corinthians 4:6) and hearts that are responsive to God (Ezekiel 36:26–27), no one ever comes to faith in Christ. If we trust in Jesus, our hearts should be filled with gratitude that God has opened our eyes to see the beauty of Christ, because none of us deserves such a privilege. There is no room for arrogance in the kingdom. No one comes to know Christ because he is smarter or wiser than others. As believers, we should marvel at the fact that God has opened our eyes to see “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6).

Finally, truly understanding these realities will make us people of prayer. All our efforts to share the gospel with others should be bathed in prayer. Learning how to respond to common questions about Jesus, the Bible, and Christianity is wise, but our ability to explain and defend the gospel is not what enables people to repent and believe in Jesus. This truth frees us from the anxiety that comes from thinking a person’s response to the gospel depends on how well we communicate.

Instead, we can confidently pray for God to do what only he can do. We can pray that, as he did with Lydia (Acts 16:14–15), God would open our hearers’ eyes to see the beauty of Christ, open their ears to hear the good news, and replace their heart of stone with a heart of flesh that responds to God in faith and obedience.