Matthew chapter 11 and just the few closing verses of the chapter. These are the words of the Lord Jesus. I'm not sure if you use a red letter Bible. Uh, some think it's not a good idea to put different portions of the Bible in different colors. The idea of a red letter Bible is that the very words of the Lord Jesus are in red and they sort of stand out. But then the concern is, does that make the other portions of the Bible less valuable? And they shouldn't be, should never be. But it is helpful just to know the words of the Lord Jesus. And in verse 25 of Matthew 11, you have, at that time, Jesus answered and said, and the rest of this chapter, are all the words of the Lord. They are all very personal, they are direct to our hearts, and they are intended for us to plead and claim. I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight, All things are delivered unto me of my Father, and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father. Neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son. And he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him. Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Amen. Our Father, we pray today that you will lead us to Calvary. We've been singing about it, we've been praying about it. We ask that through your word and by these precious words in Matthew 11, that you will indeed lead us to Calvary. We pray that burdens will be lifted at Calvary today. The burden of sin the burden of our mortality, the brevity of life, that one day we must lay down this tent and cross over into the glory. Oh Lord, we pray that this will be a time when you come in grace to minister to our hearts. Thank you for each brother and sister, each believer, Thank you for the grace of the gospel and the gift of faith that you've granted to each one. Lord, speak now. Let there be a word for each heart. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. I think this statement of the Lord Jesus, come onto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest, has to be The mountain peak promise of the Lord, of all the promises that the Lord Jesus ever has given, I think this has to be one of the most precious of all, that he would give rest to our souls. Now, there are times when we need rest for our bodies. There is time to pray for the healing of our bodies. There is time to pray for physical strength and all of that. But this is rest for your soul, that part of you that is immortal, the part of you that is made in the image of God, the part of you that will never die, that will live on for all eternity. And so to find soul rest is absolutely wonderful. And to have that today, especially as we come to the communion table, which is a ministry of reminding us that the Lord Jesus hath done all for us that we would have eternal glory. That is wonderful. Now, I simply want to answer the question today. How can the Lord Jesus give us soul rest? What an amazing claim to make. Come on to me and I will give you rest. He doesn't send us to a church. He doesn't send us to a Sanhedrin or some religious center. But he personally, he says, I will do it. I will give you soul rest. And how can he do that? Well, let's look at the verse, and let's look at what preceded this, that Jesus gives rest because of his Father's authority behind the promise. The Lord just can't dish out empty promises. He has to back them up. And in verse 27, he says, all things are delivered unto me of my Father." And so what the Lord Jesus was promising, he was not giving solo. He was uniting and giving what his Father ordained. And indeed, the Lord Jesus would be the channel through which this soul rest would come. Now, in this verse 27, you will see that the Lord Jesus reveals the Father. All things are delivered unto me of my Father. And no man knoweth the Son, but the Father. Neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son. And of course, this is the reason why the Lord Jesus come into the world, to reveal the Father. The Father is pure Spirit. Jesus took a human body, and he lived in this world in a supernatural life. He lived in power and sinlessness and in victory over the world. And in every way of life, he reflected the Father. Indeed, the Bible says he is the image of the father. Could you imagine if you moved into a neighborhood, and you were living to a family next door, and the only person you ever saw was the son? You never saw the father, but you knew that he was the resident in the home, but only the son came out the door. Only the son was visible at any time, and he's the only one of the family you've met. It's the son. And from the Son, you would learn what the Father is like. And the way he talks and the promises and the statements that he makes would all reflect the will of his Father. And that way, we enjoy the knowledge of God the Father through the Lord Jesus. And through his teaching and through his grace and miracles, we learn of the nature of the father. So he reveals the father, he revels in the father, and he also reconciles us to the father. You will see here, all things are delivered onto him by the father. Jesus is the mediator. Or if you want to use another term, a broker. So if you're buying some commodity, fertilizer, whatever you might be purchasing for your farm, there may be no merchant in town, where do you go? You call up a broker, someone who can search around and get you the best bargain. And that broker will mediate for you. And they will say, this farmer, Joe Blow, he wants a hundred tons of fertilizer and we want to deliver it on a certain date. We want it at the best price. And he's working on your behalf and he delivers for you. And the Lord Jesus is like that. He is our mediator. and you call upon him to deliver to you everything that the Father has in store. And so he is our mediator, and we work through him all the time. Now, the Lord has the right to do that because he's the head of the church. He is the judge of all men. And he has all the power and authority given to him by the Father. Jesus said it himself, all power in heaven and earth is given unto me. Go ye therefore into all the world and preach the gospel. And so the gospel that we preach is backed up with the authority of the Lord and the Father. And this is our wonderful assurance. You remember the story in Genesis about Joseph when he was sold down into Egypt and he ended up becoming the prime minister of Egypt. And for the years of plenty, he gathered in the corn, filled all the barns, and then the years of famine came. And the Egyptians were crying out to Pharaoh, give us corn, give us bread. And what did he say? Go to Joseph. Go to Joseph. He was the one who was given the keys of the barns. He was the one who had the authority to dispense the grain and the bread. And he is a great type of the Lord Jesus. In fact, there is no character in the Bible that has more parallels to the life of the Lord Jesus than Joseph. A.W. Pink, the Bible writer and commentator, he has a book with 101 parallels between the life of Joseph and the life of the Lord Jesus. And that statement where Pharaoh said, go to Joseph, is really a picture the father saying, go to Jesus, go to my son, trust in him. You want soul rest, you want food for your soul, you want to be satisfied, go to Jesus in your hunger and in your need. If you have done that, What rest has already come in? And you can testify of that. You can enjoy that sweet, blessed, beloved peace that is in your soul. And you're coming today to the communion table to taste again. and you're praying by faith, Lord, nourish my faith. Feed me and nurture my faith in the Lord Jesus. Give me stronger faith in the Lord Jesus. And that's a prayer we should all make as we come to the communion table. As you know, in Hebrew, 1 Corinthians 11, that chapter where we are instructed about communion, it says that we are to discern his body. We are to eat and drink worthily with knowledge and discernment. about the body of the Lord Jesus. And Christians, Bible believers, they know Christ is the only Savior. They know that he was appointed by the Father, and they know that he's the only mediator between God and men. And with that knowledge and with that faith, we go and take the cup and we take the bread into our hands and we feed upon them as tokens of the sacrifice that the Lord Jesus made upon that cross. Now, to try and divvy this up a little further, my second point is that Jesus gives soul rest because he gives soul rest. Now, we already learned that this is rest for souls. but do we really grasp what that means in real terms? What does this rest look like and how is it experienced within our souls? Now, the Lord uses a wonderful analogy in a picture to explain this. The example of an oxen yoked to another ox or calf, a young animal perhaps, And when the oxen is pulling a cart or plowing in the field, then the young ox has to learn to follow along. But if the young ox was all by itself, maybe he's just a year old and he hasn't got all the muscle of the mature ox, he couldn't pull the weight. He couldn't do the work. But when that wooden yoke is put upon both those animals, and I'm sure in farming life you've got many of those yokes around your farmyard yet, that wooden instrument where it went around the breast of one animal and around the breast of the second animal, And then they were clamped together over their necks that formed a yoke so that they would pull the weight more equally and bear the load equally. Well, that's a wonderful picture of the Lord Jesus coming alongside you and me and bearing the burden. He is that strong ox that takes up the heavy load, and he bears us along. That really is the picture of the Christian life, of being borne along by the power of the Lord, and he undertakes for us in this way. The Lord never sends you to do his work alone. He promises, go ye into all the world and preach the gospel. And lo, I am with you always. And so we can serve the Lord with that assurance that he will be our burden bearer along the way. And it means that you place yourself in step with all the purposes and the will of God in Christ. Never be afraid. of being in the very center of God's will. And when you are in that place of obedient and that knowledge that this is where God would have me to be, he will help you. He will be your burden bearer to carry you along. It also means that we are to live a life of submission. Take my yoke upon you, he says. This is to submit ourselves, and I think here we often fail, and we end up doing the work alone. We end up feeling that we're doing it in our own strength because we haven't submitted to the yoke. Now, think about the young animal again. Think of the plow that has to be pulled or the cart that has to be dragged along. And that young animal will not submit to the yoke. He's kicking against it and fighting it, and not really going along with the other ox. And so he's trying to do it alone. And you can see the trouble, the problems, and how it won't work. And likewise in our lives, when we try to do things alone, When we don't submit, when we don't get into line with what the Lord would have us do, we end up carrying the load alone. And so the testimony of the Christian is, I can do all things through Christ, which strengthens me. It's Jesus and me. I can't do it alone. If the Lord goes with me, I can do it. If the Lord carries me along, I can do it. and there is this unison of working together. Now, it's a wonderful thing to be united to the Lord Jesus because he really is an easy master, and he is a good master to serve. Now, anyone who does not serve the Lord Jesus is still serving someone, and the unsaved, the ungodly, are serving the devil. And he is a hard taskmaster. He is the one that takes from us and takes from us and takes from us. He will take everything away from you. And we see that in the ungodly. We see that in the world. And of course, he will take their soul too. And he will take them down to hell, to eternal damnation, because they will not submit to Christ, the devil becomes their master, and they end up with all the burden of sin and the burden of destruction. And we've got to realize that souls are led captive by the devil, and he just drags them along in his spiritual chains, dragging them down to perdition. And so we today are rejoicing that we have Christ as our master. He's a good master. He loves us. He cares for our souls, and he will lead us all the way to glory. He will never cast us off, but he will bring us home to glory, and we must rest in the grace that is in the Lord Jesus. Now, to help us do that, we have a whole series of examples in the gospel accounts where the Lord Jesus was so gracious and kind. Think of all the people he met. The widow of Nain, there's that sorrowing widow on the way to the graveside to bury her son. And the Lord intercepted and raised her son to life. And there was a woman with a terrible burden of grief, and the Lord gave her hope, raised her son. And a widow, of course, would have been left perhaps totally alone. But now she had her son returning home again. Think of the beggars, the blind beggars that Jesus met. And while others would have said to Bartimaeus, hush, quiet, don't disturb the master, the Lord said, let him come to me. None were a burden to him. Jairus' daughter, the woman of Samaria, the sinful woman that washed Jesus' feet, all of these who came to Christ He lifted their burdens, every one of them. You cannot name in the Bible one where the Lord refused, except perhaps for the rich young man. And the reason was that he loved the world too much. He loved his riches too much, and he went away sorrowful without the Savior. Now, the Lord will give you that rest. just as he was compassionate to everyone that came to him in his earthly life. Today, the Lord Jesus is saying to you, come unto me. He's inviting you, come unto me. And as you heed his invitation, and as you come afresh to the Lord Jesus, he will receive you. Now, I say afresh because even though we may be Christians for some time, we come again and again. In this communion table, there is a sense in which we are coming anew. We're coming again to the same Lord Jesus, whose love is so infinite, so full. that he can meet with us and that he will receive us again and again. And if you come today and take that bread and say, Lord Jesus, you died for me, you suffered in your body on the cross for me, and you shed your blood for me, you can take all the sweetness, all the blessedness of that to your own heart. Now that's necessary. That's what faith does. That's a work of faith. This communion table cannot be handled mechanically. It cannot be handled empty-mindedly. You must receive it by faith. And after all, that bread doesn't satisfy physical hunger. It's only a tiny little piece. You're not going to get very much. And the cup, it's a small little sip, and they are but little symbols. They are reminders of Calvary. Jesus' body, kneeled to the cross, his blood poured out. And you to come in faith to receive, and that your faith will be nurtured and strengthened so that you are more and more yoked to the Lord Jesus. That's what faith does. Faith yokes us more and more to the Lord Jesus. Now, Jesus gives us rest because it's an unconditional invitation. Come unto me all ye that labor under heavy laden. There's no conditions here. There's no restrictions, no limitations. All ye that labor. And everyone that comes, he gives rest. So come all. Then you are told to come with your labor. Whatever your burden is, if it was an unsaved person, your burden of sin, bring that burden with you. This is not a call to get rid of the burden yourself and then come. You come with your burden. You come laden, loaded with your burden, your problems. Come with your fears. Fears of a life's future and death's finality, heaven or hell, and Jesus will give you rest, assurance in your soul. Come with your failures. Now we don't have to backtrack very far to find our failures, do we? We only have to go back maybe through one week. What opportunities we missed. What time we wasted. What prayerlessness perhaps. Maybe we tried to pray and you couldn't pray. Or what time you opened your Bible but you didn't really get much. And so we feel. We can be strong one day and very weak the next. And so we are to come here to the Lord Jesus with our failures. And even when we've really flaunted it and really broken our testimony, we can still come back to the Lord with our failures. Then come with your heartaches. There are things that are not our fault. They would not necessarily be our own sins, but they break our hearts. They cause us great angst and concern, and maybe today you have a heartache. Bring it to the Lord Jesus. Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden. Bring that heartache. that burden of mind and soul onto the Lord Jesus. Come with your sins. Maybe I've covered that. Come right to the cross and say, Lord Jesus, wash me, cleanse me, make me whole again. Then come with your weariness. Ah, do we not have to say that, Lord Jesus? I'm weary. I've been bidden in the Bible to be not weary in well-doing, but I am weary. My mind is weary, my body is weary, and I come with a very weak attitude. Now, these are burdens that can weigh heavily on you. But the Lord Jesus promises, come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. And he says, take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart. And this is the only time in the gospels where the Lord Jesus refers to his own heart. This is his nature. He's meek. He's lowly. He will not drive you away. He is gentle and gracious. Now, when you come to the Lord Jesus, I give you my age old advice. You never stop looking at yourself or your sin problems or your failures until you get to the cross. If you stop looking at yourself and focusing upon your own emptiness, that will defeat you. There's no victory in yourself. You've got to come looking onto Jesus until you get to the cross and plead the power of the victory of the Lord Jesus at Calvary upon your own soul. Now, many commentators say that these words and these promises were given to people who were under the burden of Judaistic, Levitical, ceremonial worship. All the washing of cups and plates and what to wear and how far to travel and all the commandments that were made by men, the traditions of men. Many say the Lord Jesus was really countering the untold burden of religiosity. That's not our gospel. The gospel of Christ is a gospel of liberty that sets us free from all of these things. I like to read today Romans 5.1, therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God. That's liberty, that's freedom, that's acceptance with God. And Jesus frees us from so many things, from the alarms of conscience, the terrors of the law. He frees us from the fear of the judgment day. How am I going to stand before God in my rags? Well, I will have the righteousness of the Lord Jesus. So the question, are you burdened by sin, failure, or guilt? Do your sins cry out against you? Do you want peace in your inner being? Well, here is the Savior's call. Come unto me. That's not the pastor saying, come to me. That's the Lord Jesus himself. saying, come unto me. The pastor can only point you to the Lord, direct you to go to him, fall at his feet, cry to him for mercy, and he will not cast you out. He will not leave you burdened. He will receive you and lift those burdens and send you off rejoicing. He is indeed the good shepherd who giveth his life for the sheep to defend them, to save them, to keep them. And this is our Lord Jesus. Now, what about communion today? Should you come? Does Jesus say to you today, take the cup and take the bread in remembrance of me? Yes, he does. He invites you in your weakness, in your weariness perhaps, come, take, eat, drink, remember me. And he invites you to find new strength, in the nourishment of this communion feast. It's called the Lord's Supper because it is a spiritual feast. And we don't feast our bodies, but we feast our souls. And we look away beyond these little tiny symbols, and we look away to the man of Calvary, and we see the sacrifice. And we have peace with God through the blood and the gospel of the Lord Jesus. Now, if you say, well, I've never asked the Lord to be my savior. No, you can't come. If you're saying, I just can't accept that Jesus is the mediator and the only one that can give me peace, then you can't come. You're not bidden to come. But if you will recognize that Jesus is the son sent by the father, he's the savior of sinners, then you're bidding to come, come onto me and I will give you rest and he'll bring new peace, new grace into your soul. And when it comes to age limits, I don't know how you, We manage that here in Australia, but in Canada, in America, we have an age limit of 16. And that's sort of where we say, well, when a young person is 16 and they're professing faith in Christ and they want to participate in the Lord's Supper, then we say, yes, that's wonderful that you want to show your faith and eat and drink to remember the Lord Jesus. And may you be encouraged today to come. and to participate and to enter into this wonderful grace of the Lord Jesus. We have a hymn 349 and we'll