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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Although all of Pilgrim’s parking areas have yet to be striped, the City of Kilgore Friday awarded our new Parish Hall with Sunday School Classrooms its long-awaited Certificate of Occupancy, thanks be to God! Thanks also to all those who, humanly speaking, made the new building possible, not only over the two years that work on it has been underway in one fashion or another, but also in the years of planning beforehand—in some cases, people who helped early on have since moved on and, in other cases, people who have come since have helped more recently. Especially in the last six months of seemingly endless Saturday workdays, many have “labored” and may feel particularly “heavy laden”. For them and for all, the “rest” that Jesus speaks of in today’s Gospel Reading may be particularly appealing. This morning we consider today’s Gospel Reading under the theme, “Jesus gives us eternal rest”.
In the context of St. Matthew’s Divinely‑inspired Gospel account, today’s Gospel Reading comes after Jesus was denouncing the cities of Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum, where most of His mighty works had been done—denouncing them because they did not repent (Matthew 11:20‑24). As St. Matthew tells it, apparently Jesus’s consideration of the mystery of who does not repent and who does repent at that time led Him to thank (or “praise” or, perhaps best, “confess”) to His Father, the Lord of Heaven and Earth, three different things (see, for example, Michel, TDNT 5:214), and we will consider each of these three things in turn.
The first of the three things that Jesus “confesses” to His Father is that the Father has “hidden” things, apparently the things related to salvation, from the “wise and understanding” and revealed them to “little children”, for such was His gracious will (or “good pleasure”, as the N‑I‑V our previous Bible translation put it). Jesus extends Old Testament teaching about those who consider themselves to be wise and understanding (Isaiah 29:14), which teaching St. Paul, for example, will also continue (1 Corinthians 1:19). In the context of St. Matthew’s Gospel account, Jesus certainly seems to be equating those who did not repent with those who consider themselves to be wise and understanding but in fact are not wise and understanding, at least not wise and understanding in things related to salvation. And, it is not the case that the Father does not want them to be saved, as if He intentionally “hides” the teaching of repentance and salvation from them, but rather it is the case that such people were not willing to repent and so these things were effectively hidden from them.
We should ask ourselves whether or not we truly repent of our sins, whether or not we have labored trying to save ourselves by keeping the law, whether or not we are heavy laden from our sins. Our Lutheran Confessions find in today’s Gospel Reading reference to contrition (or “sorrow” over sin), anxiety, and the terrors of sin and death (Apology of the Augsburg Confession XII:44). Are we truly sorry for our sinful nature and all of our actual sins of thought, word, and deed? Do we really want to do better? Or, do we have no intention of doing better and full intend to keep on sinning in the same ways that we have sinned before? When we fail to truly repent, we risk grace being “hidden” from us (Pieper, II:31) and ultimately suffering in hell. There is a fine line there, between desiring to do what is right and knowing that we may keep on doing evil. In today’s Epistle Reading (Romans 7:14-25a), we hear St. Paul describe the war being waged between His “inner being” (or, we might say, “redeemed nature”) and his “members” (or, we might say, his “sinful nature”). We are just as wretched as he was, but, thanks be to God, we can also be delivered from our bodies of death through Jesus Christ our Lord!
The second of the three things that Jesus is said to “confess” is that the Father has handed over to Him all things, including the revelation of the Father to those whom the Son “chooses” (or, perhaps better, is “willing” to reveal Him). We who repent are such “little children” to whom our Triune God has revealed the things about salvation, in keeping with His gracious will, or good pleasure (confer 1 Corinthians 1:2 and Galatians 1:15-16). With all the attributes of God communicated to Him (Formula of Concord Solid Declaration VIII:55), the God-man Jesus Christ, Who is Himself the revelation of the Father, Divine Wisdom in the flesh, extends to us, who by our own reason or strength cannot believe in Jesus Christ our Lord or come to Him (Small Catechism II:6), the Holy Spirit-empowering invitation to come to Him for rest. As He Himself says, Jesus is gentle and lowly in heart; He fulfills the prophecy of today’s Old Testament Reading (Zechariah 9:9-12). For our righteousness and salvation, Jesus not only entered into Jerusalem humble and mounted on a donkey, but He humbled Himself unto death mounted on a cross. Jesus actively kept the law perfectly for us, and on the cross He passively paid the price for our failure to keep it. When we come to Him in faith, sorrowing over our sinful nature and all our actual sins, believing that for His sake the Father forgives our sins, and wanting to do better, then the Father does just that: for Jesus’s sake, the Father forgives our sinful nature and all our actual sins of thought, word, and deed, whatever our sins might be.
The third of the three things that Jesus is said to “confess” is that all who labor and are heavy laden should, in effect, “do” three things: come to Him for rest, take Jesus’s easy yoke and light burden upon themselves, and learn from Him, Who is gentle and lowly in heart. To be sure, we find Jesus—and the “rest” that He promises to give us—where He promises to be, that is, in His Word read and preached and administered with water in Holy Baptism, to individuals in Holy Absolution, and with bread and wine in the Sacrament of the Altar. At the Baptismal Font, Jesus fully and completely reveals the Father to even little children, the likes of whom notably praised Jesus as He entered Jerusalem humble and mounted on a donkey (Matthew 21:16). After private confession, pastors in the stead and by the command of Jesus forgive individuals their sins in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. And, on this Altar, Jesus Himself is present with His Body in bread and His Blood in wine to give us the “rest” of the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. Such a presence of the Lord has long been associated with rest (for example, Exodus 33:14), and our Lutheran Confessions recognize that the Sacrament of the Altar was instituted and ordained primarily for those “who are heartily terrified because of their many and great sins, [those] who consider themselves unworthy of this noble treasure and the benefits of Christ because of their great impurity, and [those] who perceive their weakness in faith, deplore it, and heartily wish that they might serve God with a stronger and more cheerful faith and a purer obedience” (Formula of Concord Solid Declaration VII:69-70). Note well that Jesus’s empowering call to come, take, and learn in all these ways is resistible, but, if we do not ignore it as others have done (for example, Isaiah 28:12 and Jeremiah 6:16), we will find rest for our souls, and so we can be certain of our rest and salvation in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Now, I almost hate to tell you this, but we are not yet at the time for full and complete rest. You may recall from the Old Testament the “rest” of the Sabbath Day, of the Sabbath Year, of the Promised Land, and of the like. Yet, the Divinely‑inspired author of the book of Hebrews points out that even for the people who entered the Promised Land there remained a Sabbath rest, for they did not yet completely rest from their works as God did from His on the first Seventh Day (Hebrews 4:8-10). We may next week bless and enter the new Parish Hall with Sunday School Classrooms, but there is still work to be done—in our facilities, in our congregation’s life together in the forgiveness of sins, in our witness to the community at large, and the like. Yet, even as Jesus on the cross has finished the work of salvation for us, His easy yoke carries us and His light burden unburdens us (Bernhard, cited by Lenski, ad loc Mt 11:30, 459). The “rest” for which we prayed in the Collect, for example, is the rest that is at life’s end.
This morning in considering today’s Gospel Reading, we have considered each of the three things that Jesus “confesses”: the Father’s hiding things about salvation from those who do not truly repent, Jesus’s revealing those things about salvation to those who do truly repent, and so also Jesus’s giving us who do truly repent rest for our souls. More than rest from the building process of the last several years, as welcome as that rest is, to be sure, we join Jesus in confessing and thanking and praising the Father for the “rest” that the Triune God gives us from our sins, namely, that, by grace through faith, “Jesus gives us eternal rest”.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +