Verses 1-30
Chapter 11
Matthew 11:1-30
is a chapter in which Jesus is speaking all the time; and, as he speaks
to different people and about different things, we hear the accent of
his voice vary and change. It will be of the greatest interest to look
one by one at the six accents in the voice of Jesus.
The Accent Of Confidence (Matthew 11:1-6)
11:1-6 And when
Jesus had completed his instructions to the twelve disciples, he left
there to go on teaching and to go on making his proclamation in their
towns.
When John had heard in
prison about the things that the Anointed One of God was doing, he sent
to him and asked him through his disciples: "Are you the One who is to
come, or, must we go on expecting another?" "Go back," said Jesus, "and
give John the report of what you are hearing and seeing. The blind are
having their sight restored, and the lame are walking; the lepers are
being cleansed, and the deaf are hearing; the dead are being raised up,
and the poor are receiving the good news. And blessed is the man who
does not take offence at me."
The career of John had ended in disaster. It was not John's
habit to soften the truth for any man; and he was incapable of seeing
evil without rebuking it. He had spoken too fearlessly and too
definitely for his own safety.
Herod Antipas of Galilee had paid a visit to his brother in
Rome. During that visit he seduced his brother's wife. He came home
again, dismissed his own wife, and married the sister-in-law whom he had
lured away from her husband. Publicly and sternly John rebuked Herod.
It was never safe to rebuke an eastern despot and Herod took his
revenge; John was thrown into the dungeons of the fortress of Machaerus
in the mountains near the Dead Sea.
For any man that would have been a terrible fate, but for John
the Baptist it was worse than for most. He was a child of the desert;
all his life he had lived in the wide open spaces, with the clean wind
on his face and the spacious vault of the sky for his root And now he
was confined within the four narrow walls of an underground dungeon. For
a man like John, who had perhaps never lived in a house, this must have
been agony.
In Carlisle Castle there is a little cell. Once long ago they
put a border chieftain in that cell and left him for years. In that cell
there is one little window, which is placed too high for a man to look
out of when he is standing on the floor. On the ledge of the window
there are two depressions worn away in the stone. They are the marks of
the hands of that border chieftain, the places where, day after day, he
lifted himself up by his hands to look out on the green dales across
which he would never ride again.
John must have been like that; and there is nothing to wonder
at, and still less to criticize, in the fact that questions began to
form themselves in John's mind. He had been so sure that Jesus was the
One who was to come. That was one of the commonest titles of the Messiah
for whom the Jews waited with such eager expectation (Mark 11:9; Luke 13:35; Luke 19:38; Hebrews 10:37; Psalms 118:26).
A dying man cannot afford to have doubts; he must be sure; and so John
sent his disciples to Jesus with the question: "Are you he who is to
come, or shall we look for another?" There are many possible things
behind that question.
(i) Some people think that the question was asked, not for
John's sake at all, but for the sake of his disciples. It may be that
when John and his disciples talked in prison, the disciples questioned
whether Jesus was really he who was to come, and John's answer was: "If
you have any doubts, go and see what Jesus is doing and your doubts will
be at an end." If that is the case, it was a good answer. If anyone
begins to argue with us about Jesus, and to question his supremacy, the
best of all answers is not to counter argument with argument, but to
say, "Give your life to him; and see what he can do with it." The
supreme argument for Christ is not intellectual debate, but experience
of his changing power.
(ii) It may be that John's question was the question of impatience. His message had been a message of doom (Matthew 3:7-12).
The axe was at the root of the tree; the winnowing process had begun;
the divine fire of cleansing judgment had begun to burn. It may be that
John was thinking: "When is Jesus going to start on action? When is he
going to blast his enemies? When is the day of God's holy destruction to
begin?" It may well be that John was impatient with Jesus because he
was not what he expected him to be. The man who waits for savage wrath
will always be disappointed in Jesus, but the man who looks for love
will never find his hopes defeated.
(iii) Some few have thought that this question was nothing less
than the question of dawning faith and hope. He had seen Jesus at the
Baptism; in prison he had thought more and more about him; and the more
he thought the more certain he was that Jesus was he who was to come;
and now he put all his hopes to the test in this one question. It may be
that this is not the question of a despairing and an impatient man, but
the question of one in whose eyes the light of hope shone, and who
asked for nothing but confirmation of that hope.
Then came Jesus' answer; and in his answer we hear the accent of
confidence. Jesus' answer to John's disciples was: "Go back, and don't
tell John what I am saying; tell him what I am doing. Don't tell John
what I am claiming; tell him what is happening." Jesus demanded that
there should be applied to him the most acid of tests, that of deeds.
Jesus was the only person who could ever demand without qualification to
be judged, not by what he said, but by what he did. The challenge of
Jesus is still the same. He does not so much say, "Listen to what I have
to tell you," as, "Look what I can do for you; see what I have done for
others."
The things that Jesus did in Galilee he still does. In him those
who were blind to the truth about themselves, about their fellow-men
and about God, have their eyes opened; in him those whose feet were
never strong enough to remain in the right way are strengthened; in him
those who were tainted with the disease of sin are cleansed; in him
those who were deaf to the voice of conscience and of God begin to
listen; in him those who were dead and powerless in sin are raised to
newness and loveliness of life; in him the poorest man inherits the
riches of the love of God.
Finally comes the warning, "Blessed is he who takes no offence
at me." This was spoken to John; and it was spoken because John had only
grasped half the truth. John preached the gospel of divine holiness
with divine destruction; Jesus preached the gospel of divine holiness
with divine love. So Jesus says to John, "Maybe I am not doing the
things you expected me to do. But the powers of evil are being defeated
not by irresistible power, but by unanswerable love." Sometimes a man
can be offended at Jesus because Jesus cuts across his ideas of what
religion should be.
The Accent Of Admiration (Matthew 11:7-11)
11:7-11 When
they were going away, Jesus began to speak to the crowds about John.
"What did you go out to the desert to see?" he said. "Was it a reed
shaken by the wind? If it was not that, what did you go out to see? Was
it to see a man clothed in luxurious clothes? Look you, the people who
wear luxurious clothes are in kings' houses. If it was not that, what
did you go out to see? Was it to see a prophet? Indeed it was, I tell
you, and something beyond a prophet. This is he of whom it stands
written: 'Look you, I am sending before you my messenger, who will
prepare your way before you.' This is the truth I tell you--amongst
those born of women no greater figure than John the Baptizer has ever
emerged in history. But the least in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater
than he is."
There are few men to whom Jesus paid so tremendous a tribute as
he did to John the Baptizer. He begins by asking the people what they
went into the desert to see when they streamed out to John.
(i) Did they go out to see a reed shaken by the wind? That can
mean one of two things: (a) Down by the banks of the Jordan the long
cane grass grew; and the phrase a shaken reed was a kind of proverb for
the commonest of sights. When the people flocked to see John, were they
going out to see something as ordinary as the reeds swaying in the wind
on Jordan's banks? (b) A shaken reed can mean a weak vacillator, one who
could no more stand foursquare to the winds of danger than a reed by
the river's bank could stand straight when the wind blew.
Whatever else the people flocked out to the desert to see, they
certainly did not go to see an ordinary person. The very fact that they
did go out in their crowds showed how extraordinary John was, for no one
would cross the street, let alone tramp into the desert, to see a
commonplace kind of person. Whatever else they went out to see, they did
not go to see a weak vacillator. Mr. Pliables do not end in prison as
martyrs for the truth. John was neither as ordinary as a shaken reed,
nor as spineless as the reed which sways with every breeze.
(ii) Did they go out to see a man clothed in soft and luxurious
garments? Such a man would be a courtier; and, whatever else John was,
he was not a courtier. He knew nothing of the courtier's art of the
flattery of kings; he followed the dangerous occupation of telling the
truth to kings. John was the ambassador of God, not the courtier of
Herod.
(iii) Did they go out to see a prophet? The prophet is the
forthteller of the truth of God. The prophet is the man in the
confidence of God. "Surely the Lord God does nothing, without revealing
his secret to his servants the prophets" (Amos 3:7).
The prophet is two things--he is the man with a message from God, and
he is the man with the courage to deliver that message. The prophet is
the man with God's wisdom in his mind, God's truth on his lips, and
God's courage in his heart. That most certainly John was.
(iv) But John was something more than a prophet. The Jews had,
and still have, one settled belief. They believed that before the
Messiah came, Elijah would return to herald his coming. To this day,
when the Jews celebrate the Passover Feast, a vacant chair is left for
Elijah. "Behold I will send you Elijah the prophet, before the great and
terrible day of the Lord comes" (Malachi 4:5).
Jesus declared that John was nothing less than the divine herald whose
duty and privilege it was to announce the coming of the Messiah. John
was nothing less than the herald of God, and no man could have a greater
task than that.
(v) Such was the tremendous tribute of Jesus to John, spoken
with the accent of admiration. There had never been a greater figure in
all history; and then comes the startling sentence: "But he who is least
in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater than he."
Here there is one quite general truth. With Jesus there came
into the world something absolutely new. The prophets were great; their
message was precious; but with Jesus there emerged something still
greater, and a message still more wonderful. C. G. Montefiore, himself a
Jew and not a Christian, writes: "Christianity does mark a new era in
religious history and in human civilization. What the world owes to
Jesus and to Paul is immense; things can never be, and men can never
think, the same as things were, and as men thought, before these two
great men lived." Even a non-Christian freely admits that things could
never be the same now that Jesus had come.
But what was it that John lacked? What is it that the Christian
has that John could never have? The answer is simple and fundamental.
John had never seen the Cross. Therefore one thing John could never
know--the full revelation of the love of God. The holiness of God he
might know; the justice of God he might declare; but the love of God in
all its fulness he could never know. We have only to listen to the
message of John and the message of Jesus. No one could call John's
message a gospel, good news; it was basically a threat of destruction.
It took Jesus and his Cross to show to men the length, breadth, depth
and height of the love of God. It is a most amazing thing that it is
possible for the humblest Christian to know more about God than the
greatest of the Old Testament prophets. The man who has seen the Cross
has seen the heart of God in a way that no man who lived before the
Cross could ever see it. Indeed the least in the Kingdom of Heaven is
greater than any man who went before.
So John had the destiny which sometimes falls to men; he had the
task of pointing men to a greatness into which he himself did not
enter. It is given to some men to be the signposts of God. They point to
a new ideal and a new greatness which others will enter into, but into
which they will not come. It is very seldom that any great reformer is
the first man to toil for the reform with which his name is connected.
Many who went before him glimpsed the glory, often laboured for it, and
sometimes died for it.
Someone tells how from the windows of his house every evening he
used to watch the lamp-lighter go along the streets lighting the
lamps--and the lamp-lighter was himself a blind man. He was bringing to
others the light which he himself would never see. Let a man never be
discouraged in the Church or in any other walk of life, if the dream he
has dreamed and for which he has toiled is never worked out before the
end of the day. God needed John; God needs his signposts who can point
men on the way, although they themselves cannot ever reach the goal.
Violence And The Kingdom (Matthew 11:12-15)
11:12-15 "From
the days of John the Baptist until now, the Kingdom of Heaven is taken
by storm, and the violent take it by force. For up to John all the
prophets and the Law spoke with the voice of prophecy; and, if you are
wiping to accept the fact, this is Elijah who was destined to come. He
who has ears to hear let him hear."
In Matthew 11:12
there is a very difficult saying, "The kingdom of heaven has suffered
violence, and men of violence take it by force." Luke has this saying in
another form (Luke 16:16):
"Since then the good news of the Kingdom of God is preached, and every
one enters it violently." It is clear that at some time Jesus said
something in which violence and the kingdom were connected, something
which was a dark and a difficult saying, which no one at the time fully
understood. Certainly Luke and Matthew understood it in different ways.
Luke says that every man storms his way into the Kingdom; he
means, as Denney said, that the "Kingdom of heaven is not for the
well-meaning but for the desperate," that no one drifts into the
Kingdom, that the Kingdom only opens its doors to those who are prepared
to make as great an effort to get into it as men do when they storm a
city.
Matthew says that from the time of John until now the Kingdom of
heaven suffers violence and the violent take it by force. The very form
of that expression seems to look back over a considerable time. It
indeed sounds much more like a comment of Matthew than a saying of
Jesus. It sounds as if Matthew was saying: "From the days of John, who
was thrown into prison, right down to our own times the Kingdom of
heaven has suffered violence and persecution at the hands of violent
men."
It is likely that we will get the full meaning of this difficult
saying by putting together the recollection of Luke and Matthew. What
Jesus may well have said is: "Always my Kingdom will suffer violence;
always savage men will try to break it up, and snatch it away and
destroy it; and therefore only the man who is desperately in earnest,
only the man in whom the violence of devotion matches and defeats the
violence of persecution will in the end enter into it." It may well be
that this saying of Jesus was originally at one and the same time a
warning of violence to come and a challenge to produce a devotion which
would be even stronger than the violence.
It seems strange to find in Matthew 11:13
that the Law is said to speak with the voice of prophecy; but it was
the Law itself which confidently declared that the voice of prophecy
would not die. "The Lord your God will raise up for you a Prophet like
me from among you, from your brethren." "I will raise up for them a
prophet like you from among their brethren; and I will put my words in
his mouth" (Deuteronomy 18:15; Deuteronomy 18:18 http://www.crossbooks.com/verse.asp?ref=Dt+18%3A18).
It was because he broke the Law, as they saw it, that the orthodox Jews
hated Jesus; but, if they had only had eyes to see it, both the Law and
the prophets pointed to him.
Once again Jesus tells the people that John is the herald and
the forerunner whom they have awaited so long--if they are willing to
accept the fact. There is all the tragedy of the human situation in that
last phrase. The old proverb has it that you can take a horse to the
water, but you cannot make him drink. God can send his messenger but men
can refuse to recognize him, and God can send his truth but men can
refuse to see it. God's revelation is powerless without man's response.
That is why Jesus ends with the appeal that he who has ears should use
them to hear.
The Accent Of Sorrowful Rebuke (Matthew 11:16-19)
11:16-19 "To
what will I compare this generation? It is like children in the
market-place, calling to their companions, and saying, 'We piped to you
and you did not dance; we wailed and you did not mourn.' For John came
neither eating nor drinking, and they say, 'The man is mad.' The Son of
Man came eating and drinking, and they say, 'Look you, a gluttonous man
and a wine-drinker, the friend of tax-collectors and sinners.' But
wisdom is shown to be right by her deeds."
Jesus was saddened by the sheer perversity of human nature. To
him men seemed to be like children playing in the village square. One
group said to the other: "Come on and let's play at weddings," and the
others said, "We don't feel like being happy today." Then the first
group said, "All right; come on and let's play at funerals," and the
others said, "We don't feel like being sad today." They were what the
Scots call contrary. No matter what was offered, they found a fault in
it.
John came, living in the desert, fasting and despising food,
isolated from the society of men; and they said of him, "The man is mad
to cut himself off from human society and human pleasures like that."
Jesus came, mixing with all kinds of people, sharing in their sorrows
and their joys, companying with them in their times of joy; and they
said of him, "He is a socialite; he is a party-goer; he is the friend of
outsiders with whom no decent person would have anything to do." They
called John's asceticism madness; and they called Jesus' sociability
laxness of morals. They could find a ground of criticism either way.
The plain fact is that when people do not want to listen to the
truth, they will easily enough find an excuse for not listening to it.
They do not even try to be consistent in their criticisms; they will
criticize the same person, and the same institution, from quite opposite
grounds. If people are determined to make no response they will remain
stubbornly unresponsive no matter what invitation is made to them. Grown
men and women can be very like spoiled children who refuse to play no
matter what the game is.
Then comes Jesus' final sentence in this section: "Wisdom is
shown to be right by her deeds." The ultimate verdict lies not with the
cantankerous and perverse critics but with events. The Jews might
criticize John for his lonely isolation, but John had moved men's hearts
to God as they had not been moved for centuries; the Jews might
criticize Jesus for mixing too much in ordinary life and with ordinary
people, but in him people were finding a new life and a new goodness and
a new power to live as they ought and a new access to God.
It would be well if we were to stop judging people and churches
by our own prejudices and perversities; and if we were to begin to give
thanks for any person and any church who can bring people nearer to God,
even if their methods are not the methods which suit us.
He Accent Of Heartbroken Condemnation (Matthew 11:20-24)
11:20-24 Then
he began to reproach the cities in which the most numerous of his deeds
of power had been done, because they did not repent. "Alas for you
Chorazin! Alas for you Bethsaida! For, if the deeds of power which
happened in you had happened in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented
in sackcloth and ashes long ago. But I tell you, it will be easier for
Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgment than for you! And you Capernaum,
is it not true that you have been lifted up to heaven? You will go down
to Hell, for, if the deeds of power which happened in you had happened
amongst the men of Sodom, they would have survived to this day. But I
tell you--it will be easier for the land of the men of Sodom in the day
of judgment than for you."
When John came to the end of his gospel, he wrote a sentence in
which he indicated how impossible it was ever to write a complete
account of the life of Jesus: "But there are also many other things
which Jesus did; were every one of them to be written, I suppose that
the world itself could not contain the books that would be written." (John 21:25). This passage of Matthew is one of the proofs of that saying.
Chorazin was probably a town an hour's journey north of
Capernaum; Bethsaida was a fishing village on the west bank of Jordan,
just as the river entered the northern end of the lake. Clearly the most
tremendous things happened in these towns, and yet we have no account
of them whatever. There is no record in the gospels of the work that
Jesus did, and of the wonders he performed in these places, and yet they
must have been amongst his greatest. A passage like this shows us how
little we know of Jesus; it shows us--and we must always remember
it--that in the gospels we have only the barest selection of Jesus'
works. The things we do not know about Jesus far outnumber the things we
do know.
We must be careful to catch the accent in Jesus' voice as he
said this. The Revised Standard Version has it: "Woe to you, Chorazin!
Woe to you, Bethsaida!" The Greek word for woe which we have translated
"alas" is ouai (Greek #3759);
and ouai expresses sorrowful pity at least as much as it does anger.
This is not the accent of one who is in a temper because his self-esteem
has been touched; it is not the accent of one who is blazingly angry
because he has been insulted. It is the accent of sorrow, the accent of
one who offered men the most precious thing in the world and saw it
disregarded. Jesus' condemnation of sin is holy anger, but the anger
comes, not from outraged pride, but from a broken heart.
What then was the sin of Chorazin, of Bethsaida, of Capernaum,
the sin which was worse than the sin of Tyre and Sidon, and of Sodom and
Gomorrah? It must have been very serious for again and again Tyre and
Sidon are denounced for their wickedness (Isaiah 23:1-18 ; Jeremiah 25:22; Jeremiah 47:4; Ezekiel 26:3-7; Ezekiel 28:12-22), and Sodom and Gomorrah were and are a byword for iniquity.
(i) It was the sin of the people who forgot the responsibilities
of privilege. To the cities of Galilee had been given a privilege which
had never come to Tyre and Sidon, or to Sodom and Gomorrah, for the
cities of Galilee had actually seen and heard Jesus. We cannot condemn a
man who never had the chance to know any better; but if a man who has
had every chance to know the right does the wrong, then he does stand
condemned. We do not condemn a child for that for which we would condemn
an adult; we would not condemn a savage for conduct which we would
condemn in a civilized man; we do not expect the person brought up in
the handicaps of a city slum to live the life of a person brought up in a
good and comfortable home. The greater our privileges have been, the
greater is our condemnation if we fail to shoulder the responsibilities
and accept the obligations which these privileges bring with them.
(ii) It was the sin of indifference. These cities did not attack
Jesus Christ; they did not drive him from their gates; they did not
seek to crucify him; they simply disregarded him. Neglect can kill as
much as persecution can. An author writes a book; it is sent out for
review; some reviewers may praise it, others may damn it; it does not
matter so long as it is noticed; the one thing which will kill a book
stone dead is if it is never noticed at all for either praise or blame.
An artist drew a picture of Christ standing on one of London's
famous bridges. He is holding out his hands in appeal to the crowds, and
they are drifting past without a second look; only one girl, a nurse,
gives him any response. Here we have the modern situation in so many
countries today. There is no hostility to Christianity; there is no
desire to destroy it; there is blank indifference. Christ is relegated
to the ranks of those who do not matter. Indifference, too, is a sin,
and the worst of all, for indifference kills.
It does not burn a religion to death; it freezes it to death. It
does not behead it; it slowly suffocates the life out of it.
(iii) And so we are face to face with one great threatening
truth--it is also a sin to do nothing. There are sins of action, sins of
deed; but there is also a sin of inaction, and of absence of deeds. The
sin of Chorazin, of Bethsaida, and of Capernaum was the sin of doing
nothing. Many a man's defence is: "But I never did anything." That
defence may be in fact his condemnation.
The Accent Of Authority (Matthew 11:25-27)
11:25-27 At
that time Jesus said: "I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth,
that you have hidden these things from the wise and the clever, and have
revealed them to babes. Even so, Father, for thus it was your will in
your sight. All things have been delivered to me by my Father; and no
one really knows the Son except the Father, and no one really knows the
Father except the Son, and he to whom the Son wishes to reveal his
knowledge."
Here Jesus is speaking out of experience, the experience that
the Rabbis and the wise men rejected him, and the simple people accepted
him. The intellectuals had no use for him; but the humble welcomed him.
We must be careful to see clearly what Jesus meant here. He is very far
from condemning intellectual power; what he is condemning is
intellectual pride. As Plummer has it, "The heart, not the head, is the
home of the gospel." It is not cleverness which shuts out; it is pride.
It is not stupidity which admits; it is humility. A man may be as wise
as Solomon, but if he has not the simplicity, the trust, the innocence
of the childlike heart, he shuts himself out.
The Rabbis themselves saw the danger of this intellectual pride;
they recognized that often simple people were nearer God than the
wisest Rabbi. They had a parable like this. Once Rabbi Berokah of Chuza
was in the market of Lapet, and Elijah appeared to him. The Rabbi asked,
"Is there among the people in this market-place anyone who is destined
to share in the life of the world to come?" At first Elijah said there
was none. Then he pointed at one man, and said that that man would share
in the life of the world to come. Rabbi Berokah went to the man and
asked him what he did. "I am a jailer," said the man, "and I keep men
and women separate. At night I place my bed between the men and the
women so that no wrong will be committed." Elijah pointed at two other
men, and said that they too would share in the life to come. Rabbi
Berokah asked them what they did. "We are merry-makers," they said.
"When we see a man who is downcast, we cheer him up. Also when we see
two people quarrelling with one another, we try to make peace between
them." The men who did the simple things, the jailer who kept his
charges in the right way, the men who brought a smile and peace, were in
the kingdom.
Again, the Rabbis had a story like this: "An epidemic once broke
out in Sura, but in the neighbourhood of Rab's residence (a famous
Rabbi) it did not appear. The people thought that this was due to Rab's
merits, but in a dream they were told ... that it happened because of
the merits of a man who willingly lent hoe and shovel to someone who
wished to dig a grave. A fire once broke out in Drokeret, but the
neighbourhood of Rabbi Huna was spared. The people thought it was due to
the merits of Rabbi Huna,...but they were told in a dream that it was
due to the merits of a certain woman, who used to heat her oven and
place it at the disposal of her neighbours." The man who lent his tools
to someone in need, the woman who helped her neighbours as she could had
no intellectual standing, but their simple deeds of human love had won
them the approval of God. Academic distinctions are not necessarily
distinctions in the sight of God.
"Still to the lowly soul
He doth himself impart,
And for his dwelling and his throne
Chooseth the pure in heart."
This passage closes with the greatest claim that Jesus ever
made, the claim which is the centre of the Christian faith, that he
alone can reveal God to men. Other men may be sons of God; he is The
Son. John put this in a different way, when he tells us that Jesus said,
"He who has seen me has seen the Father" (John 14:9).
What Jesus says is this: "If you want to see what God is like, if you
want to see the mind of God, the heart of God, the nature of God, if you
want to see God's whole attitude to men--look at me!" It is the
Christian conviction that in Jesus Christ alone we see what God is like;
and it is also the Christian conviction that Jesus can give that
knowledge to anyone who is humble enough and trustful enough to receive
it.
The Accent Of Compassion (Matthew 11:28-30)
11:28-30 "Come
to me, all you who are exhausted and weighted down beneath your burdens,
and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of 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."
Jesus spoke to men desperately trying to find God and
desperately trying to be good, who were finding the tasks impossible and
who were driven to weariness and to despair.
He says, "Come unto me all you who are exhausted." His
invitation is to those who are exhausted with the search for the truth.
The Greeks had said, "It is very difficult to find God, and, when you
have found him, it is impossible to tell anyone else about him." Zophar
demanded of Job: "Can you find out the deep things of God?" (Job 11:7).
It is Jesus' claim that the weary search for God ends in himself. W. B.
Yeats, the great Irish poet and mystic, wrote: "Can one reach God by
toil? He gives himself to the pure in heart. He asks nothing but our
attention." The way to know God is not by mental search, but by giving
attention to Jesus Christ, for in him we see what God is like.
He says, "Come unto me all you who are weighted down beneath
your burdens." For the orthodox Jew religion was a thing of burdens.
Jesus said of the Scribes and Pharisees: "They bind heavy burdens, hard
to bear, and lay them on men's shoulders" (Matthew 23:4).
To the Jew religion was a thing of endless rules. A man lived his life
in a forest of regulations which dictated every action of his life. He
must listen for ever to a voice which said, "Thou shalt not."
Even the Rabbis saw this. There is a kind of rueful parable put
into the mouth of Korah, which shows just how binding and constricting
and burdensome and impossible the demands of the Law could be. "There
was a poor widow in my neighbourhood who had two daughters and a field.
When she began to plough, Moses (i.e. the Law of Moses) said, 'You must
not plough with an ox and an ass together.' When she began to sow, he
said, 'You must not sow your field with mingled seed.' When she began to
reap and to make stacks of corn, he said, 'When you reap your harvest
in your field, and have forgotten a sheaf in the field, you shall not go
back to get it' (Deuteronomy 24:19), and 'you shall not reap your field to its very border' (Leviticus 19:9).
She began to thresh, and he said, 'Give me the heave-offering, and the
first and second tithe.' She accepted the ordinance and gave them all to
him. What did the poor woman then do? She sold her field, and bought
two sheep, to clothe herself from their fleece, and to have profit from
their young. When they bore their young, Aaron (i.e. the demands of the
priesthood) came and said, 'Give me the first-born.' So she accepted the
decision, and gave them to him. When the shearing time came, and she
sheared them, Aaron came and said, 'Give me the first of the fleece of
the sheep' (Deuteronomy 18:4).
Then she thought: 'I cannot stand up against this man. I will slaughter
the sheep and eat them.' Then Aaron came and said, 'Give me the
shoulder and the two cheeks and the stomach' (Deuteronomy 18:3).
Then she said, 'Even when I have killed them I am not safe from you.
Behold they shall be devoted.' Then Aaron said, 'In that case they
belong entirely to me' (Numbers 18:14).
He took them and went away and left her weeping with her two
daughters." The story is a parable of the continuous demands that the
Law made upon men in every action and activity of life. These demands
were indeed a burden.
Jesus invites us to take his yoke upon our shoulders. The Jews
used the phrase the yoke for entering into submission to. They spoke of
the yoke of the Law, the yoke of the commandments, the yoke of the
Kingdom, the yoke of God. But it may well be that Jesus took the words
of his invitation from something much nearer home than that.
He says, "My yoke is easy." The word "easy" is in Greek chrestos (Greek #5543),
which can mean well-fitting. In Palestine ox-yokes were made of wood;
the ox was brought, and the measurements were taken. The yoke was then
roughed out, and the ox wigs brought back to have the yoke tried on. The
yoke was carefully adjusted, so that it would fit well, and not gall
the neck of the patient beast. The yoke was tailor-made to fit the ox.
There is a legend that Jesus made the best ox-yokes in all
Galilee, and that from all over the country men came to him to buy the
best yokes that skill could make. In those days, as now, shops had their
signs above the door; and it has been suggested that the sign above the
door of the carpenter's shop in Nazareth may well have been: "My yokes
fit well." It may well be that Jesus is here using a picture from the
carpenter's shop in Nazareth where he had worked throughout the silent
years.
Jesus says, "My yoke fits well." What he means is: "The life I
give you is not a burden to gall you; your task is made to measure to
fit you." Whatever God sends us is made to fit our needs and our
abilities exactly.
Jesus says, "My burden is light." As a Rabbi had it: "My burden
is become my song." It is not that the burden is easy to carry; but it
is laid on us in love; it is meant to be carried in love; and love makes
even the heaviest burden light. When we remember the love of God, when
we know that our burden is to love God and to love men, then the burden
becomes a song. There is an old story which tells how a man came upon a
little boy carrying a still smaller boy, who was lame, upon his back.
"That's a heavy burden for you to carry," said the man. "That's no' a
burden," came the answer. "That's my wee brother." The burden which is
given in love and carried in love is always light.
-Barclay's Daily Study Bible (NT)