When I was growing up, my mother was my teacher of Christian ethics. She would quote the same proverb over and over: “If you’re going to talk the talk, you had better walk the walk”. She usually reserved it for the occasions when I wasn’t acting in a Christ-like manner. It goes in fellowship with “practice what you preach” or “talk is cheap” or even “actions speak louder than words”. They all come with the same message: check your hypocrisy. My mother was telling me that if I’m going to wear a cross around my neck, carry a Bible, and proclaim myself as a Christian, I had better act like it.
If we’re going to talk the talk of a Christian, we need to walk with Christ and we better be acting like Him because actions do indeed come in louder and clearer than any WWJD bracelet (or the prayer beads I carry in my pocket) or passive word that flows from our mouths. “How do we do that?”, you may ask. Well, thankfully in Matthew’s gospel, Jesus gave us an unmistakably clear answer.
Verse 28 begins with an invitation: “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest (NRSV)”. Chuck Smith called this a “wonderful invitation”. Jesus is pulling up a chair, so we can sit down with Him and have a chat. He wants to hear from us, He wants us to unload all our baggage, not for our own sake or to pet our bruised and damaged egos, because once we are able to let go of our baggage, we will be open to His assistance.
This baggage can be so many things in our lives. We struggle with all sorts of things. Some of us lie, some of us steal, some of us struggle with sexual sins, many of us struggle with bitterness, and I struggle with doubt and self-loathing on a daily basis. Yes, I’m preaching to myself as well as you. Additionally, Christ wasn’t just talking to the followers of John the Baptist or other Hellenistic people. His messages are still applicable and are the “same yesterday and today and forever (Hebrews 13:8 NRSV)”. Which means, you, me, and we need to lend an ear to what He’s trying to say to us. He’s trying to tell us that what we struggle with is not so different from what John, His disciples, and countless other people mentioned in the Gospels dealt with in their lives? Don’t believe me? Thumb through the stories and count how many of those people who share something in common with you.
First comes the invitation. Jesus just welcomed us to His table and listened to us pour out our hearts. He might have even nodded in understanding, hummed in sympathy, or placed a hand on our shoulder while we unloaded. Now, as we take a deep breath to steady ourselves, He’s getting ready to give a prescription to help us overcome the things we struggle with.
In Verse 29, He gives us a direct order: “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle, and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls (NRSV)”. Wait…what? We just went from an offer of rest and repose to a command of action from which we will find rest? This may sound paradoxical, but it really does make sense. If we are going to proclaim Jesus Christ as our King, we must submit ourselves to Him completely. We must submit ourselves to God’s service and learn what His Son will teach us. This isn’t an idle path to walk as much as we might want it to be. C. H. Spurgeon pointed out to his congregation that “Every active Christian will tell you he is never happier than when he has much to do; and, on the whole, if he communes with Jesus, never more at rest than when he has least leisure. Look not for your rest in the mere enjoyments and excitements of religion but find your rest in wearing a yoke which you love, and which, for that reason, is easy to your neck.” The rest Christ is promising us is the release from all that baggage we just unloaded at Jesus’ doorstep.
By submitting ourselves to the yoke of Christ, we are allowing ourselves to be open to His teachings and He just said that He will be a gentle and humble teacher. Spurgeon also said, “The rest before us is rest through learning. Does a friend say, "I do not see how I am ever to get rest in working, and rest in suffering?" My dear brother, you never will except you go to school, and you must go to school to Christ.” This means that we must lay aside all the things that prevent our finding that rest, including our past prejudices, self-pity, and preconceived notions of what our lives should be. Because our ways really are not God’s ways or Christ’s ways. Our timing may be good or bad timing, but God’s timing is always perfect. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather rely on God’s perfection that my own imperfection.
This is the promise that Jesus closes out with, He said in verse 30, “For my yoke is easy and my burden is light (NRSV)”. Coming from the Savior who would later hang on a cross for the sins of the world, this may seem like a rather extraordinary statement for Him to make. However, His burden wasn’t light because He was taking the easy path and living for Himself. No. Jesus’ burden was light because He wanted to please His Father. He lived to please His Father. When we live to please our eternal Father, when we live like the Savior of whom we proclaim, it is an easier burden. We see it time and time again from the Word and in our own lives that when we live to please ourselves, the burden of the carnal desires is much heavier and spoiler alert, it makes us miserable.
We live in a time and place where we are encouraged to please ourselves and mocked or in some parts of the world persecuted when we choose to follow Christ. In our lives, in our current day and age, we are beset by division, dissent, difficulty. In all these the many movements by which we are surrounded, the many efforts we make in our lives, we make in the attempt to rest. Christ comes to us offering us this rest. He promises that he can provide rest from the things that make us heavy laden. On the one hand, if we want the rest, we must actually come to him, we cannot delude ourselves by thinking we can provide our own rest with our own power. We must not believe that our own resources be factors that we see at work currently in the exterior world or our interior world has the power to grant our rest. Only in coming unto Christ and trusting in him, can this rest be gained. He, himself, is our promised rest. And yet, when he offers us his rest, he describes likewise, as a yoke, as a burden, as a learning. We cannot merely speak or think ourselves into this rest. Restful abiding in Christ is the same as walking with Christ. It cannot merely be “talking the talk” and not “walking the walk”
So. Wear the bracelet, by all means. Carry the prayer beads. Wear your “I love Jesus” t-shirts. Post those Bible verses on Facebook and talk about how much you love God. It won’t hurt anyone, and I pray that it brings those you interact with to Christ. All I ask that you remember is this: if you do all those things but you don’t act out the beliefs you claim to hold dear. It will drown out all the messages that you hope to send because it will be accurately interpreted as mere lip service. It will drive people from Christ when they need Him the most. Talk the talk, but if you do, please for the love of God, walk the walk.
