January 4 2026
Matthew 11:20-30
Happy New Year! Can you believe that once again we find ourselves facing another brand new year? Well, the good news is that right here, at the beginning of yet another year, the wisdom of the church calendar proves to be very helpful. If you remember back to the beginning of the season of Advent we said that this is when the church has its new year according to the church calendar. What we learn during Advent is God’s plan to give us a hope and a future. This plan, we also discovered, was also tied to God’s plan to give us peace through our willingness to to be at peace with our neighbors. This then, was followed by the joy of God causing us to rejoice no matter what our circumstances. Finally, above all, God longs for us to know the the certainty of his love for all people, a love that binds our life together with the life of God so that we might know God. So there in Advent we waited for these promises God made to us to become at last real to all of us. We longed for the day when our life might at last be filled with hope, that we could find a way to experience a lasting peace, that joy could bubble up within us and love at last would be the very way of life for all people. This day arrived at last, the day we know as Christmas, the day when the baby Jesus was at last born. Here at last was the long awaited king in the line of David who would usher in an era marked by hope in the hearts of all people, a time of lasting peace, an age of abounding joy and steadfast love. This is the truth that Paul understood so well for he writes in the first chapter of Second Corinthians, that Jesus is the, “Yes”, to all of God’s promises.
What this means for us as we face this new year is that instead of being filled with dread and despair, we can instead greet this new year with a living hope within us. Instead of expecting a year full of drama and stress, we instead are ready to experience peace as we seek the peace of others. We can also know that this does not have to be a year of chasing after every new thing that we believe will bring us happiness because we now know where a deep and abiding joy can be found. So, yes, this is the year that love is going to rule our life. We can look at this year so differently all because we have been given a gift whose name is Jesus.
So, we have gone through the season of Advent, which was the four weeks of the church calendar, and then a new season called Christmas began when the birth of Jesus was celebrated. The season of Christmas lasts only twelve days as we might know from singing the song, “The Twelve Days of Christmas”. So, beginning on the seventh of January we enter yet another season which the church calls, “Epiphany”. This is just a fancy name for revelation. If we remember again how we lit candles during Advent what we are to understand is that with the coming of Jesus, the Christ child, a light has come into the world. Now at last we what previously had been hidden from our eyes because of this worlds darkness is at last revealed to us in the light of Christ. The season of Epiphany, then, is a time for us to consider just what has been revealed now that the light and life of Jesus has entered into our world.
As I considered how to explain this season of Epiphany, I was reminded of a story about our first daughter, Elizabeth, when she was a mere six months old on Christmas. This was such a fun time to take and show her off at all of the family gatherings. Well, something rather funny happened when we took Elizabeth to a Christmas party for Jennifer’s relatives. Jennifer had a cousin whose son, Andrew, was around eight years old that Christmas. Andrew was a very bright kid who was always thinking. It became obvious that Andrew was pondering quite a bit about this new baby that everyone was fussing over because he stood and looked at Elizabeth then exclaimed, “What does it do?”. You see, Andrew just could not figure out what all of the excitement was about this doll baby who did nothing more than eat and fill its pants. I believe that there just might be a lot of people who are much like Andrew when they celebrate yet another Christmas. They look upon the manger scene and see the baby Jesus asleep on the hay, and they too wonder, “What does it do?”. Much like Andrew wondered about this six month baby called Elizabeth, so too I imagine many people after Christmas are left wondering about this new born child named Jesus.They desperately want to ask, just why in the world is everyone fussing over this baby born in a little backward village named Bethlehem?
Now if, say, one of those people who are thinking back on Christmas and wondering just what was all this celebration was really all about, and they came to you, what might you be able to tell them about Jesus? Just what exactly does this Jesus do? Without much thought we might explain that Jesus is our hope for eternal life, you know the gift given to us so that we might not perish and have eternal life. Yes, this is a very good reason to get excited about Jesus but what if this person goes on and asks you, but what does this Jesus do for me here, in this life I’m living right now? They are rightly wondering, is this Jesus of any earthly good? So, just what answer might you give to someone who asks you if Jesus has any bearing on this life we are living, right here, right now, in all of the mess we so often find ourselves in?
Well, if you listened carefully to the scripture for today, you will know that Jesus indeed has something to give to all of us, today. In our scripture we do find that Jesus himself is telling us just what has been revealed when he was born as one of us. Like all of the stories found in the Bible, the background circumstances prove to be very important and this is true for the scripture we read here in the eleventh chapter of Matthew. We find that Jesus has done some powerful and amazing works in the cities that are located around the Sea of Galilee. As we may recall, Jesus healed the sick, going from place to place because the crowds had grown so large. Yet in spite of these people seeing the evident power of God at work among them, they, nonetheless, refused to allow this witness to affect their hearts. God had shown up in their midst in a demonstration of power and healing and the reaction of those who saw these miracles was a yawn, and maybe a shrug of their shoulders. They easily turned back to their life like nothing had ever happened. But something great had happened, heaven invaded earth so do course, Jesus was angered. Jesus was shocked by the unwillingness of these people to let their minds be transformed by what had been revealed to them. Can you begin to understand the crisis that arises when God reveals himself to us in power? As we enter into a season when we ask the question, “Just what has God revealed to us in Jesus?”, we have to expect that we will become different people when we witness the power of God.
Jesus, yes, was rightly outraged by the refusal of these towns to be affected by what they had witnessed. So he takes the truth about judgment day, and he brings it to bear upon that very moment when these people turned their backs on God. Jesus reaches back to the infamous story of Sodom, found in the nineteenth chapter of Genesis, where God judged this town worthy of destruction all because he could not find ten righteous men living in that city. Jesus states that on judgement day that it was going to go better for the citizens of Sodom than for those who had seen his miracles and went home unmoved. You see, they, unlike Sodom, had indeed witnessed the mighty acts of God in their midst, yet such displays of power had borne no fruit in their lives.
Now it is right here that our story takes a strange turn because Jesus goes from pronouncing judgment on these unrepentant people to being caught up in a moment of intimate conversation with his Heavenly Father. Here, again, we have yet another revelation. We discover in the words of Jesus that the reason why it was that so many people refused to be transformed after witnessing the works of God. You see, God, our Father, hides his grace from those who think they have life all figured out. No, God rightfully, gives his grace only to those who are actually interested in his plan, that great goal that God has for all people. This is why Jesus tells us that the ones God is looking for are those who know themselves as being children. Just like we laugh at a child telling their parents just how they intend to live their life, so God too must be shocked by our arrogance when we believe we can demand that he support the plans we might have. Like children we must know we are utterly dependent on our Heavenly Father. We must come with our hands held out ready to receive a gift. After all, this is the way Jesus approaches his Father, for in his prayer he reveals to us that all things have been handed over to him. Can you see the Son standing before his Father, his hand held out in anticipation to receive? So too, we must follow this posture of Jesus. Jesus in childlike obedience takes what is given to him by his Father. Jesus then turns, and he offers his gift to all who come to him as a child, hands held out ready to receive.
You see, when we receive this gift from Jesus, this grace of God, we come to know something of the goodness of God. Through the receiving of this gift we have come to know that, as James says in the first chapter of his letter, every good gift, and every perfect gift comes down to us from our Father above, the one whose face never turns away from us. So, yes, we can come to know ourselves as those Jesus has chosen to share his life with us, an unbelievable honor. All of this leads us to the moment when Jesus tells us these well-known words, “Come to me all you who labor and are carrying loads that are way to heavy for you to bear, I am the one who will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Learn from me. I am gentle, lowly in heart. With me you will find rest for your soul, your very life. My yoke is easy; my burden is light.” At last we come to the whole point of what Jesus is getting at which is that he is the gift which really does, keeps on giving. Jesus is the gift given to us by our Heavenly Father, the only one who is able and willing to give to us something called, rest. You see, Jesus did not need the gift of prophecy to see which of those who had seen God’s power and had refused to repent. All Jesus needed is to look and see that these people were restless. They were walking around with the weight of the world bearing down upon them. There they were, rushing about, fussing over what they were going to have for dinner, and what they were going to wear, becoming consumed by all of the concerns of their life and it was wearing them out. Who says that the Bible doesn’t connect with real life, right? You see, the reason why Jesus was so upset by their lack of enthusiasm with what God was up to, is that the result was so tragic. Here God was holding out a way for his people to find relief from this nagging restlessness that overwhelmed their life and instead they chose to stick to their own wisdom and understanding. A common definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, and such was the situation Jesus witnessed, people living in a hell of their own making, refusing to try something different. It simply did not have to be like this. God had stepped into their situation and he offered them a gift named Jesus. Yet, they were so busy wringing their hands over their situation that they could not simply stop and hold their hands out to receive what God had to offer, the gift of Jesus who held out the gift of rest for all of them.
So the answer to the question, “ Just what does this baby do?”is this: This child named Jesus, is a gift from God, the Father, who offers to all the gift of a life marked by rest. We should not be surprised by this offer of Jesus to give us rest though, because what Jesus tells us here in the eleventh chapter of Matthew is a mere retelling of what we find in the sixth chapter of Jeremiah. There God tells his people, “Stand by the roads and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is, and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.” This truth that God reveals to us about rest is further found to be very similar to what God spoke to Moses after the tragedy of the Golden Calf. In the thirty-third chapter of Exodus, Moses prays for the people of Israel so that God’s wrath would not be upon them. Moses pleads with God to remain with his people, reminding God of the grace he had shown to him. Moses says to God, “ Now that I have received your grace, please show me your ways, your ancient paths, so that I may know you, so that I might continue to receive your grace. Remember that this nation is your people.” God responds to this prayer of Moses by telling him, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”. Where the sin of God’s people abounded in their worship of the Golden calf, God’s grace abounded even more, for even to these sinful people, God holds out the possibility for them to know his presence and experience his rest.
What we find when we go searching for a better understanding of this idea of rest is that it is rooted in the story of creation, where on the seventh day, we are told that God rested from his labors. This is the very reason why the people of God were told to rest every seventh day and call that day holy because this is what our holy God did there in the beginning. In the next several weeks, in this series of messages entitled, “Rest Assured”, we are going to consider, more closely, just what has been revealed to us in this gift of Jesus. We are going to consider just what does it mean for us to receive this rest offered to us by Jesus. What might it mean for us to enter into this new year and not be wore down from all of the concerns, anxiety and worry that can come over us as we look to an unknown future. I love this quote by the Holocaust survivor, Corrie Ten Boom who says that we should, “Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.” As we set out on this new year, let me ask you, “Are you ready to trust this unknown future ahead of us to the God that we know?”. “Are you ready to stop wringing your hands and instead simply hold out your hands out, like a child, saying, “Rest, please!”, and then expect that Jesus will lead us to rest in the Father’s arms. So, are you ready to put the yoke on, and unite yourself with Jesus as he walks the ancient paths, knowing that he is leading us to find rest in a future yet unknown? I pray that this is the year that you experience Jesus as the one who gives us the rest we all are searching for. To God be the glory! Amen!
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