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Let's start with a question. How many of you have been to Mexico? On this 5th of July, how many of you, Cinco de Julio? Yeah, a lot of you have been to Mexico. I have been to Mexico one time, and I was privileged to spend three whole hours there. Tres horas. We were on a trip to the American Southwest with our uh seminary chorus, and we were able to duck across the border just long enough to have a quick lunch, and uh that was about it. But I was there long enough to put my finely honed Spanish language skills to use. Uh, there were some signs there in Mexico at some of the intersections on the road. They were red and they were octagonal, and they had four letters emblazoned across them in all caps. A-L-T-O. Alto. We were there on a choir trip, so at first I thought maybe it was talking about the alto section. We didn't have that in our all male chorus. Uh, but then I realized, as the more linguistically adept among us could tell us today, that alto is Spanish for stop. In Mexico, stop signs are alto signs. Well, recently our family spent some time in Italy. And if you've been to Italy before, you may remember that the streets there also feature red octagonal signs. But do you know what they say there? S T O P. Stop! Apparently, many English or European countries have adopted the English stop for their stop signs. And as someone familiar with alto signs in Mexico, their Italian counterparts, not using Italian, but using English, uh, struck me as a sign, no pun intended, that even though I wasn't uh driving at all on our trip, I really needed to pay attention to what they were saying. I needed to stop. I needed a break. I needed rest. And thankfully, our trip was a wonderful and much needed time of rest for our family. And today, for all of us who love to go, go, go all the time, Jesus, kind of like a road construction worker just down the road here on Butler Market, holds up the stop sign for us. Today, Jesus invites us into a profound and much-needed rest. But this well-known passage that we're looking at today begins with some words of Jesus that I think we often tend to just skip over. And these words add greater depth to our understanding of the rest that Jesus is offering us, especially because they come at a time when it looks like Jesus' ministry has run into a stop sign. Matthew has just told us that the cities where most of Jesus' mighty works have been done have rejected him and have completely refused to repent. But do you remember how Jesus responds to this? He says, I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. Jesus understood that what appeared to be failure was really the working out of his Father's will, that all of this was on purpose, that God was very much working, and that it was all through Jesus. Jesus knew that he and the Father are one, that no one can come to the Father except through him, that no one knows God at all, except through him. Knowing God doesn't come through worldly wisdom or vain works, it comes through Jesus. And so Jesus begins this whole section by thanking the Father that he has chosen to reveal himself, not to those who think that they have it all together or all figured out, that they know everything, but rather to those that he calls little children. Elsewhere in Matthew's gospel, he refers to these type of people as the poor in spirit, those who are empty, those who are weary, those who have nothing left. Jesus is praising the Father that he has revealed himself to those who labor and are heavy laden. Today, Jesus wants us to see that that is us. And today, Jesus issues us an unbelievable offer. Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. What an invitation. One that we so desperately need. We tend to labor and work so hard at our jobs, at home, in our relationships with other people, even within ourselves. We strive and we struggle and we tire out so quickly. And when we look around, sometimes it seems we haven't gotten anywhere. It's it's like we're in a kayak on a river, rowing with all our strength against a current that matches or exceeds our own efforts. After hours of rowing, we're right back where we started. Seems pointless and futile, discouraging and demoralizing. And I bet you've experienced this in a number of ways. Maybe you've run up against this while trying to live up to the expectations that other people have of you. Your boss or your employees, your parents or your grandparents. Hearing that you're not good enough, that you've not done enough, sometimes just leads you to exert even more, to try harder. And that can tend to lead to even greater disappointment. Or maybe you've experienced this and trying to keep up with society or technology or our ever-changing world can be exhausting and feel hopeless. Maybe you're running into this in your relationship with God, trying to kick that sinful habit that's had a hold on you for a long time and seeming to never gain traction, struggling against doubts that just keep nagging at you that you just don't seem to be able to find an answer for. Trying to be a good person, trying to please God and make yourself acceptable to Him by how you treat others, by doing what you know is right. But this too can be exhausting and especially so. And it can seem a pointless exercise. It's like that story of Sisyphus in Greek mythology. It's it's like you're rolling this massive boulder up a hill over and over again, only to watch it roll back down every single time. And we can never keep it going. And sometimes the stone just seems to crush us. Jesus himself says later in Matthew that striving for our own righteousness is like tying up heavy burdens hard to bear and laying them on our shoulders. Paul described this struggle in our reading today from Romans chapter 7, concluding that all of our striving simply reveals that our body is wholly subject to death. Prophet Zechariah in our Old Testament reading described our status as being trapped in a waterless pit. There is no escape, and any effort simply tires us out more and more and makes it worse. Trying to please others, trying to satisfy God, trying to prove ourselves, trying, trying, trying. Today, Jesus tells us to just stop. Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. It's an open invitation. The open arms of our Savior extended toward us in love and compassion. He knows our struggle, he knows our exhaustion. He knows that the burden placed upon us by others, by ourselves, and even by his own good law, that burden is far too heavy for us to bear. And so the King who comes to us, righteous and having salvation, invites us to come to him also. Now we can only come to him because he's come to us in the first place, but we come to him joyfully through prayer, through his word, through worshiping him and receiving all that he offers us in word and sacrament, through fellowship with our co-laborers in Christ, through discipleship. And he promises that he will give us rest. The Greek word that Jesus is using here is an pao. This is what Jesus is promising to do for us, and to give rest is a really good definition for it. But the root of this word is powo. It's a four-letter word that would actually fit really well on an octagonal red sign because it means stop. Put the prefix anna in front of it and it intensifies it. Jesus is quite firmly telling us to stop, to stop our labor, to throw off our burdens, to give up all we do and all we carry, to hand off to him all of our efforts to prove ourselves right, to be holy, to obey, to know God, to be all that we should be for our families and our co-workers, and to find in him rest. Other good translations of this concept include to revive or to refresh. It's not much of a stretch at all to see in this Jesus' promise to us of resurrection. This Sabbath rest that Jesus gives, this blessed cessation of labor, this full and unadulterated peace that grants relief from our burdens, all of it is rooted in the righteousness and salvation of our King. Remember what Zechariah said? Behold, your king is coming to you. Righteous and having salvation is he. And he is bringing those gifts to you. Knowing God apart from Jesus is pointless. It's futile. Trying to defeat sin apart from the cross of Jesus is hopeless. Trying to be all that you were supposed to be on your own is rowing against a current far too strong for you. Stop, Jesus says. Find rest in me. Righteousness, salvation, revival and refreshment, resurrection. This is all embracing universal mercy and divine grace. It's a full reprieve from all we do and all we carry for both body and soul. And only God Himself can offer this kind of rest. Jesus is echoing ancient prophecies, like when Jeremiah speaks of finding rest for our souls via ancient paths. When Isaiah says, Those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength and mount up with wings like eagles. And then Jesus fulfills these promises by climbing a mount himself while bearing our burdens. Because as we hand everything over to him, as we pile them on, as we cast our burdens on Jesus, they all bind together and they mold into a very recognizable shape. A wooden cross, shouldered by the sun, all of our burdens borne by the one who was born to die for us. It is this man, this Son of God, who was nailed to two wooden beams for our salvation, who today says to us, Take my yoke upon you and learn from me. You know, a yoke is actually a lot like a cross. It's heavy crossbars made out of wood. They were laid upon oxen or people who were plowing a field. And this was often used by a metaphor, as a metaphor by the rabbis of Jesus' day. If you took a rabbi's yoke upon you, you were allowing yourself to be guided by his instruction, to conform your entire life to his teachings. You were placing yourself entirely under him. But it could be really heavy. In fact, the teachers of the time described the law of God itself as a yoke. It was a heavy burden that no one was able to bear. In Galatians 5, Paul will refer to it as a yoke of slavery. Not surprising. Yokes are usually not pleasant. Burdens are, by definition, heavy. But the yoke of Jesus, the yoke of Jesus is freedom. The burden of Jesus is light. Paul says in Romans 10 that Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. All who come to Jesus find rest, not more demands or heavier loads. Dr. Jeff Gibbs says in his commentary on this section of Matthew, all who come to his unparalleled authority and power with only their needs in their hands find a savior. The yoke of this rabbi is not added burden, but merciful reprieve from all we do and all we carry. All who come to Jesus find peace, Sabbath rest, renewal. And this requires one more point of clarification. To take the yoke of Jesus upon us is to allow ourselves to be guided by his instruction, to conform our life to his teachings, and to place ourselves entirely under him. Absolutely, it is discipleship. But please do not confuse this with a new set of rules and requirements. Jesus is not coming to replace your current labor and heavy burden with other ones. He comes to give you rest. And this is where the Greek of Matthew here is quite helpful. Most translations, including our ESV, quote Jesus as saying, Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart. And that's a possible translation. It's a good translation. We learn from Jesus, we become his disciples because he is the king who comes humble and mounted on a donkey. But I think another possible translation, another nuance to the Greek, really hits the mark. Jesus can also be understood to be saying, Take my yoke upon you and learn from me that I am gentle and lowly in heart. In other words, Jesus is not giving us his qualifications as a rationale for listening to whatever he may wish to teach us. Jesus is actually teaching us right here. And the content of his teaching is himself. That he is the one who is gentle and lowly in heart. He is the one who delivers rest for our souls. He is the one whose humility and gentleness will lead him to shoulder the cross of our burdens and our sins, to bring us righteousness and salvation. We find rest when we learn from Jesus that he gently receives us and forgives us. And this matches up perfectly with all that he has said in this section. His invitation is to come to know him, and in doing so, to know the Father. And this understanding of the Greek is all over the early church fathers. Augustine reads the passage this way. Theodore of Mafsuestia paraphrases Jesus as saying, My yoke is good on account of forgiveness. Another church father says, The weight of Christ rather helps the one who bears it, because we do not bear grace. Grace bears us. So please don't misunderstand Jesus to be saying that he's replacing the old demands of the law with new demands of the law. No, he is throwing them all off your shoulders. His death and resurrection have won full forgiveness for your sins, full righteousness and salvation. He's not giving you more work. He has done the work. Everything that you are not, all that you can't do, every letdown you have suffered or dispensed, all of it is covered by the cross. This is why his yoke is easy and his burden is light. So stop. Stop striving to prove yourselves to yourselves or to others or to God. Stop trying to prove that you're good enough or that you've done enough. Stop clawing at the sides of the waterless pit. Stop trying to beat your body of death back to life. Who will rescue us? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Come to him, all who labor and are heavy laden, and he will give you rest. In Jesus' name. Amen.