SPEAKER_01: Good morning.
SPEAKER_01: Well, uh, we've managed to get the AV to behave.
SPEAKER_01: It was misbehaving.
SPEAKER_01: We had four screens out of five.
SPEAKER_01: I know, uh, as the saying goes, that ain't bad, uh, but we have all five of them working now.
SPEAKER_01: So welcome to Fresh Brook Church this morning.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for joining us.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, for those of you that have sweat your way here in the heat, uh, for those of you uh for whom coming out in this heat was just too much and you're joining us live online or you catch up with us later.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, my name is Dave Davidson.
SPEAKER_01: I'm one of the two pastors here at Freshbrook Church.
SPEAKER_01: And our prayer this morning is that you will encounter the living God and be blessed as we worship together this morning in song, in prayer, and in the preaching of the word.
SPEAKER_01: I want to extend a special uh welcome and greeting to Stephen Mora Bolson.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, they drove down from Lincolnshire yesterday from New Trials Mission, where they work and serve to share with us and with our children this morning.
SPEAKER_01: This won't be a full mission update.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, you'll catch that from them later uh in August as part of our mission series.
SPEAKER_01: But they will be here this evening, uh sharing as a part of the culmination of our week of prayer something more about their work.
SPEAKER_01: So do come this evening if you're able to at 6:30.
SPEAKER_01: Uh it'll be uh everybody that the teams are going to join us as well.
SPEAKER_01: They're not having their separate meetings, so we would encourage you all to come and join us this evening, particularly if you know of the work of Steve and Moira, be encouraged and join with us in prayer with them and for them.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, just want to say uh on that of our week of prayer, thank you to everybody that has joined with us over the course of the week.
SPEAKER_01: Those of you who joined us at seven in the morning on Zoom, those of you come out in person in the evening uh from 7:30, and those that have uh braved the midday heat and prayer walks uh through the far end of Freshbook into Grange Park.
SPEAKER_01: Uh may uh the Lord just bless all of that work and continue to bless us as we pray.
SPEAKER_01: Now, this morning we come to uh uh the mid-year review, if you like, of our theme text.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, the text that we set for a year as an eldership.
SPEAKER_01: We pray each year that God would give us a wisdom and an insight, a verse or a series of verses that would speak to us as a church uh in the year to come.
SPEAKER_01: And so we preach this text in January.
SPEAKER_01: Uh so for some of you, uh, we're coming to this text a second time.
SPEAKER_01: Those of you who joined us since January, uh then a preach on this text will come to you fresh.
SPEAKER_01: Uh I've not looked again at what Phil shared in January, but I commend to you, if you're blessed and encouraged this morning, to go and have a listen as well to our service on YouTube.
SPEAKER_01: But I invite us this morning, uh, we're going to preach from the New Testament, but we're going to start the service in the New Testament and read together the text that is on the wall behind us.
SPEAKER_01: So, will you read with me Matthew 11 verses 28 to 30?
SPEAKER_01: Jesus said, Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.
SPEAKER_01: Take my yoke upon you and learn from me.
SPEAKER_01: For I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for yourselves.
SPEAKER_01: For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
SPEAKER_01: Let me just uh open our time together in prayer and commit a morning to the Lord, uh, and then we will move into a time of sun worship.
SPEAKER_01: Father God, we ask that you uh meet us here, that you come and dwell in our midst, that in our minds, in our eyes in what we see, in our ears in what we hear, in our heart and what we sense of you, Lord God, we would have an encounter with you.
SPEAKER_01: That by your spirit you would stir us in worship and praise of you, that you may be honored and uplifted as you and you alone are worthy.
SPEAKER_01: Would you encourage us encourage us, Lord God, in love for you and in love for one another, and to have such an abundance as that love as we go out from here, that we love and encourage and bless others in our community, those in our homes, amongst our neighbors, that there'll be such an abundance of it, there'll be plenty left for tomorrow for our colleagues and those that we work alongside through the course of the week.
SPEAKER_01: So would you bless this time this morning in all that we do together as a whole church, in what takes place later as we come to your word, and in what Steve and Moira will share with the young people in our primary and secondary urban saints.
SPEAKER_01: That it be for your glory and for our encouragement.
SPEAKER_01: We ask in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Our reading this morning is taken from Matthew 11, verse 20, to the end of the chapter.
SPEAKER_00: And if you've got the church Bible, it's 976.
SPEAKER_00: If you went to Bible, I see a lot of people were going to get Bibles, so I imagine you've all got Bibles by now.
SPEAKER_00: So Matthew 11 and verse 20.
SPEAKER_00: Then Jesus began to denounce the cities in which most of his miracles had been performed, because they did not repent.
SPEAKER_00: Woe to you, Kulazin, woe to you, Baseda.
SPEAKER_00: If the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.
SPEAKER_00: But I tell you, it would be more bearable for Ty and Sidon on that day of judgment than for you.
SPEAKER_00: And you, Capernaum, will you be lifted up to the skies?
SPEAKER_00: No, you will go down to the depth.
SPEAKER_00: If the miracles had been performed in Sodom, it would have remained to this day.
SPEAKER_00: But I tell you, it would be more bearable for Sodom on the day of judgment than for you.
SPEAKER_00: At that time Jesus said, I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned and revealed them to little children.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure.
SPEAKER_00: All things that have been committed to me by my Father, no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son, and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.
SPEAKER_00: Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.
SPEAKER_00: Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest to your soul.
SPEAKER_00: For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
SPEAKER_01: Paul, thank you for bringing us a reading.
SPEAKER_01: So just hold that text open, please, uh, as we look at uh these few verses.
SPEAKER_01: And just the sense of what I want us to grasp this morning is that Jesus doesn't simply invite weary people to find relief, he invites them into a lifelong relationship of trusting, learning from, and walking with him.
SPEAKER_01: So, by way of introduction, I want you to think about an invitation.
SPEAKER_01: Every invitation expects a response.
SPEAKER_01: Some invitations change our diary.
SPEAKER_01: You think, oh, yes, scratch that out, put that in, that's the day.
SPEAKER_01: Some invitations change our future.
SPEAKER_01: Some invitations change everything, and there is one invitation this morning that we will look at that is greater than any other invitation.
SPEAKER_01: Whenever we receive an invitation, we instinctively ask three questions.
SPEAKER_01: We want to know who's inviting us, we want to know what they're inviting us to, and we contemplate, should I accept?
SPEAKER_01: This morning in our text as we look at it, we hear one of the greatest invitations ever spoken.
SPEAKER_01: Before Matthew lets us hear Jesus say, Come to me, he first wants us to understand who it is that is extending the invitation.
SPEAKER_01: Because here's the key it is only when we understand who is extending the invitation that we might begin to grasp how amazing it is.
SPEAKER_01: So let's look at this one who invites and consider why why does it matter?
SPEAKER_01: Well, before Jesus invites anyone to come, Matthew has taken ten chapters to establish beyond doubt who Jesus is.
SPEAKER_01: You could thumb back through from the beginning of Matthew.
SPEAKER_01: You find as you read chapters 1 to 4 the story of the early years of Jesus, his birth narrative, his baptism, and his temptation.
SPEAKER_01: And then when you get to Matthew chapter 5 through 7, we have that text that we know as the Sermon on the Mount, a block of teaching that Matthew has drawn together that is what Jesus taught.
SPEAKER_01: So we have his birth narrative from 1 to 4, a teaching narrative in 5 to 7, and then when you look at chapters 8 and 9, we have just a succession of miracles that God is working in the lives of the people around.
SPEAKER_01: And then when you get to chapter 10, the chapter before that, which we're considering this morning, uh that chapter is devoted to the instructions that Jesus gives to his twelve disciples as he prepared to send them to take the good news of the kingdom of heaven that was come on earth.
SPEAKER_01: And then when we get to chapter 11, his ministry is expanding, and the inevitable question arises who is this man?
SPEAKER_01: And when you look at the beginning of uh John Matthew chapter 11, let me just read this brief exchange for you.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, from uh 11 verse 2 through 4.
SPEAKER_01: When John, John the Baptist, who was in prison, heard about the deeds of the Messiah, he sent his disciples to ask him, Are you the one who is to come?
SPEAKER_01: Or should we expect someone else?
SPEAKER_01: Jesus replied, Go back and report to John what you hear and see.
SPEAKER_01: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor.
SPEAKER_01: Even John the Baptist, now in prison, sends his disciples to ask, Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?
SPEAKER_01: This is the same John who had declared there was one coming after him, he himself, who was more powerful than he, who would baptize not with the water that John the Baptist baptized with, a baptism of repentance, but one who would baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire.
SPEAKER_01: John would baptize him, uh John would baptize him as Jesus came up out of the water.
SPEAKER_01: A voice spoke and said, This is my son, whom I love.
SPEAKER_01: With him, I am well pleased.
SPEAKER_01: This is the John the Baptist wrestling with who is Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: He wants to know, are you the one?
SPEAKER_01: And we can speculate about why he's asking the question, but we can be grateful for this.
SPEAKER_01: He asked it so that we don't have to.
SPEAKER_01: Because he asked the question that so many now are asking, and Jesus gives an answer to that question.
SPEAKER_01: So if you this morning are wondering who is Jesus, let him answer that question for you this morning as we look together in this text.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus addresses his doubts, his concerns of 2,000 years ago, so that in the 21st century we can hear his response.
SPEAKER_01: And he points him to what he was doing.
SPEAKER_01: So, John, look at what is going on.
SPEAKER_01: Look at how you see the kingdom come in the miracles, the blind receiving sight, the lame walking, those with leprosy cleansed, the deaf hearing, and the good news proclaimed to the poor, just as God said it should be.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus doesn't simply answer John yes, but he points him to the evidence that proves he is the one who was promised.
SPEAKER_01: He is the one who was to come, he is the one that John had proclaimed him to be, that the voice from heaven had declared him to be, so that all about might know.
SPEAKER_01: The miracles that Jesus references are not random miracles, the blind receiving sight, the lame walking, uh, the rest of the list.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, but they are evidence of God fulfilling his purposes and revealing Jesus as the promised Messiah.
SPEAKER_01: And that same Jesus of 2,000 years ago is still working powerfully and miraculously in the lives of people today, both in believers' lives and in those who are seeking him.
SPEAKER_01: So this thought to hold on to, as the writer to the Hebrews puts it in chapter 11, verse 1.
SPEAKER_01: Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.
SPEAKER_01: By faith, we are invited to look carefully at the evidence of who Jesus is.
SPEAKER_01: And then as we uh move uh on into the text that we've read together, we'll just think about this the tragedy of unrepentance.
SPEAKER_01: You see, great privilege brings great responsibility.
SPEAKER_01: Few places in history have shared the privilege of the towns that Jesus is now about to mention in these verses.
SPEAKER_01: Let me read them again for you.
SPEAKER_01: Uh verses 20 through 24.
SPEAKER_01: Then Jesus began to denounce the towns in which most of his miracles had been performed, because they did not repent.
SPEAKER_01: Woe to you, Khorasim, woe to you, Beth Seda.
SPEAKER_01: For if the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.
SPEAKER_01: But I tell you, it will be more bearable for Tyre and Sidon on the day of judgment than for you.
SPEAKER_01: And you, Capernaum, will you be lifted up to the heavens?
SPEAKER_01: No, you will go down to Hades.
SPEAKER_01: For if the miracles have been performed in you that have been performed in Sodom, it would have remained to this day.
SPEAKER_01: But I tell you, it would be more bearable for Sodom on the day of judgment than for you.
SPEAKER_01: Khorasin, Beth Sarah, and Capernaum.
SPEAKER_01: They had seen more of Jesus' miraculous working than anybody else.
SPEAKER_01: And yet Jesus speaks woe to them.
SPEAKER_01: Woe to each of them for rejecting the evidence that was so plain for them to see.
SPEAKER_01: You see, the challenge for them was not a lack of evidence, as some here now might say, Well, I don't see the things in my day-to-day life that they saw.
SPEAKER_01: The woe to them was their lack of repentance, not acknowledging who Jesus was, as he evidenced through his uh teaching and through his miracles.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus, uh Tyre and Sidon and even Sodom, those towns that are referenced, uh, for those that were listening as Jesus spoke, they conjured up a sense of judgment and wickedness uh that was unparalleled.
SPEAKER_01: If you wanted to describe depravity, you spoke of Tyre and Sidon and Sodom.
SPEAKER_01: And look at what Jesus does with that.
SPEAKER_01: He makes a comparison between them and Khorasin and Beth Seda and Capernaum, the towns in Galilee that Jesus had lived amongst, moved amongst, uh, taught in, and performed miracles in.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus' warning to them and by extension to us is that the greater the light we have seen, the greater accountability that will be demanded of us on the day that Jesus returns.
SPEAKER_01: Make no mistake.
SPEAKER_01: As we meet each Sunday, we are all exposed to the light as we worship God together and hear his word preached.
SPEAKER_01: This is a sober warning for us.
SPEAKER_01: Hearing God's word is never a neutral experience.
SPEAKER_01: We can choose to respond and say yes to God, or we can choose to say no to God.
SPEAKER_01: There is no neutral position, no middle ground.
SPEAKER_01: To make no decision for God is to say no to God.
SPEAKER_01: So out of these verses, I want you to remember this.
SPEAKER_01: It wasn't the lack of evidence for which Bethsaida, Khorazin, and Capernaum were judged, but their lack of repentance and turning to God from their sinfulness.
SPEAKER_01: And then there's this move from these woes declared on these towns to one of the gentlest invitations in Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: Let me read to you again these verses out of Matthew 25 to 27.
SPEAKER_01: At that time, Jesus said, I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned and reveal them only, reveal them to little children.
SPEAKER_01: Yes, Father, for this is what you were pleased to do.
SPEAKER_01: The invitation that Jesus makes is wonderfully wide.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus thanks the Father that these truths that are revealed are not given to the proud, to the arrogant, to the educated, but to those who come like little children.
SPEAKER_01: Simple, open-handed, faith and trust in Him.
SPEAKER_01: Only the Son knows the Father.
SPEAKER_01: And only through the Son, Jesus Christ, can the Father be known.
SPEAKER_01: The invitation that follows is from Jesus, the Messiah, the long promised one, the Son of God.
SPEAKER_01: This invitation comes with a royal seal.
SPEAKER_01: You cannot receive a higher honor than an invitation from Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: So let's consider what is it that we're invited to.
SPEAKER_01: And here it is.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 28.
SPEAKER_01: Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is speaking to people burdened by sin, crushed by legalism, and living under Roman oppression.
SPEAKER_01: Today, what wearies us and burdens us may look different.
SPEAKER_01: It may be grief or anxiety, hidden shame, loneliness, family pressures, responsibility, caring for others, exhaustion.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is inviting you to bring them to him.
SPEAKER_01: I wonder what would stop you from coming to Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: As I reflected on this, I was caused to think of Queen Esther, the most beautiful woman in the land.
SPEAKER_01: Was it a hundred of the most beautiful women that were gathered together?
SPEAKER_01: A year of beauty treatments, and the king selected from them the most beautiful of the hundred most beautiful to be his own wife.
SPEAKER_01: And yet Queen Esther, as beautiful as she was, hesitated to go into the king's presence, to go through the door to the inner court for fear of her life.
SPEAKER_01: And I thought too of the temple, and at the heart of it, the Holy of Holies, a curtain that hung from ceiling to floor, a curtain that was so thick, no man could tear it.
SPEAKER_01: And no man but the high priest dared go through it.
SPEAKER_01: And then but once a year.
SPEAKER_01: Is it a door and fear that holds you back?
SPEAKER_01: Or maybe just that sense that you're not quite beautiful enough.
SPEAKER_01: I might not be received as Queen Esther feared for going to the king's presence.
SPEAKER_01: But she stepped into the inner court.
SPEAKER_01: The king looked, extended his scepter to her, delighted to see her coming, queen.
SPEAKER_01: What do you want up to half my kingdom?
SPEAKER_01: And that curtain that once separated us from God.
SPEAKER_01: When Jesus bowed his head on the cross and said, It is finished.
SPEAKER_01: As his head fell forward, God by his hand tore the curtain from top to bottom, not as we would if we touch it from the bottom.
SPEAKER_01: You see, the way is open to God.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus took the door off the hinges.
SPEAKER_01: There is no door that obstructs our way to the inner court, no lack of beauty that prevents us from coming in.
SPEAKER_01: And as he tore the curtain, he separated the barrier between sinful man and the holy God through the life, the death, and ultimately the resurrection of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Christ has made a way for us to come to God where there was none before him.
SPEAKER_01: So what is the offer that Jesus gives to us?
SPEAKER_01: What is it that comes out of this text that we have, the text that is on the wall behind me?
SPEAKER_01: Jesus offers us rest.
SPEAKER_01: But not simply relief from responsibility.
SPEAKER_01: Rest is found in relationship with Him.
SPEAKER_01: Take my yoke upon you is an invitation to exchange masters, not to carry nothing.
SPEAKER_01: Everyone carries a yoke.
SPEAKER_01: The question is, whose yoke are we carrying?
SPEAKER_01: Look at the progression in Jesus' invitation, come to me in verse 28, and then take my yoke and learn from me.
SPEAKER_01: The goal isn't simply relief.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus doesn't merely remove burdens, he places us under himself.
SPEAKER_01: That sounds harder until we realize his yoke replaces every other yoke.
SPEAKER_01: People carry all kinds of yokes.
SPEAKER_01: These are but a few.
SPEAKER_01: Performance, approval, success, self-sufficiency, fear, guilt, religion, perfectionism.
SPEAKER_01: Did you find yourself in that list?
SPEAKER_01: Is there something I missed of the list that is the yoke that you bear?
SPEAKER_01: Jesus isn't saying, come and carry nothing.
SPEAKER_01: He's saying, stop carrying what's crushing you.
SPEAKER_01: Carry what I give you instead.
SPEAKER_01: Then his invitation is learn from me.
SPEAKER_01: This is the language of discipleship.
SPEAKER_01: It is an apprenticeship.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus calls us to walk with him and become like him.
SPEAKER_01: Then he says, I will give you rest for your souls.
SPEAKER_01: You come to Jesus worried under the weight of your burdens.
SPEAKER_01: Lay them at Jesus' feet.
SPEAKER_01: You come alone, but you leave with Jesus at your side.
SPEAKER_01: We come to Jesus one way, we leave with Jesus different people in a different direction.
SPEAKER_01: Notice Jesus' heart.
SPEAKER_01: I am gentle and humble in heart.
SPEAKER_01: This is not merely what he does.
SPEAKER_01: It is who he is.
SPEAKER_01: Let's just return to those questions we considered at the beginning.
SPEAKER_01: Who is doing the inviting?
SPEAKER_01: The Son of God.
SPEAKER_01: The Son of God, the King of Kings, has extended an invitation to you.
SPEAKER_01: Who is invited?
SPEAKER_01: Everyone.
SPEAKER_01: Everyone who will come to him.
SPEAKER_01: There are no exclusions.
SPEAKER_01: His court won't be too full.
SPEAKER_01: There is space for you all.
SPEAKER_01: And what is offered?
SPEAKER_01: What is he holding out to you with his invitation?
SPEAKER_01: It's rest.
SPEAKER_01: It is relationship.
SPEAKER_01: It is life.
SPEAKER_01: As I draw to a close, what I want to say to you, I invite you, please, just to close your eyes.
SPEAKER_01: Open your hands as a gesture of vulnerability, of offer to God for yourself.
SPEAKER_01: And hear these words as I read to you again slowly and intentionally the verse that God has given us as a church this year.
SPEAKER_01: Matthew chapter eleven verses twenty eight to thirty.
SPEAKER_01: Come to me.
SPEAKER_01: All you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.
SPEAKER_01: Take my yoke upon you and learn from me.
SPEAKER_01: For I am gentle and humble in heart.
SPEAKER_01: And you will find rest for your souls.
SPEAKER_01: For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
SPEAKER_01: My invitation to you this morning is if you have heard and received that invitation from the Lord Jesus Himself this morning, or maybe you've heard it before, but but back then you didn't make a decision, or you chose to say no.
SPEAKER_01: The invitation comes again to you.
SPEAKER_01: Will you come to Jesus, to the King of Kings?
SPEAKER_01: The one who took the door off the hinges, the one who tore the curtain, the one who makes a way into the very presence of God.
SPEAKER_01: You can come through and be in the presence of the living Son of God, the Savior, who is working miracles in changing lives in this day and time, has done from creation, will do till the day he restores creation.
SPEAKER_01: And to you this morning who know and love the Lord God, but who are wearied and burdened, to you this morning who love the Lord Jesus, but you bear a yoke that is too heavy for you, weighs you down, and is crushing you.
SPEAKER_01: Come to him who will lift that yoke off you, and then stand tall at the side of Jesus, and know that the yoke that he puts on you is no more than his arm around your shoulder.
SPEAKER_01: See, he stands tall and he stands strong and he leads you forward at his pace with him by your side, where you can have confidence.
SPEAKER_01: You're going nowhere where he isn't there for you.
SPEAKER_01: And as I close, know this the judge who had every right to condemn, as Jesus spoke, uh to those towns in Galilee, he is the one who invites you to come.
SPEAKER_01: You need do nothing more than bring your burden, lay it down at his feet, take up his yoke, become his disciple, apprentice to Jesus, that you might become like the Master.
SPEAKER_01: May this text live with you afresh today, tomorrow, and all through this year.