NewCity Orlando Sermons

Matthew 11:25-30 | Winter Wisdom

• NewCity Orlando

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 32:35

Listen to this week’s sermon, Winter Wisdom preached by Dr. Jonathan Pennington from Matthew 11:25-30.

Rev. Benjamin Kandt:

Hello everyone. This is Pastor Benjamin. You're listening to Sermon Audio from New City Orlando. At New City, we long to see our Father answer the Lord's Prayer. For more resources, visit our website at New City Orlando.com. Join me in this prayer of illumination, asking God's Spirit to shed his light on our hearts through his word. Brothers and sisters, join with me. Heavenly Father, we bow in your presence. Let your word be our rule, your spirit our teacher, and your greater glory our supreme concern through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. Our scripture reading this morning comes from the Gospel according to Matthew chapter 11. Hear now the word of the Lord. At that time Jesus declared, 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. All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son, and any one to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from 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. This is God's word. Thanks be to God. You may be seated.

Dr. Jonathan Pennington:

Thank you so much. What a joy to be here. I travel and preach a lot of places, and I always feel bad. If this is your first Sunday here, I'm not the guy. Sorry. So but I'm but we're glad you're here and come back next week as well. Um it's so good to be here and to think about these things together with you. And I want to ask a pretty personal question to begin. And I want to invite you to be honest with yourself in this question. And that is generally, what is bothering you right now? What's bothering you? Maybe this morning, even something you're aware of, maybe something you're just kind of more chronically aware of in your life. That is, when you slow down actually and pay attention, maybe it's at night, maybe it's right when you wake up and you feel this kind of unrest in your soul, and and something your your shalom is is disturbed. What's bothering in you and what do you really need? Like when you feel unrest or a lack of peace or a nagging anxiety, a large or small worry, when you think about maybe it's political turmoil in our country or cultural decay or your body's decay, where you think about maybe some relationship that used to be great, and now you feel it's kind of there's some tension there, some awkwardness there. Maybe you're just aware of your inevitable fading. Like I we had our we've got a couple of grandsons now and a third grandchild on the way, and it dawned on me the other day, and I thankfully we have six adult kids and and five of them live in town with us, and we were together all the time, so we have a very rich life. But I realized that when my oldest grandson is 18, I will be 73. And it just dawned on me like he will only, my grandchildren will only know me as an as an old man. And and there's an appropriate sobriety I feel about that, you know, that I'm fading. Maybe you're aware at that stage of life that you're fading. Maybe you feel stuck in your marriage. Maybe you feel some chronic or acute pain in your body. Maybe you're worried about church problems within and outside. And what do you need in those situations? I think some of us might give external answers to that. Maybe we need a revival, we need more theology, we need more gospel, we need more education, we need to get back to the old days. Maybe some of you think more internally, we need counseling, we need therapy, maybe physiological or psychological counseling. Maybe we need better politicians, better pastors, better business leaders, better service workers, better schools, better policies, a better economy. And I think all those answers are fine. I don't think there's anything wrong with any of those. I think there's some truth in them. But biblically, biblically and in the Christian tradition, Christians have always understood that as good as all those answers may be, there's actually something deeper and broader and more profound that we need, really, in all of our situations, personal and corporate, and that is that we need wisdom. We need wisdom. And particularly what the Bible is going to depict, and I'll explain this crazy phrase later, apocalyptic wisdom, and I'll explain what that means. So, again, as Pastor Benjamin just said, I mean, it's it's a joy to be here and to be at this transition point where you are going, you know, finishing up a wisdom series and then looking forward to Luke and the parables. And I thought a perfect text for that today. And as much as I would love to give a lecture on Jesus' great philosopher, um, I won't be able to do as much of that as I would like. I really want to just focus on a text. I have written a whole book on that, and as I always say, I don't care if you read it as long as you buy it. That's fine. Um I do have a book called Jesus the Great Philosopher. So if you're not a reader, you I do have six kids. I did say that, right? You got to keep that in mind. So I do have a whole bunch of things I can talk to you about about Jesus the Philosopher. What I really want to do today that's related to that, though, is I really want to turn to a text. It's the text we've just read. And if you have a Bible, I'd love for you to look at it there with me as well. Um, Matthew 11, 25 to 30. And I really just want to look at this text, meditate on it with you for a few minutes, and and to guide that, and especially at the end, I want to ask two questions that is always good. I I love this discussion up here about reading the Bible. And if reading the Bible feels really overwhelming or intimidating to you, or if you're an old pro at it, whatever it is, here's two really good questions to always ask when reading the Bible that I think any of us can do. And that is, what is this what does this text reveal about who God is? And what does this text reveal about who I am? Because we really need to understand both of those things. We need to understand first who God is, but we also need to be aware of who we really are, for good and for bad, if we're going to grow into the life that God has has for us, has made for us, and has made us for. And so what I want to do is just meditate on this text with you for a few minutes and then ask those two questions sort of at the end. So again, Matthew 11, 25 to 30. Now, this text, so I've had the privilege for the last 25 years or so of really focusing much of my academic and pastoral life on the on the gospel of Matthew. This is the thing I've spent most of my time in. And over my years of teaching and preaching through Matthew and writing on it, I've actually become convinced that this is probably the single most important text in Matthew, which I would not have said 25 years ago. Like I didn't see it. But as I keep teaching through the book over and over, I think this text, 1125 to 30, really is kind of like the nuclear core uh of what Matthew's saying about. And it's because it really focuses both on these two big ideas that Matthew's all about, Christology, we call it, or who Jesus is. And I think it's going to give us the highest answer to that. And also discipleship, what it means to really be a follower of him. So let me read for you the first part of it again, 11, 25 to 27. Jesus said at that time it says, Jesus declared, I thank you, Father Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding, and you've revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. Now, if you've been around the Bible for a while, that and if I were to read those verses and not tell you where they were from, I think many of us would say those are from the Gospel of John, actually, because it's in the Gospel of John that you hear that kind of language of this sort of what Aquinas and others would call the consubstantiality, the oneness of essence and nature of the Father and the Son. I mean, this is the highest form of a bold claim of who Jesus could be. I mean, did you hear it in those verses? Basically, that that who can understand the God of the universe, the one who made you. You didn't make yourself. And there's someone who made you. And the answer to the question of who, how can you know who that person is? Jesus is saying, actually, only through me. This is the bold claim of Christianity that is shocking, right? And again, we see it in the Gospel of John as clearly clearly as ever, but here it is right here in the Gospel of Matthew, the first book of the New Testament. Jesus' authority is really being emphasized. And the rest of the New Testament's going to talk this way too. He's going to be described as the Logos, the actual organizing principle of the universe. We're going to learn in the other parts of the New Testament that all things came into being through him and are sustained by him and held together by him, that he is glorified with the Father. All this kind of language is the highest form of Christology. And this is what is this text is getting at as well that he and the Father share this authority. And actually, the only way to know who God the Father really is is through Jesus' revelation. But this text isn't just about his authority. It's also emphasizing, did you catch that, on that who are the people that can actually perceive that? Who are the people that can actually understand it? Who is given the ability to perceive? Because this is a great full room. I'm glad you're all here, but there are more people that are not in this room in Orlando than there are in all the other churches combined than there are in that are that are worshiping the Lord. So who, who and why do some people start to see who God is and who not? And if you look at Jesus' answer there, it's not necessarily the ones that you and I would expect. It's not the wise, it's not the learned, the educated, the all put together, the theologians, the smart people, the ones with all the right doctrines, the ones who have morally clean lives. It's not the religious ones necessarily, it's not the successful ones. It's not the ones that I think you and I would give revelation to if we were in charge of it. And it's important to know, these those are not bad things. It's not bad to be educated, it's not bad to be intelligent, it's not bad to have good doctrine, it's not bad to be a theologian, all these kind of things. Wise and intelligent are not pejorative terms, but what we have to realize, and what Jesus is saying here, is that those things that we value actually have no inherent value for what you and I actually need. What we actually need is not education and just right doctrine as important as those things are. What we need is wisdom. And in fact, the ones to whom this wisdom of who God is is given, did you see it? It's the little ones that they've been hidden from the wise understanding, but revealed to the little children, to the to the little ones, the least of these, the ones who do not necessarily have any power or prestige or opportunities, even as we might think. And this is this fundamental reversal of human values that you're gonna see as you go through Luke and the parables, it's gonna be just hammered by Luke constantly, that God is coming and showing that what He values is not what we value. This is this fundamental reversal of human values, and this is the paradox that actually learning and success and accolades can paradoxically sometimes be a hindrance to what we actually need, which is God's wisdom. Not because there's anything wrong with them inherently, but because to be a little one, to be a little child means to be, as Augustine says, the little ones are the humble who do not presume about themselves, because where there is humility, there's wisdom. So Jesus is actually praying, confessing what is true to God, that God reveals Himself to the ones who don't think they deserve it, to the ones who don't necessarily have it all together, to the truly humble. And so this is why we call this apocalyptic wisdom. Apocalypse is kind of a weird-sounding word and has some associations that it doesn't really have in the Bible, but it what it means is just revealed. It means revealed wisdom. And that is, friends, that the wisdom that you and I need to navigate our individual lives and our corporate lives, big national problems, wayward children in our homes, difficult marriages, conflicts with coworkers, in your next door neighbor, how to handle money or a cancer report. The wisdom that we need is not going to be found simply in the latest book or a particular Substack or YouTube channel. Those things can be helpful. But the wisdom that you and I need is a gift that is revealed in God's sovereignty to the humble. For it to be apocalyptic is to be graciously revealed. It breaks through our blindness and our hardness of heart. And what I'm really excited about for you coming up in the next months is that the parables, and Luke's parables are really great, are all about this. This is how I want you to think about the series you're about to run to. They're all apocalyptic wisdom. They're retraining our imaginations, they're retraining our sensibilities for who God is and who we are and how He's inhabiting us to inviting us to inhabit the world. So whenever I teach on these verses, I always like to pause here and say, what would you expect the next verses to be? After Jesus says, No one knows the Father except for through me and the one I choose to reveal, and I have all authority in the earth. What would you expect the next verses to be? What would you say if that was you? I think I'd be like, so buckle up. Maybe throw down some Jewish gang symbols or something and just be like, so oi, watch out. You know, like we're because I'm about to tell you a bunch of stuff, right? And you better listen. What Jesus says is, I think, some of the most precious and sweetest and heart wrenching with beauty, words. This is why this has become my very favorite passage, not only Matthew of all of Scripture. He says in verse 28, So come to me. All who labor and are heavy laden, and I'll give you rest. I'll give you shalom. I'll give you that deep peace that you is so elusive to find. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I'm gentle and lowly in heart, and you'll find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. What we see here is again this gent gentle and humble, this hospitable, very personal, welcoming from Jesus. And I always like to remind us when we read the Bible, people were drawn to Jesus. I know in in this tradition you're not keen, and I understand this is not my conviction, but I respect this on images of Jesus, so you probably don't watch Jesus movies and things, which is fine. Um, but you're probably aware that in a lot of Jesus films and in paintings historically for the last 2,000 years, Jesus is often depicted pretty dourly, right? As kind of like intense and look down upon, you know, maybe you know, holding up a strong line or something. But you always have to remember people were drawn to him, especially the unsuccessful. People found Jesus welcoming. And today, if you've never thought about Jesus that way, I would like to invite you to let scriptures inform your imagination that he looks upon you with a smiling face. God delights in his creatures. And these are some of the words that help us see that. He says, Come to me. Oh, you heard we're in and heavy laden, and you'll find rest. This is an invitation with warm hospital uh hospitality. But notice that in the midst of saying that, he says something quite unexpected, and he uses this image of a yoke to describe this this warm, hospitable welcome. And I don't know if you've ever thought about a yoke because it's not a symbol we use in our Christian tradition very much. But there are different kinds of yokes in the ancient Mediterranean world. There's like a what you might think of as like a double yoke that you tie animals together with. Paul uses this in the Corinthian correspondence to talk about not being unequally yoked. But I think here he's talking about the other kind of yoke, which is a single yoke, which you put, either maybe a human might put on to carry something, but especially what you put on an animal to guide them, to direct them in the path of the fields. And whatever kind of yoke it is, though, even though I think that's what's going on here in the imagery, this is totally unexpected and doesn't seem to go along with the idea of him welcoming us in this warm way. Because a yoke is a picture of leading, of guiding, really of submission. And in fact, in the Old Testament, it's used primarily negative to refer to like a bad king, like putting a yoke upon you. Though in the Jewish literature between the uh Old Testament and the New Testament, there actually this image of a yoke ends up being used several times in a more positive way to refer to instruction, either and submission to Torah, God's instruction, andor to the kingdom of God. The rabbis talk this way after the before and after the time of Jesus as well. And in fact, there it's very interesting. There was another Jesus sometime before this, named Jesus ben Sirah, and we have his writings. He was a wisdom teacher, and he talks about this sort of yoke in this way of taking the yoke of Torah or wisdom upon yourself here. And he was a faithful Jew, this Ben Sirah, who says this acquire wisdom for yourselves without money, put your neck under her yoke and let your souls receive instruction. It is to be found close by. And this is exactly what you see all throughout the Gospels, like in the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus says, You've heard it said, I say to you. Or uh the wise and foolish builders at the end of the Sermon on the Mount, anyone who hears these words of mine and listens to them, or you think of the Great Commission at the end of Matthew, where Jesus says, All authority has been given to me, go and make disciples, right? In other words, here as in other places in the New Testament, what we see is that Jesus himself is wisdom incarnate. He's not only the instrument, he's not only like another prophet or a king or a philosopher, he uses those things who gives wisdom. He actually is saying, take my yoke upon you. And this is not in competition with God's instructions, this is not in competition with the kingdom, but it's emphasizing that the Christian faith believes that God's own wisdom has become a person. And so that person then says, Take my yoke upon you and learn from me. Jesus Himself is the gift of wisdom that you and I need. So as important as it is. To grow in biblical and theological knowledge, all these kind of things, he's saying what you and I need is to actually connect with him, not just to grow in knowledge, but actually be connected. And he uses this image of a yoke to do that. But here's the real dilemma. Here's the really odd thing. Why would he say to those who are weary and heavy laden, those who are aware of our needs and our brokenness, why would he say, take a yoke? I love how one commentator says it, people who are burdened, they don't need a yoke. They need a mattress or a vacation, right? But the reason he says this is because he's giving himself. And notice that the rest that Jesus gives is not actually the reason he uses the image of a yoke, it's not a relaxation of the call of God in our lives, but it's a new kind of relationship to God that we may not have known before. A new kind of relationship. It is a yoke, it is a guidance, but it's one that actually, paradoxically, gives life. Because you see, friends, grace doesn't mean that you and I can do whatever we want. Grace is a freedom from slavery to our own foolishness. And it's a submission to God's goodness for us. Jesus' yoke is a loving, forgiving invitation to true life. It's a gift inviting us to submit to something else to find freedom. It's like the yoke of a marriage that binds you and restricts you in certain aspects of love, but is exactly that binding that enables the deepest kind of love. It's like the yoke of learning to play scales on an instrument. That who loves that, especially when you're a kid? Nobody. But when you submit to the learning of the yoke of the scales that enables you to play beautiful music, it's really like the yoke of any discipline that you might give yourself to. It actually gives freedom. It's like the yoke of having a liturgy or a catechism that they may be painful to memorize and learn, but they actually give you the freedom of knowledge. And herein, friends, lies the great Christian paradox that Jesus reveals. That freedom actually comes through submission, that gain comes through loss, that joy comes through suffering, and then ultimately life only comes through death. And if I can kind of paraphrase some of the things he said in various places, how he describes this text, he says, How in the world could a yoke be life-giving? It's a burden. And he says, the yoke, Jesus' yoke on our lives is like the burden of feathers to a bird. They do make the bird heavier, but they enable the bird to fly. Maybe some of you have heard John Bunyan's old poem that I know John Piper used to quote a lot: run, John, run, the law commands, but gives us neither feet nor hands. For greater news the gospel brings, it bids us fly and gives us wings. And this is Jesus' invitation to us today to submit to him in this way. And so why is this good news? Well, it's given to the humble, it's given to the broken, it's given to the needy, it's given to the little ones. He doesn't say, Come to me, all you who are successful and beautiful and have it together and never have worries or anxieties. But come, all you who are honest and aware of your needs and are weary. And the good news is that Jesus is what his yoke is like. He is gentle and humble and lowly. So to wrap this up, what does this reveal about God? And what does it reveal about us? Well, very briefly, just two brief thoughts. One is we are weak, but he is strong. We are weak, but he is strong. Our lives are marked by burdens and needs and hopes and disappointments, and ultimately very little control. But it is precisely here where God meets us and grants us what we really need: his own wisdom in himself. Our weaknesses, our failures, our burdens, our weariness, our childness, they're actually not hindrances to knowing God. But paradoxically and graciously, haven't you known this? It's when we are at the end of ourselves and are honest about our needs, that's when we find God. When things are going well, it's really hard to find God. And God knows that. I often think of the Apostle Paul's experience as he describes it in 2 Corinthians. He says he was afflicted, he was burdened beyond his strength, he despaired even of life itself. He felt like he had received a death sentence on his life. And in that place did he fully experience God's comfort and deliverance. And God saw, and Paul saw that behind all of his suffering, God's kind hand was there to actually meet him. And he says, When I'm weak, then I'm strong. And the second thing I'd recommend to you, brothers and sisters, is that whenever you and I become aware of our need for wisdom, whether it's navigating a decision big or small, or processing a cancer report, or figuring out how to relate to a wayward child, maybe you need to make a career move, maybe reconcile a relationship that you messed up, maybe you have to deal with some just just something disturbing your shalom. Remember Jesus' words from just a few chapters before this in chapter seven? He says to us, ask, seek, knock. Another beloved passage. He says, Ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find, knock, and it will be open to you. For everyone who asks receives. The one who seeks finds, and the one who knocks, it will be opened. And which one of you, I love this text, which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone. Or if his son asks him for a fish, who will give him a serpent? If you then who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him, including the wisdom he needed? I was standing on the this promise this morning as I got out of bed and got on my knees and just felt really insecure about this sermon. I remembered this text. That God is a father who loves me, and He, I love to give gifts to my children. How much more will He help me today? And that's what He, that's His smiling face upon you today, no matter what you're facing. So if you're a kid today or an adolescent in school, you have so many pressures, so many uncertainties, so many changes happening in your body and your life, seek the Lord. Seek the Lord. Pray for to him for wisdom. If you're a young single trying to figure out your future, all this uncertainty, excitement, and uncertainty, seek the Lord. Ask him for his wisdom. Maybe you're a young married, and some of you are having great times. Some of you are really not having a good time in your early marriage. Maybe you've got needs. Seek the Lord. Humble yourself and ask God to guide you in wisdom. Maybe you're in your 40s, that pressure tank time of life with its mixture of successes and disappointments. You've got a school, you're an Uber driver for your kids and all the other things going on. You have new temptations that can distract you. Seek the Lord and His wisdom. Maybe you're like me in your 50s and 60s. My experience has been pretty great. Um, but there are new temptations there to just diffuse my energy to all kinds of other things. If I say to you, seek the Lord and his wisdom. Maybe you're in your 70s and you have learned a lot of wisdom from both successes and failures. Don't tube out now, but seek the Lord and seek to be a blessing to others. So today, friends, hear Jesus' beautiful and kind and life-changing invitation to take his yoke upon your life, giving you the peace and the wisdom and the strength that you need. Amen. Let me pray. God, I do thank you. I personally thank you for answering my prayers as a needy son to you, my heavenly father, today. And I pray for all those who are crying out to you today that you would comfort them by your spirit. I pray for those who feel maybe some hardness of heart and some apathy today, that you would show mercy on your creatures. I pray for those who are not sure if they know you or not today, that you would uh make yourself very present and use us uh as your priests in the world to all to those. And we thank you for your kindness toward us, and we pray in the powerful name of Jesus. Amen.