Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Matt 11:25-30.... Jesus Revealing God through Challenging us to Labor


Jesus Reveals God to Us Jesus challenges us with Laboring for God= THIS is what He wanted to Reveal to us about God
Matt 11:25-30 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. 26 Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure. 27 "All things 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. 28 "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 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. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." NIV

Sharing some thoughts from my QT this past week with our STS group…
Interesting thought for me as God is revealing more to me about Him through Christ and through His Word.  I never connected verses 25-27 to verses 28-30.  Verses 28-30 are REALLY popular with most Christians- as most see it as God wanting to give us rest… one thing about this one is that God’s idea of rest- that Jesus is telling us- is that HE wants to put on HIS yoke on OUR necks…. A yoke is a device placed on the necks of beasts of burden in order to harness their energy to do work—WE are those beasts of burden- God wants to harness our energy to do work- to labor for Him…

The first thing with this passage is that God WANTS to hide some things from people- verses 25-26

The next thing is that in verse 27 we find that Jesus is telling us 4 things:
  • ·         No one knows the Father except the Son
  • ·         No one knows the Son except the Father
  • ·         Jesus will be the one to reveal God to us
  • ·         Jesus will be CHOOSING the people who He will reveal God to

Then He tells us that He wants us to Labor for God and that this labor will be REST for us…
Connecting the dots….
Jesus is revealing to us something about God- and that something is that God wants us to Labor.  Therefore, those who labor- will be understanding more and more about who God is and what He is about- we will understand God more in a way that others will not- since they are not joining in on the labor for God…
THIS is what God wants to hide from people…
Is that IF we want to KNOW God and Understand Him- then we must Labor for Him…
There are alot of implications that go along with this too...
One of them is that... IF we don't labor- then we won't know God- and this may be because we are resisting Jesus revealing God to us through us laboring...
SO... if we don't labor- that may mean that we DON'T want to Know God...