Matthew 11, starting at verse 25 says, at that time, Jesus answered and said, I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and prudent and have revealed them to babes. Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in your sight. All things have been delivered to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and the one to whom the Son wills to reveal Him. Come to me, all you 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. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, Lord, we are thankful for this day, and we ask that your attention on the prayer requests, those who have physical needs, who need spiritual encouragement, need to be watched over in ways that we don't even understand, Lord. We lift them up to you. We thank you for hearing us. We ask that you would be with us this time, that you would give the people open ears and open hearts to hear your word, that you would Give to me the physical strength and the spiritual insight necessary to proclaim this message with passion and with accuracy, and Lord, that it would be your message that people would hear and not my own. Please forgive me of my sins, for it's in Christ's name we pray, amen. You're no doubt familiar with Matthew 11 verses 28 through 30. I just read them. The final three verses of chapter 11 contain the gracious invitation of the Lord Jesus that you just sang. If you are weary, if you are worn out, if you are fatigued, not just in a physical sense, but in a deeper, spiritual exhaustion, Jesus says, come to me and I will give you rest. Our text this morning begins at verse 25, and it is sometimes for us ever so tempting to skip over a few verses in order to fast forward and get to the good stuff. Y'all, we should love the invitation and promises in verses 28 through 30, but verses 25 through 27, that is the good stuff. It's just not what we are most comfortable reading next to an invitation to come to Jesus. So follow along with the flow of this chapter. Jesus has prepared his 12 apostles. He sent them out on a ministry to declare the good news in cities and villages of Israel. Verse one in the chapter tells us Jesus himself engages in that same mission. He went and taught in cities and villages, teaching and preaching. And what was the response to his ministry? Well, in verses 2-15, John the Baptist sent some doubting questions, which Jesus answered in kindness and wisdom, even defending the prophet standing despite his doubts. And then in verses 16-19, Jesus moves from John's response to the crowd's response. He equates them to petulant children who refuse to be satisfied. In verses 20 and 24, through 24, he launches into a condemnation of those cities and villages which saw his miraculous ministry, and yet they still refuse to repent. He lists them and says, Corazon, Bethsaida, and Capernaum will suffer greater wrath than the historically wicked cities of Tyre, Sidon, and Sodom. This chapter, it only takes a few minutes to read, but it unfolds over the course of several weeks in real time. somewhere along the line in here, the disciples come back from their mission and report to Jesus. You can glance down at Matthew 12 verse one, you'll find that they're there with Him at that point. But Matthew is not gonna get distracted by the return of the disciples. He is writing this thematic section to present the simple message of salvation delivered by the Lord Jesus Himself. Jesus's presentation of the gospel message goes like this. In verses 20 through 24, which we saw last week, he says, even the most favorable people stand condemned in sin because of their lack of repentance and trust in him. Then in verses 25 through 27, he goes from condemnation to revelation. He says, if you are condemned under sin, and you are, you can only know God and have a righteous relationship with Him through the gracious work of Jesus the Son. He says, no one knows the Father except the Son and whomever the Son wills or desires to reveal Him. Only then does Jesus move from condemnation to revelation to the invitation of verses 28 through 30. Are you condemned in your sin? Do you struggle under that burden? Do you want the saving knowledge of God? He says, come to me and I will give you rest. if we have any inclination that we wanna skip ahead to the good stuff and park ourselves at that gracious invitation and just camp out there for a while, in the process, we would be missing the basis for what makes that invitation true. All the world is condemned. Sin has broken our relationship with God. God has sovereignly chosen to make Himself known through Jesus. And a restored relationship can be found with Jesus alone. Therefore, the invitation from Jesus is, come to me and I will give you rest. We looked last week at the detail of that condemnation in verses 16 through 24. Jesus condemned those who would react to his message with, we talked about this last week, antipathy with you know, hostility, with anger, with criticism. He also condemned those who would react to his message with apathy, right? With indifference and just lack of interest. And since we covered that first point, condemnation, last week, that leaves us just two main points in our text this morning. First, praise God for his revelation. In verse 25, Matthew says, the Lord Jesus answered. And this is suggestive because there's not a question in the text. And yet there's clearly some dialogue that's happening that we're not told about. Yet whatever answer Jesus is giving, it's not to the Jewish crowd who's around him. It is to the father himself. Verses 25 and 26 is a prayer from the son to the father. At that time, Jesus answered and said, I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and prudent and have revealed them to babes. Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in your sight. the crowd at this point may have very well been thinking, like, if you don't think that the learned and respectable Jewish people in Chorazin and Bethsaida and Capernaum are gonna be saved, well, then Jesus, who is it you think is righteous enough? And the answer of Jesus in the form of a prayer to the Father is, Essentially, the people that you most expect to find salvation won't, and the people you least expect to find salvation will. God the Father, whom Jesus addresses here as the Lord of heaven and earth. In other words, he is the master. He is large and in charge. He can do what he wants, where he wants, with whom he wants. Jesus says God the Father has determined to conceal salvation from the wise and prudent and reveal salvation to infants. Can I say it this way? Jesus says salvation is of the Lord. Those who find salvation, Jesus says they don't find it because they are wise and prudent. The word for prudent here is speaking of intelligence or learning. There is a difference between wisdom and intelligence. That is, intelligence is possessing information, gaining more knowledge. Wisdom is rightly applying that knowledge that you have. It's using it well. But Jesus says, look, it does not matter how much you know or how well you use what it is that you know. Human wisdom and learning is never going to be the basis for knowing God. Now I'm gonna insert something here. Do not take this to mean that Jesus is opposed to wisdom and knowledge. He's okay with learning. Both wisdom and knowledge are good. If his point here was to say smart people can't be saved, then he would have contrasted it later on in the verse by saying, you know, he would have contrasted that wisdom and intelligence with saying, well, God has revealed salvation to the stupid. But that's not the contrast that he makes here. He says God's truths of salvation have been revealed to babes, babies, infants, little children. There is nothing unwise or unlearned about being a disciple of Jesus. But what worldly wisdom and learning often do, unfortunately, is cause the people who have those, who possess worldly wisdom and intelligence and learning, to start being self-reliant. You are never going to be smart enough or wise enough to be right with God. And any hope you have of relying on your own wits and your own intelligence and the knowledge you've gained and your own thoughts of wisdom is going to lead you straight to hell. And so the contrast by Jesus is God has revealed himself to infants. the most dependent class of people in the world. Later on, when the disciples of the Lord Jesus begin to sort of debate among themselves which one of them is the greatest, Jesus picks up a little baby, sits him down in front of the disciples, and tells them, don't you know, unless you're like this, you're nothing. Human infants are helpless. They are entirely reliant on others. This is what it means to be a disciple of the Lord Jesus, to be entirely reliant on Him. You know you need Him for everything. If you think you are smart enough, wise enough, strong enough, popular enough, conservative enough, wealthy enough to avoid the wrath of God on your sins, you are wrong. Nobody who relies on themselves is right in the eyes of God. The sum total, if you could add up all of the godless intellectualism in American education, all of it together will not please God. and not one wise, intellectual, educated, multi-PhD professor or student will come to the saving knowledge of God until they are utterly broken of their self-reliance and trust only in Jesus alone. The apostle Paul echoes this in 1 Corinthians 1, verses 26 and 27, when he writes to that congregation and tells them to like, look around at yourselves, people. And when you look around, you're not going to see many wise, you're not going to see many mighty, you're not going to see many noble because God has chosen foolish people and weak people and common people so that no flesh should glory in His presence. In other words, nobody. Nobody in the presence of the Lord Jesus for eternity will spend even a fraction of a second thinking, look at what I did for myself. To ensure that's the case, Jesus says here that the father has sovereignly determined to both conceal and reveal truth as he sees fit. He has, Jesus says, concealed or hidden it from the self-reliant, wise, and prudent, and he has instead revealed it to the completely dependent infants. There is a large portion of Christianity today that protests the idea that God, in his sovereign grace, chooses to reveal himself to some and conceal himself from others. You're welcome to attempt to explain that truth away, but the simple and obvious fact is that Jesus does not explain it away. He asserts that fact of God's sovereign choice, and he thanks God for it. In verse 25, I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth. for this work of concealing and revealing. Not only does Jesus assert this is true and thank the Father for it, he vindicates the wisdom of God for making this choice. In verse 26, even so, Father, for it seemed good in your sight. In other words, This concealing and revealing does not happen by coincidence, right? That those who seem like they have the most ability can't find the truth, and those who seem to have the least ability just kind of stumble upon it. It's not an accident or coincidence. Jesus said it seems good in the Father's sight. In other words, this is what the Father was pleased to do. This revelation comes through His gracious will. If you can imagine what this sounded like to the people standing in front of Jesus that day, as he interacts with the crowd and he condemns their sin and rejection, and then starts praying out loud to the Father, thank you, Father, that infants can see what these wise, intelligent folks seem to be blind to. It seems really evident. that in this prayer, which is a genuine prayer from the son to the father, Jesus is also using this as a preaching tool. This crowd in verses 25 and 26, essentially has been allowed to eavesdrop on a divine conversation between the son and father. And then in verse 27, Jesus stopped speaking to the father and start speaking for the father. Right? In prayer, the son praises the father for revealing himself as it seemed good in your sights. In other words, he reveals himself how and where and to whom he wills. Then Jesus starts preaching again to essentially tell the crowd, oh, you want to know how that revelation works? I make it work. Verse 27, all things have been delivered to me by my father. And no one knows the son except the father, nor does anyone know the father except the son and the one to whom the son wills to reveal him. What God the Father has done in this work of concealing and revealing, he does through the work and authority that he has given to God the Son. Because Jesus says, all things have been delivered to me of my Father. This is similar to later when Jesus says, all power and authority is given to me in heaven and in earth. This work of concealing and revealing comes through Jesus. It is given to Jesus. And here's why, he says, it's because nobody knows the Son except the Father, and nobody knows the Father except the Son. There is a mutually exclusive relationship between God the Father and God the Son that no person in heaven and earth completely grasps. They know each other, they understand each other. Jesus later will say, I and my Father are one. He'll even say to his disciples, if you've seen me, you've seen the Father. But I love how Jesus says this. He uses the word know. We think of this term simply with the idea of knowledge, right? Listen, if you pay attention during the sermon, you'll be able to pass the test that gets handed out after service. Relax, there's not gonna be a test after service. But there's the idea, you'll know the answers. Right, Jesus says this is not what it means for him to know the Father and for the Father to know the Son. That's how we think about knowing, just by, well, we got all the information. That's not how Jesus uses this word. Biblically, to know means more than just possessing knowledge. It means to have a relationship. Maybe the most obvious example, might make us uncomfortable, but the Old Testament tells us that Adam knew Eve and she had a child. Now clearly, it was not describing, there was a moment where Adam went, oh, your name's Eve, nice to meet you. No, it's talking, there was an intimate relationship. Jesus has already used this word no to describe the same thing at the end of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter 7. He said there would be a day in the coming judgment when there are people who claimed to have a relationship with him saying, Lord, Lord, look at all the wonders we've done in your name. And Jesus says in Matthew 7, 23, I will declare to them, depart from me. I never knew you." Well, I never knew you, obviously He knows them. He knows all about them. He knows what they're going to say and what He's going to do before it happens. The point of the word know there is I have no relationship with you. Just like that, when Jesus says here that the Father and the Son are the only ones who really know each other, it is a statement of mutual, exclusive relationship. They really know one another, not just know the facts, but they have a relationship. All right, it's time to do a little exercise. And here I said there wasn't gonna be a quiz. I want you to just look around the room right now, pick out somebody in here who you are not related to, but you know who they are. You're not going to get graded on this, so don't panic. But pick out somebody and let's start asking some questions. One, what's their middle name? Two, what kind of car do they drive? Three, where were they born? Fourth, how many siblings do they have? Fifth, what's their favorite food? Sixth, do they think of themselves as happy? Seven, are they more of a cat person or a dog person? Eight, What did they or do they want to do? Like what is their dream job? Nine, what are they most grateful for in their life? 10, what is their biggest regret in life? Now, y'all probably could fill out some of those answers with whomever you choose. you might struggle with a few others. Now, pretend that you got all this written down and you have all the answers on the page. So after church, you go up and say, hey, I chose you and I need a little bit of help. I need some help with number four. How many siblings do you have? I'm blank on number eight. What is your dream job? And now, great, I got it. I have all the answers filled out. It's all right. I got it all down here on my piece of paper. Does that mean that you know them? or do you know about them? You just added a little bit of education so you know about them. Knowing more than just the answers is what's required for a relationship. You can know about someone without really knowing someone. This is a little window into the kind of knowing that Jesus describes here. Get why Jesus is saying this at this time. He just said that the wise and prudent, right? The wise and the educated in verse 25 have salvation hidden from them even though no doubt they would claim to know God. At best, they know about him. They don't really know Him. They have some learning. You could hand them a quiz and they would get all their questions right, but there's no relationship there. And if they really wanna find a saving relationship with the Father, the only available means to have that saving relationship is through coming to the Son. Further, in the sovereign purpose of God the Father and God the Son, the way that God reveals himself to infants is by giving, Jesus says, all authority to the Son. So that, in verse 27, no one knows the Father except the Son and the Son. the ones to whom the Son wills to reveal Him. That wills there means desires, plans, chooses, decides. So Jesus describes God the Father as sovereign in verses 25 and 26. But by verse 27, He says the Father and the Son are so united in this relationship and purpose that the Son is sovereign over revealing salvation as well. And so how will any sinful, condemned person find a saving relationship with God? It's not through gaining more knowledge, not through employing more wisdom. It's not through, you know, asserting more self-sufficiency. It comes through the sovereign choice of the father and son to choose the equivalent of helpless children to save them. The Father chooses because He's Lord of heaven and earth and Jesus says that's what seemed right for Him to do. The Son chooses because He has all authority and Jesus says that's what I have willed, that's what I have desired to do. So verses 25 through 27 teach us to praise God for His revelation. Second, accept Jesus and his invitation. Verse 27 ends with Jesus asserting that He, God the Son, gives saving knowledge over the Father to whomever He wills, whoever He desires, whoever He chooses. The sovereign authority of God the Father and God the Son in choosing whom to save cannot be more clear than it is in verses 25 through 27. But now in verse 28, the Lord Jesus extends an open-armed invitation to anyone who is weary and laboring, loaded down. He says, come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. The sovereign authority of God in salvation in verses 25 through 27. And the open-armed invitation in verses 28 through 30 are seen by many people as an unreconcilable paradox. Jesus said, the Father and I do the choosing. And then he said, so come on then. The combination here of divine sovereignty and human responsibility has for centuries been presented as if it is a puzzle that cannot be solved. Does God do the choosing or does he extend an invitation for you to accept? Which one is it? According to Jesus, it's both. If you are prone to sort of leaning into the sovereignty of God and trusting His elective choice, but ignoring the open and gracious invitation, you are missing part of the foundational truth of Scripture. And if you are prone to embracing the open-armed call of Jesus while overlooking His self-proclaimed authority to reveal Himself to whomever He chooses, You're neglecting a God-glorifying truth. Charles Spurgeon was once asked how he tries to reconcile these biblical principles of God's sovereignty and human responsibility, and his famous answer was, I don't try to do it. I don't have to reconcile friends. The scriptural truth is this, God saves whomever he wills, and God also proclaims, whoever will call upon the name of the Lord will be saved. Neither of those is in conflict with each other. God's sovereignty and human responsibility are not struggling against each other like the old Soviet Union and United States in a Cold War trying to freeze each other out. They are not fussy neighbors shouting insults from opposite sides of a backyard fence. They're not in disagreement at all. They get along just fine. Here they both are, placed right next to each other by the Lord Jesus himself. He says, thank you, Father, for concealing from some and revealing to others as it seems good to you. He says, nobody has saving knowledge of the Father except I choose to give it to them. And he says, come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. This is mysterious, but true. It is perplexing, yet undeniably wonderful. To ignore the sovereignty of God in salvation is just a vain attempt to steal His glory, right? Nobody gets the glory in His presence. All praise goes to Him forever and always. The Father chose, the Son bled and died and rose again. The Holy Spirit brings life and faith. Salvation is of the Lord and the glory is for the Lord alone. Yet, We cannot ignore that every human being is responsible for their sin. They are condemned for a lack of repentance and they are then subject to this gracious offer to find salvation and rest in Jesus alone. Listen, if you come to Jesus in repentance and faith, He is not going to pull a notebook out of your pocket and double check to make sure your name is on the list. He simply says, even though He saves whom He chooses, He also says, come to me and I will give you rest. The scripture bears out the facts of the matter. When Jesus says, come to me, if you are laboring, if you are heavy laden, there is a unique segment of humanity that recognizes this call. To labor means to be weary, to be tired, to be worn out as a result of hard work. To be heavy laden is the idea of you are carrying a load that is too heavy to bear. The context of the chapter makes it clear this burden is the condemnation and wrath of God that comes as a result of our sin. And who carries this burden? Everybody is. Jesus just said the most blessed cities of Chorazon, Bethsaida, and Capernaum are bearing this burden. He's clear that they are laboring under the unbearable consequences of sin. God's wrath is on them. They face eternity in hell, and this is a burden that everyone bears, yet clearly not everybody knows it. Later on in Matthew 23, 4, Jesus describes this burden as a weight of trying to essentially establish your own righteousness before God. He says that the scribes and Pharisees, he says of them that they bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, and they lay it on men's shoulders when they themselves cannot move it even a little bit. My friend, I pray that you hear this this morning. Your inability to please God, your sin, His wrath on your sin, it is a reality whether you recognize it or not. Even if you're walking through life right now thinking, well, I'm doing great. Everything is wonderful. I'm a good person. I know all about God. I mean, I can answer the questions on the quiz. After all, I was baptized by a preacher who said, after I got up out of the water, that's what makes me saved. I'm a social conservative. I come from a Christian family. We went to church all the time. I feel comfortable with where I'm at. You are like the people of the cities that Jesus condemned who were comfortable with where they were at. You're trusting in your knowledge and your wisdom. You might have all the right answers to a quiz about God, but that doesn't mean you have a relationship with him through Jesus Christ. You are a sinner. You are carrying a heavy burden of God's wrath on your shoulders. And my prayer is that you feel it. You might think the best thing for your life is just to ignore it and to move forward happily, ignorant to the message of Jesus. But I'm telling you, the best thing for your life would be if you came to grips with the reality of your sin. that it would weary you, that you would feel the oppressive weight of it, that you would labor so hard that you would be so crushed by it, that you hear the invitation of Jesus and you come to Him and He will give you rest. You can find rest in Jesus because all who come to Him, He saves them completely because He carries our burden. The Apostle Peter says in 1 Peter 2.24 that Jesus, He bore our sins in His own body. He went to the cross taking our burden of sin and the wrath of God onto Himself and suffered in our place. You bring your burden of sin to Jesus, He will relieve you of it. He will give you rest. You will not carry it any longer. But you need to know, When you accept Jesus and his invitation, the text says you also have to submit to Jesus and his commands. Listen in verse 29 and 30. 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. Y'all know what a yolk is? It's not an egg yolk. Picture a couple of oxen that are being used to plow a field. They are working side by side and they are working in unison because there is a piece of wood that goes over both of their shoulders, attaching them to the burden in order to connect them so that they can go together and stay together. Now to some folks, they hear this and they think Jesus is giving a bait and switch offer. Right? Give me your burdens and I will remove them from you and in return, I'm gonna put a whole different kind of burden on you. That's not how this works. You come to Jesus for rest and he removes the burden of sin. He removes the burden of God's wrath. You don't bear it anymore because he's done it for you. But when Jesus frees you from the burden of sins, he does not then set you back loose onto the world to act the way that you were acting before. You join in him, you join with him in the yoke in verse 29. And he says, you learn from me. The word learn there is literally the word that describes becoming his disciple. The rest, Jesus gives. is not total rest from responsibility, it is the rest that comes through finding a saving relationship with Him. You follow Him, you learn from Him. Look at verse 29 again. You learn from Him and you learn about Him. I am gentle and lowly in heart. So you learn from me, Jesus says. See, when Jesus said the Father hides these things from the wise and educated, he was not endorsing stupidity. He's not against learning. He's for learning what's worth knowing, and that's him. You should not sign up for Faith in Jesus thinking that it is a one-time event. You're gonna stand in line and you're gonna get your autograph or you're gonna take your selfie and then you're gonna go on your way. That's not what Faith in Jesus is. Saving Faith in Jesus is registering for a lifelong graduate study in which Jesus is both the curriculum and the professor. He is the material that you learn and he is the instructor who you learn from. He says, you'll learn from me and you'll learn I am gentle and lowly in heart. The word gentle here is translated in the King James Version as meek and some people mistake meekness for weakness. Think of how that would make nonsense of this text. What a wonderful invitation it would be if I said, come join me in a yoke pulled together because I am a weakling who can't do nothing. Instead, this word gentle or meek is describing strength under control. It's used outside of scripture in classical Greek to describe a well-trained war horse, strong but steady and under control. Give your burden to Jesus. Take up the yoke of learning from him and learning about him because he says he is gentle and lowly in heart. He is meek and he is humble. He's picturing it like this. Get in the yoke with me because I am strong enough that I can pull the whole load and I'm humble enough that I'm willing to get in there and do it with you. You will find rest. My yoke is easy and my burden is light. come to Jesus and you will find the burden of sin removed. The crushing weight of God's wrath is withdrawn and yet you're not promised an entirely burden-free existence. The rest Jesus promises is not a sit on the couch, munch popcorn and play video games all day kind of rest. It is an active, Rest in the Christian life, you're learning, you're moving, you're pulling, but the burden is light because in that life you have a relationship with the Lord Jesus and he is there next to you and he does all the heavy lifting. Are you laboring? Are you heavy laden? Are you weary, worn out? Are you crushed by the weight of sin? Do you have the reality of the heavy weight of God's wrath on you? There is good news here. Jesus says, come to me. I will give you rest. Turn from your sin, trust Him, learn to know Him, have a relationship with Him. And He says you will find rest for your soul.