Matthew 11 and 23 connections

Pastor Tom had a great message on Sunday night on Matthew 11: "28Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."
I was doing some reading tonight in a book called The Jewish Reclamation of Jesus and some of the words there sparked some thoughts.

Thought 1: The yoke that Jesus is talking about is the yoke of a rabbi or the teaching of the rabbi. When a person became a disciple of a rabbi he/she would talk about taking on the yoke of their rabbi. Jesus tells us that in comparison to other rabbis his yoke is easy and his burden is light.

Thought 2: We read in Matthew 23, 1Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, 2"The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat, 3so practice and observe whatever they tell you--but not what they do. For they preach, but do not practice. 4They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger. The Pharisees' load is not easy and light, but heavy and crushing.

Thought 3: The teaching of Jesus and the teaching of the Pharisees and scribes of his day was distinctly different in a very important way, namely, those rabbis who came out of the tradition of the pharisees spoke in a specialized jargon and used technical language that people had a hard time understanding, it was a burden, a load to try to figure out what they were saying, and their teachers refused to lift a finger to help them understand it. Jesus, on the other hand, according to Jewish scholars, taught simply and appealingly i.e. he was gentle, lowly of heart, he didn't need to put on airs or burden the people with things they couldn't figure out because of the jargon.

Thought 4: The problem with understanding what Jesus said is that he expects us to obey it. While Jesus may be easy to understand, while we may clearly know what his yoke is, doing what he says --loving enemies, turning the other cheek, doing our good deeds so that God is praised and not us--that's hard.

Thought 5: Obedience to the yoke of Jesus is at the heart of love for Jesus. I read 1,2,3 John in the last couple of days. One thing that overwhelmed me was the connection between loving Jesus and obeying Jesus. A couple of examples,

I John 5.3 For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome. (do you hear the connect back to Jesus and Matthew 11?)

2 John 6And this is love, that we walk according to his commandments; this is the commandment, just as you have heard from the beginning, so that you should walk in it.