It’s hard to beat that. Matthew chapter 11, if you’ll turn there with me, please. We’ll continue our studies through this chapter. You may remember, or for the sake of those of you who were not here, I am attempting to work through this chapter, but aiming toward the final verses that give us something of a statement of what a disciple is. Dan Fawcett had asked that we take up that subject, and Pastor Boyd assigned that to me. And those last verses, wonderful as they are, I just didn’t want to jump to them without getting the context and see the background to it.
And so I backed up to Matthew chapter 11, verse 1, and we looked first of all at those first 12 or 15 verses where Jesus tells us, in essence, that true greatness is found in bearing witness of Jesus. And that, of course, has marvelous implications regarding his superior greatness. And then we saw in the following verses, verses 12 through 25 last time, that although we bear witness to Jesus, it is not a message that is universally accepted. And it might be a surprise because the kingdom has come; we would think, given many of the Old Testament prophecies, that it would just sweep up into itself all who are God’s—all who belong to him, I mean—and sweep away those who deny him. But that’s not what’s happening.
What we find is that there’s great opposition to the kingdom and great opposition to the gospel of the kingdom as it’s proclaimed. And then Jesus takes that up in the following verses and pronounces these woes of condemnation on those quaint and otherwise seeming innocent Galilean towns who seem so nice. But yet they had the enormous privilege of seeing and hearing Jesus, and yet they did not repent. And because of their exposure to such privilege, and because such privilege had been abused and refused, there will be implications for eternity that will be very surprising. It will be worse, Jesus says, for these quaint Galilean towns in judgment than even for Sodom or for pagan Tyre and Sidon. Hearing the gospel message is a serious matter, and eternity is at stake in it, and there are eternal implications to it.
And then we come to verse 25 last time, and we saw that even in the face of rejection, God is not taken by surprise. And in fact, in every instance of both reception of the gospel and refusal of the gospel, God is at work revealing or concealing according to his own good pleasure. And for that, Jesus praises him in verse 26. Well, that brings us up to what we’ll do today, and I don’t think we’ll get through any further than verse 27 this morning. But let’s pick up our reading with verse 25.
“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 anyone 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’m 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 bow for prayer. Our Father, we are grateful for this marvelous passage of scripture that we’ve been exploring together. We have seen profound truths related to your greatness, your sovereignty, truths that have left us humbled, even crushed with the glory that you have favored us so in revealing yourself to us. We pray that you will now give us increased understanding, that we may understand the perhaps even more profound truths that are bound up in these next two verses. And we pray that you will refresh our hearts in it. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
The Unshared Sonship Of The Son
Well, as I say, all of that in the background, climaxing so far in verses 25 and 26 with the statement of God’s sovereign concealing and revealing of saving truth, and Jesus praising him for it, it brings us to the stunning statement of verse 27: “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 anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”
The Father here, obviously, is God. The Son, obviously, is the Son of God. So what does it mean to be the Son of God? Actually, there’s a lot of confusion on that in the Muslim world. They are taught commonly that Jesus is God’s son as a result of God cohabiting with Mary and producing a son. And in that sense, he is the son of God, which of course is not what we believe. But just what is it to be the Son of God?
Well, in fact, this is—when we come to the Gospels, we have really the climax so far in the canon of scripture with this growing, wonderful theme of the Son of God. There are several senses in which we find this term, “the Son of God,” used in the New Testament. One, Son of God—well, that was Adam; Adam was the Son of God. Luke tells us that. Adam was the Son of God in that God created him and he was God’s son. Luke 3 gives us that in Jesus’ genealogy. We also find in the Old Testament that Israel was God’s son. “Israel is my firstborn son, let my son go.” Israel is God’s son. And then we find later, more climactically, that the Davidic king is God’s son. You’ll remember that God promised David a greater son. And God says of this greater son of David, “I will be his father and he will be my son.”
And then we come to the New Testament. We find all these connections coming together in Jesus. Adam was the son of God. Jesus is the better Adam, the greater Adam. Israel was God’s son. Jesus is the better Israel, the true Israel. The Davidic king is God’s son. And Jesus is the Davidic King par excellence. He is the Son of God as the new and better Adam. He is the Son of God as the true Israel. He is the Son of God as the Davidic King. And yet when we come here to a passage like this, we find that he is the Son of God in a still higher sense than that. Obviously some exalted sense is in view here. “No one knows the son except the father,” and so on.
I’ll notice some of the connotations of what it means to be the Son of God here in verse 27. “All things have been handed over to me by my Father.” What things? Well, in context, it would seem, in verses 25 and 26, he’s speaking of God’s knowledge and God’s prerogatives as sovereign. All of that’s been given to me. I have it all. In verses 25 and 26, in reference to that, Jesus is saying he knows the inner mind of God with respect to his sovereign determinations in concealing and revealing. Jesus has all that. And in fact, that’s picked up later in the verse, that he reveals God to whom he chooses. Verse 26, then, Jesus praises God for that. And verse 27, now, he claims a knowledge of God himself. Absolutely. “All things have been handed to me by my Father, and 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.”
So Jesus is claiming a kind of knowledge of God that’s unique, a kind of knowledge of God that no one else has, a kind of knowledge of God that is without any parallel. In fact, notice, he’s claiming a mutually exclusive knowledge of God. No one knows the Son except the Father, no one knows the Father except the Son. We might say there’s something we might call an “inside world” of God, of what it is to be God. And that is known—that world of deity is known—only to God. And yet that knowledge of what it is to be God is shared equally by Father and Son. Jesus knows the Father on equal ground. No one else knows God on that level. We may know God insofar as the Son reveals him to us, but we will not know God on that level. Jesus alone knows the Father and knows him in a way that no one else can.
And so we might say not only is this mutually exclusive knowledge—no one else can be involved in this—but we have to go further and say it’s mutually exhaustive knowledge, one of the other. That is, the Son is such a high, exalted being that only God, who is omniscient, can really know him. “No one knows the Son except the Father.” And the Father, of course, is infinite. He’s infinite in his attributes. He’s infinite in his being. He’s infinite in his glory. He’s beyond measure.
We have a label in systematic theology for this doctrine: the incomprehensibility of God. Big word. But it’s an important truth. We can know God. We must affirm that. It is important that we affirm that we can know God truly and accurately insofar as he reveals himself. But we have to say at the end of the day, we can never know God fully. It’s beyond us. He is God. We’re a creature. He’s incomprehensible in that sense. And yet the Son, he says—the Son knows him. He knows him fully. The knowledge that the Father has of the Son is the knowledge the Son has of the Father. All that the Father is and all that the Son is, it all lies mutually open one to the other. Not just factual knowledge—he does this, he does that—but personal knowledge. He knows him. He knows the Father who is omniscient. He knows the Father who is infinite. Or in the words of verse 25, he knows the Father who is Lord of heaven and earth. And he knows him exclusively, and he knows him exhaustively.
This is just stunning kind of talk. Who can talk like this? You remember I’ve said this so many times when we’re in the Gospels: we need to keep that question in our mind when you read, when you hear Jesus talking. Who does he think he is? Serious question. Who does he think he is? Judging by the way he talks, who does he think he is? Who can talk like this? No mere created being can ever talk like this: “I have exclusive and exhaustive knowledge of the Father.” And yet Jesus says it.
We like to imagine what we will be like in the eternal state, what we call our glorified state. Glorified bodies, glorified minds—we will often make statements offhand: “Well, we won’t know that till we get to heaven.” Well, it’s just assumed, of course, we’ll know better in heaven than we know now. But not in all the ages of eternity will we ever be anything but creatures. And not in all the ages of eternity will we ever fully know and comprehend God. And yet Jesus says, “I know. I know him like no one else can.” Unlike any created being, Jesus says, he alone is competent to grasp the infinite God. God in all of his infinite depths and his being and his glory, it’s all fully known to Jesus.
It’s worth noticing, I think, here in verse 27 that all of this is in the present tense as well. Jesus is not referring to a past experience only. He’s not referring to something that will happen in the future. But there’s this continuous, unbroken experience of the full knowledge of the Father. He knows him comprehensively. Many years ago, I heard S. Lewis Johnson preach. He was in our church. He was one of the outstanding theologians of a generation ago. And he preached from this passage. And the title of his message always caught my attention. He called it “The Unshared Sonship of the Son.” The unique or the unshared sonship of the Son—that Jesus here is saying in verse 27 that he has a unique filial relationship with God. Something that’s without any parallel at all.
Now many of you I’m sure are familiar with the fact that the four Gospels each—they talk about Jesus, all of them, and they all talk about the same Jesus, but they each present Jesus from their own slant, looking at him from a different angle. And so you have Matthew, who is known as the gospel of the Messiah, the gospel of the king. You have Mark, who’s the gospel of the suffering servant, or the suffering servant who is the Son of God. You have the gospel of Luke, who is the Savior for all people, even the outcasts. And you have the Gospel of John, who is noted widely as the Gospel of the deity of the Son, the Gospel of the Divine Son. And it is John, above all others, that presents Jesus as the Son of God and the full implications of the deity. Starts out, “In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, the Word was God.” Climaxes at the end with doubting Thomas saying, “My Lord and my God,” and all through the middle we have these upshots of the same thing coming: “I am one with the Father, I and the Father are one.” John is given to tell us that Jesus is the divine son.
And yet we come to a passage like this in Matthew. That’s just unsurpassed anywhere, even in John. In fact, some have referred to this famously as a “thunderbolt from the Johannine sky.” One commentator wrote, “We might describe the teaching of the fourth gospel, that is the gospel of John, as only a series of variations on the one theme which has its classical expression in this verse of the synoptic gospels.” So Jesus here is not, in verse 27, not just claiming messiahship. He’s claiming to be divine messiah. Now, in fact, that’s another study that we could open up at great length as well. In fact, there are plenty of passages in the Old Testament that present the Messiah as not only the son of David, but the son of God, that he is both David’s son and David’s Lord. For instance, in the Psalms, “Your throne, oh God, is forever and ever.” And we find language that goes beyond mere humanity in all of this—two tracks of God coming and David’s son coming and David ruling and God ruling coming together in the incarnation of Jesus.
But Jesus is claiming that here, and in fact that’s the ground of his messianic mission. He is the Son of God, come as the Son of Man. This comes up again at the very end of Matthew’s Gospel, where again we have just a marvelous statement of the deity of Jesus, where Jesus is going to baptize them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. The name—single name—the singular name. And it’s not the name of the Father, and the name of the Son, and the name of the Spirit. The name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Three persons distinguished, one God sharing in that ineffable name, and Jesus participates in the divine name.
So, verse 27: “No one knows the Son except the Father.” The Son is such an exalted being that no one can know him comprehensively except God himself who is omniscient. And no one can know the Father, obviously, but the Son does. Jesus is the divine son. And yet—and I often do that to you, don’t I?—and yet, notice verse 27 again: “All things have been handed over to me by my Father.” All things have been handed over to me by my Father. So we have both perfect equality and yet, in some deep sense, relational dependence.
Now, if you feel like I’m about to lose you here, it’s okay. I think we’re in some of the deepest waters of the New Testament right here. Perfect equality, and yet, in some deep sense, a relational dependence. Now, let me take just a minute and expand on this just a little in other places that we see it in the New Testament. Keep your hand here, Matthew; we’ll be right back. But look at John chapter 3. John chapter 3, verse 35: “The Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hand.” If that’s not enough, look at John 17. Here in Jesus’ high priestly prayer, look at verses 11 and 12: “And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world. And I am coming to you, Holy Father. Keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. Keep them in your name, which you have given me.”
So here again, we have like in Matthew chapter 28, a statement that Jesus participates in the divine name. He’s God. The name belongs to him. And yet it’s a name that the Father has given him. So perfect equality, and yet in some deep sense, relational dependence as Father and Son. And my favorite expression of this, look back at John chapter five. John 5, verse 26: “For as the Father has life in himself…” Let’s stop there. The Father has life in himself. What is life in himself? Independence, eternality, self-existence. It’s a doctrine of divine aseity. God exists of himself. He has life in himself. He’s independent. He doesn’t depend on anything. He has life in himself. All right, now, verse 26: “For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself.” So the Father and the Son have self-existence. And yet, the Father has granted the Son to have self-existence. Now, how do you do that? I haven’t got a great answer for that. I don’t know.
But we are here, as I say, in some of the deepest waters of the New Testament. The ancient church called this the doctrine of eternal generation. And you find this reflected in several different ways in the New Testament. You find it with some titles given to Jesus and some descriptions of his relationship to the Father. It is always the one direction, from Father to Son, never back from Son to Father. So Jesus is the image of God. But you never find that the Father is the image of the Son. Of course not. The Son is the image of God. You find it in other expressions, like in John chapter 1. Jesus is the Word of God. He is God expressing himself, but you never find it running the other direction. You find it famously in Hebrews chapter 1. The Son is the imprint of God’s nature. He’s the effulgence of God’s glory. The Son is the brightness of the Father’s light, but you never find it running the other direction. Perfect equality, and yet in some sense, a relational dependence upon the Father.
And most famously you find this in the writings of the Apostle John where Jesus is referred to as the begotten Son. So when was Jesus begotten? When was the Son of God begotten? Now you could answer that like the ancient heretic Arius answered it and said, “Well, there was a time when the Son was not, but he came into being, he was the first creation of God.” And at that point, you’re in heresy. The Son is eternal. The Son has life in himself. He always was the Son of the Father. And yet, he’s the begotten Son of the Father. And so as I say, the ancient church coined the term “eternal generation,” which is self-contradictory. It can’t be generated and eternal, but that’s what you have to put together to put together all of this that we find here in the New Testament. Again, perfect equality and yet in some sense a relational dependence. And that’s what we have here in Matthew 11, verse 27. “All things have been handed over to me by my Father.”
So verse 25, the Father sovereignly hides and reveals saving revelation about himself. Verse 26, the Son praises him for that. And then verse 27, in turn, the Father has authorized the Son to reveal or not according to his shared will. The Son reveals to those whom he chooses.
What Is This Rest That Jesus Has In View?
All right, and it’s on that ground then that we come to verse 28: “Come to me, all who are labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Now again, we have to ask, who can talk like that? Who is this that dares to say that he can give rest to weary souls? Well, you see then it’s an offer that’s grounded in his exalted person. He is the one who has exclusive, exhaustive knowledge of God, and he, therefore, is the only one qualified to mediate knowledge of God to anyone. He’s the sole, exclusive channel of divine saving grace.
Okay, let’s move on. Next, what is this rest that Jesus has in view? What’s the weariness, the heavy ladenness that he’s talking about? Well, again, we find here a climactic kind of statement that brings together whole strands of Old Testament connections. You know, you think about your reading of the Old Testament, you’ve seen this rest idea come up quite often. We have the weekly rest, the Sabbath. We have yearly rests. We have rests all the time. Entering into Canaan was a rest. And now Jesus says, “Come to me and I will give you rest.” Is he claiming then that all of that rest theology in the Old Testament pointed forward to me? And I give you the rest that all of that just typified?
Well, in fact, it seems exactly that’s what’s going on. If you read just in the next verses, chapter 12, verses one and following, we find the Sabbath incident where Jesus’ disciples are plucking grain on the Sabbath and the Pharisees object—they’re working too much on the Sabbath—and Jesus doesn’t take the easy way out and say simply, “They’re not breaking the Sabbath, the law provides for this.” But instead, he takes the higher road and says, “I’m a unique exception.” And then he says he’s the Lord of the Sabbath. And he’s greater than Jonah and greater than Solomon and greater than everybody else. Is he saying then that all of that rest theology that’s pointing toward me and the rest that I give?
Well, in fact, the New Testament writers pick it up in exactly that way. You look in the book of Galatians; the whole problem in Galatians is they’re taking the Old Testament law, and now the Sabbath in particular, way too seriously, not recognizing it pointed to Jesus. Or Colossians chapter two, the Sabbath: people want to impose these days and new moons and Sabbaths on you. They don’t realize it’s pictures of Jesus. Hebrews chapters 3 and 4: the writer there picks it up and he picks it up in relation to the Psalms and back to the Canaan rest. The Canaan rest was offered under Joshua. Hundreds of years later now, we find the psalmist writing and says there remains yet a rest for the people of God. The writer of Hebrews now, hundreds of years later, looks back on that and says, “If hundreds of years after Joshua, the psalmist is saying there remains yet a rest for the people of God, then whatever else we can say, the rest entered under Joshua did not exhaust the promise of rest given because it’s still being promised hundreds of years later.” And guess what? It’s Jesus. He gives us rest. You find the same thing in the book of Revelation finally, climactically. There the saints of God have rest from their labors.
What Jesus is pointing toward here then is that all of this Old Testament rest theology—rest, rest, rest, enter into rest—all of that pointed toward Jesus, who alone can give true rest. I think coming closer to our text, we should point out also that this offer of rest surely has to be understood in terms of the angelic announcement in chapter one when Jesus was born. The birth announcement ahead of time: “You will call his name Jesus for he will save his people from their sins.” Surely this rest must be that. It’s not financial rest that he’s offering. He’s offering rest from the burden of sin and guilt. And in fact, then, that’s what we find in this passage as well. “All things have been handed over to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father. No one knows the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him. Come to me, and all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
It is the rest of the knowledge of God, the rest of acceptance with God. It is an invitation to sinners to come and know God, as the knowledge of God is mediated through the Son. And it is, I think, just a wonderful, such a wonderfully fitting description of salvation, isn’t it? Rest. No more the endless struggle, trying to earn God’s acceptance. Wondering all the time whether I’ve done well enough. No more the anxiety with reference to my standing with God. No more the fear of death. No more the fear of divine judgment. No more the fear of abandonment in the end. I’ve come to Jesus and I’ve found rest. Isn’t that our testimony? And this word “rest” captures it, I think, so well.
Now, how does Jesus provide this rest? Well, of course, this passage doesn’t answer the question. But we have to recognize that this passage is part of a big narrative. And Matthew is giving us that narrative that climaxes in the death and resurrection of Jesus. And there the divine Son who’s equal with the Father, the divine Son who though on earth remains one with the Father always, the divine Son who claims to give rest—this exalted Son is arrested and he’s whipped. And he’s put on a cross and he’s crucified. And there he bears the sin of his people. And because he bears the sin of his people successfully, God raises him from the dead. And he comes from the dead and he declares, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go and make disciples of all the nations.” He provides this rest by accomplishing salvation through his saving work.
To Whom Is This Rest Offered?
Next question then, to whom is this rest offered? Verse 28: “Come to me all”—unrestricted offer, all—and yet this one qualification: “all who labor and are heavy laden.” To all who recognize that they are unable to find rest themselves, come to me. That is the only requirement to finding this rest: is to recognize that you can’t give it yourself and you go to Jesus for it. That’s it. And what Jesus is saying here is what he says so often and what we find throughout the New Testament: that we must come to Jesus as helpless babies, acknowledging our helplessness before him, acknowledging that we have nothing to offer.
In fact, that brings us to the next question. What does it mean to come to Jesus? Come to Jesus. Is there a place where you can go? You walk there? Maybe you walk to the front here? What does it mean to come to Jesus? In fact, the New Testament has a wonderful vocabulary of faith. We speak of faith, believing, trusting. Trusting is the essence of what faith is. Resting—there’s another metaphor for faith. Waiting on God. The New Testament has several metaphors for faith. “Having Christ,” and that is to have in him what he alone can give. “Receiving Christ,” there’s another metaphor. To receive Christ is to receive what he alone can give because he alone has accomplished it. “Eating and drinking of Christ,” there’s another metaphor for faith. To nourish yourselves from Christ, to find in him what only he can give. One of my favorites is in the book of Hebrews: “fleeing to Christ.” It takes the imagery from the cities of refuge in the Old Testament. You run to get away from the avenger of blood and now you’re safe. And we fled for refuge to Jesus. In him now we’re safe.
And that’s the idea here. Come to Jesus. Come to Jesus as the one who uniquely and only has accomplished salvation and have in association with him what you can have only in association with him because he is the accomplished Savior. Coming to Jesus, then, is coming to him for the needed rest and for needed salvation. It is a whole-souled embrace of Jesus as our only Savior. It is coming to him recognizing that we have nothing to offer, recognizing we have nothing to plead, as we sang this morning, except that he’s a Savior who has shed his blood for sinners and he’s bid me come. And because of his promise, we can come and have in him what he alone has accomplished.
And notice what he says here: “I will give you rest.” Is it worth noting he doesn’t say, “I’ll pay you, I’ll reward you”? Just unmerited free gift. This points up the unique suitability of faith as the instrument of justification. We receive from God. Faith is not a work for which we’re rewarded. Faith is just an open-handed reception of the free gift in Jesus. And so Jesus, the uniquely exalted divine Son, offers salvation to all who will come to him for it. And what he says is very simple. If you sense your estrangement from God and you long to know him, come to me. If you sense your sin, you feel your lostness, come to me. I’ll give you rest. If you recognize your guilt, and the thought of standing before God in judgment frightens you, come to me. That’s all. Just come to me. And I will be for you all that God requires of you.
Come ye sinners poor and needy, weak and wounded by the fall. If you tarry till you’re better, you’ll never come at all. Let not conscience make you linger, nor of fitness fondly dream. All the fitness he requires is to feel your need of him. And we don’t have this version in our hymnal, but I love the refrain that’s given in other hymnals: “I will arise and go to Jesus.” This is our Lord’s invitation. It is an offer of free salvation provided fully by the divine Son who alone can give it. “Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Amen.
Let’s pray. Our Father, we’re struck by the profound claims of Jesus, his greatness and his glory, and we’re struck with the wonderful invitation that he has given. Lord, help us to see that Jesus is our only hope and help us each here today to rest in him. We ask in his name, amen.