Dale Johnson: This week on the podcast I’m delighted to have with me Dr. Paul Twiss. Paul serves as a teaching pastor at Bethany Bible Church in Thousand Oaks, California. He’s also an associate faculty member at the Masters Seminary. Paul loves to preach and teach the Bible and he’s blessed to be the husband to Laura and a father to six young children, which I can resonate with certainly having six children of my own. Paul, listen, it’s a delight to be with you. Thank you for joining us on the podcast today.
Paul Twiss: It’s great to be here. Thanks for having me.
Dale Johnson: Now interestingly, we are talking about the rest that Jesus offers and as you think through this, I always describe in counseling, most of the time in counseling issues this is exactly what people are looking for, they just don’t know where to find it. They find themselves burdened. I often say that you know, life’s experiences are best explained in the system of Scripture better than any other system and what people are looking for with these difficulties that they struggle with is they’re trying to find peace, there trying to find solace, they’re trying to find rest. And we think about the world in very different ways. We think well, we’re not supposed to be burdened. Maybe it’s abnormal that we’re burdened. But the reality is Jesus says in this world we will have trouble, right? We’re going to have difficulty. So, let’s start at a place like that. What are the things that make us heavy-laden and struggle? What are the troubles that we feel? The burdens, if you will, that we feel.
Paul Twiss: It’s interesting you mention it just that. I think most people, at least in various seasons, feel burdened and they feel weary, and we tend to think about rest in terms of pulling back, doing less, we think our weariness comes from a full schedule. And certainly, a change in routine, vacation can give relief. But I don’t think that’s what Jesus has in mind when he offers rest. If you think about just pushing that logic to keep pulling back to find rest, then what actually happens when you do that is you try and minimize your commitments. We know Genesis tells us that God has put us on the earth to subdue it, rule over it, to be image bearers. So, by just pulling back if that’s the only way that you seek to find rest, you actually become quite discontent.
So, the problem isn’t so much with how much we’re doing or what we’re doing. It actually is more about how we’re doing it, the manner in which we go about our daily routines and our daily responsibilities is what causes us to feel weary. Now, how does Jesus get to that very issue to begin with in Matthew’s gospel when He issues the invitation to come and to find rest? The context is really key. Throughout Matthew’s gospel there is this polemic to Jesus’ ministry against the Pharisees and the scribes that you see it all through the Sermon on the Mount. One place that you see in particular is in chapter 12 of Matthew’s gospel. It really is a long-extended interaction with the Pharisees and Jesus is undermining their legalistic teaching and what Jesus points out is that the Pharisees are creating burdens for those around them they took the Old Testament law, they manipulated it, they added to it and in doing that they’re simply trying to justify themselves. Their reason for doing what they did with the law and their way of teaching was to find a way in which they could proclaim, “We’ve done it, we’ve arrived, we’re righteous in and of ourselves.”
Now, if you fast forward to our day, we don’t have the Pharisees around us. We don’t have people over us doing this, but there’s a sense in which we really don’t need them because we’re all very good at behaving like Pharisees. We’re very good at taking whatever is the thing in front of us, whatever is the activity and pursuing it in a way that we’re seeking to justify ourselves or validate our lives through what we do. So, you know, you can imagine the young college student leaves home and heads off to college. She desperately wants to feel accepted, affirmed, her life to be validated, and she starts to look for ways to do that and one very common way in which we seek to validate our lives is simply through the praise of others and so you can see young people today behaving in a way on social media, in peer groups in a way that is simply trying to receive the praise of man to satisfy that inclination we have to justify our lives. Or fast forward beyond the college years, you see this a lot in parenting, parents actually shifting that burden as it were on to their children and parenting in such a way that they feel like they’ve arrived, they’ve done it, they’ve done what is necessary to say my life counts, which is a terrible way to parent. It puts an awful responsibility or burden unnecessarily on the children or away from the home in the workplace I think a lot of men struggle with this as they try to work in a way that is far in excess of what their job is truly requiring of them. They’re going about their work, so as to feel like they validated themselves they’ve justified themselves and they’ve arrived. Really, there’s no end of examples we could give. We can turn just about any activity into something a self-justifying activity. And when we do that, we start to feel burdened because there is no activity, there is nothing that we can do to finally satisfy that need that we feel there’s nothing that we can do in and of ourselves to say, “I did it, I’ve arrived,” and so it’s wearying, inherently at its core, or the way, we go about life makes us feel burdened.
Dale Johnson: Paul, I love the way that you’re really sticking your finger on the pulse of what’s happening in our culture and I think both Genesis 3. This is what the Bible is trying to help us to see, that the ways of the world where we try to find meaning, value, and purpose in the things of the Earth or pressure that we put on ourselves what we’re trying to find our self-fulfilled and sufficient based on our own strength and yet we find ourself in this web. That’s the deception of it that becomes the burden and I think you’ve described that really well within the context of Matthew chapter 11.
Now, what I mentioned is I don’t think anybody would question the burdens that we have. Certainly, the therapeutic world is trying to rid ourselves of burdens. But what they continue to do is place more means at which we trust in our own strength to try and overcome these things, and the burdens continue to pile, and what everyone is after is rest. That’s what we’re seeking. So, in the context of the passage or even more broadly, in the way Jesus approaches this idea, He’s talking about unshackling them from burden. He’s trying to talk to them about where they actually find rest. So, how does Jesus give rest?
Paul Twiss: Yeah. So again, I think the context of Jesus’s words are really key. It’s interesting to me we only find this invitation in Matthew’s gospel. I don’t know why Luke, John, and Mark didn’t record it. But here it is in Matthew’s gospel, and it comes just before chapter 12, the long interaction with the Pharisees. Just before that Jesus is saying come to me to find rest and then the very first incident in chapter 12 is the Pharisees accusing Jesus’ disciples of breaking the Sabbath law, the day of rest. So, there’s the thematic connection across that chapter division.
So what Jesus is doing in Matthew 11: 28-30 is offering an alternative to the Pharisee’s ministry. And what’s particularly interesting is that Jesus, as He gives this invitation to rest actually alludes to the Old Testament book of Jeremiah, so we probably missed this because we don’t know our Old Testament well enough, but I think Jesus’s original audience would have picked up on Jesus’s use of Jeremiah when he says, “come to me and you’ll find rest for your souls.” So, what is the point of that? Why is Jesus leaning on Jeremiah to issue that invitation? I think it gives the answer of how it is that He specifically can help, and the answer is this: in Jeremiah, the prophets call the people back into a covenant relationship with himself or with God, speaking on God’s behalf. And Jesus is essentially importing that same framework here and He’s inviting people first and foremost into a relationship with Himself. And then, as we zoom out, we look at the entirety of the gospel and indeed the New Testament teaching on Jesus’s life. We understand that the nature of the relationship that Jesus is inviting us into is one of love and acceptance based on the completed work of Christ on the cross. So that’s the theological context. If you come to Jesus, you find rest. Why? Because He brings you into a relationship where it’s already all being done. That’s the point when you look at the cross Jesus has paid for our sins as we trust in Him our sins are forgiven, His righteousness is put upon us. So now that fundamentally changes everything that we do, we no longer parent as a means of justifying our lives because it’s already been done. We have Jesus’ righteousness. We’re in a relationship with Him, we’re fully accepted by God because of Jesus, so I don’t need now to parent or to work or to conduct myself in a way where I’m seeking to justify my life. I’m fully accepted in Christ.
Dale Johnson: Now, I think maybe our listeners need to slow down and really dive into what you’re describing because our tendency is in the context of the passage, we’re thinking of the Pharisees right? Well, we don’t want to be pharisaical, but we find ourselves doing exactly the same thing that they’re attempting to do. You use the term justify I would say yes, we’re trying to justify ourselves by the means that we use to accomplish whatever task because we think it gives us meaning, purpose, and value but we do that in the modern culture. The therapeutic gospel is an approach of this same type, trying to find meaning, purpose, and value in some particular way, but people are naturally going to ask this question, right? Surely Paul, it can’t just simply rest upon the shoulders of Christ in this work, we sort of know this intellectually certainly in our circles, but we fight against this tendency constantly asking this question, but it seems that there’s something that is required of us. So, what is that thing that’s required of us?
Paul Twiss: So, that is an important question, and I would say the answer is twofold, and actually, Jesus hints at the twofold nature of our responsibility in His invitation because He says to us in Matthew 11, “come to me.” So, there’s the first command “come to me.” And then He gives two further imperatives; “take my yoke upon you and learn from me.” I understand the take and the learn to be somewhat synonymous, and there are giving as it were almost a process come to Jesus, take and learn. So, let’s just unpack those a little bit.
Coming to Jesus that’s the first and necessary condition for finding rest. We will not find rest apart from being in a relationship with Christ. You will forever be burdened and weary. So, you have to come to Jesus, and the New Testament teaches that is by faith, accepting that Jesus is who He says He is and that His death accomplished what the New Testament teaches: a payment for our sin and by taking at face value God’s word accepting the testimony of Scripture we are forgiven and clothed in the righteousness of Christ. That’s what a Christian is. When you come to Jesus you find that rest simply because of His completed work, you don’t need to prove yourself anymore. You’re accepted by God. One thing that I stress is the necessity for the Christian to keep coming to Jesus. So, you kind of hinted at this when you ask the question. Even Christians can feel very burdened and very weary. Christians can very quickly get into a rut, and they can be living their lives in such a way that it feels like they don’t know the rest Jesus gives at all. It’s so important to understand as Christians we need to keep coming back to Jesus or as I’ll often term it, we just need to be those who savor Jesus. We have to be savoring the completed work of Christ and all of those rich indicative of the gospel, all of the indicatives that come from the gospel: your sins are forgiven, you have the righteousness of Christ, you are adopted by a loving Heavenly Father, the Holy Spirit dwells within you, you have a certain hope, all of the indicatives of the gospel that issue from the cross, we have to savor them regularly because we’re so forgetful.
We’re so forgetful. One day, I can worship well, and I can live not needing to validate myself because I’m accepted in Christ, and the very next day, it is as if I never learned it, and I’m going about my work in a legalistic manner, trying to prove myself and validate my life because I’ve forgotten the gospel. If you feel weary as a Christian, it’s not because the gospel has changed but it is because your perception of the gospel has shifted. And very quickly we can lose sight of what is true about Christ and us in Christ. And that’s when the Christian starts to feel that burden again.
So, the first part to the answer is come to Jesus and to do so in an ongoing manner, savoring Him. Now, what about the next two commands, the taking and the learning, again going back to the first point: Our rest isn’t dependent upon an empty schedule. I think you can be a very busy person and know rest. It isn’t so much to do with how many commitments you have on your calendar, but the way you go about them. So, when Jesus says, “Take and learn”, He’s telling His disciples in this moment coming to me and finding rest isn’t about not obeying; you have to keep obeying, but you have to obey in a certain way. So, the yolk Jesus talks about the burden that He says is light, “my burden is light.” I take that to be all of His commands and then, by implication, the commands of the New Testament that we’re bound to obey as Christians. What Jesus wants us to do is to obey those commands to take them very seriously. God calls us to be “Holy as He is Holy”, but the way in which you obey again can be rest-giving.
So it’s important to note throughout Matthew’s gospel, Jesus is presented to us as the King of Israel and His commands come, issue from a heart of love and compassion and goodness. He says in these verses, “I am gentle and lowly in heart.” He’s not here to harm us. He’s not against us. All of Jesus’ commands are just more expressions of His love for us. And I think that’s the key point that we as Christians need to understand when Jesus tells us not to be angry when Jesus says to pray for your enemies, when Jesus says don’t lust, he’s not a killjoy. He’s not trying to make life miserable. These are expressions of His love for us their the very best thing for us. So, I think I often am reminded of the words of Francis Schaeffer. “How should we then live?” He talks about the secular age in which we live and explains that the outworking of secularism is to have divided what he calls the universals from the particulars. We’re not very good at connecting the universals with the particulars and that’s true of Christians. We see the particulars, that is the commands of Scripture. I need to do this, I need to do this, I’m not supposed to do… there’s the particulars, what we’re not good at doing is connecting those to the universals. In this case, it is the love of Christ. That’s the universal that reigns over every single command and the skill that the particular skill that is required of us is to consistently connect every particular, every command with the universal, namely Christ’s love for me and to truly believe that when Scripture confronts me with the command I’m bound to obey it is an expression of Christ’s love for me than this is best. If I can go about my Christian life knowing and believing that. If my obedience comes from an understanding that this is an expression of His love, then even obedience becomes rest-giving. Again, I can be a very busy person as a Christian and know rest, because I understand everything that I’m doing in response to the Word is good for me. And so, I actually delight to do it and I find my rest in it.
Dale Johnson: I love it. This is the means, and we see the end goal. I like the way you are describing this; this is a gratitude of the work that Christ has done. This is a demonstration of our love toward Christ, John 14:15 “If you love me keep my commandments”, He’s not saying keep my commandments in order for you to gain acceptance of me, right? So, this is a beautiful picture of our response of love to Him for the love that He is so poured out to us, and I’m reminded even as you talked about Christians and our constant need to come to Christ, Paul describes us in Colossians 2:6 where he tells us “In the same way in which you received the Lord Jesus so walk in him.” How is that by faith? It is not a means of us doing something to gain something before God. It’s a response in faith, trusting, believing, hoping, and knowing that the soul is settled when we please the Lord out of gratitude. It is so helpful as we think about it in terms like that; you broke it down for us really into bite-size pieces. I think about it in terms of Hansel and Gretel. You’ve dropped some breadcrumbs, so we can get home as we think about this.
Sometimes, when I think about going on vacation, we get back from vacation, and I think man, I need to rest from what I was supposed to be doing, but we just were so busy. I did not rest. Sometimes, we can think about Jesus’s rest in that way, but I want to talk about rest in terms of what type of rest Jesus is offering because that’s sort of the end goal. He says, “You will find rest for your soul.” He gives a pretty specific description. How good is that rest when we think of what Jesus offers?
Paul Twiss: Yeah. That’s a good question. I’m always mindful of not painting a picture of the Christian life that is unrealistic, you know, finding rest in Jesus. It’s easy to talk about it as if it’s the easiest thing in the world to do, and the truth is this: the patterns of sinful thinking and behavior can be ingrained very deeply within us. You’ve not been with the Lord for very long. Perhaps you lived a long time without the Lord, and He saved you. There are sinful patterns ingrained, and it can be very difficult, simply to savor Him and obey the commands of Scripture because we’re so used to behaving otherwise.
So, in the moment when temptation comes upon us, what is it that’s going to cause me to choose a path of finding rest as opposed to indulging in some kind of sinful behavior? And I think the answer to that is you have to know how good the rest is. So, how good is this rest that Jesus offers? You have to see the value of it to choose it and pursue it above other options. Here again is where the context of Jesus’s words in Matthew 11 is so helpful. We read forward as it were into chapter 12 and we saw how He offers rest just before the Pharisees accused His disciples on the day of rest, but if you work backwards that also becomes very enlightening. In chapter 11, prior to these last few verses talking about rest, there are a number of interactions with Jesus and people. First of all, John the Baptist is discouraged as he’s in prison, but then there are people beginning to reject him. So, the present generation they don’t have the wisdom to accept Jesus and this pattern of rejection and discouragement comes to a climax when Jesus speaks to the unrepentant cities. Just before he offers rest, he speaks to the unrepentant cities, and he says “Woe to you, if Tyre and Sidon had seen the work so done, they would have repented.” He warns them of the coming judgment. He says to Capernaum, “You’ll be brought down to Hades if the mighty works done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day.”
So, very sober words from Jesus about eternal punishment. Now, I think we often look at the gospel narratives and we fail to see the connections and the wonderful, masterful arrangement of material and so we might be tempted to go on to verse 28, the offer of rest and think it’s entirely disconnected from the immediate context. But I think actually there’s a very intentional link here, Jesus teaches, he says, “woe to the unrepentant cities, you’ll be judged for your rejection of me eternally.” and then He doesn’t say “but if you come to me, you’ll go to heaven.” Which is theologically true, but He doesn’t phrase it that way. He doesn’t say “woe to unrepentant cities. You’ll be judged eternally, but hey, if you come to me your sins are forgiven and you won’t go to hell.” Even though that’s theologically true, what He says is “woe to the unrepentant cities, eternal judgment, come to me and you’ll find rest.” And what I’m getting at here is the notion that when Jesus offers present rest in this life is actually giving to us, offering to us, a taste of heaven. We will know rest eternally and the New Testament elsewhere speaks about that. We will enter into an eternal rest. But Jesus’ Words here are offering rest now, today and He’s showing us by way of this context how good that rest is. It is a taste of Heaven. And so I think about, you know, C.S. Lewis in The Great Divorce, and he paints so wonderfully the picture of the person who has put Heaven first, and he says the person who put Heaven first, which is his way of speaking about Christians in that context. He said the person that puts Heaven first, Earth becomes a taste of heaven. And Jesus is saying, come to me, and now you can begin to taste the rest that you will enter into for all eternity.
Dale Johnson: Man, this is the type of discipleship that we’re intended to lead people to, is this type of rest, and there’s a means and a way that we’re supposed to get there, and it’s through Christ specifically. Paul, this has been so helpful. I hope it’s an encouragement to our counselors to know this is the way in which we lead people to Christ, to follow Christ, and to truly rest by loving Him and doing the things that He commands. Brother it’s been great, thank you for your time.
Paul Twiss: Thank you for having me.
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