Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3352
“Come unto Me, all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Matthew 11:28.
PERHAPS no verse in the whole of Scripture has been handled in the pulpit more frequently than this, and yet it has not been exhausted and never can be! It is a great soul-saving text. There are some words of Scripture which seem to be like special stars in the sky. As the polestar is conspicuous to the astronomer, so are these salvation Truths of God to the Evangelist—he is never weary of gazing at them and pointing to them. The promises that are fitted to give present and immediate relief to the conscience are stars of the first magnitude and many sinners have had their attention attracted by them and by them been directed to the Port of Peace! Upon such a passage as I have propounded for our sermon tonight, [see exposition at end of sermon] I shall have nothing new to say. No novelty is required. We only need to hear the same old Truths—yes, to hear them till they work their way into our souls, and then to hear them yet again, that our pure minds may be stirred up by way of remembrance, and that we, feeling their value, may proclaim them out for the guidance and comfort of others! Observe first—
I. TO WHOM THE SAVIOR ADDRESSED HIMSELF—all them that “labor and are heavy laden.”
It is not once out of a dozen times that I have ever had the good fortune to hear this text quoted correctly. It is, “All you that are weary and heavy laden,” according to the modern rendering. But as Jesus Christ said it, it is, “All you that labor and are heavy laden.” I suppose the alteration has been made in the interests of those who will not venture upon an invitation to men to come to Christ until they have got Him—I mean will not tell men to look to Jesus till they virtually have already experienced all that a look to Jesus is ever likely to give them! They will insist so much upon the spirituality of the terms used here that, seeing the words are a little difficult to get over, they must change them altogether! When our Lord said, “All you that labor,” who is to tell me that I am to trace in the word all them that spiritually labor? I should be afraid to add to the words of Scripture and must leave the responsibility with those who do so. Men labor, and if they labor with their heads, or their brains, or their hearts, in any form of labor, Christ bids them come to Him for rest. Men bear great burdens, some of them burdens of care, some burdens of grief, some burdens of foolish hope—but if they come to Him, being heavy laden or heavily loaded, He will take their load from them and give them rest.
From the day of the Fall man has been a laborer and he has been heavily laden. Into whatever condition man may climb, he cannot altogether escape that first curse, “In the sweat of your brow shall you eat bread.” If he does not work with his hands, he must, at least, toil mentally. But if he is idle because he says he has a competency, there is a something about such a life as that from which a man cannot escape! Instead of the world getting better in the way of toil and burden carrying, it is every day getting worse. Why, our forefathers of the Puritan times were quite easy souls compared with us! When I read the diaries of some of their lives, I quite envy them. A Puritan minister, when he dedicated himself to the work of the ministry with all his heart, was not run upon by the public, hunted up by the postman and embarrassed with ten thousand of the difficulties which arise out of our unnatural civilization! Good souls, they sometimes had rest and walked with God with some degree of ease! But now the world goes by steam. We have laid down steel rails and all business must run on them. It is all driving and turmoil from morning till night. You wake up, some of you, with the sound of the steam whistle in your ears, and you scarcely can sleep in your beds because of the rumbling of the trains at your very doors! It is a world of toil, and I believe that it will go on so—and instead of getting better, the world will in some respects get worse. It will be a harder struggle to live and a sterner struggle to live a spiritual life as the world grows gray. Hence, the words of the Master seem to me to come more fresh tonight than even when they fell from His
lips, “Come unto Me all you that labor and are heavy laden,” for we labor more, now, than men did in His day, and are even more heavily laden than they were then! Jesus Christ addresses you tonight whose toils are many and your burdens heavy. Some of you are laboring after wealth, and if you got it you would find no rest in it. But the probabilities are that you may never get it and so be disappointed. But you need rest. Well, come to Him and you shall have it! Some of you, perhaps, are toiling after learning and the honor which it will bring you—may you get it! If it is good for you, you may, perhaps, obtain it. But in all learning there is sorrow—oftentimes the greater the domain of knowledge, the broader expanse is there in the soul for the floods of grief to cover. But if your mind needs rest, Jesus bids you come to Him! Oh you with enlarged ambitions, with grasping desires! Oh you that are panting and puffing in the race of life, you that are faint and weary with tugging at the oar of the world’s great ship, come to Him, for He can release you! He can take off the chain from the galley slave and set you free!