I hope you'll listen carefully
this morning as I read from the Gospel of Matthew chapter 11.
Matthew chapter 11. And it is my hope and prayer
that God the Holy Spirit would use His Word to call out His
people. This is what He uses, the preaching
of His Word. In Matthew 11, the Lord Jesus
Christ is speaking and says in verse 27, All things are delivered
unto me of my Father. That is, all authority is given
unto him, and heaven and earth, all judgment, all rule, the dispensation
of all things. And he goes on to say, And no
man knoweth the Son, but the Father, neither knoweth any man
the Father. save the Son, and he to whomsoever
the Son will reveal him." The Lord Jesus Christ must reveal
God, the true God, and His Father to those people given to Him
by God. Well, in verse 28, the Lord Jesus
Christ says, Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy
laden, and I will give you rest. Come unto me." Now, this is the
subject that we're going to deal with this morning. What does
it mean to come to Christ? He says, Come unto me, all ye
who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. To
come to Christ means to, first of all, believe Him. believe
him. In Matthew chapter 8, I read
verses 1 and 2. It says, When he was come down
from the mountain, that is, when the Lord came down from speaking
to the people, great multitudes followed him. That is, he was
surrounded by many, many people, always. Great multitudes followed
him. Now, people were all around him. swarming him. And verse 2 says,
Behold, there came a leper, and worshipped him. Though all these
people were around him, yet here comes a man to him. A leper. That is a dying man. A man who had a fatal disease
that was killing him, and he needed Christ, who alone could
cure him of this fatal disease. So he came to Christ. Now, the
first thing he came to Christ for was not his healing, but
worship Him. It says he came to Christ and
worshiped Him. This is how a person first comes
to the Lord Jesus Christ, whether If they get anything out of Him
or not, He is worthy to be worshiped. We come to Him to worship Him.
The God who has provided for us and sustained us and protected
us all of our days, we have not glorified, Scripture says. So
when we first hear of who God is, who Christ is, that is, the
person whom Christ reveals the Father to. They realize that
they have lived a whole lifetime without giving God a thought,
without giving God the praise and the glory and the honor and
the thanksgiving that He is due. So they come to Him to worship
Him. This is the first order of business
for every sinner. That's to come and worship the
God whom they have not worshiped up to this point. And He came
to him as a needy. sinner, a needy leper, a man
with a disease which only Christ could take care of. And our greatest need, people,
is not a new job or not a new spouse or our bills paid, but
to have our sins forgiven us, our sins put away. We are lepers,
whether we know it or not. We have a disease that is fatal.
It is called sin. And unless Christ does something
about it, by His blood and His righteousness, we're going to
die forever. Well, we go to Him for the forgiveness
of our sins, the putting away of our sin. How do you go to
Christ? It's to believe Him. It's to
believe that you're a poor and needy and helpless sinner like
this leper. It's to believe that He alone
is able. Willing and able. Most preach
today, preach a God who they say is willing but not able.
That God wants to if you but can't unless you let Him. In other words, He's willing
but not able. That's not what Abraham believed. That's not
what the faith of Abraham is. It says of Abraham that he believed
the promises of God, being fully persuaded that what God had promised
he was able to perform. So to come to Christ is to believe
who he is and your need of him and his willingness and ability
to meet that need. And as I said, to come to Christ
is to come to worship him. To come to Christ is to call
upon him. to call upon Him in prayer and
to do it continually until He answers you. Bartimaeus, a blind
man, sat by the wayside begging, and when he heard that the Lord
Jesus Christ was passing by, the only one who could heal him
of his blindness, he began to cry out, Jesus, thou Son of David,
have mercy on me. That's the sinner's true need,
mercy. Mercy means not getting what
you deserve, being spared. That's what every sinner who
is guilty before God, deserving of God's wrath and anger, not
love, but wrath, that's what they need, God's mercy. Have
mercy upon me, the sinner, the publican. Barnabas kept crying,
and the people told him to hush up. He said, no, you must not
have ever been blind. So he cried all the more. And
the Canaanite woman, who would not be put off by the Lord Himself,
and she kept coming to Him. So it's to come to Christ in
prayer, to call upon Him continually until He answers our prayer. To come to Christ is to confess
our sins unto the high priest. There's only one. There's one
mediator between God and men, the man. Christ Jesus, not Mary,
not St. Christopher, no other saint,
but Christ alone, the one High Priest between God and man, to
come to Him confessing our sins. If we confess our sins, He is
faithful and just to forgive us our sins. And the blood of
Jesus Christ, God's Son, will cleanse from all unrighteousness,
all sin. It is to come to Christ in public
worship to come where he is. Someone says, I don't have to
go to church to worship Christ. Well, no, you don't. You can
worship Christ from the heart. You can worship Christ in your
closet, in your home. But the fact is, every sheep
of God is joined together with his flock, with his congregation.
And they go where he is. And Christ said, where two or
three are gathered together in my name, there am I. And that's
where they want to be. So yes, you do have to go to
church, have to be a part of his church, if you truly worship
the Lord. That's where you want to be,
and that's where you will be. To go to Christ, to come to Christ,
is to leave all else to have him, to follow him. Whenever you go somewhere, you
leave somewhere else to get there. Or you leave someone to go to
someone else's house. Well, the scripture says, For
this cause shall a man leave his father and mother to cleave
unto the Lord. They leave all else. They leave
their religion to come to Christ. Not just a denomination, but
a person. They leave unbelieving families. It doesn't matter. They have
to have Christ. They leave all. They'll leave everything once
they've found this pearl of great price. They'll sell everything
they have to have Him. Oh, you don't leave the gospel
and leave Christ to go find a better job and then expect to find it
again. No, no. It doesn't work that
way. You seek first the kingdom of
God and His righteousness, and then all these things will be
added to you. That's the Lord's promise. To
come to Christ is to trust Him. To come to Christ is to actually
cast all your care upon Him. To actually place all your hope
of salvation on Him. To leave yourself and come to
Him as your righteousness, as your Lamb, as your scapegoat,
as your High Priest. So Christ says, Come, all ye
that labor and are heavy laden. Who will come to Christ? Well,
those whom the Holy Spirit brings under conviction this burden
of sin. Labor and are heavy laden, the
Lord said here in Matthew 11. Heavy laden because of this burden
they carry called the guilt of sin. And the Lord says, I will
give you rest. Rest from carrying this burden.
The freedom that comes from removal of guilt. Some people have such
guilt over past life, past sin, they can never be rid of it.
Their conscience smites them. But there's one way. be rid of
this guilt of sin. Christ. How does he give rest
from this heavy burden that people carry around? How does he give
rest? by taking that burden upon himself, by taking that sin upon
himself, by taking the blame, taking the shame, taking the
punishment of sin, for God hath laid on him the iniquity of us
all. So Christ takes this sin of his
people upon himself. He was made sin. 1 Corinthians
5.21 says, made sin. 2 Corinthians 5.21, excuse me. He was made sin for us. Who? God's people. God's sheep. That's who he laid down his life
for. Who knew no sin? Christ the righteous, the spotless
Lamb of God was made sin. who knew no sin, that we might
be made, that God's people might be made the righteousness of
God in him. It's called imputation of sin
and imputation of righteousness. In other words, substitution.
Christ took the sins of God's people and he gave them his righteousness. That's how he removes the guilt,
the penalty of sin. And this gives rest. Rest from
laboring to be saved. There's only one way to be saved,
and that's by Christ saving you. You can't do it yourself. You
can't put away your guilt, put away one sin by one act of penance
or one act of trying to atone for your past life. No way. But Christ, by one offering,
by one sacrifice, put away sin by the sacrifice of himself,
by his own blood. Rest from searching for peace,
for truth. When you come to Christ, you'll
quit looking. Rest from fear of death and condemnation. Rest from an all-consuming pursuit
for happiness. Well, Christ says, Come unto
Me, all you that labor and heavy laden. I'll give you rest. Who
will come to Christ? Well, in John 6, verse 37, the
Lord says, All that the Father giveth Me shall come to Me. and him that cometh to me, I
will in no wise cast out, for no reason and in no circumstance
will I cast that person out who has come to me, who will come,
all that the Father giveth me," Christ said. Remember what he
said there in Matthew 11? No man knoweth the Father, save
the Son. No man knoweth the Son, but the
Father, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him. It is the sovereign electing
grace of God which chooses someone, and the sovereign power of God
which causes that person to come to Christ. Oh, Christ must get
all the glory in there. God must get all the glory. If
you come to Christ, you know why you did. Oh, yes, you do.
Every true child of God knows and gives God all the glory.
All who truly come to Christ know why they came. And as all
in heaven know why they are there, they know why they are there.
They know who sought them, who bought them, and who brought
them. Because Psalm 65 verse 4 says, Blessed is the man whom
thou choosest and causest to approach unto thee. They come because God in mercy
brought them. He gets all the glory. Nevertheless,
he says, Come, come, all that labor and are heavy laden. May
the Lord cause you to approach unto Him for this divine rest. Amen.