The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Vol. 47

“í Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”” —

Matthew xi. 28. You have doubtless heard several sermons from this text already. I have discoursed upon it, I know not how many times; — not so many times, however, as I intend yet to do if God shall spare my life. This verse is one of those great wells of salvation from which we may always be drawing, for we can never exhaust it. Our proverb says, “Drawn wells are the sweetest;” and the more we draw from such a text as this, the sweeter and the fuller does its meaning appear to us.

I am going, on this occasion, to use this passage in a special way, so as to bring out just one single point of its teaching. I might speak, if I wished to do so, of the rest which Jesus Christ gives to the heart, the mind, the conscience, of those who believe in him. This is the rest, this is the refreshment, which those who come unto him find, for we might read it, “I will refresh you,” or “I will relieve you;” and I should have a very sweet topic if I were to discourse upon the wonderful relief, the divine refreshment, the blessed rest, which comes to the heart through believing in Jesus Christ. May you all experience that blessing, dear friends! May your rest, your peace, be very deep! May it not be a pretended restfulness, but a rest which will endure searching and testing! May your rest be a lasting one! May your peace be like a river that never ceases to flow! May your peace be always a safe one, — not a false peace, which will end in destruction, but a true, solid, justifiable peace, which will endure throughout your whole lives, and ultimately melt away into the rest of God at his right hand for ever! Happy are the people who thus rest in Christ; may we be among that number; and if we are so already, may we penetrate still more deeply into this glorious rest!

I might also speak, dear friends, upon the various ways in which the Lord gives rest to believers; and I might speak specially to some of you who are believers, but who do not seem to enter into rest as you ought to do. There are some of us who get worried with the things of this world, or troubled by our own feelings; we are perplexed and tossed hither and thither by doubts and fears. We ought to be resting, for “we who have believed do enter into rest.” Rest is our rightful portion: “Beiig justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ;” but, somehow or other, some who are thus justified do not seem to realize this peace, or to enjoy this rest as they should; and, peradventure, even while I am talking, they may find out the reason why they do not have all the rest and peace which they might have. Certainly, our Lord Jesus Christ did not speak to one particular class alone, when he uttered the words of our text. To all who labour and are heavy laden, — whether they be advanced Christians, or unconverted people, — he says, “Come unto me, and I will give you rest.” I shall indeed rejoice if, as the outcome of what I shall have to say, it shall happen that some who came in here distressed in spirit, and bowed down in heart, perhaps even fretful and complaining, shall come to Jesus Christ over again, drawing near to him once more, and getting into touch with him again, and so shall find rest unto their souls. It will then be doubly sweet to come and sit around the communion table, resting all the while, — resting and feasting, — not standing, with loins girt and with staff in hand, as they did who partook of the Passover in Egypt, — but resting, even as they did who gathered at the last supper when the Master reclined in the midst of his apostles. So, spiritually, may your heads be resting on his breast, and may your hearts find refuge in his wounds, as you hear him again say to you, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

Yet it is not quite that truth about which I am going to speak to you. I want to pick out just this one thought, — the glory of Christ, that he should be able to say such a thing as this, — the splendour of Christ, that it should be possible for him to say, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” These words, from the mouth of any other man, would be ridiculous, and even blasphemous. Take the greatest poet, the greatest teacher of philosophy, or the greatest king, and who is he, with most capacious soul, who would dare to say to all the labouring and heavy laden ones in the whole human race, “Come to me, and I will give you rest”? Where are there wings broad enough to brood over every sorrowing soul, except the wings of Christ? Where is there a harbour capacious enough to hold all the navies of the world, to give refuge to every tempest-tossed barque that ever crossed the sea; — -where, but in the haven of the soul of Christ, in whom dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead; and, therefore, in whom there is room enough and to spare for all the troubled children of men?

That, then, is to be the drift of my discourse; may the Spirit of God graciously help me in following it!

I. And, first, I call your attention to THE PERSONALITY OF THIS

CALL: “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

If you look at the text carefully, you will notice that there is a double personality in the call. It is, “Come ye, — come ye — to me; and Z will give rest to you.” It is two persons coming near to each other, the one bestowing and the other receiving rest; but it is not, in either case, a fiction, a figment, a phantom, a myth. It is you, you, You, — you who really labour and are heavy laden, and who therefore are real beings, painfully conscious of your existence, — it is you who are to come to another Being, who is as real as you yourselves are, One who is as truly a living person as you are living persons. It is he who says to you, “Come ye to me, and I will give rest to you.”

I want you, dear friends, to have a very clear conviction of your own personality; for, sometimes, people appear to forget that they are individuals, distinct from everybody else. When there is a guinea to be given away, and the jingle of it is heard in the distance, most men are conscious of their own personality, and each one looks out for himself, and tries to secure the prize; but I find that, often, in the matter of eternal things, men seem to lose themselves in a crowd, and they think of the blessings of grace as a sort of general shower that may fall on the fields of all alike, but they do not specially look for the rain upon their own plot, or wish to obtain a blessing for themselves. Now, then, you, you, you, — you who are heavy laden, wake up. Where are you? The call of the text is not to your sister, mother, husband, brother, friend, but to you: yourself: “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

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