This page looks best with JavaScript enabled

The Call.

 ·   ·  β˜• 8 min read  ·  ✍️ Odunayo Rotimi

Bible Text

Matthew 11:28-30 (NLT)

Matthew 11:28-30 Then Jesus said, β€œCome to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. 29] Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30] For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.”

Matthew 11:28-30 (NKJV)

Matthew 11:28-30 Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29] Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30] For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”

Matthew 11:28-30 (AMP)

Matthew 11:28-30 β€œCome to Me, all who are weary and heavily burdened [by religious rituals that provide no peace], and I will give you rest [refreshing your souls with salvation]. 29] Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me [following Me as My disciple], for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest (renewal, blessed quiet) for your souls. 30] For My yoke is easy [to bear] and My burden is light.”

The call to come

“Come to me all you who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest," said Jesus. One may not readily be able to conclude the audience to which he made this call. But based on two facts, one may fairly say that the appeal is not to unbelievers. Firstly, the Israel crowd at any point is not a tribe utterly ignorant of God. Furthermore, Jesus taught particularly in Mathew 23:4 that the scribes and the Pharisees were the ones responsible for hewing these heavy burdens on the bearer.

Secondly, we heard Jesus preached that “His sheep hear his voice,… And the sheep follow Him,…1" This connotes an existing relationship between the sheep and the shepherd, such that when the shepherd calls to the sheep, saying, “Come unto Me…” it does not hesitate.

Who can therefore answer the call to come?

There are two things to observe here also. There is the call to come, and there is a state from which the summon must be answered. The invitation is to a straying Christian and not a departing Christian. In most cases, those who know their destination depart but only those who are mistaken drift from their course.

Additionally, this call is more audible when it addresses the circumstance in which the sheep finds itself. Straying should be tedious for the sheep. Because the moment the sheep cannot find the shepherd at sight, a problem occurs. The sheep becomes vulnerable and settles for whatever betides.

Values

For a fold, be it a family composed of animals. Or humans, social coexistence demands that there are set of respected values, whereby the family lives. If a pack of wolves are so orderly to be educated to maintain their hierarchies, where everyone knows its duties, discharges it and foster peaceful coherence. How much more the family of Christ!

Values are those sets of beliefs. They are training taught to children, and the parents will be confident of their composure: at home or far away from home. One of such values is the sheep recognizing the voice of the shepherd. Now, this is all-encompassing. The sheep can identify the tempos and the length of the pitch of the shepherd’s voice. Hence the shepherd can be confident that straying in the wild cannot make the sheep grow wild. But by missing home, the shepherd can call out, and the joy of that heard-voice will oust all disparaging thoughts and endless wandering of the sheep.

Family values of the word of life and the acts of Jesus were ingrained into Peter. This made him swiftly identify Jesus when Jesus came seeking him and other disciples who had gone adrift from the path of men-fishing to subsistent fishing.

Likewise, the values the prodigal son (nicknamed Billy Pranks, hereafter) had learnt for the household gave his dad the confidence to release Mr Billy Pranks as he so requested. Unconsciously, Billy’s Father’s voice spoke to him through the husks on which he fed. The call communicated restoration through a repentance-compelling soft tempo. “I will arise and go to my father,…2" was a response to this internal agitation that Mr Billy had contemplated in his heart for a while.

Have you not tasted and seen that the Lord is good? And have gone out there to taste some bad lords? Sensibility demands that you should return home. Have the revelations of Jesus that were once real and abundant to you faded? Sensitivity to household ethics should question your senses of taste. It should ask you, saying, “How many angels are in my Father’s house and see him face-to-face? Why have I - a son - been counted out? He satisfies the desires of animals, vegetations and all other things, except me! Why not me?”

Call to the sinner

Value is the character of a given household summarized and passed into the senses from which the adherent never departs. Although circumstances may arise for such traits should be abandoned. Christian value-set are alien to the sinner-man and his sinful value-sets. They cannot be lived simultaneously. One must be abolished for the other to prevail. They are in constant opposition. It is a son, who is well acquainted with the values of his family that drifts. He knows the standard, hence can measure how far departed he has gone. Jesus' call is to you sinner: fornicator, prideful, backbiter, gossip, winebibber, the liar, is to come and taste the Christian values. And I can assure you that you will see that the Lord is good afterwards. Repent from your sins! Believe that the lamb has been slain for your sake! And you will be admitted into this household of faith.

Jesus' call to the sinner is to come and taste the Christian values.

Call to the called

Are you called? This you were called out of a longing to satisfy God which religious miscreants have manipulated to their own gains and veneration. A system where leaders use their God-given grace and talents to promote their own interests. The outlook of the current-day scribes and Pharisees may not be immediately apparent. As W. Warren puts it: “To the Pharisee, righteousness meant outward conformity to the laws of God. They red the inward condition of the heart. They had a false concept of ministry3. To them, ministry meant handing down laws to the people and adding to their burdens. Jesus never asks us to do anything that He has not first done. The Pharisees commanded, but they did not participate. They were hypocritical religious dictators, not spiritual leaders4.”

the Pharisees burden the people
Too big to help: too heavy to carry. Jesus places an offer.

Do your spiritual leaders not do the same? Do they not hewn so much burden of prayer and fasting on you without any noticeable spiritual progress in your life? Do they not claim to exorcise demons in you, and you end up being twice as worse in character as you were initially? Are they, in the words of Jesus, not making you “twice a son of hell…5"? The call is to you to come with these heavy burdens. Come with your burnouts. Come out of your incessant regularities in meeting that does no good to your soul. Come and find the real rest that emanates from spiritual progress from Me. Come and learn heavenly values from me. “Have you once tasted that I am good? Let sensibility make you denounce less tasty but cruel lords of empty religious obeisance. Come to me!”

Are your spiritual leaders keener on your tithe and offerings than the actual spiritual growth of your soul? Are they more concerned about what you pay in the church than what you are when no one is around you? Oh, these are men who have ignored the weightier matters of the law and are using your hard-earned income to build large physical church structures that feed their egos. They have no part in heaven because they have not laid any treasures there. Hence, the assurance of their belongingness to God is sight-based, not based on doing the will of God. Hear Jesus calling you to safety, if and only if you are tired, “Come out, come unto Me!”

Now, Jesus may or may not want you to leave the church. The crux of the call is to recognize the caller and follow - wherever He goes. He may choose to make you remain physically in the same church. Be sure He will bless all antagonism to the growth of your soul. Or He may bid you depart - do not shift your focus away from God to adore the leaders of the new church setting because of their spiritual strides. They constitute nothing but disposable vessels - just like you6.

If you do this, you will pass from being called to the full consciousness of being chosen. Indeed, many in the church are called, but few amongst them are chosen7.

References


  1. John 10:3-4 ↩︎

  2. Luke 15:18 ↩︎

  3. Mathew 23:4 ↩︎

  4. Warren W. Wiersbe: The Wiersbe Study Bible, New King James Version. Mathew 23:16-22. ↩︎

  5. Mathew 23:15 ↩︎

  6. 2 Corinthians 4:7 ↩︎

  7. Mathew 22:14 ↩︎

Share on

Odunayo Rotimi
WRITTEN BY
Odunayo Rotimi