part of the series: Faith for Ordinary Days | Zechariah 9:9–12, Romans 7:14–8:2, Matthew 11:25–30
This weekend our country celebrated 250 years since the Declaration of Independence. On July 4, 1776, the people in the colonies said, we are free. But were they free when they signed it? It took eight years of bitter war to make real the freedom they had declared on paper.
The scriptures say that you and I are free in Christ. Is our freedom like that? Something we declare and then have to go fight for?
I ask because there is a war going on, and it's inside every one of us. The apostle Paul wrote it in Romans. In chapter 7 he writes what sounds like a confession: “For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate” (Romans 7:15 ESV). It's like there are two people living inside of Paul. He is divided against himself, and I think all of us can relate. Maybe it's the temper you swore you would control. Maybe it's the resentment you have to repent of over and over.
Here is the thing that matters most about this passage. This is not Paul before he met Jesus. This is the apostle decades into his walk with the Lord, and still there is a war inside him. So if you ever get the feeling that there's a war going on inside of you, that is not evidence that your faith is weak or failing. That is what Christian life feels like while we walk this earth.
Paul wants to be a good man, a really good man, all the way through. And he is self-aware enough to know that it is beyond him. So he cries out, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (Romans 7:24 ESV).
So, here is the difference between American freedom and Christian freedom. America declared independence and then had to fight to make it real. God declares our freedom and then does the winning for us, through Jesus Christ, the cross, and the empty tomb. Romans 7 is not the fight to win your freedom. It is how you live when someone has already given your freedom to you. A Christian doesn't fight for victory. A Christian fights from it.
That changes the fuel. Of course our lives are different, and we are growing as Christians. But not out of fear. Not to prove anything. Not in comparison to others. Not even to pay God back for what he has done for us. The Christian fuel is gratitude and trust in the victory already won for us by Jesus Christ.
The King who ends the war
Five hundred years before Jesus, the prophet Zechariah saw what this freedom-winning King would look like, and he did not look like a conqueror. “Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey” (Zechariah 9:9 ESV). Not on a war horse. And when he comes, he doesn't stockpile weapons. He destroys them. The chariot, the war horse, the battle bow, all cut off. This King's arrival doesn't mean the start of a war. It means the end of one. And his reign runs from sea to sea, to the ends of the earth. A kingdom bigger than any nation's coastline.
Then Zechariah writes this: “Because of the blood of my covenant with you, I will set your prisoners free from the waterless pit” (Zechariah 9:11 ESV). There's a nod right there at Jesus and the Lord's Supper. When Jesus took the cup, he called it his blood of the covenant. He is the rescuer Zechariah was pointing to.
Let me tell you about the waterless pit, because the detail matters. It's a cistern, a well with no water in it, and people in that world actually used them as prisons. Remember Joseph? His brothers threw him into a waterless pit and held him there until they could sell him. And as you read through the Old Testament, especially the poetry, the pit becomes a picture of the grave itself. So when Zechariah says the blood of the covenant frees prisoners from the waterless pit, he is telling us that this King's blood reaches all the way down into the grave.
Then comes my favorite phrase in the whole passage: “Return to your stronghold, O prisoners of hope” (Zechariah 9:12 ESV). We are not prisoners marked by fear. We are prisoners marked by hope. In fact, the phrase is stranger and better than that. The hope imprisons us. It grabs us around the middle and won't let go.
I can tell you that from experience. Sometimes, when I have felt pretty low, it's almost like things are too tough and I'm trying to let go of hope, and hope won't let me go. It even surfaces in a comical way. I've sat down to write some blues, because the blues is just a good man feeling bad. And I can't write them. I start singing about Jesus and I don't feel bad anymore. The hope has me bound to it like a prisoner.
Come to me
When the King finally arrived, he stood in the middle of Galilee and told us who he is, and he used Zechariah's own words to do it. Zechariah described a king who is gentle and humble. Jesus said, “I am gentle and lowly in heart” (Matthew 11:29 ESV). Same word. The humble King who comes to end the war is the same man saying, come to me.
Before the invitation there is a prayer, and it's really an invitation to faith. Jesus thanks the Father for hiding these things from the wise and understanding and revealing them to little children. That connects with something Jesus says later, that the kingdom is entered the way a child enters. You can rest from having to figure it all out. In fact, I don't think you can rest until you give up having to figure it all out. That is what faith and trust in Christ looks like.
Then the invitation itself, and it is beautiful: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 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. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28–30 ESV).
A yoke is the wooden beam you see over the necks of two oxen, binding them together so they can work. In the language of the day it was a familiar picture of religious law pressing down on people's lives. The heavy burden of measuring up. Ever-increasing definitions of perfection. No rest while that yoke was on. Jesus tells you to lay that burden down, the burden of having to prove yourself to God or your family or your community or even your own conscience.
God had said the same thing through Isaiah centuries earlier: “In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength” (Isaiah 30:15 ESV). The verse ends tragically: “But you were unwilling.” Israel ran to war horses and frantic alliances instead of leaning on the word God had spoken to them. The rest was offered. The trust was missing, not the effort.
Notice that Jesus doesn't offer no yoke. Life doesn't work that way. He offers his yoke. And the word translated “easy” really means good, well-made, well-fitting. A yoke that doesn't chafe. The Jesus yoke still pulls, and you're still pulling, but it fits, and it isn't something you want to run away from. And a yoke is built for two. If you take his yoke, you are not pulling alone. You are pulling with Jesus.
So what is the rest Jesus offers? It's not rest from work. It's not even rest from Romans 7. It's rest from carrying it alone, and rest from feeling like your eternal soul depends on the outcome of that battle. The battle has already been won.
Which takes us back to Paul's question. Who will deliver me from this body of death? “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:25 ESV). And one verse further: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death” (Romans 8:1–2 ESV). Past tense. Declared, and done. You are not free from the struggle against sin. You are free from what the law says sin earns, which is death.
Every once in a while the conversation turns to what heaven will be like. I can tell you my definition. Heaven is the end of Romans 7. Heaven is the end of living in this body where the good I want to do is not what I do. That's heaven for me: the day the battle is done and my soul finally goes quiet, because the war is over.
That day is coming. It isn't today. Today there is something else: a yoke, a companion, and the table of the Lord’s Supper where Jesus still says, come to me, all who are weary, and I will give you rest.
Will you have the rest Jesus is offering you?
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Pastor John Rallison
Redeemer Lutheran Church | Salem, Oregon
https://www.RedeemerSalem.org