The two rests
Rest, Rest
Spurgeon finds two different rests in the same passage, one received at once and one that takes years, and argues that confusing them is why many people think it did not work for them.
“Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
This passage also appears in bible verses about anxiety.
- Passage
- Matthew 11:28
- Preached
- 8 January 1871
- Place
- Metropolitan Tabernacle, London
- Reference
- Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, vol. 17
The text has two halves and almost everyone quotes only the first. “Come unto me” promises a rest that is given; “take my yoke and learn of me” promises one that is found. The whole sermon is built on that difference.
He says it like someone who has seen the problem many times: people who came, received the first rest, and years later concluded it had not worked. His answer is that it did, and that what is missing is the second, which does not arrive the same way.
The rest that is given
It is for those who labour and are heavy laden, and it asks nothing but coming. Spurgeon presses that it is immediate and complete: it lifts guilt at once, not by stages and not by merit.
His tone here is deliberately plain. There are no conditions to meet first, no state you have to be in. The only action in the verb is to come.
The rest that is found
The second is not received but learned. It comes from taking the yoke, which means getting to work, and from learning from someone who describes himself as meek and lowly in heart.
He lands it where it hurts: this is what lets you keep working when you are criticised or when it looks like none of it mattered. A person who has just arrived does not have that rest yet, and its absence is no sign that nothing happened.
His picture is a stream. First forced to drive a machine, then dammed and still, and at last running free through open fields. All three are water. Only the last is at peace doing what it does.
In his own words
“Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart.”
This is our summary. The full sermon by Charles Spurgeon is available at The Spurgeon Library. It is in the public domain: you can read all of it for free.
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