Matthew 11:28-30, “Come unto me, all [ye] that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke [is] easy, and my burden is light.”
I have found many Christians live as if this passage of Scripture does not exist. They live in constant fear of committing some sin that will condemn them to hell, they live in fear that if they do not tithe ten percent of their gross income, or miss church some Sunday, or if they don’t witness to others of their faith, or if they smoke, drink or break any number of rules God will punish them. Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying we should not follow these disciplines, I am just saying we are not to follow them out of fear of an angry God who will strike us down with lightning bolts if we break one rule. I am saying we follow these rules only as a way to express our love for God. Yet there are so many Christians who follow all these rules and regulations out of fear. Does I John 4:18 not tell us that perfect love cast out all fear? Like the Jews of old many of us are laboring and became heavy ladened under the laws of God. Here Jesus is telling us that the law is not meant to be a burden any more than the laws of marriage are to be a burden. One law of marriage is that a husband does not cheat on his wife by lusting after other women. He doesn’t follow this law because he is afraid of an undesirable interface between his head and a frying pan. If he truly loves his wife it will be the most natural thing for him not to lust after other women and cheat on her. That little gal is meek and lowly in heart, her only desire is that she be the center of her husband’s world and if he loves her she will be the center of his world.
Jesus is asking that we just learn about Him, learn what His heart is truly like and if we do we will find that He is meek and lowly in heart and we will find rest. Just what was going through the mind of a first century Semitic person when he heard the word rest?
The word in Greek for rest is ana pauo which basically means to pause from labor. Yet, Jesus spoke this word in Aramaic which is much more poetic and expressive. The Aramaic word for rest that is used in these passages is nucha. It comes from an old Ugaritic word NH and Akkadian and Persian word nahu, which is a reference to a camel’s resting place. Arabic grew out of the Persian language. There are about 160 words in Arabic for camel and this is one of them. When a Semitic person heard the word nucha he was picturing in his mind a camel at rest as the origin of this word for rest lies in a camel resting on its breast on the ground. Look at a picture of a camel at rest and you get a feeling of contentment and satisfaction. This is what a first-century Eastern man pictured when Jesus said that he would give him rest. He would give him a sense of satisfaction and contentment.
We in the Western world have little concept of what a camel is. We consider them unruly, temperamental, stubborn and angry creatures. Actually, camels are docile and very sweet creatures under a caring hand. Only when it is ill-treated can it become stubborn and angry. A camel weighs about five hundred pounds, yet it can carry up to 1,000 pounds on its back. When it rests, it will lower itself, with its burden and rest on its stomach, and it has legs powerful enough to rise up again with its load on its back. Its breast is padded and designed to bear the weight of its body while resting. Yet its sternum raises the body so air can pass underneath to cool its body. The camel rests on its breast facing the direction of the sun to minimize the heat against its body. A camel will rest not only because it is tired, but to also cool itself off from the desert heat.
Although a camel is able to carry around 1,000 pounds its master will not burden him down with that much weight but will purposely only weigh him down with just 1/3 of that weight. In its origins as a pack animal, camels were used to carry frankincense, the fragrance of a king. Jesus is saying that He is the caring master and the burden we carry is really just the fragrance of our King who does not force us to carry more than we can bear. When He gives us rest, he is like the camel herder who allows his camels to relax and cool themselves. His burden is light, a burden yes, but one that does not break out backs and one that carries His fragrance.
Oddly, in Aramaic, Jesus is not saying that He is meek and lowly in heart but that He is restful nucha and meek in heart. He is our resting place. The ground is the resting place for the camel but Jesus is our resting place. As the camel lies down with his burden upon his nucha or the ground as his resting place, we lay in the arms of Jesus with all our burdens as our resting place and he absorbs the weight of our burden.
Jesus also says that He is meek in heart. The word meek in Aramaic is makyaka, which is to suck entirely out of, sort of like we will suck all the ice tea out of a paper cup with a straw. It has the idea of all-consuming. Jesus is saying that His heart is totally consumed with us, we are the most important thing in the world to Him. His heart sucks us up entirely. How can we even think that He means to overburden us? Just as a husband’s heart is totally consumed with his wife’s presence such that she can just rest in his arms as he shares whatever burden she may have. She knows that when she is wrapped in her husband’s arms her burden is his burden as well. When we wrap ourselves in the arms of God, our burden is His burden as well. As the husband shares his wife’s burden he will gently stroke her face with his fingers and say, “It’s ok.” You know what, it suddenly becomes ok. Just as we find our nucha our resting place in the arms of God, he will gently stroke our face with His fingers and say, “It’s ok.” And you know what? Suddenly it is ok. And like that camel on his nucha, we become the picture of satisfaction and contentment.
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