The First Invitation - Revelation of Christ’s Person
The First Invitation - Revelation of Christ’s Person
"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" (Matthew 11:28–30).
This is the very first Gospel invitation given by our Lord Jesus. It is the full realization of the significant time of this invitation that gives full point to its conclusiveness. Rejected by His own, He opened His arms wide to the weary universe and offered men that which can never be found outside His gift. He told men that He would solve all their problems. Salvation from sin, peace in the midst of trouble, and contentment in the midst of need - all these things were promised to weary hearts by this Man, Christ Jesus.
On the day that He stood for the first time in the synagogue of Nazareth and read the Old Testament prophecies of Isaiah, He claimed that He was the object of those prophecies. "The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He hath anointed Me to preach the Gospel to the poor; He hath sent Me to heal the broken hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord." These are the words spoken by Isaiah the prophet and recorded in the sixty–first chapter of His prophecy. But these are the words which the Lord Jesus took as the text of His first formal utterance, "This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears" (Luke 4: 21).
His message never changed. From the first moment when He claimed to be the object of the Messianic prophecies, on throughout His whole life, the heart of His claims was never altered. "I and My Father are One" (John. 10:30). "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father" (John. 14:9). "Before Abraham was, I AM [Jehovah]" (John. 8:58). The leaders of Israel took up stones to stone Him, because that He, being a man, as they thought, yet made Himself equal with God. He did not seek to correct their opinion, rather He did everything to strengthen and support that idea. He said that His words were more lasting than Heaven and earth (Matthew 24:35), and that those who built upon His words were building upon the solid rock, but those who did not build upon them were building upon the sand (Matthew 7:24-27). In the very first Gospel invitation, the Lord made a statement that is so simple and yet so stupendous that it dwarfs all comparison.
Dr. Barnhouse gives ample support for this claim, and ample reason to continue to make this invitation to a labor weary world. Let us be faithful do so.
Further Reading: Isaiah 61
