Matthew 12: Jesus Gives Us God’s Kingdom Rest

In Matthew 11, Jesus lays out a very hard truth.

He says, “No matter who you are, no matter where you’re from, no matter what your background is, if you reject Jesus, you are rejecting God. If you reject Jesus, you are abandoning God. You are abandoning His covenant. You are abandoning His kingdom. Even if you share the bloodline of Abraham, even if you are ethnically an Israelite, rejecting Jesus is abandoning the covenant of God and the God of the covenant. But embracing Jesus makes you into one of God’s people. Period. Embracing King Jesus makes you a citizen of God’s kingdom. Embracing Jesus makes you part of God’s family. Embracing Jesus brings you into God’s covenant, the same covenant with Abraham.”

He says:

“Come to me, all you who labor and are heavily burdened, and I will give you rest.”
—Matthew 11:28, WEB

He says, “Come to Me, and I will give you God’s rest. Come to Me, and I will give you the rest that the Old Testament prophets pointed toward. I will give you that true rest that God promised to us when we rebelled against Him in the garden and broke the world.”

He says the ministry of Jesus is all about bringing God’s kingdom rest into our fallen and broken world.

And when He does that, He is giving us what the Sabbath from the Old Testament was always pointing towards.

Jesus’s kingdom mission is to bring us God’s rest.

That is the true rest that the Sabbath from the Old Testament points towards.

The Sabbath Points Toward God’s Rest

In the Old Testament, God said, “For six days you can work, but on the seventh you must rest.”

He says, “You need to get all of your work done within six days.”

That doesn’t mean you have to work all six of those days.

If you can get it done in five days, even better.

If you can get it done in four days, awesome.

But He says, “Within six days, you need to get all your work done, and then on the seventh day, for 24 hours, you need to rest. Allow your body and your mind to be restored. Allow yourself to recuperate from the difficulties of the week. Allow yourself to be rejuvenated and restored from all the exhaustion of the week.”

Rest is an act of worship.

But that rest that God commanded us to take in the Ten Commandments, in the Sabbath command, is pointing towards an even truer and deeper and richer rest.

It is pointing towards the rest that comes when God unbreaks the world, the rest that comes when God undoes the fall, the rest that comes when we are liberated from the brokenness of the world, when God turns the world right-side up again, when God puts the world right again, when God destroys the devil and does away with the forces of darkness and makes everything work the way that it’s supposed to again, when God restores the world back to His good created design.

What we get is rest, right?

The exhaustion that we feel day to day and moment by moment comes not from the fact that we’re out and about and we’re working, not from the fact that we’re out and about and we’re laboring and striving.

The exhaustion we experience moment by moment comes from the radical brokenness of this world.

It comes from the fact that this world does not work the way that it’s supposed to be, the fact that this world is filled with darkness and filled with sickness and filled with grief and filled with struggle and filled with injustice.

That is where our exhaustion comes from.

And so true rest comes not just from taking 24 hours and spending some time reading the Word, watching TV, relaxing on the couch, hanging out, and so on and so forth.

That’s good, but that’s a Band-Aid.

True rest comes only when God does away with the brokenness of our fallen world in rebellion.

And so the Sabbath command that God gave to us in the Old Testament points towards that truer and better rest.

Jesus Shows Us What the Sabbath Is About

And so Jesus uses a debate over the Sabbath to illustrate and explain this rest that He is offering to us.

What happens is that He heals a man on the Sabbath, which naturally pisses off the Pharisees and the Sadducees.

The entrenched religious leadership in Israel sucked so much, and one of the ways that they sucked is that they took this good command that was given for our benefit and our rest and our blessing, this command to rest, and they turned it into another freaking burden.

They turned it into a massive burden with a million rules.

So God’s Word is very simple.

The law is super simple.

It says on the Sabbath day you must not do anything that is burdensome, that wears you out, that prevents you from resting.

But they took that and they said, “Okay, so we are going to tease that out. We are going to flesh that out in ways that God’s Word doesn’t. We’re going to make a bunch of rules. Okay, you can’t light a fire on the Sabbath. Okay, you can’t walk more than this many feet on the Sabbath. Okay, you can’t pick up anything heavier than this on the Sabbath. Okay, you can’t prepare food in any kind of complicated way on the Sabbath. Okay, you can’t do this on the Sabbath. You can’t do that on the Sabbath. You can’t do this on the Sabbath. You can’t do that on the Sabbath.”

They turned the Sabbath into a pair of handcuffs.

The Sabbath is supposed to be a warm blanket.

They turned the Sabbath into a prison.

Jesus says, “You have distorted the meaning of the Sabbath.”

He says, “Sabbath is not about all your endless rules and regulations, you bunch of nerds. The Sabbath is about restoration. The Sabbath is about healing. The Sabbath is about finding rejuvenation from all the ways that the world has battered us and beaten us down.”

So right there in the Law of Moses in the Old Testament, it is crystal clear.

It says, “If your sheep falls into a hole, what are you supposed to do on the Sabbath? You just get the sheep out of the hole. If your ox falls into a pit on the Sabbath, what do you do? You go get your ox out of the pit.”

Why?

Because the ox is suffering.

The sheep is suffering.

You want to take it out, and you want to end its suffering.

You want to help it.

You want to restore it.

You want to raise it out of the pit.

That is what the Sabbath is all about.

And that same thing applies to humans.

If a human is suffering on the Sabbath, you live out that good Sabbath rest by helping bring their suffering to an end.

If a human is struggling on the Sabbath, you live out that Sabbath rest by bringing their struggle to an end, by helping them in their struggle, by helping them in their suffering.

And so, “Here I am healing the sick, healing the blind, healing the deaf, raising the dead, casting out demons, lifting up the poor, giving people who’ve never been able to walk the ability to get up and around and run and dance and all of that. You say I’m breaking the Sabbath because I’m healing, and that’s work. I say when I heal, I am living out the Sabbath. When I heal, that is what the Sabbath is about. The Sabbath is about healing our suffering.”

Jesus’s Healings Show Us the Rest He Offers

So why does that matter?

It matters because when Jesus heals, He is showing us the rest that He offers.

When Jesus raises the dead, He is showing us the rest that He offers.

When He casts out demons, He is showing us the rest that He offers.

When He gives sight to the blind, when He gives hearing to the deaf, when He gives mobility to the paralyzed, He is showing us the rest that He offers.

He is showing us a glimpse of the true and perfect kingdom rest that we receive when we become God’s people, when we place our faith in Jesus.

He says, “All these healings, these exorcisms, these resuscitations, all of it—this is just a foretaste of the full, deep, rich, perfect rest that I am offering to you. Come to Me, and I will give you that kingdom rest that all of the history of God and His people has always, always been pointing towards.”

So the mission of Jesus is to bring us God’s kingdom rest, which leads to an inevitable question.

How do we receive that rest?

How do we gain access to that rest that Jesus is offering?

He is holding it out to us.

How do we reach out and take it?

The Spirit Leads Us to Faith in Jesus

Matthew answers that question by telling a couple of stories that tend to confuse the heck out of people.

He tells a story that has caused more confusion than almost anything else in the Bible.

He tells a couple of stories that have, frankly, stirred up a lot of just plain weird superstition from a lot of Christians.

He says, “How do you receive God’s rest? You receive God’s rest by listening to the Spirit as He guides you to faith in Jesus. If you want God’s kingdom rest, you need to listen to the Spirit guiding you to faith in Jesus.”

If you are a believer in Jesus, you are a believer in Jesus because the Spirit led you to faith in Jesus.

If you are a Christian, you are a Christian because the Spirit led you to faith in Jesus.

Once upon a time, you were not a follower of Jesus, and then the Spirit gripped your heart and led you to the foot of His throne and led you to throw yourself on His mercy and submit to Him as King and make Him into your God.

That is why you are a Christian.

You listened to the voice of the Spirit.

You followed the voice of the Spirit.

You obeyed the voice of the Spirit as He led you to Jesus and brought you to faith and repentance.

The Spirit makes you repentant and gives you faith to believe in Jesus and follow Jesus.

So how do you become a member of God’s kingdom?

How do you gain His kingdom rest?

Go where the Spirit tells you.

Go to the foot of the throne.

Follow the Spirit’s voice.

He will lead you to Jesus, and He will give you faith, and He will make you repentant, and then you will throw yourself on the mercy of Jesus and be saved.

We Become Members of God’s Family

He says when we allow the Spirit to lead us to Jesus in repentance and faith, we become members of God’s family.

We are adopted by the Father.

We become children of the Father.

We become brothers and sisters of Jesus.

We get the Spirit dwelling within us, so the presence of God is with us and in us at all times.

We become genuine members of God’s family.

We become truer in—how do I put this?

I’m not sure how to word this exactly, but our family connection becomes even truer than our blood family.

Matthew tells this story where Jesus is preaching and teaching all of this, and His mother Mary and some of His brothers and others show up, and they need to talk to Him urgently.

And He says, “Well, they can wait, right? Give it a sec.”

And He uses the opportunity to teach them about all this.

He says:

“For whoever does the will of my Father who is in heaven, he is my brother, and sister, and mother.”
—Matthew 12:50, WEB

He’s saying, in the family of God, we are a truer family than flesh-and-blood family.

When we listen to the Spirit who leads us to faith in Jesus and repentance, we become part of God’s family.

We are adopted into His family, and we become heirs of everything that belongs to the Lord.

We are adopted into His family, and we inherit the kingdom rest that He offers to us.

So how do you gain God’s kingdom rest?

Through faith in Jesus.

How do you come to faith in Jesus?

The Spirit works on your heart.

The Spirit leads you to Jesus and compels you to repent and submit to Him.

That is how you place your faith in Jesus.

But here’s the thing.

That’s not possible if you reject the Spirit’s voice.

None of that is possible if you reject the Spirit’s work in your heart.

None of that is possible if you refuse to listen to the Spirit.

If you resist the Spirit’s pull on your heart and you reject Jesus, then none of that is possible.

And that’s what happens with the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the scribes and the Herodians.

That is what happens with the entrenched religious leadership in Israel throughout the story that the Gospels tell.

What Does It Mean to Blaspheme the Holy Spirit?

Jesus uses this really strange phrase that freaks a lot of people out.

He uses this phrase, “blaspheming the Holy Spirit.”

A lot of people freak out because Jesus uses that phrase, “blaspheming the Holy Spirit.”

He says:

“Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him, neither in this age nor in that which is to come.”
—Matthew 12:32, WEB

And so they freak out and they say, “Oh no, what if I blasphemed the Holy Spirit?”

They say, “Oh no, I might have accidentally blasphemed the Holy Spirit at some point. Does that mean that I can’t be forgiven? Does that mean that I can’t be saved?”

No.

No, it doesn’t.

So many of us have been robbed of sleep by this weird, superstitious notion that there is some special combination of words out there that we can say that technically is blaspheming the Holy Spirit, and that if we accidentally say this magic combination of words, it’ll make it so that we are no longer forgivable and we are no longer redeemable.

But that is not what blaspheming the Holy Spirit is about.

That is not what Jesus is talking about here.

Listen, this is not a perfect rule of thumb, but this is a good general rule of thumb.

I want you to write this down.

I want you to burn this into your memory.

I want you to do whatever it takes to carry this truth with you for the rest of your life as you are reading God’s Word.

Okay, are you ready?

If it seems superstitious, it’s probably not what the Bible is saying.

If you are reading God’s Word and what you are reading seems superstitious, it’s probably not what the passage is actually saying.

Don’t get lost in the trees.

Take a step back and look at the forest.

There is no such thing as some magic combination of words you can say, some magic thing that can accidentally slip out of your mouth that will cause God to never forgive you again.

That is superstitious crap, and you need to cast it out of your mind forever.

You need to treat that as a dumb superstition, the same way you’d treat astrology, the same way you’d treat tarot cards, the same way you’d treat people who think the reason they’re an a-hole is because they’re a Capricorn or whatever.

You need to treat that as a dumb superstition in the same way people think of, like, walking under a ladder giving you bad luck or something like that.

If it seems superstitious, it’s probably not what the passage is saying.

What Blaspheming the Holy Spirit Actually Means

So let’s talk about what blaspheming the Holy Spirit actually means.

Let’s look at the big picture.

Let’s look at the broad context.

Don’t obsess over the little details.

Look for the big message each passage is saying.

Don’t get lost in the trees.

Take a step back and look at the forest.

Jesus is warning the Pharisees and the Sadducees that they’re on a very dangerous road.

He’s warning that they are rejecting the Spirit’s work in their hearts to draw them to Jesus, and it is dangerous to reject the Spirit’s work in your heart.

It is dangerous to resist the Spirit’s voice leading you towards faith and repentance in Jesus.

Because if you continuously refuse the Spirit’s convicting work to bring you to faith, if you persistently reject the Spirit’s convicting work to bring you to faith, if you permanently reject the Spirit’s convicting work to bring you to faith all the way until you die, then you cannot be saved.

You cannot enter God’s rest.

You cannot be forgiven.

Why?

It’s actually really simple.

It’s because God cannot forgive an unrepentant person.

God cannot redeem an unrepentant person.

God cannot restore an unrepentant person.

God cannot save a person who continues to reject Him.

At this very moment, there is no such thing as an unforgivable sin.

There is no such thing as an unredeemable act.

There is no such thing as some magic words you can say or some magic act you can commit or some magic mistake that you can make that makes it impossible for God to ever forgive you again.

There is exactly one way to go unforgiven, and that is to continue to rebel, continue to reject Him, continue to refuse the Spirit’s work in your heart to draw you to Jesus and bring you to faith all the way to death, and then die.

If you die unrepentant, you cannot be forgiven because God cannot forgive an unrepentant person.

And the name that God’s Word gives to that lifelong act of persistently and continually and permanently rejecting the Spirit’s work to draw you to Jesus and bring you to repentance and faith is blaspheming the Holy Spirit.

So Jesus says, “You Pharisees, Sadducees, scribes, Herodians, temple priests, you entrenched religious leaders in Israel, you are rejecting the Spirit’s work in your heart, and you are actively opposing the Spirit’s anointed Savior. And if you keep this up all the way till death, you will die condemned, banished from God’s covenant. You will not be redeemed and restored.”

He is talking about the way that you respond to the Spirit’s work in your heart.

Our Mouths Express What Is Inside Us

Our mouth speaks the overflow of our hearts.

Our mouths express what is inside us.

Our mouths express what is within us.

And that means our mouths either express our repentance or our rebellion.

Our mouths either express our faith or our faithlessness.

Our mouths either express our submission to King Jesus or our rejection of King Jesus.

We express our faith and our repentance with our words, right?

We confess with our mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord, and we express our faith through our baptism.

We go and we are publicly baptized as a public declaration of our faith in Jesus and our desire to follow Jesus and be His disciples.

So by our words, we are acquitted.

By the way that we express the faith that is within us, we are redeemed and restored.

Or by our words that express the rebellion within us, the faithlessness within us, we are condemned.

So Jesus looks to these Pharisees and Sadducees, and He looks to these Israelites who have rejected the message of Jesus, and He says, “You are on a dangerous road. I am holding out My rest to you. The Spirit is working in your hearts. The Spirit is trying to break down your walls. The Spirit is drawing you to Me in faith and repentance, but you are rejecting the Spirit’s voice and leading. And if you continue to reject the Spirit’s work to lead you to faith and repentance in Me all the way to death, you will not receive God’s rest. You will not be redeemed or restored.”

And Jesus uses two really interesting examples to help us understand this.

We Are Like Trees

Number one, He says we are like trees.

Trees grow fruit, but a tree can only grow the fruit that is meant to grow on that tree.

A tree can only grow the fruit that naturally comes from that tree.

So an apple tree can grow apples.

Orange trees can grow oranges.

He says we’re like trees.

There are repentant trees, and there are unrepentant trees.

A repentant tree grows the fruit of faith in Jesus and repentance.

But an unrepentant tree grows the fruit of faithlessness and rebellion against Jesus.

He says to the Pharisees and the Sadducees and these Israelites who’ve rejected Him, He says, “You are unrepentant trees, and you are bearing the bitter fruit of faithlessness and unrepentance. And if you do not become a repentant tree, you will not receive God’s kingdom rest.”

The House and the Unclean Spirit

And at the same time, He uses another really fascinating example.

He says that we are like a man or a house possessed by a demon.

He uses this really weird story.

He says when a demon is cast out of a man, it goes and it wanders through the desolate places.

But then one day it comes back, and it finds its original host cleaned up, swept, ready to be occupied by another tenant, and it moves right back in.

And then it gets all its demon buddies to move on in as well.

Do not get lost in the details.

Jesus tells strange, shocking, exaggerated stories, but not every detail has significance for how you interpret it.

What is Jesus talking about with this story?

He’s saying that if our hearts are unrepentant and rebellious, what happens is our sin and rebellion gradually starts to take us over completely.

If our hearts are persistently rebellious, persistently unrepentant, persistently resistant against the Spirit’s voice leading us to Jesus, then what happens is that our sin and rebellion start to rule over us, just like an unclean spirit rules over someone when they take possession of them.

Just like an unclean spirit rules over someone when it brings in all its demon buddies, and now you are possessed by a legion of demons.

So the demons aren’t the point.

The possession isn’t the point.

It says our sin and rebellion, our resistance, our arrogant rejection of the Savior and King and God who has come to redeem and restore us, can take over our entire life and mind and heart the way that a legion of demons can take over your body when they possess you.

He’s saying to these Pharisees and Sadducees, “Your rebellious heart is taking over you. Your rebellious heart is causing you to reject your God and Savior and King. I am the One you’ve been waiting for. You should be throwing yourself on My mercy to be redeemed and restored and become My disciples and join Me in My kingdom work to bring God’s kingdom rest to the world. But you can’t see it because your heart is like a tree that grows bad fruit. Your heart is like a man possessed by seven demons. Your heart is cold and hard and callous toward Me, so you keep rejecting the Spirit’s work to bring you to My feet in faith and repentance.”

God Gives His Rest to Anyone Who Comes to Him

And all of this points to a really grand irony.

Because God gives His rest to anyone who comes to Him in sincere faith and repentance.

God gives His perfect kingdom rest that the Sabbath points towards to anyone who comes to Him in sincere faith and repentance and lays down their burdens and takes up His yoke.

And because that’s true, His kingdom of rest is filled with repentant Gentiles.

His kingdom of rest is filled with repentant foreigners.

His kingdom of rest is filled with repentant former pagans.

Because God gives His rest to anyone who comes to Him.

His kingdom of rest is filled with people like the Ninevites that Jonah preached to.

They heard the truth about God when Jonah reluctantly preached it to them, and they repented and submitted to Him, and they were redeemed and restored.

God’s kingdom of rest is filled with people like the Queen of the South, who sought out the true God’s wisdom through Solomon when he was king, and she was redeemed and restored as a Gentile.

God’s kingdom of rest is filled with people like Rahab, the Canaanite prostitute, who learned about the true God, placed her faith in Him, submitted to Him, and was redeemed and restored.

It’s filled with people like Ruth the Moabite, who came to Israel, threw herself on the mercy of the true God, and was redeemed and restored.

God’s kingdom of rest is filled with people like Uriah the Hittite, who learned about the true God and came and started fighting for Israel’s army.

He was redeemed and restored.

It’s filled with people like the Magi, the wise men from Matthew chapter 2, who left behind their life of pagan astrology because they encountered the true God and were captivated by His glory and were redeemed and restored.

His kingdom of rest is filled with people like the Roman centurion, this Roman soldier, this pagan Gentile, who sees the true God in the face of Jesus Christ, throws himself on His mercy, places his faith in Him, becomes His follower, and is redeemed and restored.

God’s kingdom rest has been found and embraced by all of these Gentiles.

And yet these Israelites, who should be the first and greatest followers of Jesus, are going to miss God’s rest and forgiveness because their hard, faithless, unrepentantly rebellious hearts will not let them listen to the Spirit who is calling them to follow Jesus.