Where Are You Going?

Where are you going to go?

Matthew 11:28-30

A man was watching the news one night when it was reported that a car was going the wrong direction on the freeway. The man knew his wife was on that freeway and became very concerned so called her on her cell phone. She answered and he said, "Dear, there’s one car going in the wrong direction on the freeway." She exclaimed, "One car! There are hundreds of them!"

With it being a few weeks past the devastating disaster or Hurricane Katrina the recovery process has begun but it will be a long time to recover. Why this happened, I don’t know. Some may ask, “Why did anyone have to die”? The warning went out days before the storm.

Census tells us that the areas hit the worst were those who were in the low income. Many didn’t have cars or the money to leave even if they wanted. And now they have no place to go back to. Everything they had is gone.

So now where do they go? What to they do? Many states including our own are sending out the welcome mat. People are opening up their homes to strangers. Many are offering relief and I believe that is what God would have for us to do as well.

I was listening to the radio and I heard one guy from New Orleans stated that they would not forget the help they have received even if it meant bring the Mardi Gras to us. No thanks I was thinking. This might have been God’s allowed this, like when He destroyed Sodom and Gomorra.

But just think of the one who is trying to find their way back. Where are they going to live? Where are they going to work? Where are they going to go?

And it is not just the Hurricanes that we have faced over the years. We have just gone through the anniversary of 9/11. You have the killings of Columbine. All over the world you have disasters and in our own lives we have our own storms.

I can remember when I had a house fire several years ago. The fire did not do that much damage but the water and the smoke damage made the house unlivable. So we lived with my in laws while waiting on the house to be repaired.

But where should the Hurricane victims go? Where should anyone go? The answer is found in our text. Matthew 11:28-30 (Read)

So where should we go? We should come to Jesus. Before we dwell on that let’s review our text a little more closely so that we know how to come to Him.

How do come to Jesus?

a. The request

Notice in verse 28 it states, “Come to Me ALL you who labor and are heavy, and I WILL give your rest”.

Jesus gives the invitation of come and then He gives the response of those who respond to the invitation, “I will give you rest”. Jesus was always inviting people to come to Him and He would meet their needs.

Notice it did not say, “Come to church to find rest”. Going to McDonalds doesn’t make you a cheeseburger; it just makes you smell like one. Going to a garage doesn’t make you a car. And going to church does not make you a Christian. Many people who have problems come to church looking for answers. But the answer is not the church but it should be found there. The answer is the relation and the relation that begins with answering the invitation of coming to Christ.

You see there are a lot of people who believe in God. They know who He is and what He is about. They know a lot of information about Jesus. They know of Him but do not know Him because they have never answered the invitation to come to Him.

If you are hungry or thirsty then Jesus says in John 6:35, And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believe in me will never thirst.

And His invitation is come one, come all, and come just as you are.

b. The response.

When you respond to the invitation His response is I WILL give you rest. When we think of rest, we think like Webster defines it; “To stop work; to place or lay”. In other words He is talking here about stopping self-effort. He is not talking here that when we come to Him that we don’t have to work. Remember it was God who created work. Genesis 2:8 The LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden,

But the rest that He gives is a Spiritual rest. Our efforts fall short of what God’s standard. He is saying here, you don’t have to work out your Salvation, just lay your sins on Me and I pay for them in full.