From the book “He Will Give You Rest. . . (from Chapter 1:) Invitation and a Promise:
One scholar observes that Matthew 11:25-30 records “perhaps one or the most important verses in the Synoptic Gospels,”1 More specifically, Elder James E. Talmage described verses 28-30 as “one of the grandest outpourings of spiritual emotion notion known to man.’2
If these statements are true, then why is Matthew the only author to include this invitation: Come unto me all ye that are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon, 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). Why was this teaching so important to Matthew? After all, Luke includes the three verses that precede them, in which Jesus speaks about knowing the Father (Luke 10:21-22); both Mark and Luke include the story that follows plucking grain on the Sabbath (Mark 2:23-28; Luke 6:1-5).
Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that Matthew’s Gospel was written to a Jewish audience and therefore emphasizes through works-righteousness, dikaiosyn
It is therefore significant in a Gospel where works-righteousness is so prominent, Matthew also includes an important counterbalance for those who feel the weight of such responsibility. The counterbalance expressed in Matthew 8:28-30 is just as important for modern readers as it was to Matthew’s original audience in the first century. In fact, the importance of that counterbalance is reflected in the poetic form of the passage. Chiasmus, as Latter-day Saint Scholar John W. Welch explains, “consists in arranging a series of words in one order, and then repeating this in reverse order.” One of the important features of chiasmus is that ‘the main idea of the passage is placed in the turning point where the second half begins, which emphasizes it.”3 Matthew 11:28-30 can thus be formatted in the following way, with the ideas of laboring and being heavy laden paralleling the easy yoke and light burden, and the two promises of rest paralleling each other.
1.Come unto me all ye that are heavy laden,
2.And I will give you rest.
3.Take my yoke upon you and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly of heart;
2.And ye shall find rest to your souls.
1.For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.4
At the turning point of this chiasmus is the invitation to take Jesus’ and learn about and from him. His yoke is not that of a tyrant, for he is meek and lowly of heart. He does not ask us to take his yoke so he can load additional burdens upon us, because he wants to help us. Rather, he asks us to take his yoke because he loves us, because he wants to help us, because he wants us not just to endure mortality but to enter into the fullness of God’s glory, both here and in the eternities.
To more fully appreciate the meaning of this text, we must examine it within the broader context of the passages that surround it. As it stands in his Gospel, its immediate context is an important link between his discussion of knowing the Father and the Son (Matthew 11:25-27) and Jesus’ proclamation that he is the Lord of the Sabbath (12:1-9) ~~Richard Nietzel Holzapfel, Gaye Strathearn, He Will Give You Rest, An Invitation and a Promise Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2010) p.15-17
(Note from kdm. . . . The ancient pattern of writing, Chiasmus, is common in the Bible, and was discovered by the Latter-day Saint scholar, Jack Welch, while he was serving as a young LDS missionary in Germany. (He had taken a class taught by Professor, Dr. Hugh Nibly. This ancient form, lost for many centuries, is found throughout the Book of Mormon, not only in verses but in chapters and more. It is also common in the Bible and is just another proof that the Book of Mormon is truly the word God.)
