A Sermon by Thomas Boston
Matthew 11:28. Come unto Me, all ye that labour, and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
Second. The sort of labour sinners have in the law. To this most of what has been said already may be applied; besides, it may occur afterwards. I shall only say these two things about it at present.
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It is most hard labour, for it requires most exact obedience, under pain of the curse: “Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them” (Gal 3:10). Nothing but perfect obedience is accepted, according to the law, and the least failure dooms the sinner to death. Now, no man can perform this, and yet men are so foolish that they think they can please God with their works. Again, it is hard because the law neither promises strength nor gives it. God gave Adam strength to perform it; he lost it, and the law does not restore it; so that in this case they must make the brick, and no straw is laid to their hands. This makes hard work, and so, by the Spirit, it at length breaks the heart of the elect and makes them die to the law (Gal 2:19).
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It is vain and useless labour. There are great pains and no gain in this labour. It is vain; they that labour in the law sow their seed in the sand, but all they reap is wind, which may puff them up but cannot nourish. Why are there so many barren professors but because they are trading with the law, not with Christ? Men go to duties and rest in them; the pipe is laid short of the fountain. It is vain for acceptance with God. It is thankless work, for it supersedes the command to believe: “This is the work of God, that ye believe on Him whom He hath sent” (Jn 6:29). It is a sad word: “Israel, which followed after the law of righteousness, hath not attained to the law of righteousness. Wherefore? Because they sought it not by faith, but as it were by the works of the law” (Rom 11:31,32). Turtle doves were accepted on the altar at Jerusalem, when bullocks were rejected on those at Dan and Bethel.
Further, it is vain, not answering the demands of the law (Gal 3:10). Our curtailed obedience will not answer the measuring rod of the law; it demands satisfaction for what is past, and perfect obedience for what is to come.
Finally, it is vain, for it does not save. The way to heaven by the first covenant is blocked up; the angel with the flaming sword guards it; duties are a sandy foundation, and great will be the fall of those who trust in them.
1This is the second part of the third sermon on this text. It is reprinted, with editing, from Boston’s Works, vol 9. The first part appeared in the April 2022 issue, where the preacher spoke on the sort of labour sinners have in their lusts.
4. Why sinners labour in their lusts and in the law for satisfaction and do not come to Christ.
(1.) Because they have lost God, the fountain of happiness, and therefore they seek to squeeze it out of the creatures: “Having no hope, and without God in the world” (Eph 2:12). For God says, “They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters” (Jer 2:13). The sun has gone down on them; therefore they light their candles, and compass themselves with their own sparks; for the empty soul must have something to feed on. The prodigal needed bread, and therefore fed on husks. Dove’s dung was precious when there was no bread in Samaria.
(2.) By a strong delusion, they still expect satisfaction from them. They see them through a magnifying glass, as our first parents did the forbidden fruit (Gen 3:5,6). That delusion is conveyed to their posterity, and they will never be cured till grace does it. Hence, though men meet a thousand disappointments in those things, they still renew the attempt, with new hopes.
(3.) These things are most suitable to the corrupt nature: “They that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh” (Rom 8:5). Fish swim in the river and do not care for the most pleasant meadow; swine prefer the dung-hill to a palace; because everything seeks its like. Even the way of the law, though just and good in itself, is the way that agrees best with self: “Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? Of works? Nay, but by the law of faith” (Rom 3:27).
(4.) They know no better. Christ is hidden from men in their natural state, they do not see His glory, fulness and excellency; they say, “What is thy Beloved more than another beloved” (Song 5:9). The fowl scrapes beside the jewels and takes up a grain of corn beside them because it does not know their worth. “Unto you therefore which believe He is precious, but unto them which be disobedient, the stone which the builders disallowed, the same is made the head of the corner, and a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence, even to them which stumble at the word, being disobedient” (1 Pet 2:7).
(5.) Men naturally are enemies to the way of salvation by Jesus Christ.
5. Application. Let me warn you most earnestly. Why do you spend your labour for what does not satisfy? (Is 55:2). Seeing you wish to labour, will you not labour in God’s way, that you may enter into His rest? It is wearisome labour that all out of Christ are engaged in. I wish you to give it over and engage in Christ’s service. I come in His name to beseech you. Your labour is one that God never put in your hands; it proceeds from a corrupt heart and the devil, who yoked you to that work of seeking your happiness in created things; in lusts or in the law, and not in God. To this some may plead, Not guilty! “We know (they say) the world is but vain, and we place
our chief happiness in God. God forbid we should labour in any such way!”
For your conviction, however, I must say a few things. You may be deceived; many are as busy as can be at that work, and yet say that they are not. “There is a generation that are pure in their own eyes, and yet is not washed from their filthiness” (Prov 30:12). I would ask you:
(1.) Who loosed you from this labour? Were you never at it? If you think so, you miserably deceive yourselves. Since Adam went away from God to pluck his happiness off the forbidden tree, all mankind have followed his steps, and abide at the work, till converting grace looses them. What is conversion, but a turning to God, from whom we are naturally turned away? Alas, there are few converts!
(2.) Were you ever heartily wearied of this labour, seeing your folly in abiding so long in it? Was it ever a heavy task that you were made to groan under? All are welcome to Christ that will come, but none will ever give up such labour till God will bring them to a holy despair (Hos 2:6,7). Then the soul can neither get satisfaction in created things nor go to God. Thus it sits down with these words, “Thou hast chastised me, and I was chastised, as a bullock unaccustomed to the yoke; turn Thou me, and I shall be turned, for Thou art the Lord my God” (Jer 31:18). “No man can come to Me, except the Father which hath sent Me draw him” (Jn 6:44).
(3.) How are you kept from returning to this labour? If you have left it, it will not be without a struggle. There is a natural bias this way in the hearts of all. Alas, the strong man keeps the house with most people; they have no struggle with the world, nor do they struggle to keep it out of their heart.
(4.) Whence does your greatest dissatisfaction proceed, from the world mistrusting you or God hiding His face from you? From your disappointments in the world or at the throne of grace? Where the disappointment goes deepest, the expectations have been greatest: “Hope deferred maketh the heart sick” – an infallible evidence that most men are at this work.
(5.) Where do you find your greatest satisfaction and pleasure, if we may call it so? In the enjoyment of God or of the world, in getting your lusts satisfied? If worldly joy was turned away from them, many would not have a happy hour. They never found as much sweetness in the benefits of the covenant as in those of the world.
(6.) If you are not labouring thus, what are you doing? There cannot be an idle soul among us. If the devil has us not, God has us at work. These things must bring convictions to our breasts.
Let me still further warn you. Why spend “your labour for that which satisfieth not”? This labour is thankless; God will not thank you for it; He says, “Who hath required this at your hands?” The devil pays you the wages due
to it, which are death (Rom 6:23). He has no better to give. Besides this, your labour is against God. Having forsaken the fountain of living waters, you have hewn out for yourselves broken cisterns that can hold no water” (Jer 2:13). You are thus setting created things in the room of God; accordingly God is against you in this labour, so you can never get what you are seeking from it. Be exhorted then to give it up. I set before you these motives:
(1.) Why will you toil so much to bring from created things what is not in them? Only God can answer the desires of the soul; no one ever saw his desires fully satisfied till they were swallowed up in God. When created things were at their best, there was the forbidden tree in paradise to teach man that his happiness was not in them. How much more now! “The bed is shorter than that a man can stretch himself on it, and the covering narrower than that he can wrap himself in it” (Is 28:20).
(2.) How can you expect to find rest when all things here are unstable as water? Unchangeableness is necessary in what will make one truly happy; otherwise the very fear of losing it mars the happiness. Will we seek our root in vanity or fill our hands with the wind?
(3.) Did you ever meet with any worldly enjoyment that was every way as you would have it? Dissatisfaction will proceed from any defect, however small, as with Haman (Est 5:13); but everything desirable must come together in what will give satisfaction. So Christ “is altogether lovely” (Song 5:16). Let a man turn over the whole creation for satisfaction, yet he will find that “in the fulness of his sufficiency he shall be in straits” (Job 20:22). Who ever got the rose that lacked prickles?
(4.) Are not all hopes disappointed? They promise more when far off than they give when they come near. Mountains afar off become molehills when near. The more closely a ball of snow is held, the smaller it will grow.
(5.) Has not the sap been squeezed out of enjoyments to you between the hand and the mouth? “The floor and the winepress shall not feed them, and the new wine shall fail in her” (Hos 9:2). Have you not had fair prospects blasted in a moment, before you ever tasted them?
(6.) Has not the loss of them often brought greater sorrow than ever the having of them gave joy, when God has taken away your choice comforts? Were you not more grieved then than you were happy before?
(7.) Has not what you expected to be the greatest comfort turned out to be the greatest cross? This was the case with Rachel, who said to Jacob, “Give me children, or else I die”. She got children, and death instantly followed.
(8.) Have not special mercies, as well as judgements, brought a sting with them, while conscience was whispering that God was your enemy.
(9.) Was your heart ever truly at rest in these things, so that you could say
you desire no more? But the more one has of them, the more are they desired.
(10.) There is another way to come at your purpose. Come to Christ, and He will give you rest. This is a short way, for all is in Him; whatever perfections are scattered up and down among created things, all is in Him, infinitely more. It is a sure way, for you will not miss happiness if you come to Him. John 10:17. I would once more warn you. “Wherefore do you spend . . . your labour for that which satisfieth not?” I would beseech you most earnestly, not only to give up your present unpleasant, unprofitable labour, but also to change your labour – not only to depart from evil, but to do good; to serve a new Master, and run in the way of His commandments. You are labouring one way or another; will you not then labour in true religion, real godliness? If we must serve, surely it is better to serve Christ than the devil. Labour in religion frightens the world; but why should it, seeing their labour is so great while they are out of Christ? Consider:
(1.) We are not calling you from idleness to working, but from labour to labour. Even if we were still to be slaves, better to be God’s than the devil’s. What will men say to Christ at the last day, who will labour in their lusts but not in holiness; that will bear a yoke but not Christ’s yoke?
(2.) We call you, not from one base labour to another, but from a base to an honourable work. Should one be called from the stone-barrow to be a king’s cupbearer, it cannot be compared to what is proposed. They will have [1] a more honourable master; [2] more honourable fellow labourers, for the angels serve Him; [3] more honourable work, for God is glorious in holiness; [4] a more honourable office; from being slaves to the devil, they are made kings and priests unto God.
(3.) We call you from vain labour to what will be prosperous and successful. You are labouring for happiness where you will never get it, but here are full breasts. You are striking in vain at the flinty rock for water; here is an open fountain, from which no one ever went away disappointed.
(4.) We call you from useless labour, where you will get nothing but sorrow to take away with you, to a labour which will follow you when you have finished it (Rev 14:13). Your present labour is miserable (Is 59:5).
(5.) The worst that can be said is that religion is hard labour. But this should not prejudice you against it, seeing, as was said, labour out of Christ is also hard labour. But observe:
[1.] If religion is hard labour, it is worth the pains. Other labour is not: “If thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasures, then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God” (Prov 2:4,5). There is hard labour in digging stones, as well as in digging for gold; it is hard labour digging disappointments; whereas the gain of labour
in religion is precious and certain. (1) Christ promises to “cause those that love Me to inherit substance, and I will fill their treasures” (Prov 8:21). (2) The experience of all the labourers confirms its certainty: God “said not unto the seed of Jacob, Seek ye Me in vain”.
[2.] If it is hard labour, it is short. You shall soon rest from your labours (Rev 14:13). The spirits of one that is tired with his journey will revive when near the end. The shadow of the evening makes the labourer work heartily, for the end is at hand. The trials, afflictions and weeping of the saints endure but for a moment. On the other hand, the labour of others knows no end; no rest awaits them, but everlasting toil under wrath that never ends.
(6.) We call you from hard to easy labour. Christ has said, “My yoke is easy”; we must believe it. Consider:
[1.] All the difficulties in religion arise from corruption in men, making them labour in their lusts and in the law. “The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force” (Mt 11:12), violence and force, not with God, but with our own corruptions. Only in this sense does Scripture hold out the labour of religion to be hard. But men do not state the matter fairly. Take them separately: labour in religion is easy, the other hard. Men cannot bear Christ’s burden. Why? Because they still keep the devil’s burden on them, and they cannot bear the one on top of the other. Put aside the one; take up the other; see which is lighter. A meek man and a passionate man, which of them has the hardest task in bearing an affront? A sober man or a drunkard? A worldly man or he that lives above the world? The more power grace has, the easier is the labour; the more power lusts have, the harder.
[2.] There is true help in the one, not in the other. Labour in religion has outward helps; the labourers are not helpless; a cloud of witnesses has gone before them, whom the labourers may see with crowns on their heads (Heb 12:1). Armies of saints have stormed heaven before you and have left behind them the fact that the work is possible and the reward certain. The others do not have this; if they get satisfaction in their lusts, they are the first. They see thousands before them, who have laboured as hard as they, disappointed and lying down in sorrow. This labour has inward helps. Christ bears the heaviest part of His own yoke; He gives strength; He gives a will for the work, and does the work for us when we have the will, “for it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure” (Phil 2:13). “Thou also hast wrought all our works in us” (Is 26:12). The others do not have these blessings. True, they have within them what puts them to this labour, but the more of the one, the harder the other, as the wearied beast is goaded by the spur, and worn out by being beaten when it is allowed no straw. But where is the help to work happiness from created things or from the law?
(7.) We call you from wearisome to pleasant labour. I have proved the first; for the last, see Proverbs 3:17: “Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace”. But is there pleasure in sin? In some sins there is none. What pleasure has the passionate man, that kindles a fire in his own bosom? What pleasure has the envious man, that gnaws himself for the good that others enjoy? What pleasure has the discontented man, that is his own executioner? Consider the calm of spirit that the opposite graces bring, and judge who has the better part. As for those sins in which pleasure is found,
[1.] Those things that gratify men’s sensual appetite are common to them with beasts: gluttony, drunkenness, filthiness and so on. A sow can drink, and be as drunk as the greatest drunkard, and they have the advantage that they are under no law; they do it without remorse; they find satisfaction in these things, as they cannot desire greater things. Now, where is the pleasure? Is it not surpassed by the pain?
As to the desires of the mind, these are common to them with devils. The devil can satisfy the greatest swearer, liar and proud opposer of religion better than any; he can reason more closely against religion than any atheist. But mockers and those who obstinately despise reproof surpass the devil, for the devils believe and tremble, whereas for a time rebellious sinners do not.
[2.] The pleasure is momentary; the pain follows hard at its heels and is eternal. What pleasure can be devised for which a man would hold his finger over a burning candle for a quarter of an hour? How much more dreadful to endure eternal burnings!
[3.] The struggle of conscience with corruption brings more torment than that of corruption with grace. Conscience is more dreadfully armed than corruption; there is as much difference here as there is between the hand of God and that of the devil. See now what becomes of the pleasure!
(2.) Labour in religion is truly pleasant. It is truly holy labour; and Scripture testimony proves its pleasantness; see Proverbs 3:17: “Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace”. Ask David and he will tell you, in Psalm 84; Paul, in 2 Corinthians 12:10.
[1.] It is a labour suited to the nature of the soul, the better part. Believers are partakers of a divine nature (2 Pet 1:4). This must create delight; the stream easily flows from the fountain. The reason why many find difficulty in religion is that they are out of their element when engaged in it.
[2.] In it the soul carries on trade with heaven; it has communion with God through the Spirit of Christ – the soul receiving influences from Him and returning them again in duties; as the rain falls on the earth freely, so the waters run again freely toward the sea.
[3.] Great peace of conscience usually attends this; and the more labour,
the more peace: “Great peace have they which love Thy law” (Ps 119:165). Here is a feast which nothing mars except sin, “for our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our conscience, that in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God, we have had our conversation in the world” (2 Cor 1:12). Men cannot take it from us (Jn 14:27).
[4.] Sometimes they see much of Christ, evidences of the Lord’s love as a high spring-tide of joy in their souls, greater than what the whole world enjoys (Ps 4:6,7). It is joy unspeakable and full of glory (1 Pet 1:8).
[5.] They walk in a way of light, whereas the other is dark; the light of the Lord’s word shines in it. Scripture points out duty, as if it were written with a sunbeam.
(8.) We call you from labour against yourselves to labour for your advantage. We must either do the work of God or of the devil. Every sin is a new impediment in your way to heaven, a new stone laid on the wall of separation. How mad to be working out damnation, instead of our salvation!
(9.) We call you not to more, but to other, labour. We are all laborious creatures; the greatest idler is in some sort busy. Paul even calls them busybodies who do not work at all (2 Th 3:11). Our life is nothing but a continual succession of actions, even as the rivers are ever running. It is in some ways impossible to do more than we do. Why may we not then keep to the highway while we are travelling.
(10.) The same pains that men suffer, as they ruin themselves, might possibly serve to save them. There are difficulties in the way of sin as well as in the way of religion. Does not sin often cause men to lose their night’s rest? Are they more disturbed when communing with their own souls or with God? Do not men draw sin as with cart ropes (Is 5:18)? Why might not labour be employed in drawing the heart to God? If men would but change, and suck as greedily and incessantly at the breasts of God’s consolations, as they do from created things, how happy they would be!
(11.) Labour in religion is not greater than in sin; indeed, it is less, for religion contracts our work to one thing: “Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things; but one thing is needful” (Lk 10:41,42). Sinners have many lusts to please; saints have but one God to please. The work of religion is all of a piece; it is not so with sin. There is a sweet harmony between all the graces and duties of religion. But lusts are quite contrary; as they war against grace, so they fight against one another, “From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members?” (Jas 4:1). So the sinner is dragged one way by one lust, and another way by another lust. How hard it is to serve contrary masters!