Toten Rocks

Toten Rocks

Matthew 11:25-30

What kind of week have ya’ll had. Wit the predictions of the weather and things to do. I felt like I was toten rocks all week long. I can use the word toten can’t I? This is home and you know what I mean don’t you?

I am talking about working on something and feeling like you will never finish.

For some reason, I have quite a bit of experience getting rocks. When I was in Colorado, I used a pick up truck to get rocks n the mountain and carry them back to our house to make a parking spot in the yard for the truck. There really wasn’t much grass to speak of, what was there was brown most of the time because of the lack of water.

We made 5 or 6 trips up into the mountains to these creek beds with Round River rocks about the size of you fist. The first trip we got too many on truck and we floated back down the mountain, swaying a little more the comfortable. We would load rocks for 2 hours and have them off the truck in 15 minutes. And they did not seem to cover much ground. We did not have to carry them to the truck , we just pulled out to the edge of the creek and started tossing.

It was actually pretty hard work. You would have thought the truck should hold more. You knew it was full looking at the tires.

So toten Rocks pretty much describes any time I have task that I don’t seem like I will ever finish the job or project. Perhaps that is a problem with my physical body or perhaps it is a problem with the tools I have.

Today scripture starts with a little unfamiliar portion but it is section by editors to be a block a scripter about rest. But there are several things that we should connect so that we can understand this better.

This event is connected to the Gospel of Luke Chapter 10 when the seventy that are sent out pairs to preach,. This is the day assigned for the return Matthew doesn’t refer to any of that. The chapter starts with a Question of John the Baptist asking if he really is the messiah. Then he talks about how the people received John and Jesus and basically could not be pleased.

Then Matthew records Jesus pronouncing WOEs on the cities where he taught and healed because the people did not respond with repentance for their sins.

We stared reading at verse 25, At that time Jesus said, "I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure.

Jesus gives prays to his heavenly father, as being the Lord of heaven and Earth. He is sovereign which, means that there is no one higher. He is the top. He is the greatest authority with no rival.

Jesus credits God with hiding knowledge from the wise and prudent. That sounds a little selective and perhaps a little unfair. Wise and prudent sounds like the intelligent people perhaps the ones with good educations. In Jesus day that would have been the Pharisees and Sadducees, government officials. Probably many f the successful business men.

That sounds a little short sited and hard, the message was hidden from all the smart people.

I am not sure that the definition of wise and prudent is as restrictive as the scripture states. If it did, most of us would probably not be hearers of the message today.

I think it means something else. I think that he means people that think they are wise and know it all, people that have no need for help because they know it al had have done it all. They pulled themselves up by their own boot straps and loaded the truck with the rocks of life all alone.

Basically, I am saying people that are completely independent and don’ nee help from anybody….Anybody includes God.

This can include the religious of then and today. This can include anyone that is comfortable and feels like they did it on their own.

Then on the other hand he reveals to the children. So God helps the children, who would that be? How about people that know that they need something. Perhaps they have no clue what it is. They feel their emptiness and eagerly listen to the teaching of the messengers that Jesus sent. It does not automatically require that have to be poor.

They just have to realize that they do not now it all.

In reading this it would be easy to wonder why God was unfair to hide something from one group. Unfair that God would hide the message from anyone.