Drawing on Pastor David Jang’s preaching, this in-depth exposition of Matthew 11—“Come to Me, all who labor and are heavy laden”—connects Jesus’ invitation to rest with the reindeer migration portrayed in Frozen Planet II, illuminating the atonement of the cross, true rest, the yoke of love, and the hope of eternal life.
The images of Frozen
Planet II portray a world where ice and wind, silence and storm,
alternate in relentless rhythm. Not only the polar regions of the Arctic and
Antarctic, but also frozen deserts, high mountain ranges, forests buried under
snowfields, and cold seas—within spaces ruled by cold, life is always forced to
decide on “the next step.” Among these scenes, the vast procession of Arctic
reindeer crossing a deep river in search of newly grown grass feels like more
than a spectacle of nature. It approaches us like a struggle to grasp hold of
the very reason for existence. The current before them is as cold as thin ice,
and the flow is fierce. And yet thousands press forward in one direction and
cross. Why? Because on the far bank there is still-green growth that has not
dried up, and that green is life itself; life is the promise that enables
endurance today. Watching that moment, we cannot help but ask: What have we
been willing to risk for? How far have we ever offered ourselves in order to
seek truth?
As Pastor David Jang
(founder of Olivet University) expounds Matthew 11, the point he repeatedly
holds onto is this: rather than human beings staking their lives to find the
truth, the truth itself has come toward us. Just as the reindeer must cross the
river to obtain grass, we tend to imagine that we must cross some dangerous
divide and secure truth for ourselves. But the gospel opens a path in an
entirely different direction. It is not that we risked endless danger, pushing
toward truth; it is that truth came down toward us and extended a hand. That
hand is the invitation of Jesus Christ, and that invitation is His word: “Come
to Me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” This
invitation does not remain a warm sentence that merely soothes exhausted
emotions. Where it lands is at the deepest weight human existence carries—the
fundamental burden of sin, the anxiety produced by sin, and the countless
structures of self-justification we build in order to cover sin.
Pastor David Jang says the
word “burden” is not merely fatigue; it is a theological reality. People do not
simply need rest because they are tired; they cannot rest because of sin.
Outwardly they may appear to be doing well, but inwardly they are always being
chased. Yesterday’s failure returns as today’s self-accusation; today’s display
turns into tomorrow’s emptiness. Whether consciously or not, human beings live
as if they must defend themselves—and the more that defense repeats, the
heavier the inner weight becomes. As Romans 1:18–20 describes, though God has
given what can be known of Him, people do not acknowledge Him or give thanks.
Ultimately they place the created thing in the position that belongs to the
Creator, and the human heart becomes trapped in a cycle of willful forgetting
and anxiety. Truth is not gone somewhere outside; it is suppressed and pressed
down deep within. Therefore the gospel’s invitation is not, “Try harder,” but
“Come to Me.”
In John 1:29, John the
Baptist points to Jesus and declares, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away
the sin of the world.” Through this sentence Pastor David Jang clarifies the
direction of salvation. The problem of sin does not grow thin through human
resolution, and it can be covered for a moment through religious discipline,
but it is not removed at the root. The reason Old Testament sacrifices were
repeated was not simply that sin repeated, but that the human conscience could
not be completely cleansed by those offerings. Yet Jesus Christ, who came as
the Lamb, ends the chain of repeated ritual through a once-for-all sacrifice,
transferring the weight of sin onto His own shoulders. Here, “transfer” is not
merely symbolic; it is real. The declaration that Christ carried what humans
cannot throw off overturns religion’s long-standing demand: “You must bear it.”
Matthew 20:28 makes that
overturning even clearer: “The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to
serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.” Pastor David Jang brings out
the sharp realism carried by the word “ransom,” insisting we do not forget that
salvation is a matter of cost. Freedom is not given without price. Someone must
pay. The debt of sin—a debt we cannot pay—was paid by Jesus, and the price was
the cross. That is why Christian peace is not a vague optimism, but a solid
rest built on a price already paid. This is where the force of John 14:27
emerges: “The peace I give you is not like the peace the world gives.” The
world’s peace is conditional and unstable; Christ’s peace is an irreversible
gift grounded in the fact of the cross.
As Pastor David Jang
unfolds Matthew 11:28–30, he distinguishes the burden in two layers. One is the
burden of sin that we must lay down. The other is the yoke of Christ that we
must willingly take up. The burden of sin collapses a person, but the yoke gives
life. It sounds like a contradiction, yet Scripture explains the structure of
freedom precisely through that paradox. Without a yoke, the human being becomes
bound—under the name of “freedom”—to the shackles of desire and fear. By
contrast, the yoke of Christ provides direction in love and truth and rescues
us from self-destructive wandering. When Jesus says His yoke is easy and His
burden is light, He is not saying responsibility disappears from life; He is
saying the root of responsibility changes into love. It becomes not “because I
have to,” but “because I love.”
At this point Pastor David
Jang often brings to mind Jesus’ rebuke of the scribes and Pharisees. In
Matthew 23:4, Jesus says they “tie up heavy burdens and lay them on people’s
shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with even one finger.”
Religion can easily fall into the temptation of relocating weight onto someone
else’s shoulders. Through rules, through evaluative language, through the gaze
of comparison, through “community image” and respectability, we add burdens to
one another. Pastor David Jang warns that both church leaders and congregants
must guard against this trap. The gospel is news that enables burdens to be
laid down. If, while claiming to preach the gospel, someone manipulates people
by expanding guilt and fear, that path is closer to the Pharisees than to
Christ. Jesus’ invitation is not oppression but liberation; not a technique of
control but the power of love.
Yet liberation is not
license. The moment we lay down the burden of sin, we stand before another kind
of calling. The “yoke of love” Pastor David Jang speaks of includes communal
responsibility. Christ does not merely let us rest alone; after giving rest, He
sends us again into the way of love. Thus the “rest” of Matthew 11 is not a
passive break but the restoration of relationships and the reordering of
vocation. When Philippians 4:7 says, “The peace of God, which surpasses all
understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus,” that
peace is not a mood that escapes reality; it is an active protection that
guards the heart and mind. What does it guard? Love, hope, and the posture of
service.
The reindeer crossing
in Frozen Planet II calls to mind precisely that “active”
quality. The reindeer are not creatures merely swept away by the current; they
take direction in order to live, rely on the herd, and keep stepping forward to
the end. Faith is similar. Coming to Jesus is not a moment of drifting into
religious emotion; it is a change of direction, a decision to return the
lordship of life to Him. Pastor David Jang emphasizes that although truth came
to us rather than us risking our lives to find it, there must be a clear
response in receiving that truth. If the invitation is a gift, faith is the act
of receiving that gift with both hands. If one does not receive it, the gift
remains at the door.
Romans 1 shows how the
world becomes twisted when human beings turn away from God. When God is not
honored, gratitude disappears, thinking becomes futile, and the senseless heart
grows dark. Pastor David Jang reads this not merely as a moral list of decline,
but as a process of ontological collapse. The reason human rest breaks down is
that the relationship with the Creator has broken down. We try to gain rest
through work, relationships, and achievement, but rest comes from restored
relationship. Therefore when John 17:3 defines eternal life as “knowing You,
the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent,” eternal life is not
merely an extension of time granted in the future; it is a qualitative change
of relationship that begins here and now. When that relationship is restored,
peace becomes not an emotion but the foundation of existence.
When Pastor David Jang
speaks of redemption, he does not wrap the cross in sentimental language.
Rather, he says the cross is the event that demolishes every ladder of
self-salvation we have built. We often cling to the project of becoming “a
person worthy of being recognized by God.” But that project alternates between
pride and despair. When we do a little well, we become proud; when we stumble a
little, we despair. In that cycle, we lose rest. Jesus came to sever that
cycle. As the symbol of the “Lamb” suggests, He does not save by crushing with
power, but by saving through self-giving. That self-giving is not weakness; it
is the strongest form of love.
There is a famous
masterpiece that visually evokes this form of love: Michelangelo’s Pietà.
In marble it depicts Mary holding the body of Jesus taken down from the cross,
capturing weight, compassion, and silence in a single scene. The reason such
warmth is felt in cold stone is that the moment is not only a mother’s sorrow;
it symbolizes the weight of redemption—the burden borne in place of humanity.
Pastor David Jang’s exhortation to “lay down your burden of sin upon Jesus”
rests on the fact, as the Pietà’s embrace suggests, that someone
has already received that weight. Before that embrace, we no longer need to
spin endless self-defense. Atonement has already been accomplished.
Then by what is the
Christian life measured? Through Matthew 20:28, Pastor David Jang says the mode
of existence of the saved is revealed as “service.” Service is not a moral
bonus point; it is the channel through which the grace of ransom flows into real
life. If Jesus came to serve, then those who belong to Jesus inevitably stand
in the way of service. Yet here again the Pharisaic temptation raises its head.
Even service can be corrupted into a stage for the desire to be recognized.
Therefore Jesus says, “Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me.” Learn to
serve—but learn from Jesus. Learn His heart, not the eyes of people.
Pastor David Jang warns
how much “spiritual achievement competition” within the church becomes yet
another burden for many. Some compare one another by attendance numbers, others
by the volume of volunteering, others by the depth of religious knowledge. In
that process, wounded people quietly leave, and even those who remain begin to
“perform” faith in order to be approved. This is the opposite of the gospel’s
rest. The invitation of Matthew 11 shows the posture of God who approaches the
wounded first. God does not call us because He has reviewed our performance
report. He calls those crushed by the performance report. And within that
calling, we finally receive the strength to live by love.
The cold world shown
in Frozen Planet II paradoxically makes the warmth of life
more vivid. The harsher the blizzard, the more precious even a small
temperature becomes. Faith is similar. The colder life becomes, the more we
experience how concrete Christ’s love is. Pastor David Jang does not leave
Christ’s love as an abstract idea; he urges us to understand it as “an event in
which burdens are transferred.” Jesus lifted and carried our burdens, and under
His yoke we learn love. Love then is not a flood of feeling but appears as the
form of will that gladly gives itself for others—sometimes as listening,
sometimes as forgiveness, sometimes as the practice of lifting someone else’s
load.
Yet the practice of love
is difficult to sustain by human willpower alone. That is why Pastor David Jang
emphasizes “learn from Me” as the core discipline of faith. Learning is the
fruit of relationship. When we learn Jesus’ heart, we are freed from legalistic
compulsion. Legalism always centers on “me,” and therefore it is always heavy.
The gospel centers on “Christ,” and therefore it becomes light. “Light” does
not mean problems vanish; it means the way we carry problems changes. We move
from a life carried alone to a life carried together with Christ.
Pastor David Jang often
repeats in his preaching a confession like this: “We did not stake our lives to
find the truth. It simply came to us. All we need to do is receive it.” This
makes the beginning of faith humble. Faith is not a heroic human story; it is a
story of divine grace. We did not discover truth like great explorers; we were
discovered like lost people. What is needed at that moment is not boasting but
receiving. Before Jesus’ invitation, rather than presenting “what I can do,” we
acknowledge “what I cannot do.” That acknowledgement is repentance, and
repentance opens the door to rest.
That rest does not stop
inside the individual. Pastor David Jang says the community must become a
conduit that conveys the rest of Christ. The church must not be a masquerade
ball where wounds are hidden; it must be a hospital where wounds are healed. It
must be a space where burdens are shared. Instead of exposing someone’s
failure, it must give strength to rise again together. This is how the
invitation of Matthew 11 becomes concrete within the church. And it becomes a
testimony to the world. When the world looks at the church, it should discover
not heavier burdens, but a lighter hope.
The peace enjoyed in the
love of Jesus Christ cannot ultimately be separated from the promise of eternal
life. Pastor David Jang does not reduce eternal life to a “ticket to heaven
after death.” Eternal life is a new way of being given to those whose relationship
with God has been restored here and now. As John 3:16 says, God’s love is the
love that gave His only Son; that love rescues the one who believes from
perishing and moves them into eternal life. “Perishing” is not only a future
judgment; it is the collapse of life already beginning in present
fragmentation, emptiness, and fear. Eternal life is the restoration in which
that collapse is healed.
Therefore Pastor David
Jang’s exposition of Matthew 11 is not merely a message of comfort; it is a
radical reinterpretation of human existence. We are “beings carrying heavy
burdens,” and at the deepest layer of that burden is sin. Yet we have been
given a way to lay it down. That way is not self-improvement but atonement, and
at the center of atonement stands Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God. Because He has
taken away our sin, we can go to Him and find rest. And those who have found
rest take up the yoke of love, serve the world, and no longer place heavy
burdens on others—instead they become people who lighten burdens.
Just as the reindeer cross
the river toward newly grown grass, we too must cross the familiar river of
guilt and fear. But the wonder of the gospel is this: we do not cross that
river alone. Christ has already cut through the current before us. We respond
to His invitation and step forward. Faith is not reckless courage that ignores
risk; it is the courage that trusts love. And that courage leads us to broader
green pastures, deeper peace, and a firmer hope of eternal life. As Pastor
David Jang emphasizes, truth is not far away. Truth has come to us, and even
now it says, “Come to Me.” When we listen to that voice, we finally lay down
the heavy load and walk the light yet solid path of love.
The “yoke” Jesus speaks of
was also everyday language in the first-century agrarian society of Palestine.
A yoke was a tool placed across the necks of two animals so they could plow a
field together; it distributed weight and aligned direction. Pastor David Jang
does not let us treat the phrase “My yoke” as a mere abstraction—simply “Jesus’
teaching.” A yoke is something two bear together, and the fact that Jesus calls
it “Mine” implies that the disciple is not someone plowing alone, but a
companion walking in step with Christ. Therefore, when Jesus says the yoke is
easy and the burden is light, He does not mean the practical difficulty of life
suddenly drops. He means the heaviest axis of life has shifted onto Jesus’
shoulders. The world’s philosophy—“carry it alone”—ultimately fractures,
isolates, and exhausts a person. The gospel, by contrast, carries together. In
prayer, in repentance, in service, we still sweat, but that sweat is not the
sweat of despair; it is the sweat of love.
Moreover, the rest Jesus
promises is not a powerless pause that stops daily life; it is a restoration in
which the soul returns to its rightful place. Pastor David Jang calls rest “the
alignment of the soul.” The world continually shakes us. Just as the herd of
reindeer on screen seems about to scatter with the wind’s direction but
eventually gathers again toward one path, the human heart scatters in every
direction under information overload, competition, and relational expectations.
What should we love? What should we fear? What should we live for? The
standards become tangled. Then Jesus’ invitation gathers the scattered heart
back to the center. And that center is relationship with God. When that center
is restored, we gain a stability that does not collapse even if circumstances
do not change. This does not arise from mere self-suggestion, but from the
confession of faith that God truly holds our hearts.
Pastor David Jang also
gives concrete language to the heavy burdens modern people carry: the endless
self-proof demanded by a performance-driven society; the pressure to satisfy
the expectations of family and organizations; the fatigue of masks in a digital
culture where comparison and evaluation are normalized; and the exhaustion of
having to act “fine” in order to survive. If religious language is added to
these, people place another burden on top of the burden of sin. Simplistic
interpretations like “I’m suffering because my faith is weak” can push wounded
people into deeper guilt. Pastor David Jang, so that the gospel does not
suffocate people in this way, stresses the objective event of the cross and the
priority of grace. When we come to the Lord by faith, Jesus first makes us put
down stones of condemnation. When condemnation stops, change begins. Grace is
not an excuse for license; it is the soil in which true repentance grows.
The faith that responds to
Christ’s invitation is not a secret event occurring only inside the heart; it
includes the work of restructuring life itself. Pastor David Jang says, “Do not
turn the phrase ‘come to Jesus’ into an abstraction.” To come to Jesus is the
courage to acknowledge one’s sin, wounds, and failures without beautifying
them, and to entrust all of it to the Lord. To come to Jesus is also a decision
to reorder relationships anew. There may be someone to forgive, an attachment
to lay down, an addiction to cut off, a responsibility to begin again. In all
these processes, we move not by “my strength,” but by “the grace of Christ.”
The yoke of love Pastor David Jang describes is the inner动力—the inner driving
power—that makes these concrete decisions possible.
Just as Frozen
Planet II highlights the impact of climate change, Pastor David Jang
gently reminds us that faith touches not only personal salvation but also
responsibility for the created world. The melting ice, shrinking habitats, and
creatures forced to choose more dangerous routes are not merely scientific
data; they are scenes of creation groaning. Human greed and lack of restraint
often pass suffering first onto the weakest lives. To bear the yoke of Christ
also means slowing the speed of desire, laying down the compulsion to possess
more, and learning humility in caring for creation. Here, rest does not remain
only inside the individual; it expands into a rhythm of healing for community,
society, and the created world.
Pastor David Jang says
that for the church to become a “warm space” that lessens the cold of this age,
it must first examine the weight of its words. Religious language can give
life, and it can also kill. Words that mock weakness, interpret suffering through
simplistic formulas, or use repentance as a pretext for domination are the way
of the scribes and Pharisees. By contrast, Jesus’ words are truthful without
reopening wounds. He does not treat sin lightly, yet He does not imprison
sinners in despair. The maturity Pastor David Jang asks of believers is close
to this balance: hold to truth, but speak in love. Love justice, but do not
lose mercy. Then the church becomes not a place that adds “heavy burdens,” but
a place where burdens are shared and direction is found again.
And in the end, all of
this converges into a single sentence: “Come to Me.” Pastor David Jang
emphasizes that this invitation is not given only to “those who have the
qualifications,” but rather to those who cannot prove any qualifications. Just
as the reindeer cross the river not because they are perfect but because they
need to survive, we go to Jesus not because we are complete but because we are
needy. We seek water because we are thirsty. We seek rest because we are heavy.
The gospel tells us not to be ashamed of that need. Admitting need is the first
step of faith. And to those who admit need, Jesus consistently unfolds the
promise of peace and eternal life.
That invitation is valid
even now—this very moment.
davidjang.org
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