New Testament Scriptures in St. Matthew's Gospel in
chapter 11, and we shall read a passage
that begins with verse 25, concluding with verse
30.
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.
All things have been committed to me by
my Father.
No one knows the Son except the Father,
and no one knows the Father except the
Son.
And those to whom the Son chooses to
reveal Him come to me.
All you who are weary and burdened, and
I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you and learn from
me, for I am gentle and humble in
heart, and you will find rest for your
souls.
For my yoke is easy, and my burden
is light.
Now we began with this passage last Lord's
Day morning.
I indicated that I really wanted to come
to the closing invitation, this wonderful invitation of
our Lord's, but I found it impossible to
come to it directly, because it is set
in such a beautiful setting, and we need
to see the setting.
We need to see the setting in order
to appreciate the wonder of the invitation itself.
And what we saw last Lord's Day morning
can be put very briefly in this way.
Jesus here invites all and sundry who are
wearied and heavily laden.
He invites them to come to Him and
find rest in Him.
What right is He to make such a
claim?
That He can bring rest of soul, peace
of heart, and mind to all kinds of
people.
Is it really not too much to open
your arms so wide and to say to
the whole universe, come to me and I
will give you rest.
Isn't this really the most remarkable illustration of
megalomania that we have in the whole of
literature.
And now we looked at the early verses,
the early part of this passage, because it
indicates something of the credentials of the Christ
so to do, so to offer, rest for
the weary, peace for the troubled, a place
of refuge and a place where the trials
and the troubles of life have ceased to
harass us to a point of driving us
to despair at any rate.
Our Lord Jesus Christ you see was there
having faced some of the most seriously difficult
situations in his life experience.
But in the midst of it all, when
it seemed that everything was crumbling, everything was
going wrong, he himself had rest.
John the Baptist was questioning now whether Jesus
was really the Messiah or not.
All these cities in which his most mighty
works were done, they were not taking any
notice of him.
They were going on just as if he
hadn't come.
John the Baptist had announced the judgments of
God upon them.
They took no notice of the word of
judgment or of wrath.
Jesus came with all compassion and mercy.
He healed their sick.
He even raised their dead.
They couldn't care less.
They would neither respond to John nor to
Jesus.
They were determined to refuse the message.
And it was in that hour, Jesus turns
to his father and he begins to praise
him.
And it's a very strong word for praising
God.
I thank you Lord God.
He says, Father, Lord of heaven and earth,
because you've hidden these things from the wise
and the people who are very well to
do in this realm or that realm, and
you've hidden them, having hidden them from those
you have revealed them to the little babes,
the few humble disciples that I have gathered
around me, you have revealed these things to
them.
And he finds rest.
He's not in trouble.
He's not distraught.
He's not in anguish.
He isn't at the end of his tether.
He has peace.
He has balance.
He has equipoise.
Even when everything is going against him, and
he has it for this reason, he has
an exclusive knowledge of God.
He has told us that it is only
the Father that knows the Son.
I'm passing that by.
I'm coming to this.
He also says that no one knows the
Father except the Son.
And I am the Son of the Father,
he says.
And I know God, and I know him
to be the Father, and I know God
my Father to be the Lord of heaven
and the Lord of earth, so that nothing
can go wrong.
And in the knowledge of him, peace like
a river attends my way.
I have rest of soul.
On all counts, you see, on all counts,
therefore, he is qualified, he is competent to
turn to men and women like you and
myself in the 20th century, or in any
other, who are distraught, worried, with our hearts
and our spirits hacked and torn, and we
know not where to turn.
He is competent, I say, to turn to
you and to me and say, come unto
me, all you who are weary or burdened
and heavy-laden, and I will give you
rest.
I can do it.
I have it myself, and I can lead
you into the knowledge of the God and
the Father, the Lord of heaven and earth,
whence my rest comes, so that you may
know him as I know him, and find
rest from the same divine source through the
one mediator of his joy.
So we come to the great invitation.
It's wonderful to have a text like this.
Those of you who are visiting us this
morning, let me tell you, I'm very excited.
It's exciting to be able to face members
of our own congregation and our own family
here, some of whom may not yet be
trusting the Savior.
They've sat in their pews for a long
time, but they've never come to the Lord
Jesus.
And to be able to say, he is
here, and he's surely addressing them this morning,
as if he had mentioned them by name
and given their social insurance number.
And he's surely addressing you.
And his message is this, you troubled ones,
you who are really tired with fighting against
this, and fighting against that, and battling with
yourself, and battling with circumstances, with sin and
with Satan, and you're overwhelmed with a burden
of it all, he, the Son of God,
the Savior of mankind, says to you, now
look, give it up and come to me,
and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you, and learn of
me, and you'll really find rest for your
soul.
Now there are three things that I would
like us to focus on this morning.
First of all, the human condition, or conditions
that are envisaged by our Lord in these
words.
Come to me, he says, all you who
are weary and burdened.
This is the NIV.
You who are weary and burdened.
It's a good thing not to gloss over
these words when we read a passage like
this.
We can be so enamored with a picture
of the whole, that we miss the meaning
of the parts.
Let's just take the picture clearly now, and
see what's here.
Come to me, all you who are weary.
What does the word mean?
The word instinctively calls to mind a condition
of extreme tiredness.
Actually, a fatigue.
Behind such wearisome fatigue, however, there lies a
life of positive and persistent battling with something.
Actually, it's a verb we have here.
Come to me, all you who are being
wearied.
It's not an adjective describing a condition.
All of you who are being made weary.
You're battling.
You're doing something.
You're involved in something.
And what you're doing is making you weary.
It's making you tired.
It's sapping your energies.
It's taking the life out of you.
It's taking hope out of you.
It's taking everything out of you.
We can help expound the implication of the
word, perhaps by quoting the sheer contrast that
appears in another saying of Jesus.
This is by sheer contrast.
In Matthew chapter 6 verses 28 and 29.
He says, Why do you worry about clothes?
Now, this is not only for ladies, it's
for gentlemen too.
Why do you worry about clothes?
See how the lilies of the field grow.
They do not labor or spin.
Now, that word labor, it's exactly the one
we have in our text.
They do not labor.
They don't go at its hammer and tongs
to weave their own garments, you know, and
get all excited in curse they haven't got
the right garment for the next day.
They do nothing.
They rest.
Yet I tell you, says Jesus, that not,
not even Solomon in all his splendor was
dressed like one of these.
You see, the weary are those who are
fatigued in the midst of actual unremitting exertion
of energies.
They've come to the end of their tether.
Now, the burdened or the heavy-laden are
the same people, but they are here described
from a different point of view.
We move now with this word from an
active exertion of energy to a passive bearing
of an altogether oppressive and exhausting burden.
In the first word we were fighting against
something and we fought so hard and so
long, all the zippers gone out of us.
Now, as far as the second word is
concerned, we're under a burden.
And the burden is so heavy, it's so
crushing.
It's like a Himalayan range coming down upon
our minds, upon our spirits, upon our bodies.
We are really buried.
We're sunk under it.
I don't know whether I should say this
or not, but I was visiting a certain
country not all that long ago, and I
saw a picture which which which came back
to me very forcibly this week as I
was meditating upon what I should say this
morning.
It was the picture of a donkey laden
with what seemed to be a burden that
was far too much for five donkeys, let
alone one.
And there was this donkey with an amazing
baggage on its back, tied with ropes.
And the donkey was trying to negotiate a
hill, not going up a hill, but going
down.
And the poor little thing was too afraid
to go down.
And I don't blame it.
It seemed to me that either its little
legs were going to snap, unless its heart
gave out first.
It seemed that all the world was tied
on its back.
You ever feel like that?
All the world's on your back.
And if your heart doesn't stop, you're just
going to break.
You're going to crack.
That's what we have here.
Oh, let it be clearly understood, however, that
Jesus is here describing human situations that were
facing him there before his very eyes, and
which he could foresee as facing men and
women down through the centuries, right up to
our technological age in this 20th century.
Now the question comes quite naturally, did Jesus
have any specific people in mind who were
in this twofold condition?
I suggest that he probably did.
And I would be surprised if he wasn't
thinking of people that are here in the
background, in the context, because so many of
them fit into this category.
I think particularly of the ungodly, the guilty,
those who rebel against the light that God
has given them, either in the law, or
in the prophets, or in the gospel, or
in nature generally.
And they refuse the light that God gives,
and they fight against it, and they fight
against it so hard, until a burden of
guilt begins to grow, and it gets bigger
and bigger, and it weighs heavier and heavier,
until they're swamped under.
Now many of you know something about this,
about rejecting the light of the word of
God, the gospel of God, the law of
God, the word of the prophets, the influence
of the Christian church, and you hear about
it, and you read about it, but you
shrug your shoulders, and you take no notice
of it, but something happens to you.
You get worn out, rejecting truth that challenges
you, refusing testimony that you see to the
truth.
And then the burden, the burden of guilt
begins to grow, and you carry it with
you wherever you go.
It's with you in the morning, it's with
you in the daytime, it's with you as
you pause at that traffic light in your
car, and you don't know what to do,
whether to go through the red or not,
and you're all hot and bothered, and it's
with you when you get to the office,
it's with you when you lose your temper
for the first time, it's with you when
you eat your food, it's with you when
you come home to your wife and children,
it's with you all the time, and you
go to sleep with it.
It's a burden that's crushing you, and it's
making a beast of you, and you loathe
yourself.
Who were they?
Who could they be?
Are there any such people?
Well, I look back here into the context,
and I think first of all of King
Herod.
King Herod, you remember, had imprisoned John the
Baptist, and in no time he was going
to have his head chopped off, presented on
a platter, all in order to please someone
with whom he was sensually involved.
Now, you see, Herod was not quite an
ordinary person.
I say that for this reason.
We read in the Gospel of Mark that
when Herod the King heard about John the
Baptist, he admired him, and he veritably believed
that God's prophet, God's mouthpiece, had arrived on
the scene.
Even though Herod was, I'm sorry, John was
about the only man that ever faced Herod
with his own sins, and said to him
that he was living in adultery, and he
should leave the woman that he was living
with in sin, and repent, and put himself
right with God.
John was the only man that ever dared
to do such a thing.
We read in the Gospel of Mark that
Herod went to hear John in the desert.
Herod!
King Herod!
He was discomforted by John.
He was accused by John.
He was put in the dark, as it
were, by the Spirit of God through the
words of John, and found guilty.
And yet nevertheless, when John was preaching in
the wilderness, Herod was listening.
But what did he do about it?
Nothing.
Just nothing.
What some of you were doing.
You've got enough doctrine in your heads to
feed a thousand souls for a thousand years.
But have you come to Jesus yet?
Herod had heard the truth, and he knew
enough truth to recognize the man of God
before him, but he did nothing.
And I suggest to you that our Lord
saw in his heart a man who was
getting weary, and tired, and his nerves were
frayed, and he was itchy, and edgy, and
didn't know where to do, or what to
do, and the burden was coming heavier and
heavier, and he was virtually out of his
mind when the vital test came.
I believe Jesus would have taken Herod had
he come in penitence.
Come unto me, all you who are weary
and heavy laden, and I will give you
rest.
Take my yoke upon you.
Put your own scepter one side, Herod.
Come and take my yoke as the Son
of the Living God, and I'll teach you
to have rest of soul.
Not only King Herod, there was that whole
generation.
This is generality of course.
But a whole generation depicted by Jesus in
the verses of this, the previous verses of
this very chapter.
He said, how shall I liken this generation?
Well, he says, it's a queer generation altogether.
They're like children sitting in the marketplaces playing
games.
That's what we have here, children playing games.
And as they go on play games, they
call one to another.
You see there's one little group over here,
and one little group over here.
And the one says, we've played the flute
for you, but you haven't come to dance.
And the other says, we sang a dirge
for you, and you did not mourn.
What does the picture mean?
What Jesus is saying is this, and he
goes on to explain it.
This is not my explanation.
He says, this generation is like children.
Not in the right sense, but in the
wrong sense.
The Word of God came to you in
the flaming declarations of John the Baptist, warning
you to flee from the wrath which is
to come.
And you say, oh this ascetic man, we
can have nothing to do with him.
He's not our type, living in the desert.
He's dressed in a manner we don't like.
He talks so uncouth, we can have nothing
to do with this man.
Let's get rid of him as soon as
we can.
Then the Son of Man came.
Jesus came, dressed like anybody else.
He didn't come from the desert.
He came from amongst the people.
He was born in Nazareth.
He lived in Capernaum for most of his
time.
But wherever he came from, he lived among
men.
He sat where they sat.
He touched them.
He had dealings with a common man and
a common woman.
He was there where harlots had their parties.
To the great consternation of some people, he
sat with sinners.
They said, oh we can't listen to him.
He drinks.
He's a wine bibbler, which of course was
not true.
But you see the point.
They would not have the one or the
other.
They wouldn't have the wooing, compassionate Jesus.
Neither would they have John the Baptist declaring
the wrath of God as being imminent.
They determined against it.
I wonder whether Jesus could see in the
hearts of those people nevertheless this awful sense
of fighting against God, fighting against truth, fighting
against the light, battling against something that they
cannot win over, and in consequence becoming bowed
down and burdened.
And I believe the words of the Lord
Jesus would apply to them as to anybody
else.
Oh the heart of Jesus.
Oh the compassion of the Son of God.
If it is written in John 3.16
that God so loved the world that he
gave his only begotten Son that whosoever.
Here we have its equivalent concerning the Son
of God.
Come unto me all ye that labor and
are heavy laden.
Every jack one of you, men and women,
boys and girls, scribes and Pharisees and common
people.
You who said awkward, nasty, terrifying things about
me, and you struggled against me.
I'm still saying to you my arms are
open.
Can't you see them?
Come to me and I will give you
what you can't get anywhere else.
Because I have exclusive knowledge of the Father
and I can introduce you to him.
You can come to him through me.
Come to me.
I could refer to other illustrations but I
don't need.
The point is you see this message was
relevant in Jesus' day and I don't need
to prove the point.
It is relevant here this morning.
Now you may not be a Herod.
No, no, no.
I certainly don't charge anyone with being a
Herod here.
Not with anything.
Have you been fighting against truth?
Against light?
Against God's Word?
Until at long last you're under a burden
of guilt that you simply cannot remove and
you're turning to one and another in the
hope that you'll get a little bit of
help to get a little bit of peace
and you don't get it.
My friend, this is where to get it.
Jesus says, come unto me.
A divine remedy he offers.
We must stay with this for a moment.
Jesus repeats it.
I love this.
You see, repetitions are meaningful.
If I tell my wife once that I
love her, I hope she believes me.
If I tell her twice, I really hope
she's taking it in.
In the New Testament especially, repetitions are very
meaningful.
It's the equivalent of Jesus, verily, verily, verily,
verily.
I mean it, I mean it.
Listen, listen.
You notice how he repeats this.
Come to me, he says, and I will
give you rest.
That's verse 28.
And then he tells them to be yoked
to him, etc., etc.
And then he says, and you will find
rest for your soul.
There's a rest, he says, which I will
give you as a gift in which you
will discover and experience.
This rest is not something that you can
tuck up in a parcel, go out into
the street and say, I've got God's rest,
I've got God's peace in a parcel, and
here it is under my arm.
Somebody may snatch it from you.
God's rest is something to be found in
each new moment, in each new day, in
each new circumstance, in each new month, a
new year.
It's something to be discovered and says, Jesus,
I'll give it to you in its totality.
And then when you get yoked to me,
you'll find it.
You'll discover it for yourself.
This is a wonderful text, isn't it?
Hallelujah!
My word, if any of you preachers want
a text, try it.
I've been frightened by this text because of
the amount of stuff that's in it.
The provision actually reminds us of the meaning
of the institution of the Sabbath at the
creation.
See, God always wanted man to have rest.
He always wanted you to have rest.
And he wanted me to be restful.
That was the idea.
And so when he had worked for six
days, he himself rested.
And he himself resting, he says, now I'm
setting aside the seventh day for man to
have rest.
I want you to have, I want you
to be a rested people.
I want you to know rest, peace.
I want you to have balance and equipoise.
I want you to be people like that.
It has been seriously suggested that much of
our weariness in the 20th century is nothing
other than Sabbaths in arrears.
Sabbaths that we've never kept.
And much of our dispeace is due to
the fact that we simply flout the purposes
of God.
And we use a day of rest for
anything but for what God meant it to
be.
Is that true of you?
And don't grumble if you've got ulcers.
Don't grumble if you break down.
Don't grumble if you are flouting the commandments
of God.
You will not have rest.
Keep to the commandments of God.
Do what he says and you will know
a rest that you've never known before.
There is no peace saith my God to
the wicked.
But of course this Sabbath rest was not
just purely physical.
It was symbolic of the ultimate rest that
man will have when all his trials and
troubles are o'er and we are safe
on that beautiful shore, whether the imagery is
right or not, in the city of God
which has foundations.
When we are there it will be an
eternal Sabbath.
And Sabbath means rest.
Not absence of motion, but absence of commotion.
Into it nothing shall enter that is causes
an offense.
In the city four square where the gates
are open, the twelve gates, day and night,
not the defileth shall ever enter.
Now did you hear such a thing?
Twelve gates open day and night, but nothing
shall come in that will cause an offense.
Nothing to disturb the peace, the rest.
He's gone to his rest, says the word.
And his work follows him or her.
But in between what is referred to in
Genesis chapter 2 and this ultimate rest, Jesus
says I will give you rest here and
now.
You come to me and I will give
you a foretaste of that ultimate and I
will fulfill the purpose of God for mankind
at the creation.
And rest is his gift.
He says I will give it.
He who personally possessed such rest and never
allowed it to be disturbed by apparent failure,
as we saw last time and have referred
to already this morning, or by success, he
also procured it for us who languish and
die in need of it.
He made it possible by his death for
us sinners upon the cross.
He died to procure our peace, to make
peace, says Paul.
What a pregnant statement.
To make peace.
He made peace by the blood of his
cross.
And he, the peacemaker, now becomes the peace
-bringer and the peace-giver.
And he says I will give you rest.
And the heart of peace is rest.
It matters not whether our restlessness has been
due to our open warfare with God and
rebellion against him, or to our vainly trying
to make ourselves acceptable to him by our
own good deeds.
It doesn't really matter why you are weary
and heavy laden.
Wherever it's come from, however it has come,
it doesn't matter.
Jesus says you come to me and I
will give you rest.
And of course beyond the peace that accompanies
divine pardon, there comes with Christ's rest a
re-establishment of a proper relationship with God
the Father.
That we may know him who was the
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The Lord of the heavens and the Lord
of the earth.
We may know him and know him as
our Father.
And you see, if you know that your
Father is God, and that your Father who
is God is Lord of the heavens and
Lord of the earth, now frankly, honestly, rationally,
what have you got to be afraid of?
I'm sure this little story has been heard
a thousand times.
I was a very young Christian many years
ago when I first heard of it.
About some little kiddie traveling through the Rockies
in a train.
And he was sitting in the corner on
his own.
There were two elderly ladies there.
And they were rather agitated going through the
tunnel.
And this little kiddie was bright as a
button.
It seemed that they were never going to
get through.
As far as the ladies were concerned, they
turned to this lady and they said, Larry,
what are you, why are you so happy
about, do you like tunnels?
Well, he says, I don't mind them.
Well, you're very happy about going through the
tunnels, aren't you afraid?
Oh no, no, he says, my dad is
at the engine.
My dad is in the engine.
My friend, if you know God, and if
you know God as your father, and if
you know that God your father is Lord
of the heavens and Lord of the earth,
then you can have peace, then you can
have rest.
And that rest which is Jesus' gift is
to be discovered and experienced by each one
who receives it.
You will find rest for your soul.
Now that brings me to the third thing,
and I will enlarge upon that as I
mention the third point I have.
The universal invitation announced.
Let me repeat it again.
I don't want anyone to miss this out
this morning.
You good people who sit right at the
back or on the gallery, you're not out
of this.
I can't see your faces clearly some of
you.
It's kind of old age they say, but
anyway I can't see your faces, but I
tell you the Lord can.
And he's got you in mind this morning,
and he's got me in mind, he's got
us all in mind.
I don't want you to miss this, not
a solitary soul.
Is there anybody sleeping here?
I can't see anyone.
I hope there isn't.
But I don't want you to miss this.
Jesus said, not me, Jesus said, come to
me all you who are weary and burdened
and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you and learn from
me for I am gentle and humble in
heart and you will find rest for your
soul.
I noticed the three steps there.
First of all, come to me.
Come unto me.
To possess and then increasingly experience this foretaste
of heaven, you must come to Christ.
Come to him.
Not simply read about him, that's good in
and of itself, but that's not enough.
Not simply respect him, that's good in and
of itself, but it's not enough.
I remember talking to a dear gentleman in
a Roman Catholic area in Belfast where we
were ministering, and they were looking at a
television scene.
Television in a shop window.
Somebody was having an operation and he turned
to me and he showed me a big
bottle of medicine and he said, I'm not
very well myself, he said.
I guess I'll be going that way before
very long.
Well, I said, there is someone that can
come with you.
I have a friend who comes with me
everywhere.
And I said, I know he can come
into an operating theater.
Do you know him?
Who is he?
I said, the blessed Lord Jesus Christ, the
Son of God.
He took his hat off.
I knew he was a Roman Catholic.
You see, they have respect for the Trinity.
You may not believe everything that the Roman
Church believes, but they have a respect for
the Godhead.
And in days when we Protestants have had
all kinds of things and notions about God
and about his Son and even about the
Holy Spirit, they've been loyal to the truth
about the Godhead.
And I salute them for that, if for
nothing else.
And he took his hat off and he
said, sir, he said, no, no, no.
I had my collar on.
He said, your reverence, he says.
I think very highly of him.
I said, that's great, but do you really
trust him?
There's a long pause, it seemed to me.
And he says, your reverence, he says, I
think more of him than I can tell
you.
I said, that's very, very wonderful.
You're, you're, you're, you're very generous, but that's
not enough, you know.
Can you put yourself into his hands and
trust him and him only to be your
Savior and your friend?
And I didn't get an answer for a
long time.
I haven't had it yet.
You see, it's one thing to admire the
Lord Jesus of Calvary.
It's one thing to take your hat off
to him.
It's one thing to speak well of him.
It's another thing to come to him and
put your arms around him and let his
arms be placed around you so that you're
entwined in a bond that not can sever
with faith and love united as one.
You come to him.
Have you come to him?
If you haven't, do so now by faith.
Tell him that you're coming.
He's here to come to you.
And he will not refuse to receive you.
The invitation includes notice, notice, please notice this.
Come unto me, he says, all you who
are weary and heavy laden, all of you.
And if you think I'm making too much
of that little word all, let me remind
you of my Lord's words in John chapter
6.
All that the Father hath given me will
come to me, and him that comes to
me, whoever comes to me, I will in
no wise, on any condition cast out, not
on your life, he says.
You come to me and you won't find
a closed door.
You come to me to trust me, to
walk with me, to receive me, and I'll
receive you.
That's the history of the church.
You may take the first step where you
are.
The second is this.
Take my yoke upon you.
In Jewish literature, a yoke was the sum
total of obligations which, according to the rabbis,
a person must take upon himself.
If you become a disciple of the law,
then you take the yoke of the law
upon you.
And it had this metaphorical sense.
The yoke of the law was the responsibility
you assumed in in taking a certain position.
Of course this figurative meaning arises naturally from
the literal meaning of the word yoke, which
according to the New American Webster Dictionary is
a contrivance for fastening together the necks of
two draught animals as oxen.
I think we know that well enough.
Now there are other explanations of this, but
I believe without spelling this out this morning,
that what our Lord Jesus had in mind
was this.
He was inviting the person who comes to
him, not only to come to him and
walk alongside of him, but to be yoked
along with him.
You see that wooden yoke going from the
neck of one oxen on to the neck
of the other, and they're bound together by
the one yoke.
I believe that what Jesus was saying was
this.
Come alongside of me, come to me, but
not only that, bend the neck now, and
let you and I together be bound together
by a common yoke, a common responsibility, a
common purpose.
You and I together, fellow yoke fellows.
That would not only imply our associating ourselves
with him, but our subjecting ourselves to him.
We do not come under his yoke as
equals.
This context will make that very clear.
He is the Son of God.
He knows God.
He knows God as his Father in a
unique sense, and has the ability and the
capacity to reveal him to others.
Now he is above us.
He is infinitely greater than we are.
He's the incarnate Lord.
And Jesus, imagine somebody saying, what me join
in with you, come under the yoke with
you.
In the book of Deuteronomy, one thing is
forbidden.
You mustn't put an ass and an ox
under the same yoke.
Now can you imagine why?
Well the reason is simple.
The ox is much taller than the ass,
and if you have a yoke going from
the neck of an ox to the neck
of an ass, you imagine them trying to
walk together.
The poor little ass is going to get
all the weight, and the neck of the
ox is going to shake, it's going to
cut through, it's going to bleed.
And Jesus says, now I'm infinitely more, I'm
infinitely greater than you, but listen, he says,
I'm going to bend down to your size.
Come to me, he says, take my yoke
upon you.
I am gentle and humble in heart.
It's true, he says, no one else can
reveal the Father to you, and I know
the Father, and I am the Son of
God, but I am gentle, and I am
humble in heart.
I'll come down to your level so that
we can bear the yoke together, and he
adds this, my yoke is actually easy, and
my burden is light.
Though I'm the Lord of all the cosmos,
I'll walk alongside of you, in fellowship with
you, and we'll go together.
Don't be afraid of it, come and join
me.
And what then?
And as you do, you will find rest.
You'll discover it.
I've given it to you, it's yours in
promise, it's yours in the package, it's yours
in the promise, it's yours in the covenant.
I'm giving it to you, but as we
walk together under the same yoke, you and
I going out into each new day together.
We've got the same objectives, we're going to
do the same things, we're working together in
harmony, you and I.
Now look, in so doing, you'll find rest.
Many people who have been given rest have
never found it.
They are heirs to the rest of everlasting
life, but they not seem to be finding
it.
They're missing it in everyday experience.
It is found under the yoke to Jesus
Christ and with Jesus Christ.
And lastly, and learn of me, learn of
me.
And this is the place to learn from
Jesus Christ.
He don't come to sit over him, look
down at him as the superior 20th century
character who knows everything, has no questions.
You know how you learn from the Lord
Jesus Christ?
Come to him, get under the yoke with
him, yoked to him, go out into the
day with him.
This is where he teaches you the greatest
lessons about all things but supremely about God,
the Father, the Lord of the heavens and
the Lord of the earth.
And in the knowledge of that, you too
will have rest.
Men and women, is there someone here this
morning who's missing this?
Where are you losing it out?
Where are you losing?
Have you come?
Some of you have walked down the front
and you've made a profession, I know, but
you still haven't got it.
Is it that your neck is still not
under the yoke with Jesus?
I don't know.
You're going your own way still.
Bend the neck to that.
And then when your neck is bent and
when you're bound to him, begin to learn
from him in the process of doing.
See, we don't learn our greatest, our most
important lessons in easy chairs.
We learn our most important lessons about God
when we are obeying God, when we're on
the field, when we're in the business, when
we're going with Jesus.
Lo, I am with you all the way.
What's he talking about?
Go and make disciples of all nations, he
says.
Now, as you go, make sure I'll be
with you all the way to the end
of the age.
I'll be there.
And that's where he's discovered.
That's where he teaches.
There's a place for preaching such as this.
There's a place for the Sunday school class.
There's a place for all these groups of
teaching and praying, I'm quite sure.
But brothers and sisters, to know God, you've
got to go with Jesus.
And if you don't go with Jesus under
his yoke, you'll have nothing but head knowledge
until you die.
And then it'll be too late to have
anything else.
God is discovered when our backs are up
against the wall, when the troubles mount high
and no one else can help us, but
he comes in.
And we say to him, out of my
bondage and sorrow and night, Jesus I come
to you.
I came to Jesus as I was weary
and worn and sad.
I found in him a resting place and
he has made me glad.
In the name of the Son of God,
I invite you this morning, dear people.
It's a privilege to have you.
It's good to see you.
I invite you to come to the Lord
Jesus, to put your necks under his yoke
and get absolutely bound, locked up with him,
and go out into the world of daily
living, heeding the needs of men and meeting
them as he did, healing the sick, attending
to those in prison, compassion for those who
need compassion, education for those who need education,
the good news for all men going out
to meet the needs of mankind, in the
midst of it all, you shall find rest
for you.
I'm through.
Now it's up to you.
No, I'll not do like Herod.
I won't try to wash my hands and
say over to you like that.
No, no.
I invite you.
I urge you.
I plead with you like the Apostle Paul.
We beseech you in Christ's stead.
Come to Christ today that you may know
the Father in the Son and experience his
grace and his rest in the midst of
this tumultuous, turmoiled, broiling experience of human life.
Let us pray.
I cannot pray this morning as I ought.
There is a prayer that only you can
pray.
I ask you to do it now.
In my heart I pray that you will.
That is my prayer.
Will you pray in your heart saying that
you will come to him, bend the neck
beneath his yoke, and begin or begin again
something that has come to a dead end.
Begin again to find rest for your soul.
Tell him now.
There is only one who is interested in
your not doing so, and I tell you
that is the enemy of all our souls.
It is Satan, the accuser, the blasphemer, the
devil.
Pray God for grace in this morning hour
to come to Christ.
Heavenly Father, hear us.
Hear us, hear us, hear us, and help
us.
Lest the burden of added responsibility from hearing
today only add to our burden and sense
of lostness.
Draw us and we will run after you.
Spirit of God, enable us to believe and
to come.
In Jesus name we pray, amen.