Matthew
11:28 – 30, “Come unto me,
all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, 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.” “Come unto me” – an invitation
from Jesus. I’m glad we made it to
convention but we have further to go. We
need to come to Jesus. That’s where
there’s rest and peace. It’s not enough
to come to meetings, or come to convention; that’s good, but we need to get in
touch with Heaven; we need to touch the throne.
No one was excluded in the invitation.
It was to “all who labour and are heavy laden.” We may have come burdened down with the cares
of life, with the burdens of mistakes, with burdens of the past that we are
carrying. I don’t know if you’ve been in
a bookstore recently, but there is a huge self-help section. We need to get help, but self-help doesn’t
take us far. Without the Lord, it’s not
going to take us very far or very deep.
He promises us rest. The rest He
gives is wonderful! Natural rest is so
restorative. We could be worn out at the
end of the day, and sore and aching, yet in the morning we awaken feeling
refreshed and able to work again. The
same is true spiritually; the rest He offers renews and refreshes our spirit
and soul. When I was young, sometimes my father would be away at night. Since I
was the eldest child in the family, before going to bed, I checked the doors and
locked them, but when Dad returned, I just went to bed and rested. I had full confidence in my father that he
would lock the doors and we’d be safe.
May our confidence in our Heavenly Father be increased here at
convention and may we know rest.
Then
Jesus said, “Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me.” This would seem to be a contradiction, but in
reality it is not a contradiction.
However, it is a contradiction to our human thinking. Revelation 4:11, “Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and
honour and power: for Thou hast created all things, and for Thy pleasure they
are and were created.” What do you do for pleasure? Do you know what the Lord did when He wanted
to have pleasure? The Lord made us when
He wanted to have pleasure. Pleasure is
really living for others; it’s not living for self. Rest is found when we are
willing to take the yoke. II Corinthians 6:14 speaks of not being unequally
yoked together with unbelievers. Two different
animals yoked together would be unequally yoked together. One might go one way and the other go in
another direction and the result would be miserable. The same is true spiritually. If we are yoked with Jesus and yoked with
someone who is an unbeliever, it is a miserable situation. We want to break every yoke except the yoke
of Jesus. We have fellowship when we
are yoked with Jesus and we have fellowship with believers because of passing
through the same experiences. There will
be communion, concord, unity, and unison in our walk, going together, step by
step. Being yoked with Jesus brings
concord. When yoked, we have
agreement. “Take My yoke and learn of
Me.” A young ox is yoked with an older
ox. Jesus is our older brother. He’s been through it all before and we are
learning how to respond, learning of Him. Verse 29 tells us Jesus is meek and lowly in
heart. He is our teacher, but more that
that, He is humble. He doesn’t upbraid
us when we make mistakes. He’s lowly — and
we are learning humility when yoked with Jesus.
In Matthew 19:17
and Mark 10:17, someone
came running to Jesus and kneeled to Him and said, “Good Master, what shall I
do?” Jesus’ response was “Why call thou
Me good? There is none good but one,
that is, God.” Jesus kept God separate,
above Himself, separated, sanctified. John 5:19, Jesus said, “Verily, verily I say
unto you, The Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He seeth the Father
do: for what things soever He doeth,
there also doeth the Son likewise.” Verse
30, “I can of Mine Own Self do nothing; as I hear, I judge: and My judgment is
just; because I seek not Mine Own will, but the will of the Father, which hath
sent Me.” Jesus for Himself felt He
could do nothing except His Father would show Him. Jesus, in His humility, had the response in
His Father that He could do nothing, couldn’t judge the situation. “I am meek.”
Jesus was meek. Moses, too, was
meek. Numbers 12:1, Miriam and Aaron
spake against Moses and they said, "Hath the Lord indeed spoken only by Moses?
Hath He not spoken also by us?" Moses was
meek; he never defended himself, but God heard it and spoke up. Verse 4, “The Lord spake suddenly unto Moses,
and unto Aaron, and unto Miriam," Verse 8, "and said, 'How come you speak against my
servant Moses?' And the anger of the Lord
was kindled against them and Miriam became leprous and Aaron looked at her and
she was leprous.” God wanted Moses. Moses knew how to fit in and submit to the
Lord. Moses interceded for Miriam. Meekness is being more concerned about the rights
of others and about the things of the kingdom, rather than the rights of
self. Jesus was concerned about the
claims of His Father and His Father’s will more than His Own will. He said, “Come, rest a while,” but the
multitude got there first and immediately Jesus had compassion on them. He didn’t think about His Own weariness but
on the rights of others. James 1:21, “Receive with meekness the
engrafted word, which is able to save your souls.” Jesus received His Father’s word in
meekness. The word had greater place in
Jesus’ life. When a branch is grafted
in, it is grafted into a very specific place.
God puts His words in a very specific place and we need to accept it in
meekness. It could be a thought, a motive
or an action and we need to receive it with meekness and give God’s word place.
John 19:28 (Psalm 69:21), “Jesus knowing
all things were now accomplished, that the scripture might be fulfilled said, 'I
thirst.'” This too showed the meekness
Jesus had toward God’s work in His life.
May we learn how to respond to the word. He said, “My yoke is easy.” Another version says my yoke is kindly. The bond is charity. The yoke of marriage can be wonderful, or it can be miserable. Terrorists are yoked together too, but it is a yoke of hatred. God’s people are yoked or bound together by charity. Read I Corinthians 13 with this thought in mind. Being yoked with Jesus takes care of the burdens of the past and the burden of the future. He just asks us to carry the burden of today, to come to Jesus and learn of Him as we go through life together and have His help and power with us.
Hymn 223, "Lord, I Would Take My Yoke" |