Matthew chapter 11, and we're
going to read from verse 25 again. So we're becoming very familiar
with these verses. Thank you for your patience and
your tolerance as I read the same passage over and over again. But I trust that there will yet
be a little sweetness to be had in our reflections this morning. This sermon is called Christ's
Yoke and it's Matthew chapter 11 and verse 25. At that time
Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven
and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise
and prudent and has revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father,
for so it seemed good in thy sight. All things are delivered
unto me of my Father, and no man knoweth the Son but the Father,
neither knoweth any man the Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever
the Son will reveal him. 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. Amen. May God bless to us this
reading from his word. So as I say, we've been drawn
to this passage several times over the past few weeks, but
I think that it has an importance for many different reasons. We have in the past concentrated
on the Lord Jesus Christ's kind invitation to his sin-weary people
to come and to receive and to experience comfort and rest and
forgiveness from him, to receive justification, to receive righteousness. and union with their Lord and
Saviour. But there's also a clear statement
here of God's sovereign grace and I just want to touch upon
that briefly and also a reference to the Lord Jesus Christ's divine
nature. The first of these two, with
respect to election, we can see in verse 25 and verse 26. And there we find that we are
told that the gospel comes only to whom the Father is pleased
to send it. And I want you to notice that
this morning with me, please. I want you to notice that the
Lord Jesus Christ understands this and clearly states it and
thanks God for it. The Lord Jesus Christ thanked
the Father that the Gospel only came to certain individuals. Here we are, we are broadcasting
this morning. There's nothing narrow about
a broadcast like this. Just in the same way as when
we meet together in our church building and the door is open,
we long for people to come and listen to the gospel. We wonder
why people are not more eager to hear the Gospel. We who have
found the Gospel to be the truth of God, to be sweetness to our
souls, to be a help to us in our life, we think to ourselves,
would not many others benefit from hearing this message also? And yet what do we discover? That God the Father limits those
to whom this message comes. We want to go out and shout it
from the housetops. We would have people come and
hear this message. We would broadcast it to the
world if the world would just desire to hear it. But we only
have a few listening today. Now I'm sure that that's partly
to do with the ability that we have to express ourselves and
convey the message and to tell it to others. But it is also
a blindness which comes upon men and women, which the Lord
God himself takes responsibility for. And so the Lord Jesus Christ
expresses gratitude to his Father that his Father has been pleased
to send it to some, and to hide it from others, revealing it according to his
own good pleasure. Consider the implications of
that with me for a moment, if you will. The gospel of the Lord
Jesus Christ has never been sent to every single person. There has always been people
on the face of this globe who have never heard the gospel. It never was a worldwide message. It was limited in its extensiveness. It was limited to those to whom
it was sent. And it comes to certain people
by design, God's design, God's purpose, and according to the
will of God, certain individuals hear this message. And it comes
also, if we might reinforce it in this way, only for a certain
time. So we discover, for example,
that Paul spent time in Asia. We heard about these Jews who
came from Asia, and they had a hatred for Paul. Why? Because
he preached the gospel with success in those towns and cities of
Asia, or we call it now Turkey. But Turkey today is a largely
Islamic country. And so the gospel is not preached
there. So the gospel only went to certain
places for certain times. And I want to stress that point
because that is an important point for any young people who
are listening today. Here you are and you're sitting
perhaps with your parents, you're sitting perhaps in your own home,
you're listening to the gospel being preached and God has sent
that gospel to you. God has willed that you are hearing
this Gospel this morning, but that may not always be the case
for you. And as you grow up, you may not
hear that Gospel anymore. And so it's important that you
listen to this Gospel now. It's important that we take the
opportunity now, today, that God is giving us in order that
we might hear about the Lord Jesus Christ and hear about what
he has done. Because there are days coming
when we will no longer hear the gospel and the gospel may no
longer be preached in our hearing and God withdraws that message
from us and separates us from hearing that message ever again. Do we understand our privilege
in hearing the gospel preached? Only, hear me, only a tiny proportion
of the population of this world ever hear the gospel. only a tiny proportion of the
population of this world ever hear the gospel. Most people,
even today, who are hearing sermons preached in churches are not
hearing the true gospel. And only a tiny proportion of
those who hear the gospel will be saved and come to Christ. This gospel message is a rare
and precious gift and if God speaks in your hearing today. If God speaks this message to
you today, then you are privileged beyond measure to be hearing
this gospel preached and seeing the Lord Jesus Christ lifted
up and hearing these words of Jesus Christ himself saying,
come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will
give you rest. The Lord Jesus Christ says in
Matthew 11, 26, Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy
sight. This isn't to do with the will
of man. This isn't to do with the will of people. This isn't
to do with whether somebody decides to go to church or somebody decides
to listen to the YouTube channel or somebody decides to read their
Bible or someone decides to hear the gospel. This is to do with
God. It's not to do with the will
of man. This is God that has arranged this. And if God gives
us the hearing of the gospel, then it is a tremendous privilege
which we ought to recognise and be grateful for. And you can
tell me, what you would have done to make it different. You could tell me, you know what,
I think we should make our own criteria of how the gospel goes
forth, who it is that gets to hear it, who it is that gets
to receive it, who it is that gets to believe it. And we can
construct to our heart's delight our own means and our own methods
and our own criteria and our own ways of doing things. And
men and women have been doing that for thousands of years,
working out how it's best to approach God. But the truth of
the matter is this. that God sends his message to
whomsoever he will because it seems good in his sight to do
it this way. This is God's message and salvation
comes by his grace. And here's what Paul says to
the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians chapter 1 verse 29, no flesh will glory in his presence. It will all be God's glory to
whom he gives and brings salvation and we need to be humble enough
in his presence to realise his goodness and his grace towards
us. Another thing that this little
passage tells us about is the union that the Lord Jesus Christ has
with his Father or the unity between the Father and the Son. Now we're not talking particularly
about the Holy Spirit at this time because we're referring
to this particular verse in this particular chapter. But verse
27 here tells us of that unique relationship that the Father
has with the Son. There is a union that exists
between the two and the two share the exclusive knowledge of each
other. The son knows the father and
the father knows the son. And that is a tremendous statement
about the divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ. No! Mere man could
make such a statement, to say that they knew God the Father
intimately, and that God the Father knew them intimately,
at the exclusion of all else. And so this is a beautiful statement
of the divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ, and shows us that the
Lord Jesus Christ is truly God, as well as being a true man. But if that's not enough, that
statement of the fact that God has become a man, that God in
the person of Jesus Christ came into this world in order to accomplish
that purpose of salvation, the Lord Jesus Christ adds another
amazing thing to that statement. And he says that by Christ, and
only by Christ, Will men and women, boys and girls, ever know
God? And that's what we were speaking
about at the very beginning when we were talking about Psalm 68
or the parallel passage, the commentary in Ephesians chapter
4. where the apostle there and David
in the psalm were speaking about the gifts that the Lord Jesus
Christ gives to men and women. That is the gift of the knowledge
of God. and this is only possible because
the Lord Jesus Christ is God. He says, I am the way. He says, I am the revelation
of God amongst men and that union or that unanimity between the
Father and the Son, that union of purpose, union of person,
union of Godhead, that agreement, that harmony, that consistency
and purpose, is shown to us in the fact that the Lord Jesus
Christ agrees with that discriminating choice, that elective purpose
that God has for his people. The Lord Jesus Christ could say,
even so Father, it seemed good in thy sight. And the Lord Jesus
Christ agrees with that, which shows us that so far as election
is concerned, and the commitment of the elect into the care and
keeping of Christ, and the redemptive work of the Lord Jesus Christ
upon the cross, The select group of people whom God has chosen
are the same group of people for whom the Lord Jesus Christ
died. And these are the same group
of people to whom the Lord Jesus Christ is the way and the revelation
and the door of access to the Father for those for whom he
died. Universal grace is not in Scripture,
and nor is universal redemption. The Lord Jesus Christ did not
die for everyone, nor is the love of God granted to everyone,
nor is the way of salvation delivered to everyone. But there always
has been this discriminating purpose, this unique purpose
of the Godhead, to bring to salvation those whom God had chosen and
those for whom it was the Lord's good pleasure to do his will. And I want you to notice this
because here we are in Matthew chapter 11. We're reading a little
verse here which says, And that little verse is used by so many
people in order to give a universal invitation for everyone to come
to Christ. And yet in the very words of
the verse, we find that there is a limitation taught. Come unto me all ye that labour
and are heavy laden. That is the condition, that is
the criteria of the invitation as it goes forth and that ought
not to be, that cannot be denied. And even within the broader context
of these few verses surrounding that invitation, we see that
the Lord Jesus Christ establishes very clearly that this doctrine
of election and this doctrine about the revelation of the gospel
is very clearly limited to whomsoever it is God's pleasure to bring
it. And that never has been a universal
message. This isn't a hidden doctrine.
The Lord Jesus Christ personally attested to it. His disciples
heard him saying it. His disciples were reminded by
God the Holy Spirit of all that he had taught them. That means
that when They went out to fulfil their commission. They knew that
they were being sent, according to the purpose of God, to preach
that gospel in certain places, at certain times, to certain
individuals who would most certainly believe it. Matthew wrote it
down. It is here in Scripture for us
to read. The Bible, as it has gone around
the world in its written form, is clearly stating this case
and history records it. This is the message. These are
the very words of Christ. The gospel is a particular message
sent to a particular people. So Luke could write in Acts chapter
4, given under heaven, I'm sorry,
there is none other name under heaven, given amongst men, whereby
we must be saved. No other name, no other way,
no other saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ says, come unto me. All ye that labour and are heavy
laden, and I will give you rest. And so I come to this little
phrase about Christ's yoke, and I want to just very quickly explain
what I understand this reference to Christ's yoke to mean. He goes on to speak in these
verses about his yoke. Now, we don't use the word yoke
very often. In fact, if I was to say to you,
yoke, I think you would be thinking about quite a different kind
of yoke. You might be thinking about the
yoke of an egg. Well, this has nothing to do
with the yoke of an egg. This is a completely different
yoke. This kind of yoke was a wooden
bar that was fitted across the neck of oxen. And it was the old way of ploughing
before we had any tractors or before we had any mechanised
ploughs. And oxen were used to drag a
plough through the soil in order to turn it over and in order
to allow farmers to plant their seeds in broken ground every
year. And so this reference to a yoke
is that wooden bar that is fitted over the top of the necks of
the oxen to bind them together so that they can pull the plough
or they could pull a cart even. Whatever it was that they had
to pull, they were bound together with this yoke, this wooden yoke,
and that caused them to walk together and to do the job that
it was designed to do. And so we often find a yoke like
this for oxen mentioned in the Bible. And not only do we find
it mentioned there, but we find that it is also used not as an
actual yoke, the physical piece of wood, but it is also used
as a picture. It is used figuratively. and
just as the yoke would be laid over the top of the oxen and
it would weigh down on their shoulders, so if we speak about
a yoke we might think of it as a burden or to be brought into
subjection or as a picture of servitude and slavery. But it's really that yoke that
we want to be thinking about this morning. It's that yoke
that we want to have in our view. And I wanted to just give you
a quick example of someone in the Bible that used a yoke with
his oxen. And maybe you'll remember this
because we spent a little bit of time a few months ago speaking
about the prophet Elisha. And in 1 Kings, or 1 Kings chapter
19 and verse 19, we are told that Elisha was a farmer. Before Elisha was called to be
a prophet, remember how Elijah came and got him and Elisha became
a prophet who followed Elijah. Before he was a prophet, he was
a farmer. And there's this little verse
in 1 Kings, and here's what it says, that Elisha found, I'm
sorry, Elijah found Elisha, the son of Shaphat, who was ploughing
with, listen, 12 yoke of oxen before him, and he with the 12th. and Elijah passed by him and
cast his mantle upon him, or cast his cloak upon Elisha, thereby
showing that Elisha was going to be Elijah's successor. But when Elijah found Elisha,
he was ploughing with 12 yoke of oxen before him. Now, I was
thinking about that. What does that mean? Does that
mean that there were 12 oxen all in one great big long yoke? Well it's possible if it was
really bad ground you would need a lot of oxen to pull up even
that ground. But more likely this was teams
of oxen, probably six teams of oxen with two oxen under this
yoke. and Elisha was managing all six
teams and he was with the last team, or some permutation of that. So Elisha, you knew what it was
to work with oxen in a yoke. Now, the Lord Jesus Christ, he
speaks about his yoke. He speaks about taking his yoke
upon us. I know that the Lord Jesus Christ
wasn't a farmer, but I also know that he was a carpenter. And
I imagine that as a carpenter, the Lord Jesus Christ made many,
many, ox yokes. In fact, it's very
likely that the Lord Jesus Christ knew more about an ox yoke than
even the farmers who yoked their oxen together in order to plough
their fields knew. I'm not saying that the Lord
knew as much about the ox or indeed the ploughing, certainly
as a man, as a workman, but he probably knew more about the
yokes than did the farmers, just in the same way as the car mechanic
knows more about our cars than we do who drive them. The Lord
Jesus Christ knew how to make a good yoke. He knew what a good
yoke was. He knew that it would be lightweight. He knew that it needed to be
well-fitting. He knew that it needed to be
strongly built. And so when the Lord Jesus Christ
says in Matthew chapter 11 verse 29 and 30, take my yoke upon
you. My yoke is easy and my burden
is light. He knew what he was talking about
when he was speaking about a yoke. Now, we're not going to put a
physical piece of wood across our shoulders like an ox. And
so here is one of these figurative usages of this word in the Bible. But I just want to show you that
the Lord Jesus Christ had an intimate knowledge of what he
was talking about here. And when he says, my yoke is
easy and my burden is light, we can well imagine that he understood
the benefits and the blessings of an easy-fitting yoke. and a yoke that was lightweight
as it laid across the shoulders of those oxen. My yoke, says
the Lord Jesus Christ. This was his yoke. And he was
the only one that could make such a statement. The emphasis
here by the Lord is on the word my. And so what we need to realise
is that the Lord is not contrasting between having a yoke and no
yoke. So the Lord is not saying you
might not have to have a yoke or you have my yoke. No, what
the Lord is doing is contrasting between the yoke that he gives
and the yoke which is man's natural need to be obedient to the law
of God. And that's a great fault or a
great error of those who teach free will and those who have
this idea of free will in their preaching. Mankind is not yoke
free ever. Mankind is always bound by that
old Adamic nature. Mankind has always fallen in
sin. Mankind is always slaves. to Satan. We are not free from
having a yoke. There is a bondage, there is
a corralling, there is a keeping in step. And the question is
whether or not we will have an easy yoke, whether or not we
will have a light burden, or whether or not we will have a
heavy yoke and a hard yoke and a yoke which is that dominion
of evil and Satan and nature. The contrast is between Christ's
teaching, his doctrine, his gospel, which is a light yoke of grace
and mercy and free justification. or the heavy yoke of works righteousness
and legal obedience and the dominion of the flesh over the heart and
the will of an individual. You see, we are all captives
to sin in our nature and we are all prone to follow Satan. We're all bound up in a self-deception
and in a desire to justify ourselves by our own self-righteousness. And so we imagine that we're
better than we are. We imagine that we're not as
bad as we could be. We think that we are doing just
nicely, thanks very much. We don't think that there's any
great problem in our lives until the Lord Jesus Christ comes and
speaks to us in the Gospel. Until God sends this message
to us, discriminating between us and someone else, showing
us our need of a saviour, showing us the true nature of our hearts,
showing us that we are sinners before his holiness. And it is
only when we then hear as those who know we are sinners under
this heavy burden, this heavy yoke of our own self-deceit,
our own bondage and sin, our own servitude to Satan, that
we understand the blessing and the benefits and the good of
this light yoke, this easy yoke, this gift of grace and goodness,
this free gift of God which he alone gives. Christ's deliverance
of his people, Christ's giving to us of this light, easy yoke
is because he has carried the burden of our sin in himself. That he has bent, that he has
stooped, that he has descended and come into this world on behalf
of his people and delivered his people by substitution. by paying
their debt, by redeeming their souls, by liberating them. And
this liberation that he gives, it isn't an unconditional liberty. We are right with God. We are given his grace. not as masterless spirits that
are released to roam this earth without any leadership, without
any direction, but as willingly born again into the family of
God, into the people of God. We have become servants no longer
to sin, no longer to Satan, no longer under the heavy yoke,
but to a new master. And now we have Christ's yoke
to bear, a good yoke, an easy yoke, but it is a yoke nonetheless. But we are brought under that
yoke, brought under that new direction, brought under the
Lordship of the Lord Jesus Christ as willing recruits, not as wayward
rebels. And what we discover in being
yoked together with Christ is that we have been redeemed and
we have been bought with a price. You see, we're not our own people
as that redeemed of the Lord. We are Christ's people. We are God's people. This isn't
to do with our free will. This isn't to do with us making
a choice. This is what Christ has done.
He has bought us. And then he calls us. to take
his yoke and we do so willingly. We do so delightedly because
we have given up a heavy yoke. We have given up a burdensome
yoke to take his light, easy yoke of grace and goodness. We're not our own. And the light
yoke of Christ is not a grievous burden to the believer. But it
is comforting to those who were weary of that old heavy yoke. And we realise that this yoke,
this picture that we have, is a method of linking two together. just as the yoke, the wooden
yoke, linked the two oxen together, that they might achieve more
together than they could apart. So the Lord honours us by equipping
and by empowering, by enabling us, men, women and children,
boys and girls, to serve him in his church, to serve him in
his kingdom, over which he is our Lord and our King. Believers
who come to Christ, they find rest from their labours, but
never a rest which speaks of lethargy or a rest that speaks
of not doing anything or laziness. We are not without usefulness
in the Kingdom of God. Rather, we are called to serve
our God. In this world, we are called
to willing service, a willing service that honours our God
and our Master. And so if we think about that
and if we press it, as I've mentioned a little, we might see that being
yoked together with the Lord Jesus Christ is a blessed thought. When we realise our own weakness
and our own inadequacies and our own inabilities, And yet
we see that the Lord Jesus Christ has invited us, welcomed us to
be yoked together with him. He says, take my yoke upon you
and learn of me. We are united to the Lord Jesus
Christ. And I think that's a beautiful
picture. I well imagine that when these two oxen were yoked
together, often there would have been an older oxen, a bigger
oxen, a stronger oxen, and a younger oxen that would be taught how
to work the plough, carry the yoke by that older, that more
experienced ox. And I think that's a beautiful
picture of the way the Lord Jesus Christ gently leads his people. He is the one who takes the strain. We are the inadequate ones, but
the Lord Jesus Christ says to us, take my yoke upon you and
learn of me. His yoke is easy, his yoke is
light because he takes the burden, he takes the strain and he carries
us through. It's a beautiful picture, our
union with the One, the Lord Jesus Christ. He has been made
one with us. He was given flesh, He was given
a body. That body was prepared for Him
by His Father and He has united Himself to us. He represents
us in such a way as we are hid with Him. and God looks upon
us in his Son. Paul could say to the Thessalonians
in 1 Thessalonians 5, verse 10, that the Lord Jesus Christ has
died for us, that we should live together with him. He died for us that we should
live together with him, that we should be bound together with
him, that we should be yoked together to him. And the Bible
tells us elsewhere that we are not to be unequally yoked with
unbelievers. but the Lord Jesus Christ has
made us righteous with his own righteousness that we might be
equally yoked, that we might be married with him, that we
might be joined to him, united to him, not unequally yoked with
the world, but equally yoked together with Christ, everlastingly
bound to him as one. And let us not, friends, brothers
and sisters in the Lord, let us not miss the high honour that
the Lord Jesus Christ has given to us in our humanity, individually. He has taken human nature, our
nature, into the Godhead. By coming, as it were, from God
as God and assuming our humanity, the Lord Jesus Christ has stooped,
taken our sin, carried it away and bound us to Himself and taken
us back into the Godhead, back into the divinity, united us
with the divinity of God himself, such is our nature now in the
Lord Jesus Christ. We are so yoked to Christ as
to have become one with him in flesh, who is one with the Father
in his Godhead. and God himself is pleased to
dwell with his people in our humanity. Being yoked to Christ
has both a spiritual and practical aspect. We are joined to him
in eternal purpose, we are joined to him in elective grace as we
have seen, we are sanctified in Christ, we are set apart in
this world for his glory. But there is also a practical
aspect of this union because we are to learn of Christ. He
says, take my yoke upon you and learn of me. We are to get to know the Lord
Jesus Christ more and more. We are to deepen our experience
of his presence in our spirits. And we are to learn of him in
the gospel. The Apostle Paul calls this practical
aspect of our Christian life, learning Christ. That's exactly
what the Lord Jesus Christ said. He said, take my yoke upon you
and learn of me. Paul calls it learning Christ. Ephesians chapter four, verse
20, ye have not so learned Christ. That is, we learn of Christ in
his Gospel. We learn Christ and that's the
great task of our existence here upon earth. That's the principal
duty and obligation of our life. That is the labour of love that
we are now bound to. That learning of Christ begins
in time as we are converted and brought into a knowledge of the
truth. Remember, he said, I am the truth, so it is a knowledge
of Christ that we are speaking about, and it will extend into
eternity. We will continue to learn of
Christ for all of our everlasting life. We learn Christ in the
Gospel. We learn Christ as we come together
around the Word of Truth. We learn Christ in reading Scripture. We learn Christ in communicating
to him in praise and worship and gratitude, in prayer and
in fellowship, and in the mutual encouragement of the saints around
the Word of God, and in these spiritual, scriptural truths
that we have come to know and to understand. What that tells us is that in
every circumstance of our life, in every situation of our daily
life, You, where you're sitting at the moment in your own home,
or in the company of some friends, or wherever you might be, in
whatever city, in whatever country, in whatever state you might be
right now, where you are sitting right now, this is part of our
education of Christ. This is part of our learning
Him. Life is a classroom for us. Life is a classroom so that when
we get up and go into the world tomorrow, we are still learning
about the Lord Jesus Christ. Every trial is a lesson. Every disappointment is as meaningful
to us as every blessing. in order to teach us more and
more about our Saviour. Every temptation that we feel,
every time we stumble and fall, every time we sin, every time
we hurt, every time we're disappointed, every time we're ashamed, these
are all lessons. to teach us to learn Christ better,
to always be returning, always going back to hear the Gospel,
to know more about what Christ has accomplished, what He has
done, what His blood has secured, what His righteousness provides,
what His Father desires for His church and His people. And so
we learn day by day in every circumstance more and more about
the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ says to his people,
come unto me and learn of me. Our coming to Christ is not a
geographic thing, it's not a physical thing, just as in the same way
as that yoke is not a piece of wood. but it does speak of that
service into which we are brought, into that classroom into which
we have been encouraged to come. We learn by faith. And by faith
we discover the Lord Jesus Christ in all of our circumstances,
in all of our situations, in all of our experiences. And we
learn of Him. And what do we learn? We learn
that His yoke is light and that His burden is easy. Our yoke
is easy and his burden is light. We learn of Christ and we learn
of his grace. We learn of his goodness. We
learn of his gentleness towards us. We learn about what he has
secured for us. We learn the value of his blood,
the blessedness of his righteousness. We learn these things and we
thank him and we worship him and we follow him day by day. May God give us grace to come
daily to Christ faith and may the Holy Spirit teach us day
by day about what it is to carry his yoke and to learn of him. Amen.