Psalm 121 that he sings so well,
so often. These hymns that we've heard
all our lives, we'll never grow tired of. Our song will silence
never. Matthew 11. Read verses 27 through 30 with
me. The Lord is speaking and says,
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 to whomsoever the Son will reveal him. Come unto
me, all ye that labor 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 you shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy,
and my burden is light." We've looked at this recently,
what it means to come to Christ, and we would do well to look
at this every time we met together. Because we need to come to Christ
all the time. To whom coming? We need to keep
coming to Christ for rest. For rest for our soul. The only
place to find it. Our Lord said that. You come
to Me. That's why we read from Isaiah
30. He said people look for rest. peace, look for answers everywhere,
but to the only one who has them. Not many years ago, a man wrote
a book, I think it was a man, and wrote many sequels to a book
called Chicken Soup for the Soul. You ever heard of it? You may have a copy of it. And he wrote, or she, whoever
it was, wrote many sequels to that, Chicken Soup for the Teenage
Soul, Chicken Soup for the, you know, the whatever, the NASCAR
fan soul. And I, you know, the more I think
about that, the more I resent that and despise that, or all
of the books that men and women write and pretend to promise
people rest for their souls. When we read there in Isaiah
30, it's going to be just confusion. That's all it's going to add
is to their confusion. One can read and observe every
single thing that the wisest people on this planet have to
offer from their books and not profit one whit. But that's what people do. They
resort to anyone and everyone and everything but the One who
has rest. The One who says, you come unto
Me and I will give you rest. If there's anything good, you
say, but I've got some problems. If there's anything good whatsoever
in the things that men and women say today, I guarantee you, It's
a paraphrase. It came from someplace in this
book. And I've pointed out before that
Solomon wrote 3,000 Proverbs, and we have, I forget, 800 or
900 in our book here, and men don't know one of them. Don't
know one of them. And not read them. In any one
of these Proverbs is infinite wisdom and peace. and rest."
But he said, you will not come unto me that you might have lacked,
didn't you? The Lord is not inviting anyone
here. He doesn't invite anyone. He said, no man can come unto
me except the Father which hath sent me draw him. And if you
do come, blessings, holy name, because the Father that sent
him drew you. When he says, come unto me, it's
a command. He's talking to his people like
I call my dog. Come unto me. If he doesn't come,
you know what I'll... Well, the dog I used to have. If he didn't come to me, you
know what I would do? I would go fetch him. He's coming. And I get great comfort from
this. The Lord commanded men everywhere to repent, but they
don't. But the goodness of God leads us to repent. When Christ
says, come unto Me, and we start running, He runs after us. He
runs after us and brings us back. How many times have you... prone
to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love. Do you
love Me? Do you? Why are you running here? Because
I'm a fool. I'm a sheep. I'm prone to wander.
Yes, and I'm the Great Shepherd. And He leaves, and I'm in, and
I bring you back. He's just coming to me. is a command. God has
given commandment to Satan. And with the command comes the
arm of the Lord that's not short. It can reach out and bring us
back. It does every time. Oh, my. Well, I've got to get
to my notes, I think. Maybe I ought to close them.
Come unto Me. He said, I will give you rest.
Learn of Me. He said, take My yoke upon you
and learn of Me. Learn about Me. Learn from Me. Follow Me. In verse 27, remember
He said this, All things are delivered unto Me of My Father.
All things. Whatever we are is by His grace
according to the measure of Christ. He's the one that doles out everything.
You remember the story of Joseph in Egypt? that Pharaoh put Joseph
in charge of the storehouses, and if anyone wanted anything,
they had to go to Joseph? Well, that's the Lord Jesus Christ.
And He's such a kind and gracious and wonderful overseer that He
says, Come unto Me. I'll give it to you. What do
you need? And we don't come. I mean, we don't get what we
need because we don't come. He said, You don't have because
you don't have. He's not willing. Whatever we
have comes from Him. Whatever we know comes from Him.
Whatever we need, He has it, be it spiritual or material,
whatever it is, He has it. He says, come unto Me. Come unto
Me. It's His to give, yours to ask. How do we come? Well, by prayer,
first of all. By prayer. Whosoever shall call
on the name of the Lord shall be saved. That doesn't just mean
one time. That means saved from everything.
In every predicament you get into. Whatever you fall into.
Wherever you go. We get lost all the time. You
fall away all the time, don't we? Seven times. But He says,
call and I'll come get you. We come by prayer. Whosoever
shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved. And we come to Him by His Word.
You know how He's such an ever-present help in time of trouble and need.
You know why God wrote a book? You know why God doesn't speak
out loud to us? He wrote a book so that you can
go back and look at and read the same thing that gave you
peace in the beginning. The very same words that gave
you hope and rest and peace. He wrote them in a book for you
to keep coming back and reading them. Just keep coming back and
reading them. I have favorite passages. And
I keep going to them time and time again. That's why he wrote
the book. Keep reading it. It hasn't changed. It's settled
in heaven. Come to the Word. If you didn't
rest, come. Don't read anything else. It
won't give you rest. It won't give you rest. Read my promises. And as I said to you before,
often you'll read God's Word, I read God's Word, and it's full
of conviction. It convicts me and it troubles
me. I see, you know, there are certain passages that I dread
reading them. I just do. They scare me. As
I told you, keep reading. Just keep reading. Don't stop.
When you're convicted, always after the conviction, the Lord
gives comfort. Like Isaiah, it says, Behold
your grass. Behold. It's vanity. Behold in
chapter 40 of chapter 41. And he comes to chapter 42 and
says, Behold my servant. My servant. Come unto me. We
come by His Word, we come worship. He said this, for two or three
are gathered in my name, I am there. You need to come to Christ, you
need to hear from Christ. He said, you go where my sheep
are, you go where the fold is. You go where He's gathered His
people. He has promised to be there. And if you're there in
His name, you will get a blessing. Where two or three are gathered,
I'll be there. You will hear from me. My sheep hear my voice.
Go there. But they said, no, we'll run.
We've got to run to this and run to that. You're forsaking
your own mercy. There's one hope, one help, one
peace, one place of rest. The place He's caused to put
His name there. Rest for the soul. Rest for the
inner man is what the Lord has promised us. He has not promised
us bodily rest in this world. These bodies will never rest
until we put them in the ground and lay them to rest permanently.
These bodies are going to suffer toil and labor until the day... Some of you retired a few years
ago. Yeah, right. No. You toil and labor all of
our days, and we'll suffer pain until the day we die. These bodies.
In Psalm 90, another favorite of mine, he says, The days of
our years are threescore and ten, seventy, if by reason of
God-given strength, eighty years. Yet in all of those years, he
says, there's strong labor and sorrow. And that's my design. As we said, the Lord is showing
us that this is not your home. This is a place of pain and suffering,
of toil and labor. But you're going to come to me forever, someday, and I'm going
to give you rest. Eternal rest and peace. But now here he's talking about
this soul rest for the laboring and heavy laden. Actually, verse
29 is the one I want to dwell on, but we need this over and
over again. We need to come to Christ. Those
who labor in religion, you know, labor is hard working. And there
are many who labor in religion trying to get to heaven. I don't
know if there's anyone in here doing that right now, but religion
is hard work. Trying to keep the law is hard
work. In fact, it's impossible. And the Lord will never give
anyone peace who's trying to keep the law to get to heaven.
The Lord will never give anybody any rest who's trying to be the
best person that they can for God to accept them. If they're
one of His, He won't give them rest. He'll give unbelievers
a refuge of life, thinking that they are good enough, and will
stand before Him someday and actually plead that goodness.
but not his people. He'll make it hard labor and
travail. Then there are those believers
who labor and wrestle with and struggle with the flesh. Every
one of God's people labor and are heavy laden with this old
man of sin that we struggle with all the time. Every day he won't
leave us alone, will he? Every day we wake up with this
burden on our back. What does Christ say? Come to
me. You can't do anything with that
old fellow. Come to me. And when we do, when by His grace
we come to Him and say, Lord, please deliver Satan, our adversary,
who is stronger than us. You're no match for him. We're
never a match for him. He desires to sift us like wheat.
What are we going to do? Like Peter, we need to come to
Him. Lord, help. He's the only one stronger than
our adversary. He's the only one stronger than
our flesh. He's the only one. He says, come to Me. You see
what He's saying? Every day, every hour, every
moment, at all times, for all things, I've got it all. You
need it all. You have nothing at all. Come
to Me. That's why He says, pray without ceasing. The world threatens to overcome
Me. I look at it and at times it
appeals to me just like it did before I knew the Lord. It has
this glitter every now and then, an attraction every now and then. What do I do to keep from being
overcome? Who is he that will overcome
it? He that believeth. He that cometh
to me. And I'll show you myself. And
then you'll lose your interest in this world. I'll show you.
I'll take you to Mount Pisgah. lofty heights and show you the
promised land. And show you that this place
is Sodom and Gomorrah. Heavy laden. We looked at this. We need to look at it again.
Those that are heavy laden under a heavy burden, bearing a heavy
burden that you can't carry and you're falling under the weight
of it. A guilty past. Sin. Man says confession is good for
the soul, so what do people do? And I admit, you know, everybody
feels like if I could just unburden my guilt on someone else, that
somehow or another it's going to help me. Often it compounds
the problem. Most of the time it doesn't.
I'll finish it to say, all the time it does. You need those
sins, that guilt, you need it put away. You need that sin and
that guilt laid on the head of a sacrifice. You don't go to
a man, he's got his own guilt. He can't forgive you. You don't
tell somebody, you don't confess to people your sins. But Christ
said, Come unto Me. Confession to Him is good for
the soul. He's the only one that will give you any rest by saying,
I paid for your sin. I paid for your sin. You come
to Him in prayer. You say, Lord, would you undo
what I've done? I've made a mess of things. I have the consequences
of sin. What I've done, my sin has done.
It's ever before me that Christ says, yes, but the blood is ever
before the Lord. paid for your sins, and I am
undoing what you've done. But in fact, what you've done
is working together for good. What you've done that you think
needs to be undone, I have actually used that in my purpose to bring
about your salvation and my glory. Here's an illustration. David's
great sin. All his life he lived with that.
And it was terrible. And he said that in Psalm 51,
against thee and thee only have I sinned. He said, you're going
to be right if you judge me. If you blame me, you'd be right
to do it. And he pleaded with God's mercy. But you know what? In God's purpose,
Uriah, the man he killed, Went to be with the Lord. He sent him home. David wasn't
trying to do that, but the Lord purposed it. That baby that was
born of them went to be with the Lord. It's all good right
now, isn't it? David and Bathsheba were united. Do you know what came of that
union? We wouldn't have Solomon. We wouldn't
have the proverb. We wouldn't have Psalm of Solomon. We wouldn't have that word had
not that sin taken place. As bad as it was, the good that
came out of it was infinitely better. Where sin abounded, grace
did much more now. You know that David wrote most
of the Psalms after his great sin. most of the psalms. We have Psalm
51. Where would we be without Psalm
51? Where would we be without Psalm
38? Where would we be without Psalm 32? Blessed is the man
whom the Lord repudith not iniquity. He didn't know that until he
experienced his great sin. You see? So he says, unburdened, if you're
heavy laden, Heavy laden with the guilty path. Heavy laden
with the care and responsibility of this world. He said, all things
are given unto me. What do you need? Come unto me.
What do you need? The Lord knoweth that you have
need of these things. Things we worry about, daily bread.
He said, just ask. I'll give it to you. You're never
going to be without. Come unto me. All your doubts,
all your fears, come unto me. Come unto me and I will give
you rest. That's His name. He's the Lord
of rest. I want you to turn with me to
the book of Ruth. One illustration or picture is
better than a thousand words. Look at this. For this cause
Christ came into the world. To save sinners. To bring us
out. The Lord came down. He's heard
our cry and He's come down in the person of His Son to bring
us out, to bring us up, to bring us to God. And nothing is going
to keep us from that. We need to keep coming to Him.
In Ruth chapter 3, look at verse 1. I began to read passages of
Scripture that dealt with rest. You know the story, some of you,
most of you know the story. Boaz is Christ, a picture of
Christ. Naomi and Ruth are us, lowly,
poor, needy sinners. Look at verse 1. Naomi, Ruth's
mother-in-law, said unto her, My daughter, shall I not seek
rest for thee, that it may be well with thee? And that's what
we want, isn't it, for our daughters and daughters-in-law and for
ourselves? Naomi needed it, too. Now, is not Boaz our kindred?
Isn't he one of us? Don't we have a faithful and
high priest touched with the feet of our impermanence, who
didn't take on the nature of angels, but the seed of Abraham? Isn't he our kindred? Isn't he
a man just like us, touched with the feet of our impermanence?
Isn't he? Our kinsmen, verse 2, with whose maidens thou wast,
you've been there, he's been with you all the time. You didn't
know who he was. Behold, here she says, he went
with Barley tonight, today, right now, in the threshing floor.
He's right there, right now. You can go right where he is.
What do you need? We need, we're in great need.
You can go there now, tonight. You don't have to wait till tomorrow.
Wash yourself therefore, anoint thee, put your raiment upon thee,
get thee down to the floor, get down, go down, don't make yourself
known, don't advertise yourself, you don't have any right to be
there, but I tell you if you go, until he's done eating, you wait
on him, you're going to wait I say, he don't have any right
to be there, but you go and you just wait and he'll be gracious
to you. And it shall be, when he lieth
down, that you mark the place where he shall lie, and thou
shalt go in, uncover his feet, lay down at his feet." And he's
going to tell you what to do. Ruth, I want you to rest. Here's
where you're going to find it. Go to Boaz. He's the only one
that's going to give us rest. You go to him. Right now. Right
now. You mean tonight? Yeah. Get up.
Right now. And you go lie at his table.
And sinner, I desire rest for you as well as myself. And today is the day of salvation.
And you go to Christ right now. Right now. Right now. And now look at the last part
of this chapter. Verse 14. She lay at His feet
until the morning. See it? Verse 14. She lay at
His feet until the morning. And now in verse 17, He gave
her many portions of barley. She confessed to Him. And look
at verse 18. And when Ruth came back to Naomi,
here's what Naomi said again to her after it was over. She
told her to go to Boaz to find rest. And she came home, and
Naomi said again to Ruth, she said, You sit still, my daughter,
until thou know how the matter will fall. You will know. For
that man, he will not be in rest until he's finished that famous
day. You've come to him. and laid your case before Him.
You've entrusted Him. You've believed in Him. You have
cast all your care upon Him. Well, He cares for you, and you
just wait. You just rest in that, in Him,
because He won't rest until He's finished it. Christ said, Come unto Me. I'll
give you rest. And did He not say on Calvary's
tree, It's finished? It's been. Well, there's a threefold, twofold
rest, really. There's an eternal rest. He said
you'll find rest for your souls. There's an eternal rest someday.
Oh my, are we ever going to have rest? And I can't even describe
it because I haven't seen it, haven't been there. I've never
lived a moment in that rest, complete rest. Hardly. But we
shall. God is satisfied. We have peace
by the blood of Christ's cross. Our sins have been paid. God
is pleased with us in Christ. Christ is our rest. Christ is
our Sabbath. Christ is our salvation. We shall
have eternal rest, all that come unto God by Him. But there is
a temporary rest that we need, as I said before. Every day,
every hour, we are full of doubts and fears and
unrest. And we need to come to Him. We
need to keep calling upon Him. Like, I was going to have us
read Psalm 107, but we don't have time. But you know how,
and we love that passage, don't we? Because the children of Israel,
we, like the children of Israel, would believe God and answer
Him and bring Him out, and oh, they would praise the Lord for
His goodness, And then they'd get right back in trouble. And
they'd call on the Lord. Well, the Lord would hear them
and bring them right back out of trouble. And then they'd praise
the Lord for His goodness. And they'd believe. And then
they'd go right back to the same things again. They were up and
they were down. They were believing or unbelieving. They were full
of praise and full of sin. And the Lord, you know, they
needed to keep coming to Him. And so do we. And you know, coming to him is
like, and prayer is coming like that widow who kept coming and
said, I will not, I will not go away, not go away until you
bless me like Jacob. And he's promised to do so. So
this calling on the Lord is an earnest, fervent coming to him. Well, look at this now. Verse
29. Come unto me. You're not a great
command and a wonderful promise, I will give you rest. Eternal
rest someday and temporal rest right now. Every time you come,
I will give you rest from whatever it is that you need rest from. Then he says in verse 29, take
my yoke upon you and learn of me. I am meek and lowly in heart,
and you shall find rest for your soul. Take my yoke upon you. Now, a yoke is a collar or a
harness. We have a few horse people in
here that know this, and nearly everyone in here has seen a horse
harnessed, has a yoke or a big old collar, horse collar on them. And this collar, this yoke, is
four things. I'm not going to keep you long,
but this is good. Our Lord said, take this yoke. You'll find rest
if you take this yoke. It's a yoke of ownership. It's
a yoke of union. It's a yoke of submission. And
it's a yoke of service. Okay? It's a yoke of ownership. You've never seen a horse yet
with a yoke on it that somebody didn't own it. Or for that matter, a dog wearing
a collar. If they don't have a collar,
they're running loose, they're a wild dog. If they don't have
a harness on it, if they don't have a halter on it, a yoke on
it, it's a wild ass's coat. Now, we're owned by somebody.
Either the God of this world has got us yoked, or the God of all, God over all,
God of the God of this world. I want to be owned lock, stock,
and barrel by the Lord Jesus Christ. Don't you? I've been under the yoke of the
God of this world. And how He's got people yoked
is to make them think they're running free. Young people, I
was there. And I thought I was free when
I was in absolute bondage to what my peers were doing, to
what this world was telling me to do. I was under a bondage,
a yoke. I didn't know it. I thought I
was free. Boy, if you see a horse running free, he's in trouble,
isn't he? You've got to kill him. If he's
running wild and free, if he's not yoked or tied up or in a
corral, hedged about, He's in trouble. Night-night, that horse
is headed for trouble. You need to be yoked. And you
need it to be a kind and wise master. You need to be owned
by this master. You want the boas of the heavens
to be your owner, your master. Our Lord said, take it. Take
my yoke upon you. Oh, my. Everyone is yoked with someone,
though they don't know it. And I want the God of glory to
own me, not the God of this world. I want Him to own me, not the world to own me. And our
Lord said of His yoke of ownership, it's easy. The Lord doesn't take
rule over us to make us, put us under hard
bondage. Oh no, he set us free from that
hard bondage. When the Lord sent his disciples
to get that wild ass's coal tied up, you know, it was tied up,
somebody owned it. It was still wild and it was
tied up and by the door, it wasn't in the door, by two ways. One
led to Christ, the other one led to destruction. And the Lord
sent His disciples, said, you go and you loose Him. Bring Him to me. You go and you
say, thus saith the Lord. Somebody owns Him. And when they
say, you can't do that, you say, thus saith the Lord. And He will
turn loose. And you will lead captivity captive. And you bring Him to me. Loose
Him and bring Him to me. Our Lord's yoke is easy. The way of the transgressor is
hard. He said, the way of this world is destruction. The end is destruction. No matter
what that way is. There's a way that seemeth right
unto men. No matter what that way is, our Lord said, it ends
up in destruction. If the Lord owns you and has
you yoked, He's leading you in paths of righteousness. Why,
for His name's sake, He's leading you in a heavenly footpath, and
the way drops fatness, and it leads you all the way to glory,
all the way home. It's easy. Just build you in. He says, take my yoke upon you.
That doesn't mean make Him Lord. That's what religious people
say. Make Jesus Lord. That means He isn't Lord if you
have to make Him Lord. But what this means is, he says,
bow your head, bend your knees. Lord, not my will, but Thy will
be done. Put Your yoke on me, please. The same is coming to
me. Call, Lord. I'm a wild ass's
coat, please bend my knee, bow my head, make me willing in the
day of thy power. I don't want to run loose. Own
me. Take possession of me. We need
to be under this yoke. You know, a wild coat, like I
said, running loose is not good, buddy. He's in trouble. Running
with a pack. You run with a pack. You run
with this world. Are you listening to me, young
people? If you run with this world, you're going to die with
it. If you be unequally yoked with an unbeliever, you might
die with them. They might bring you down. Jesus
Christ, Lord. That's why He said it's good
for a man that he'd bury this yoke in his youth before the
world gets a hold of him. Oh, Lord, get a hold of our young
people before the world does. It's already in them. Yoke to
Christ. It's good to be yoked to Christ.
Oh, He's an easy Master. Yoke to His people. They're all
pulling together in the same place. They're not going to lead
you wrong either. Yoke to someone like Christ in marriage, in friendship,
in companionship. David said, my companions are
those that fear God. When you have a yoke on it, it's
a union. It's a union. There's always two in the Scripture.
The yoke is always two. And when two horses or oxen are
yoked together, they're going in the same direction. They're
side by side. They're united. They can't be
separated. And they're going in the same
direction. Okay? Oh, we need to be united to Christ,
because I know where He's going. He said, Follow me. And you know, Kelly will tell
you this, I've watched him break a few horses. And one time, and
he does this often, is get a wild, incorrigible, that means untamable,
horse that he can't do anything with and tie it to an old, dead,
broke gelding or mare, an old horse that's been there and done
that, and tie it to that woman to settle it down. And I know this from experience. If you're going to break a plow
horse, you put it with an old, broke plow horse that's plowed
many a furrow, that knows where he's going. This wild one doesn't
know where it's going. He had one under that yoke and
would like to be heading here and there. When you take it and
you yoke it together with this old, dead, broke animal that's
plowed many a furrow, who knows where he's going, knows the Master's
voice, knows that Master means nothing but kindness, knows that
it won't work too hard, that He means him nothing but good,
just a little work to do, and at the end of the day, it's going
to be rest. It's going to be red and food
to your fullest. And it's good. This is a good
thing to be yoked. So you put that young horse.
That young horse doesn't need to know what it's doing. It just
needs to follow the other one. Christ said, take my yoke. Follow
me. Follow me. He knows where he's
going. He's been through what we've
been through. Touched with all our infirmities, yet without
sin. And he says, I'll give you rest.
There's rest. Follow me. Just follow me. Follow
my lead. Listen to what I say. I know
where I'm going. And if I go, I'll come again
and receive you as myself. I promise you. The end of this
road is rest. If you're not yoked to me, your
end is bad. It learned of me. I'm meek. That
means submissive. He didn't do his own will. His
meat and drink was to do the Father's will. He was lowly. That means a servant. A servant. That's what it means to be lowly,
not high. He who was high became low. Let
this mind be in you, Philippians 2 says, which was also in Christ
Jesus, who was equal with God, but made himself of no reputation.
Let this mind take this yoke upon you. Learn of Him. You'll
find rest. The Lord in submission to the
Father's will was always at rest. Even in the strongest, the roughest
storm, life-threatening storm, what has He done? Sleep in. Sleep in. Take my yoke upon you. Learn of Me. I submitted to My
Father's will. You submit to Me. I served My
Father's cause. You serve Mine. It's not a hard
thing. Not a heavy burden. It's light.
My yoke is easy. This yoke of service. My burden
is light. A light burden. You know, our
Lord went to the cross and bore our sins in His body on the tree,
and that was a heavy burden. He sweat blood. to bear our sins. His holy nature recoiled at the
thought of being made sin, yet he bore it for the love wherewith
he loved us. He bore that heavy burden that
we can't bear one of our sins, but he bore them all. The weight
of God's people's sins was upon his shoulders. That was a heavy
burden. But that's not what he's talking about here. He's talking
about for the love wherewith he loved his people, for the
care, for the concern for his people. The Scripture said He's
carried us all the days of our lives. He said, I've borne you
from your cradle, and I'll bear you all the way to the grave,
but it ain't heavy. He's my brother. You see? And He said He thought nothing
of the shame, despised it, thought nothing of it, for the joy of
Him sat before Him during the cross, carrying His people on
His back. They weren't heavy as light.
He says, take that yoke upon you. You serve yourself. He's a hard
man to please. Impossible. You can't make him
happy. Nothing you do is good enough.
You give him something today, he'll want something more tomorrow.
Serve this world, they just want to throw and get out of you.
Young people, somebody trying to marry you, doesn't know Christ,
I'll tell you what they want out of you. Sex. Is that too plain? I said it. And I ain't going to edit it.
That's what they want. They want what they can get out
of you. Pleasure. And when you don't have that to offer, they'll
dump you. You want somebody to love you
like Jesus Christ loves you. If He loves you. You want somebody
faithful and true. And when that physical attraction
is gone, Somebody that's pulling in the
right direction. Somebody that knows Christ and
says, I need to win Christ and be found in Him. Otherwise, they're
going to pull you astray. Listen to me. Thank God He didn't let me be
yoked together with an unbeliever. I didn't know the Lord when I
started dating her. Before that, I had several you know, acquaintances, girlfriends,
if you will. And I thought I was in love with
them. I was attracted to them. They were beautiful. Not as beautiful
as this one, mind you. Not anywhere close. But I was
attracted to them, none the less. And you can't believe the Lord's
providence inseparated us. And oh, am I thankful. The Lord
used this woman to bring me to hear the gospel and yoked us
together. We're pulling in the same direction
now. Otherwise, I might not even be
here, and some of you wouldn't be here either. Are you listening
to me? Lord, get a hold of our children.
Make them fall in love with the Lord Jesus Christ. And fall in
love with a man or a woman that loves Christ. And pull together
now Him up and glory together. When this is all over, when there's
no marriage at all, they'll be married to the Lamb. Eternal
rest, their souls won't be destroyed. This is serious. My yoke is easy. You talk about
rough yoke, if you're yoked together with somebody that doesn't know
Christ, tell them somebody that's yoked with somebody like that,
tell them how rough it is. Huh? Tell them. My yoke is easy. My burden is light. Some of you
dear ladies in here, widows, you were married to men that
loved the Lord, you're going to see them again. You're going
to see them again. You didn't want to live without
them, didn't think you could live without them. Well, you
were married to Christ and He said, I'll give you rest. And
He has given you rest, but you didn't want to lose that one.
He said, you won't. I'll give them back to you. Take them away just a little
while to show you that you need me more than them. But then I'm
going to give them back to you. Like Job lost all his children.
He gave them back to the devil. He's a good master. You want
to be yoked to him. You want to be married to him.
Oh, marry the Lord Jesus Christ first. Take his yoke first. And then
He'll join you to the one that knows Him and loves Him and will
do the same. Love you. Oh, my Lord, help me. Come unto
me, He said. Come. Right now. Come unto me,
all you that labor, heavy laden, whatever it may be, whatever
it may be. At all times, in all things, in everything, in every
little thing, in everything with thanksgiving, make your request.
Come unto me and I'll give you rest. Rest at the moment. Come unto me, take my yoke upon
you, be united to me, join together with me, I'm going to give you
eternal rest. Serve my people. Serve my cause. Don't serve yourself. Don't serve
the world. Serve my people. Your yoke to
them. Carry them. Bear ye one another's
burdens in the service of the tabernacle. It's easy. It's good. I did it. You follow me? All
right. John, come and we'll sing in
closing. I forget. 205. 205. Take care.