Well, it's good to see everyone
here this morning. If you would be turning in your
Bibles to Matthew 11, our text for today will be verses 28 through
30. And this is a very familiar passage,
I'm sure, to many of you. And I've taken the title of my
message from our text. I've titled it, Finding Rest
in the Yoke of Christ. Now, I hope that title your interest
some, because think of that. How can we find rest in Christ's
words when he says, immediately after mentioning the rest for
the soul, he says, take up my yoke. And so that's what we'll
be looking at this morning. So we'll begin reading back in
verse 25 just to capture this in context. Christ coming into
this verse, he had just upbraided the cities where he had performed
many of his miracles. because he said they repented
not in spite of that which he had displayed and the miracles
that he performed. So in verse 25 he begins and
he says, 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 to reveal them unto babes. Consider that for just a moment.
That would do away with any notion that we can amass some learning,
some knowledge, apart from spiritual life, being made a babe, birthed,
born again, that would somehow prequalify us for learning of
Christ, having Him revealed to us And he continues here, and
he says, Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight,
verse 26, 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 or except the Son, and he to whomsoever the
Son will reveal him. Now with that backdrop, we look
at our text for today where he begins and says, 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 ye shall find rest
under your souls, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. So as we Enter into verse 28
today our text just prior to that in verse 27 if you'll consider
what he said when he says no man can know the father except
the son and He to whomsoever the son reveals him that would
automatically Repudiate the notion that's most popular today in
so-called Christianity and that is that this coming unto Christ
this believing on him, as we'll see in a moment, that it has
some sort of causal relationship in our acquiring an eternal blessing
from God. You see, most of religion imagines
that Christ, most of Christianity imagines, so-called, imagines
that Christ did a work that made men savable, and if they will
come as a result of their coming unto him, he'll bless them."
Well, if you'll just consider it in the context, you'll see
that verse 27 precludes that notion, excludes that notion
altogether, because he says it's only revealed to him whom the
Son decides to reveal it to. And we know that to be those
that he covenanted with the Father to come and live and die for.
So then we look in our text and he begins and he says, Coming
to Christ is to be understood as believing on Him. It's not
coming to Christ as walk down this aisle to come to Him and
receive Him and do your part to be saved. It's not coming
to Christ by repeating some prayer, but it's speaking of the soul
coming to rest in Christ based on that which He accomplished,
the fruit of His labor rather than our own labor. And we see
that this coming is synonymous with believing. If you'll just
consider John 6, 35, when Christ said, I am the bread of life,
he said, he that, what, cometh to me shall never hunger. He shall never hunger. He's speaking
of an everlasting life there and that which is required to
sustain it. And he describes those who come
to him. And in the next phrase, he says,
and he that believeth on me, Believing shall never thirst,
that is, he too shall never lack for that which sustains everlasting
life." So we see just in that verse alone how coming to Christ
and believing on him are one and the same. And we're commanded
to do that. We're commanded to believe on
him. That is, to believe on Christ. who is identified by his very
work, so we cannot separate his person and work. That which he
accomplished, see, in his obedience unto death. And so he says, come
unto me, now who will come then? Well, those and only those to
whom it is revealed, according to verse 27 that we looked at.
That is those who are birthed spiritually. You see, he says
he hid it from the wise and the prudent, and it's a revelation. It's revealed unto babes. Those
are the ones who will come. Secondly, it will be those whom
the Father draws, those and only those whom he draws. Christ said
in John 6, 44, No man can come unto me, except the Father which
hath sent me draw him. And then lastly, in our text today, those and
only those will come to him who labor and are heavy laden. Now, that and is a very important
conjunction. You see, I think this laboring
speaks of being on a road, a religious journey, so to speak. And he
says, Come unto me ye that labor and are heavy laden. But we all
began, the scripture tells us, our walk on this earth in darkness. You see, it hasn't been revealed
to us until there has been a spiritual awakening. We've given life and
its faculties, for we are deaf, but we're given ears to hear.
We're blind, but we're given eyes to see, hearts and minds
to understand. But until then, we labor, and
we labor according to our natural, sinful, fallen fallen nature,
and we labor to attain or maintain our salvation. And while we're
laboring as such, we're totally oblivious to the heavy burden
that we've taken on. You see, we don't need rest because
we find it by nature in that which is prescribed by our various
denominations, sex, or whatever. The message of how God saves
sinners that is so popular today and that which we naturally will
buy into, which the scripture says is a way that seems right
to us, but ends in death. And that way is a way that says,
if you'll just whatever, you'll just reach out your hand, you'll
repeat this prayer, you'll walk this aisle, if you'll be baptized,
if you will Clean up your life. If you'll get serious about religion,
if you'll start reading your Bible, if you'll do good deeds
unto others, any of those things, all of those things, some of
those things, it makes no difference. You see, we're not initially
burdened down with this guilt of the evil, which we naturally
call good. You see, we don't need rest because
we think we have rest. But these who come unto Christ,
they are not only those who labor, but they become burdened with
the guilt of sin, pressed down by the unbearable yoke of the
law when God reveals something to them. He reveals the extent
of the law, the very perfection it demands. Remember our study
of the Sermon on the Mount? There Christ, he said, that's
what I came to do, to fulfill the law. Every jot and tittle. And he said, you have to have
a righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees.
And he told them how it went to the very heart of the matter.
He said, it says, it says in the Old Testament, thou shalt
not kill. But I say, if you're angry with your brother without
a cause, he goes on and elsewhere in scripture, we see that summarized
as love God supremely and our neighbor as ourselves. And he
defines our neighbor as our very worst enemy. And he concludes
chapter 5 there in Matthew with, here's what you've got to have,
perfection. Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is
in heaven is perfect. Now that's what happens when
there's a revelation by God under the sound of the gospel. That
is, this word, the good news of how he saves sinners, wherein
his righteousness is revealed. That righteousness is that perfection. It is perfect satisfaction to
all that God requires, both in its precept, obeying it, and
in the extraction of the penalty, a penalty that had to be of such
a great value that it had to deal with the travesty against
an infinitely holy God. It took none other than the blood
of the God-man, the Lord Jesus Christ. That's righteousness.
And he says that's what we must have. Now, when God is pleased
to reveal that to someone, they come unto him, these who become
heavy laden, and they find rest. They find rest in their substitute,
in Jesus Christ. And he says in verse 29 and 30
there, he says, now take my yoke upon you. How is that rest? It doesn't sound much like rest,
does it? Taking a yoke. A yoke was used to tie animals
together into the wagon to connect them That doesn't sound much
like rest, does it? And this yoke is indeed speaking
of a subjection to the will of God. If you think about it, his
next phrase is, learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart.
You see, meekness is subjection to God's will. And that's what
he's speaking of here. It's to be guided and directed
by his word. It's his ordinances, just as
we'll observe this morning. It's His command, our obedience
to that which God reveals as His will for us. So it's a walk. It's a walk of obedience, a walk
of faith. It's a taking up of our cross
to follow Him. Listen, it's even the scorn,
taking on the scorn of this religious world in which we live. You know,
most of us, we don't suffer very much in our day, nothing like
the apostles did and those in the early church. But you know,
we do suffer in part, and you suffer the scorn. Scorn is that situation in which one has no
value, places no value whatsoever on that which is indeed very
valuable. And this world's religion doesn't
value, you see, that which we look to in Christ in that alone. You see, they haven't become
heavy laden, most haven't. And so they imagine that salvation
is conditioned on themselves in some way, to some degree. And Paul said in Philippians
1, he says, it's not only called on you to believe, he said, but
also to suffer for his sake. Now, how's that rest? Well, your
Bible may be like mine and have a cross-reference right there
by verse 30, 1 John chapter 5, and be turning there, and this
will help us better understand this, I think. 1 John 5 verse 3, we read, For
this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments, and
his commandments are not grievous. Well, that kind of goes against
reason a little too, doesn't it? I mean, if you've got an
order, a command that you're supposed to fulfill, that's kind
of like, feels like a burden to us in our workplace, anywhere
in our life. And yet he says here that his
commandments are not grievous. How can that be? It's because
those whom God has birthed, who he has revealed himself to through
the foolishness of the preaching of the gospel. when applied by
the God the Holy Spirit, they possess a God-given regard for
his glory that they didn't possess previously. You see, they see
the extent of the law. They see in the person and work
of Christ what it took to satisfy God. It really did take a perfect
righteousness. And so they see how God can be,
not only can be, but is a just God. He didn't just look and
pretend that sin didn't happen, and so many think that God's
grace and mercy is him just deciding to look the other way. No, it
really did have to be dealt with, and it was dealt with by our
Lord and Savior on the cross of Calvary. You see, His commandments are no longer
grievous because now we're not operating from a mercenary or
a legal motive. We're no longer trying to obey,
trying to meet a requirement or a condition that we imagine
will find us blessed with the saints of God, and instead we're
looking to something that's finished and has already taken place at
the cross of Calvary, a righteousness that we didn't produce but that
was made ours by imputation. Listen, that's God's reckoning
of the merit of what Christ accomplished to the account of all those whose
sins were charged or reckoned to Christ. Christ, who knew no
sin, he died for sins he had no part in producing, that those
for whom he died might possess the very righteousness that he
merited for them, not one they produced. So, what is taking
this yoke? I walk, I strive to obey, all
motivated by the certainty of my salvation now, because it's
conditioned on one who could not fail and did not fail, Christ
and him alone, with no contribution from me, the sinner. So how do
I walk? I walk and I strive to obey. I strive with Christ's supreme
example of meekness and lowliness of heart, as we read here in
our text today. That is my unachievable goal. I'll never achieve. I'm a sinner,
and I'll never match that meekness and humility that was displayed
at the cross of Calvary, and yet I walk and I strive with
what was accomplished in that example at the cross of Calvary
as my very possession. You see, now there is relief. There is rest. So I walk, but
now I walk motivated by grace and gratitude, not in order to
gain something, not in order to appease his wrath. In Matthew
11, 29 there, Christ calls a genuine professional faith in him and
subjection to his ordinance is a yoke. In Proverbs 3, wisdom
is personified, Christ who is our wisdom, and it says of her,
of wisdom, of Christ, her ways are ways of pleasantness and
all her paths are peace. Jeremiah the prophet put it this
way in Jeremiah 7, 16, he said, Thus saith the Lord, Stand ye
in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the
good way? And walk therein, and ye shall
find rest for your souls." It's a way, see, it's a walk, but
it's pleasant compared to the yoke of the law, of having been
striving to meet a requirement or a condition blind to what
really was required For had we known that, we would have known
that that was an impossibility for us to do. And when Christ
is pleased in time, that's what he reveals to his people. He
says there, learn of me, for I am meek and lowly. You know,
we learn, we grow in grace and knowledge, and we should. But
this word learn here seems to have the connotation more of
understand. I want you to understand And
he describes it as that he is meek and lowly in heart. If you go to Philippians 2 sometime
when you have time there, we know that Christ is set forth
as the greatest example ever known of meekness and humiliation
and suffering and lowliness of heart. He said he when he's talking
to the church at Philippi and he told him, he said, let nothing
be done through strife or vainglory, but think of each other better,
more important than yourselves. And to give them an example of
how they're to do that, he says, let this mind be in you, which
was in Christ Jesus, who thought it not robbery to be equal with
God, but humbled himself, took on humanity, took humanity. God, think of that. God condescended
to take on humanity in the person of Christ. And it says that he
was obedient even unto death, the death of the cross, and thereby
God exalted him and gave him a name above every other name.
Well, this speaks here, when he's talking about taking this
yoke, it is speaking of this humility and this lowliness.
And he's saying, if you understand what took place there at the
cross of Calvary, he said, you'll find rest for your souls. Verse 30, he says there, the
yoke is easy and the burden is light. And it sure is, in contrast
to the religion that we all initially embark upon, that we all naturally
imagine to be so, but that we were mistaken in when we thought
that we could be saved based upon some condition or some requirement. We might have talked a lot about
what Jesus did, how he died for sins, but if what makes the difference
in whether you imagine yourself to be in Destined for hell or
for heaven is whether you will do something or whether something
will be done in you You see that is the product of the wise and
prudent of this world That's what seems right to us and God
has hidden things from from us at that time. We we didn't know
him it was we come to this world dead blind deaf sinners and we
we fail to see that we're being yoked to a requirement that's
not as easy as we were told, that's not just hard, but that's
impossible. See, the Scriptures tell us that
we're cursed as every man that continues not in all things that
are written in the book of the law to do them. That's why Christ
had to come and fulfill that law, every jot and tittle. And
that burden that we were under It was anything but light. Oh,
it seemed light. You know, it's pretty easy to
check off what you had to do there, wasn't it? You know, just
say this for prayer and you're okay. Just say that, come and
profess Him and walk down an aisle, you're okay. It seemed
light to us, but it's anything but that. As Paul told the set
of his own countrymen in Romans chapter 10, he said, to be ignorant
of that which is really required, that righteousness. is to go
about to try to establish one of your own. Can you imagine
that? Do you see the evil of presuming
that something done by you, the sinner, while you may have given
all the credit to God and to talk much about Christ, if you
imagine that what really got you blessed, what really procured
your standing of being bound for heaven's glory, with something
done by you. What you're imagining is that
you could do what took the humiliation, the condescension of our Lord
and Savior and the very shedding of his blood. You see, men call
it good, and yet we know that the Scripture tells what men
call good, God sees as evil. That which is highly esteemed
among men, he says, is an abomination unto him. Well, this all would
seem like a big contradiction, I think, to most. God revealing
a rest to be found under the yoke of Christ. You know, a yoke,
as I said earlier, it was like a coupling, that which coupled
the animals together. It's a union, and here it speaks
of a union, a oneness with Christ, as we heard about during the
10 o'clock hour. You know, we find ourselves in
Christ, holy. blameless, unreprovable in the
eyes of God's justice because of the very merit of what Christ
accomplished in our room instead, made under the law to redeem
them that are under the law, is made mine by God's gracious
imputation of it to me. So this oneness and this oneness,
we see that this walk, this way, it's his work. It's not our work.
It's his obedience unto death. So if you're burdened down with
the religion of man, imagining that salvation is conditioned
on you, the sinner, in some way, to some degree, based on something
done in you, by you, or through you, then I pray God will reveal
himself to you even today so that you too will be heavy laden,
that you will see the impossibility of that. And if so, you'll come
to Christ in God-given faith. You see, and there there's rest.
It's not from walking. It's not rest from no longer
needing or being willing to obey that which he reveals us to do,
but it's rest in it. You see, because now the merit
that I possess is no longer conditioned on anything done by me, not on
my far from perfect, sin-tainted efforts to obey God. So the merit
I possessed before God was finished at the cross of Calvary, and
it was judicially made mine by God's imputation or reckoning
of it to me. So here is the scripture. Come
unto Christ, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and he will
give you rest. Take his yoke upon you, and learn of him, for
he is meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest for your
souls. For his yoke is easy, and his
burden is light. A few men will come. We're going
today to observe the Lord's table. And what a privilege. You know,
in one small way, that's exactly what we're doing today. We're
taking his yoke upon us. Because you see, we're doing
this in obedience to his command to do this in remembrance of
him. And think of it. That which we
are remembering, the very elements represented here, the broken
bread representing his broken body, the wine representing his
shed blood, that's where we look and therein we find rest.