Let's turn with me back again
please to Matthew chapter 11. Matthew chapter 11. And just for the sake of freshness
and because you can't have too much of a good thing, we will
read our verses once again. 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 hast
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. The Lord Jesus Christ once told
his disciples, the words that I speak unto you,
they are spirit and they are life. Let me repeat those words. The
words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are
life. You find that reference in John
chapter six, verse 63. Spirit and life are in the words
of Christ. And the words of Christ are the
very words that we have read today together. I don't want
us to think about the words of Christ as being something that
was uttered historically, something that was said many years ago
and has a quaintness and a relevance to a bygone era. If these are
living words, then they're living still, for Christ is the very
essence of eternal life. He says of himself, I am the
way, the truth, and the life, and these words that he speaks
as the perfect, holy Son of God are unchangeable. and their relevance
is unchangeable. These words are spirit and these
are words of life today as surely as they ever were before. And therefore we can come to
them and expect that same efficacy, that same energy, that same power
to be discoverable in those words today. The words that Christ
speaks are spirit and they're life. And they open up to us
this morning such a potential that is beyond our comprehension. People might think as they look
upon us here today, what are those old folk? What are, and
some young folk. What are those guys doing gathering
together like this, populating a few old hard benches and sitting
listening to some chap speaking for half an hour or 45 minutes? What is that activity all about?
I'll tell you what it's about. It's about spirit and it's about
life. It's about God's work and God's
purpose for his church and for his people today. And it's for
the good of your soul and mine. These are vital opportunities
that God gives to his people to gather together, to fellowship
together, to engage together, to hear together. these words
of spiritual truth and these words of energy and life. Therefore I trust that we are
coming with an anticipation this morning, an anticipation of hearing
something lively and something that will enter into our very
souls and will sustain and nourish and bless and comfort us. the
words I speak unto you, and I come as a representative of the Lord
Jesus Christ this morning. I come as Christ to speak to
you. I am a mere man. I am a sinful
creature. I am a channel. I am a vehicle of the Word of
God. And to the extent that I am able
to faithfully declare the truth of the Gospel to you, then these
things are lively and spiritual and true, and I trust the Lord
will take them and apply them to your hearts and souls this
day. Perhaps the Savior had in mind when he spoke those words
to his disciples, a little verse in Proverbs chapter 4. A couple of verses, it begins
at verse 20. And it says there, the wise man
is speaking, and he's speaking to his son, and he says, attend
to my words. Attend to my words. Incline thine
ear unto my sayings. Let them not depart from thine
eyes. Keep them in the midst of thine
heart. for they are life unto those
that find them. Maybe that's what the Lord Jesus
Christ was alluding to when he spoke those words, drawing upon
the words of Solomon, that wise man of many years before, and
showing that it was these words that were the words of life,
these words that were the spiritually enlivening words of truth and
gospel meaning. And I don't think that we could
have a more emphatic encouragement this morning to give ear to the
gospel of Jesus Christ, the words of the Lord. There are so many
more places that we could be today. So many, it seems that
Sunday has become the day of recreation for the world. That used to be a Saturday, now
it's a Sunday. And there are so many places
where people can be attracted to. I suspect there were days
when this church would have been filled and maybe upstairs as
well. In days gone by, where are the
numbers any longer? People have no interest in this. But the Lord's Word is the same,
and the Lord's Word calls His people to attend to these things.
And therefore, we take it as a privilege in knowing that these
words of spirit, these words of life, are still declared amongst
the Lord's people to His flock in these days. And they are an
encouragement for us to be here, for that experience to become
our experience. The experience of which Solomon
spoke, the experience of which the Lord Jesus Christ spoke,
the experience of which I speak to you today. This is the best
possible place that you could be today. For these words are
words of meaning and truth and blessing. There are many voices
in this world, and many would scoff at us for gathering in
a situation like this, but the Lord says, attend to my words. Attend to my words. Take that
personally. Take that as coming from him
to you, even if you're younger. attend to my words, hear what
the Lord has to say today. Give attention, it's so easy
to be distracted, so easy to find the things that are going
on outside, or the things that are happening, or the noises,
or what's going on around about us. Let us be serious. When the teacher at school says,
look at me, look at the board, hear what I'm saying, She means
that you look, not that you get distracted with the things around
about. When the Lord says, attend to
my words, he means that you put those thoughts, those other concerns
about what's happening tomorrow morning at the workplace, or
what's going to be said in the evening when you go home, or
all the other things that are going on in your lives, because
there are many. You put them to the side, you
consciously, you purposefully think that this is the Lord's
hour. This is the time when I will
come, I will be rested, I will be ready, I will be prepared
to hear what the Lord has to say to my soul and I will come
with an anticipation to hear those words, to attend to the
words. The Lord says, incline your ear
to my saying. Sometimes I hear people talking
and they'll say that they went to a service and they sat up
at the back and you know the preacher, you could hardly hear
what he was saying. And I think to myself, well get
down to the front. Incline your ear. You make it
your business to hear what's being said. If the Lord gave
that man a word for you and for your soul this day, and you sat
up at the back and should say, I could hardly hear what he was
saying. That's not gonna be your problem today, by the way. I
could hardly hear what he was saying. Then incline your ear.
Make sure that you go out of your way to be attentive to those
things that are being said. Keep them before your eyes. I think I'm right in saying that
the old Jews used to have a little piece of fragment of scripture
that they stuck in a box in the front of their head so that they
could fulfill that. Well, that's surely a misunderstanding
of what we're supposed to be doing, though we'll give them
the benefit of the doubt that they were making the point. but
we keep these things before our eyes. These are the most important
things in this world. Your job's important, your family's
important, your interests are important, but these have the
priority, for these are the words of spirit and life. So let us
be like Peter, who could confirm when the Lord spoke to him. When
the Lord says, Give attention. We say, we shall attend to your
words, Lord. We shall. We shall incline our
ears to your sayings. We shall keep them before our
eyes. We will store them in our hearts. Because you've got the words
of eternal life. And where else are we going to
go? I say again. The things before
our eyes this morning are spiritual things, holy things, heavenly
things, lively things, eternal things. Jesus Christ's words
are spirit and life. They are comfort and they are
joy. They are grace and they are peace
to the souls of his people. And let me say one more thing
about this, too, because this is just my introduction. Let
me say one more thing about this, too. The Lord Jesus Christ, in
this verse, said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord
of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from
the wise and prudent and hast revealed them unto babes. We're talking about keeping these
things, these words of spirit and life before our eyes, inclining
our ear, storing them in our heart. But these things are hidden
from many. These have been purposefully
hidden from many. God has chosen to hide these
things from the many and to reveal them to but the few. So you're privileged this morning.
We say, why are there not many more in here to hear these words
of spirit and life? Because the Lord has prevented
them from coming. Prevented them from coming. giving
them so many more other things to do that they couldn't get
here. If they had any sense, any understanding, any awareness
of the eternal dimensions of this life and the God to whom
they are answerable and before whom they must stand, do you
think they wouldn't, for the simple case of self-preservation,
be here listening to these words of spirit and life? They're ignorant! They're ignorant, and it's why
they're not here, because God has hidden it from them. But
not you. No, he's revealed these things
to you. He has shown you that there's
a need. He has shown you that there is
something important to be gotten here, and the Lord has brought
us under the sound of these lively words. Our sovereign God both hides
and reveals the words of life. And the Lord Jesus Christ thanks
his Father for doing so. And we should thank God. We should
thank God for doing so. You ever thank God for the empty
seats? But the Lord said, thank you, Father, for hiding these
things, but revealing them to the babes. The worldly wise despise
the gospel, but Christ's little ones find these words to be blessings
to their souls. And we are privileged and blessed
to hear the gospel today. God grant us grace to store these
matters in our hearts. So here are the Lord's words
to his little ones, those babes to whom the words of life come
with grace and with power. I want to draw your attention
to the last few verses of Matthew chapter 11. Often it's the 28th
verse that gets the attention. Come unto me all ye that labour
and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. And rightly so,
because it's a beautiful little verse. But I want, if I may this
morning, to push us beyond that verse into the second part of
what the Lord said there and concentrate more completely on
the second part. Take my yoke upon you. And I
want to ask, what is it to take Christ's yoke? What is it to
be yoked together with Christ? What does that mean and what
is the lesson that we can learn. And I simply want to take four
points, as it were, one, two, three, four, get through them
as quickly as we can this morning in order to encourage our hearts
and comfort us with these words of what it means to be yoked
together with Christ. The first thing is just to put
it in context and to remind ourselves of Christ's call when he says,
come unto me. Come unto me, all ye that labour
and are heavy laden. Come unto me, says the Lord Jesus
Christ. Many years ago, I was asked the
question if I thought that those words, come unto me, were an
invitation or a command. Is that an invitation from the
Lord, come unto me, or is it a command from the Lord? Come
unto me. Well, I think it's neither. That's
what a preacher can do. He can set up an alternative
and then he can say that it's neither. But I'll tell you why
I think it's neither. It's neither because there are
no general offers in Scripture. There are no general offers that
go out universally for everyone to come to Christ. as we see
here and as you will see no matter where you look in scripture.
Every time there is an offer made, it's a conditional offer.
Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden. There's
a condition attached to the words come unto me. And there's no need for command.
because it's a delight for those that labour and are heavy laden
to come to Christ. I thought about what I could
say to illustrate that. And there is a story about a
little boy that was playing in the park one day. These parks
nowadays are much more exciting than the parks used to be when
I was a lad. But now you get tubes that you
can crawl through and frames that you can climb up. And this
little lad had been playing in one of these long tubes and he
was crawling through the tube and he got his trousers stuck
in a bolt halfway through this tube. And he tried to go forward
and he couldn't and he tried to go back and he couldn't. And
he started to panic because here he was stuck in this tube. And
he started to shout out. And his dad heard him calling. And he went and he looked down
the tube and there's the little boy looking up. And the dad reaches
down, sees what the problem is, unhooks the trousers from the
boat, and says, come on to me. Come on up. Was that an offer? It wasn't offering. Come. It wasn't a command. Come. It
was a gathering in. It was an embrace, it was a receiving,
it was an enabling, come unto me. And this is what we understand
when we hear these words of the Lord. We are coming to one who
is reassuring us as he receives us. Come unto me. like the father of the prodigal
who ran to his son and embraced him and said, come unto me. He sees a troubled child, he
sees a weary child, he sees one who is stuck, he sees one who
doesn't know where to turn, one who can neither go forward nor
go back, and in his panic cries out for help. He is weary, he
is heavy laden, he is anxious for his soul's well-being, and
the Lord says, come to me. But I wish to take us on and
to think about what that coming means, because the Lord is saying
to these people who come, you're coming to be yoked to me. We come to Christ, we are given
this picture of being yoked together with him. And I don't think that
there's any need for us to overlay make this a picture of simply
acknowledging the authority of the Lord or saying that we are
subject to him and that that's what yoking means together. The
Lord could have used any word. He used yoke. And the picture
of the yoke that is used is the picture of the beam that stretches
across the shoulders of the beasts of burden. that they are called
to pull. And so that's the picture that
I'm going to present to us this morning. For the Lord says, take
my yoke. And the thing about a yoke is
that it is a harness for two. That's the point of the yoke.
It keeps two together in step. It speaks about a union, a union
that is forged between these two that would otherwise go their
separate ways and couldn't be held together. So the Lord is
calling His people to come and be yoked together with Him. And that picture of taking upon
ourselves that yoke of Christ is entering upon that Christian
life, that union together with Christ, as a follower of Christ. Christ's yoke, and we are yoked
together in that yoke with Him, so that we walk with Him. so
that we are united to Him and joined with Him. It binds us
together with Him. Nor is it optional. You can't
choose whether to take that yoke or not. You come to Christ, you
take His yoke. You come to the Lord as your
Savior, you take His yoke. You walk with Him, you follow
with Him. It's not optional. People who
think that they can make Christ their Savior but not their Lord,
as they often say, fail to understand that in Scripture those two words
are always connected firstly with the Lordship of Christ and
then an understanding of the salvation that flows from it.
He is Lord and Savior, never Savior and Lord. And so when
we come to Him and we take that yoke, we are putting ourselves
beside the Lord. We are recognising that we walk
with Him. He leads us, He guides us, He
directs us. We learn of Him, we know who
He is. And that also reminds us of the
fact that scripture speaks much of us being a purchased people,
a people who are not our own, a people who have been bought
with a price. And so we are subject to Christ
as we are yoked together with him and we are bound up together
with him, following after him, going where he leads. working
as he works, being engaged together with him in this life. So that's the point of the call.
Then there's the challenge. Because taking this yoke means
engaging with him. And when the Lord welcomes his
people to him, he welcomes them with a life to live for him. These words are spirit and they're
life, and we live with the Lord Jesus Christ. We live with him
day by day. We live with him in the things
that we do, in the things that we say, in the things that we
think. The Lord Jesus Christ comes into the experience of
his people, into their soul, into his life. He says, lo, I
am with you always, not merely as shoulder to shoulder, but
closer than a brother. We are the very temple of the
Holy Ghost. Christ lives in us. And everything
we say and everything we do is affected and changed and influenced
by that union that we have with Him. We are yoked together with
Him. So there is that activity in
the Christian life. There's always activity when
we come to Christ. The Lord says, come and dine. Come and dine. He says, come
and drink. He says, come and follow. Christ's words are spirit and
life. There are no stillbirths with
the Lord. The Lord says, Lazarus, come
forth. And then we see that that life
follows. We're told that we are to learn
of Christ. When we come to him to hear these
words of life, we learn of him. He says, take my yoke upon you
and learn of me. Learn about me. We learn about the Lord. From
the very youngest age, if we're blessed with being brought up
in a Christian home, we learn about the Bible stories, we learn
about the things that he said, we learn about the things that
he did. But it takes that work of God the Holy Spirit to enter
the life of an individual and open their eyes to truly learn
of him. And that's the picture of the
coming and being yoked together with the Lord Jesus Christ. This
is us learning of who he is and what he has done. We learn with
Christ because he leads us, he guides us, he is a lamp to our
feet, he is a light to our path. And I thought at that stage of
Ruth joining herself to Naomi, She learned of Naomi. She learned of this woman. She
learned of her attitude. She learned of her nature. She
knew her history. And such was that love that had
been forged between these two that Ruth could say, entreat
me not to leave you. I don't want to go back. I want
to stay. Retreat me not to return from
following after you. Why? Because she'd been yoked
together with Naomi. And she said, whither thou goest,
I will go. Where thou lodgest, I will lodge. Thy people shall be my people. Thy God, my God. Look around. These are your people. These
are your people. The people of God are our people.
We identify with them. We will stand with them. When
the trouble comes and someone is called to take a stand, don't
let them stand on their own. Stand with them. These are our
people because we are yoked together with Christ. We are bound together
with him. And all who are bound together
with him have been bound together with each other. The Lord has
a people and he deals with us as a congregation. And the Lord's
people learn of him. We see the means of that learning
in preachers. We hear the gospel preached.
We see the means of that learning in the scriptures and we read
the word of God and it feeds and nourishes our souls. We see
the means and providences and the circumstances of life as
the Lord teaches us in the very issues of life, what it is that
He is bringing to our attention. And even in our trials and our
hardships, we see the means of learning from the Lord. He is teaching us constantly.
God give us ears to hear and eyes to see these lessons of
Christ and of grace. He teaches us at his hand of
his will and his purpose. He nurtures us and causes us
to grow in that grace and knowledge of the truth. And we learn of
Christ in a deepening awareness of the gospel and what the gospel
is, his work, his person, his glory. All of these things that
he has done are conducive to us learning of him and therefore
praising him more and more. For the more we learn of God,
the greater our praise and our worship becomes. The greater
is our gratitude towards our God. And that is why when we
get to heaven, our praise is going to be getting sweeter and
sweeter. I've been walking up where we're living at the moment,
up in Cumbria, and I've been listening to the larks. The larks
are nesting at the moment in the fields. And I learned as
a little boy that the higher a lark rises, the sweeter it
sings. And I've been listening to the
larks in the fields. The higher that a Christian's
understanding of the Lord reaches to, the sweeter is his song of
praise and worship, for we're learning of Christ and what he
has done. Taught people are a worshipping
people. Taught people are a grateful
people, a praising and a prayerful people. and his disciples learn
of him. What do they learn when they're
yoked together, when they've come to Christ and they're yoked
together? When the Lord says to them, take my yoke upon you
and learn of me. What do they learn of him? They
learn what kind of man he is. They learn his character. They
behold the one to whom they are joined. We learn that he is meek and
lowly of heart, subject to his father's will.
Here is no pride, here is no superiority. Here is a man who
is meek and lowly of heart. Come unto me, he says, take my
yoke upon you, learn of me, for I am meek and lowly of heart. shows us humility, it shows us
compliance, it shows us trust, it shows us heart of love. And I think that phrase meek
and lowly of heart is an interesting phrase and it's very significant. It is Christ's nature to be meek
and lowly of heart. It's not my nature to be meek
and lowly of heart. I tell you that that's not my
nature. I try hard. I try hard to be
meek. I try hard to think before I
speak. I try hard to be thoughtful and
sensitive of the needs of those people around about me. I do. I try hard. But it's not what this heart
is like. It's not my nature. My nature
says, get out the way. My nature says, me first. My nature says, give it to me.
But Christ is meek and lowly of heart. And I want to be like
him. I want to be like my savior. That's what I aspire to. That's
my ambition. That's what I hope for. Where
I say me first, my way, my will, my needs, my pleasure, I'm revealing
what's in my heart. But oh, that I should learn Christ. Oh, that I should learn what
it is to be meek and lowly in heart. That's his nature. That's his heart. He is perfect. He is holy, He is gracious, and
He is good, and it's all that I long to be. All that I cannot
be, He makes me when I am joined to Him, when I take His yoke
upon me and learn of Him. For my purity and my holiness
and my perfectness is all derived It is derived, it comes from
my Saviour, and my Saviour has done all things well. Oh, the
privilege to be joined, to be yoked together to such a one. And we learn about Christ's achievements.
We learn about what he has done when he came to do his Father's
will. Take my yoke upon you and learn
of me. We learn of the deliverance of
captives. We learn of the redemption of
sinners. We learn of a payment of a price
that was sufficient to liberate a people bound and dead in their
sins. And we learn of eternal glory,
of sovereign grace. A grace that meets the demands
of divine holiness and satisfies every need. These are the things
that we learn when we take Christ's yoke upon us, when we come to
Him. And we learn the cost of His
sacrifice. We learn about the price that
was paid, the life's blood that was given, the suffering of soul. We find about the hurt and the
pain and the tears and the loss. I don't know whether you've ever
spent any time in the company of someone who has had great
loss or experiencing great hurt and great grief. But what you don't do is you
don't tell them all your problems. If you can't say anything, you
just sit quietly in their presence. But don't tell them about your
aches and your pains when they've just lost their loved ones. Don't
tell them about the fact that you've got a sore back or you
missed the bus or all the problems that you've... What does it do
when we are yoked together with someone who has suffered like
Christ? It puts all our problems into
their proper context. When we are yoked together with
one who suffered as he suffered, never man suffered as he suffered,
then it puts all of our problems into their proper place. Oh,
we grumble and we groan. Well, not if we're yoked together
with Christ, not if we're walking on this pilgrim way with Christ
and aware of all that he endured. Are we gonna spend our time in
service yoked to him, moaning and groaning about our aches
and our pains? And we learn to trust him. Not
like a charm, not like the world has its lucky charms. Like a
genie, once you rub the lamp, the genie comes out and gives
you everything that you want. These are shallow, superficial
notions of faith and provision. But truly learning Christ takes
place in the crucible of this world's hardship. In the fires
of affliction, under stress, amid trial, and it's learning
the difference between the old man's lusts and the new man's
longing. Learning Christ is being put
under his yoke, and it's transforming, and it's life-changing. But in case I say too much about
the trials of being in Christ's yoke, Christ gives us a correction. He says, you'll find rest for
your soul. Yes, being under Christ's yoke
makes a change in our lives, but here's the promise that goes
with it to sweeten it all the days of that life. You will find
rest for your soul. Brother and sister, we've heard
that call. If you're one of the Lord's people,
you've heard that call. You've come to Him. You've taken
that yoke. We've faced His challenge. We
are learning of His character. He's the suitable Savior that
we need. And now we are promised His comfort. Rest for our soul. Is there anything
in this life that is greater than an individual knowing peace
in their heart? Knowing the life and the joy
and the comfort of being reconciled to God and united to the Lord
Jesus Christ. Is there anything more valuable?
If I could gain the whole world, and lose my soul, what an impoverished
man, what an impoverished creature I would be. Rest for our soul is rest from
the guilt of the law and conviction of sin. Rest from a guilty conscience. If we've ever had our conscience
stirred up to where we've realized the true nature of the things
that we have done and said and the actions that we've perpetrated
on another. I look back on things that have
happened in my life and I know that I have caused people to
sin. I've sinned and I've caused people
to sin. I have aggravated the punishment
of that individual in hell for eternity. I did that. Where does a man find rest from
that sort of guilty conscience? You'll find rest for your souls
in Christ. Rest from the guilt of the law,
rest from conviction of sin. That's rest from true soul weariness. Rest from our works. and from
the mocking efforts of our self-righteousness, saying that, yeah, we're able
to do what God wants us to do. We're able to keep his standards,
live by his law, honor his instructions. Really? Perhaps outwardly, you
hypocrite. Rest from constant anxiety and
a sense of inadequacy. Because though I'm nothing, the
Lord is all in all, and he has made me everything that he wants
me to be. Christ is sufficient. And rest
from fear and worry in this life. What does tomorrow hold for us?
Do you get anxious? I get anxious. I worry about
the things that are coming down the line to meet me that I don't
know about, but I shouldn't. I shouldn't. because I know who
holds the future, and I know that he loves me, and he has
supported me, and he has helped me. Every day of my life, I can
testify to that. Even the times when I got into
so much trouble, the Lord was always there with a way of escape,
and he will be tomorrow. Every minute detail of my life
is held in the clasp of his hand. My well-being, my good for time
and eternity is vouchsafed in him. Stephen, sometimes called the
first martyr, Stephen bore witness when he was preaching in the
early days after Christ's death and ascension back to heaven.
He was given an amazing audience of all of these Jews, and he
stood up before them. It was his last will and testimony,
and he preached the gospel to them. And he, by inspiration,
took the words of David, that David had spoken. And he tells
them that David's words had a messianic context. The words that David
spoke weren't spoken about David, they were spoken about Christ,
says Stephen in Acts chapter 2. But remember that we are now
united to Christ. We're joined with Him. We're
yoked together with Him. So these words can become our
words too. Stephen says they're Christ's
words, but they're our words as we are united with Him. And
these are the words. Is this your prayer? Is this
your experience? Listen to these words. Therefore
did my heart rejoice. and my tongue was glad. Moreover
also my flesh shall rest in hope, because thou wilt not leave my
soul in hell, neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see
corruption. Thou hast made known to me the
ways of life, thou shalt make me full of joy with thy countenance. What a lovely testimony for the
Lord's people to have, those that have come to Christ, those
that have learned of him, those who are yoked together with him,
those who receive the rest and the comfort of his presence day
by day. Brothers and sisters, No one
in this world is more privileged than we are privileged. No one. Not the rich, not the famous,
not the celebrities, not the kings, not the politicians. No one is more privileged than
the Church of Jesus Christ, the true believers in Jesus Christ,
the elect of God. No one is blessed as we are blessed. We who have taken Christ's yoke
upon us are possessors of promises to thrill our hearts and comfort
our souls for time and eternity. We rest in Him, in Christ, He
with whom we are yoked together has met every demand of a holy
God on our behalf, supplied every need that will ever be required
of us, secured every blessing, and made us complete in Him. Is this not rest? Is this not
comforting to us? Does not Christ's yoke do good
to our souls? I trust that we will be blessed
in contemplating these things. His goodness to our souls, his
grace to our hearts, and that this morning we will be able
to say, it was good for me to hear the gospel of the Lord Jesus
Christ. Amen.