Hard Things Made Easy in His Presence

Matthew 11:28–30 “Then Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.””

Hard things become EASY in the presence of God.

As human beings, we have a tendency to make things complicated.

From something as easy as picking where to eat, we complicate EVERYTHING.

Sometimes we even tend to complicate our relationship and our experience with God.

I believe a lot of the times we complicate things because we have accepted a lie in our mind that serving God is DIFFICULT. Serving God is HARD. Serving God is TORTUROUS.

But does that mean I am saying that life will never be hard? No.

Students, I want you to hear me tonight when I speak because tonight I am going to speak against the lie of the enemy that Christ’s Church has bought into about it being hard to live for Him and serve Him.

If tonight, you have a belief that it is hard to serve God, please God, or live God, I am believing tonight that this lie is broken off of you. That tonight you experience complete and total freedom to experience the relationship Christ died for you to have with Him.

I believe some of us, whether we wanna admit it or not, have given up or thought about giving up our relationship with God because it got too hard or we are starting to buy into the lie that it is too much.

You may believe tonight you can never please God because you always seem to fall short. You may believe tonight that God is just some being that is looking to punish and judge you.

Tonight, I am believing for COMPLETE and TOTAL RESTORATION and FREEDOM to take place in you tonight as we go through this journey together.

TONIGHT, we are going to talk about the 3 THINGS THAT MAKE LIFE HARD:

BAD CHOICES

Have you ever made a choice that you thought was good in the moment and then you regretted later? Ex. letting Zuko into my room while I read the Bible

There are often decisions we make them seem good to us in that moment in time and then after the moment passes and we deal with the consequences of that decision.

When we say things are hard or difficult when it comes to our relationship with God, it is important to remind ourselves of God’s original intent for us. Lets go back to the Garden of Eden.

Genesis 2:15–17 “The Lord God placed the man in the Garden of Eden to tend and watch over it. But the Lord God warned him, “You may freely eat the fruit of every tree in the garden—except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If you eat its fruit, you are sure to die.””

So God’s original intent and design for us was to…

To have dominion over everything on Earth and to care for it

To eat from any fruit of any tree in the garden EXCEPT one.

God created it to be so simple.

And instead of us asking questions like, “Well, why did God even put that tree in the garden in the first place?”, we should be asking questions like, “Why couldn’t we follow one stinking rule?”

Sin wasn’t in the world at this point so there was no natural pull to disobedience

We believe God was giving them a choice. He had given them the freedom to choose because He didn’t want to force them into this relationship with Him even though He had every power to do so.

Moving on…

Genesis 3:1–4 “The serpent was the shrewdest of all the wild animals the Lord God had made. One day he asked the woman, “Did God really say you must not eat the fruit from any of the trees in the garden?” “Of course we may eat fruit from the trees in the garden,” the woman replied. “It’s only the fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden that we are not allowed to eat. God said, ‘You must not eat it or even touch it; if you do, you will die.’ ” “You won’t die!” the serpent replied to the woman.”

Satan came into the picture and Eve entertained the conversation

BAD CHOICE #1 (Ephesians 4:27 “for anger gives a foothold to the devil.”)

As Eve continued to entertain the enemy, she began to entertain his lie.

Genesis 3:6 “The woman was convinced. She saw that the tree was beautiful and its fruit looked delicious, and she wanted the wisdom it would give her…..…

She became convinced of the lie because she continued to behold the temptation and think about the temptation. (BAD CHOICE #2)

Students, she took her eyes off of being in the presence of God (which was her entire life up until this point) and began to focus on the lies of the enemy.

Our bad choices about what we behold, what we look at, what we focus on, what we allow into your lives can make life hard.

Why? Because God does not associate with darkness. He does not associate with demonically influenced things.

If we are making choices that do not glorify God but glorify our flesh (sinful nature), it can make our lives difficult.

Instead of blaming someone else for our bad decisions its time we start evaluating our own lives and what we allow into them and taking responsibility.

Psalm 139:23–24 “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. Point out anything in me that offends you, and lead me along the path of everlasting life.”

If only this prayer of David’s would become ours daily, it would keep us in the will of God for our lives.

We would catch bad choices before they turn into the next thing we’re going to talk about……

2. SIN

Genesis 3:6–7 “The woman was convinced. She saw that the tree was beautiful and its fruit looked delicious, and she wanted the wisdom it would give her. So she took some of the fruit and ate it. Then she gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it, too. At that moment their eyes were opened, and they suddenly felt shame at their nakedness. So they sewed fig leaves together to cover themselves.”

The bad choices turned into a decision to sin

Sin:

Actions that violate the law/moral standard of God,

It is depravity, iniquity, transgression, trespass, worldliness,

Going against the divine will of God

Isn’t just the outward actions towards God, but the inner actions of the heart like our thoughts and desires.

Isaiah 59:2-3 says that our “iniquities (sin) have separated” us from God

In the very moment that Adam and Eve had partaken of the fruit (disobedience), they immediately felt shame at their nakedness.

This wasn’t because they were just living oblivious and ignorant to being naked. Scripture teaches that the glory of the Lord, the light that shines from that glory, could’ve been their covering. It is likely they didn’t see their nakedness because they were clothed in the glory of the Lord because His presence was with them.

The moment they chose disobedience is the moment their clothing of glory would’ve been removed because God cannot stand sin. God is holy and holiness is pure. Sin isn’t pure.

They noticed their nakedness and they turn to cover themselves, to in turn, cover their sin.

Isaiah 59:3 calls us guilty for our sin. Nothing, besides Jesus can remove the guilt of sin. We can try in our best efforts to do it (which we’ll talk more about in a moment), but God saw their sin through Adam and Eve’s attempt to cover it

Genesis 3:8–19 (NLT)

When the cool evening breezes were blowing, the man and his wife heard the Lord God walking about in the garden. So they hid from the Lord God among the trees. Then the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?” He replied, “I heard you walking in the garden, so I hid. I was afraid because I was naked.” “Who told you that you were naked?” the Lord God asked. “Have you eaten from the tree whose fruit I commanded you not to eat?” The man replied, “It was the woman you gave me who gave me the fruit, and I ate it.” Then the Lord God asked the woman, “What have you done?” “The serpent deceived me,” she replied. “That’s why I ate it.” Then the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, you are cursed more than all animals, domestic and wild. You will crawl on your belly, groveling in the dust as long as you live. And I will cause hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.” Then he said to the woman, “I will sharpen the pain of your pregnancy, and in pain you will give birth. And you will desire to control your husband, but he will rule over you.” And to the man he said, “Since you listened to your wife and ate from the tree whose fruit I commanded you not to eat, the ground is cursed because of you. All your life you will struggle to scratch a living from it. It will grow thorns and thistles for you, though you will eat of its grains. By the sweat of your brow will you have food to eat until you return to the ground from which you were made. For you were made from dust, and to dust you will return.”

Genesis 3:23–24 “So the Lord God banished them from the Garden of Eden, and he sent Adam out to cultivate the ground from which he had been made. After sending them out, the Lord God stationed mighty cherubim to the east of the Garden of Eden. And he placed a flaming sword that flashed back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.”

Adam and Eve reveal their nakedness to God, God calls them out for their disobedience, and then God begins to list a bunch of things (consequences) that resulted from that choice.

Students, in the beginning God told them to just rule the Earth and not eat the fruit. Not complicated at all!

Now that they had sinned against God, life became harder. Women would suffer pain in pregnancy. Man and woman would always be fighting for control and rule. Work would not be fully enjoyable, but would instead be a struggle. This struggle to survive and make ends meet would last until death.

And to top it all off, they would no longer be able to live in the beauty of the garden, which housed the presence of God. God’s original intent. God sent them out to begin this hard life separated from Himself in a way they were never meant to be.

Students, life got harder because Adam and Eve CHOSE to leave the presence of God.

We see this trend continue throughout Scripture as…

Cain, Adam’s son, chose sin by killing his bother and left God’s presence to live a hard life as a wanderer, always wondering who would kill him.

And Israel goes through the cycle of disobedience, bondage, repentance, and back to bondage.

Students, sin makes life HARD.

Bad choices that can potentially lead to Sin can make life hard for us.

NOTICE: This is never what God intended for us. He intended that being with Him would be easy. Because in His presence, it is easy. The moment we choose to leave it is when things get hard.

3. RELIGION

If you have ever read through some of the books in the early part of the OT like Leviticus, Exodus, and Deuteronomy, you will find a bunch rules.

These rules, or laws, set the standard for how God wanted us to worship Him and live for Him in our daily lives.

There were a little over 600 commands that God gave in the OT after the fall of man.

These laws are what form what we would call the Christian and Jewish religions. They are the set of beliefs, forms of worship, prayer, rituals, and code of moral behavior that we adhere to.

But lets be honest, keeping all those laws is difficult. Now because of Adam we are born into this sinful nature that is naturally bent in the opposite direction of the holiness of God. This is a part of the curse of sin.

We cannot possibly keep all the laws of God because of sin’s power over us. This is why we needed Christ.

By the acceptance of Jesus’, the Holy Spirit comes to live on the inside of us, to empower us to live like Jesus. We can live holy and God sees us as holy because of Jesus’ sacrifice the moment we accept Him as Savior and Lord in our lives.

NOTE: Jesus is the ONLY one who can and did live a sinless life. Every person according to Romans 3:23 has fallen short of God’s glory or holy standard.

However, even when we become a believer, we can still be bound up by the yoke of religion.

Yoke: an instrument made from wood that bound animals or people together. This was a mark of slavery that caused oppression and burden upon the one yoked.

Jesus called out the yoke of the religious people in Matthew 23:3–4 “So practice and obey whatever they tell you, but don’t follow their example. For they don’t practice what they teach. They crush people with unbearable religious demands and never lift a finger to ease the burden.”

These people were more concerned about the works

Have you ever been so mad at yourself and ashamed of yourself because you did something you promised you’d never do again and then you keep going back to that very thing?

Jesus said to follow what they say, but not what they do. Why? Because they had the right laws to follow, but they were focused on the wrong thing.

They were focused on the works gaining their approval, which lead to repeated failure. They were trying over and over again to not do something or do something in their OWN strength.

They were not relying on Jesus to change their heart, which would in turn change their actions as they spent more time in His presence.

Romans 8:1–4 “So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus. And because you belong to him, the power of the life-giving Spirit has freed you from the power of sin that leads to death. The law of Moses was unable to save us because of the weakness of our sinful nature. So God did what the law could not do. He sent his own Son in a body like the bodies we sinners have. And in that body God declared an end to sin’s control over us by giving his Son as a sacrifice for our sins. He did this so that the just requirement of the law would be fully satisfied for us, who no longer follow our sinful nature but instead follow the Spirit.” Romans 8:15 “So you have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves. Instead, you received God’s Spirit when he adopted you as his own children. Now we call him, “Abba, Father.””

The lie of it being hard to serve and please God has been broken.

The lie of your sin being too hard to overcome is broken.

The lie of your bondage being your only choice is broken.

Jesus did what we could not do! We are free from the law of sin and death through Him!

Through His body, sin lost control over our lives! The law was satisfied with His sacrifice! All we have to do is TRUST it.

Students, its EASY to serve and please Him because He helps you do it.

Its EASY to turn from sin because He teaches you to do it.

Its EASY to break out of bondage because we broke it already.

Don’t hear what I’m not saying. You will make mistakes. This is not a free pass to continue living in a way that doesn’t please God though. When you make the mistake, do what 1 John 1:9 says: confess, repent (turn the other way), receive forgiveness, and move forward.

Don’t just sit in sin thinking God is okay with it. Habitual sin is not okay before the Lord, but it can be broken in His presence.

Lets go back to our original text…

Matthew 11:28–30 “Then Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.””

Jesus invites us who are weary and carrying heavy burdens

You’re weary if you are carrying the load on your own

You’re heavy burdened if religious has been your focus. If rule-following has been your focus. If this has been your focus, you have likely failed over and over again and want to give up.

Jesus promises rest…

This rest revives us, refreshes us, and causes us to stop doing it in our own strength and rely on His

The yoke of bad choices is hard. The yoke of sin is hard. The yoke of religion is hard, and dare I say the hardest.

Jesus’ yoke isn’t heavy. He called it light. Why? Because He holds the heavy part up! He did all the work that you could never do or could possibly do. However, the yoke connects you to Him. In His yoke, He does the heavy lifting.

Jesus promised to teach us. Why? Because this isn’t natural to us. Bad choices can be natural. Sin can be natural. Religious works to prove ourselves is natural. Rest is not. Trusting someone else to take care of our messiness and dirtiness is not.

Jesus promised to teach us. He is gentle and humble and His heart’s biggest desire is to give us rest in Him.

This is only an invitation to rest. To receive it, you must accept it. It doesn’t mean you’ll have it all figured out from here on out. It means you accept the process of learning.

In learning, there are mistakes, missed targets, and bullseyes. Its a journey.

ALTAR:

Salvation

Freedom from sin/religious works