HOT TIP ON A GOOD TRADE

HOT TIP ON A GOOD TRADE Matthew 11:28-30 With grateful acknowledgement of these sources of direction and inspiration: the Holy Spirit; the Word of God; George Beasley-Murray, Jesus and the Kingdom of God; Richard Davis, Shared Any Good Yokes Lately?; Alfred Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah; Michael Green, Matthew for Today; C. S. Lewis, God in the Dock; John MacArthur, Matthew 8-15 January 23, 2005 Given by: Pastor Rich Bersett [Index of Past Messages] Introduction Let me ask you a question about life in 2005. Does it seem to you that you are spending more time on things like financial obligations? You know, paying bills, planning budgets, figuring taxes and generally trying to keep your head above the water? It is supposed to be easier than this, isn’t it?  I mean we have direct deposit, automatic payments, state-of-the-art software. We’re the moderns who got set free from pencils and ledgers and check registers, aren’t we? But more than ever we’re busy—phonin’ and faxin’, spendin’ and sendin’, flyin’ and tryin’. We’re hooked up, booted up, revved up, psyched up, and, if we’re honest about it all, FED UP. The most exasperating thing about modern living is that all the gizmos designed to make our lives easier and less burdensome have actually backfired. Just look at what the age of technology is doing to us. The line between leisure and work has never been so thin. We now have laptops in our family rooms, telephones by our toilets and beepers on the golf course. We communicate with our spouses and kids through answering machines and cell phone walkie-talkies, we buy our dinner at the gas station,. Are we having fun yet? I thought it was going to get better! How is it that, with all our advances, we never have the time to sit on the porch and drink tea any more? Why are we eating fewer and fewer meals together? How did our relationships get replaced by sound bytes and our conversations mutate into emails and instant messaging? Technology has helped us, but it has also conspired against us, making our lives not less complex, but more. It just doesn’t seem we have more time for each other; we have but less. The only thing we seem to have more of is stress. Take a look at this picture of a friend of mine at a recent doctor visit (cartoon re stress) On the screen behind me is an image by artist Tony Saunders that I think captures the “trapped” feeling so many in our society experience. Hemmed in from all sides, smashed into distorted but oddly-conformed shapes, like so many puzzle pieces, each individual seems to be fight for air, freedom. Magazine editor William Falk was vacationing in the British Virgin Islands with his family, when he found himself longing for a simple life. Gazing across the water, a little island caught his attention. He learned that the population was known for enjoying a carefree lifestyle. Falk decided that's where he wanted to go. He confessed: I have no real wants; if anything, my life is too full. "That's precisely the problem," author Gregg Easterbrook says in his new book, The Progress Paradox. Americans enjoy a higher standard of living than 99.4 percent of the 80 billion human beings who've ever lived. Yet we're not content. "Our lives are characterized by too much of a good thing…excess at every turn."  We're surrounded by so much food that obesity has become a national crisis, are tempted by so much information and entertainment and stuff to buy that we sleep three hours a day less than our grandparents. At times, it leaves you staring at a four-mile-long island on the horizon, wondering what it would be like to chuck it all. Hilton Generational Time Surveys reported in a USA Today article some interesting opinions from the people whom technology has freed from the tyranny of the old fashioned ways: Percentage of Americans who say they: Need more fun: 68 Need a long vacation: 67 Often feel stressed: 66 Feel time is crunched: 60 Want less work, more play: 51 Feel pressured to succeed: 49 Feel overwhelmed: 48. A Good Trade Into our busy and hectic lives comes this sound byte from Jesus: "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest." (Matthew 11:28) Those words are bold. Most teachers teach and counselors counsel and friends listen, but Jesus declares that if you will come to Him, He will do more. He will give you the rest you need. And here is lesson #1 – We will find our answers in God alone, and if you want to come to God, you come to Jesus, the incarnate Son of God. That’s what Jesus means when He says, I will give you rest. That’s what I call a hot tip on a good trade—you trade your burdens for divine rest! Mary Poplin was the professor of education and Dean of the School of Educational Studies at Claremont Graduate University. Though she had been raised in the Methodist Church, she had given up on her faith heritage and sought fulfillment for years in Buddhism, Transcendental Meditation and other mystic religions.  She met another professor in 1993 who testified to her of his Christian faith, telling her regularly that he prayed for her and that if she ever wanted to do anything with her spiritual life, he would like to help. He prayed for her and shared with her for eight years. Once when the Christian friend had gone away on Sabbatical, she said she had a dream. “I was in a long line of people suspended in the air. Jesus was standing greeting us in line.” When I looked at Jesus, I knew immediately what I was seeing. I couldn't even look at him, but for a second. I fell down to his feet and started weeping, and the only way I can describe the feeling I had in the dream is that I could sense every cell in my body, and I felt total shame in every cell. Then Jesus grabbed my shoulders, and I felt total peace, like I had never felt in my life. I woke up, and I was crying. She called her friend and told him and the two of them later started reading the Bible together once a week. “That was November to January. In January my mother wanted to go to North Carolina to where she had grown up. We went to this little Methodist church, not because she was religious; she just wanted to see her friends. When we got there, I was really moved to just go up to the altar and give my life to the Lord. It wasn't even an altar call. It was a communion call. The guy said, you don't have to be a member of any church to take communion. You just have to believe that Jesus Christ lived, that he died for your sins, and you have to want him in your life. And when he said that, I was so powerfully moved that I actually thought, even if a tornado rips through this building, I'm going to get that communion. I took the communion, and I didn't even listen to the guy. I knelt down and said, "Please come and get me. Please come and get me. Please come and get me." And when I took the communion and I said that, I felt free. I felt like tons of things had been lifted off…me.” When we are RESTORED to our intended relationship with God in Christ, We receive His REST in our souls. If the picture of having tons of things weighing you down is meaningful to you today, I want you to know that Jesus Christ is the One who can take the burden from you and give you rest. If the image of being crushed to death by the demands of life is real to you, it’s a signal from God to you that you are missing the key ingredient of life—the “rest” of a restored relationship with Him. You see, it isn’t just busyness and time and financial pressures that weigh us down. It is a sense of guilt and condemnation for our sins. Separated from God we have no relief. The Wrong Yoke and the Right Yoke The next part of Jesus’ teaching looks at first glance like a contradiction of what He has just said. "Take my yoke upon you and learn from me…" Jesus has just promised that if we come to Him we will find rest. Now He is telling us we have to wear a yoke. That sounds like more work, doesn’t it? If we are weary and burdened, why would we want to add another yoke? What we need to understand is that Jesus is talking about trading one yoke for another. In Jewish thought it was very common to think of the Law of God as something that a good Jew “put on” like a yoke, and he carried it (or, obeyed it). In this passage, just like in the book of Jeremiah, the reference is to bad teaching about the Law, not the Law itself. Jesus always taught respect for the Law of God, but He had some very harsh things to say about the misapplication of the Law by false teaching. That is precisely what is going on here. If you were to look ahead at chapter 12, you would see that Jesus is about to confront the false teaching of the Pharisees and their legalistic interpretation of the Sabbath rules. He will correct them by asserting the proper understanding about the Sabbath and pointing out the error of their overzealous “letter-of-the-law” teaching.  His point is clear. He invites His hearers, including you and me, to shake off the burden of following the carnal teachings of false teachers, because they are wrong and what they demand of their followers is wrong. He says they are carnally motivated, self-centered and hypocritical. Jesus will not abide the mishandling of truth, especially when it oppresses people through legalism or religious nitpicking. The Pharisees, we will learn in the remainder of Matthew’s gospel, were far more interested in having the people follow their rules and traditions, and their carnal rules and strict interpretations of the Law.  They were wrong in what they stressed in their teaching. So much so that Jesus teased them that they would, in their attempt to do everything properly, strain out a gnat, but swallow a camel. That is, they would work so hard to get some insignificant detail just right that they would miss the whole point of the Law. The definition of a “perfectionist” is someone who takes great pains … and gives them to others! That’s what they did—they made it so difficult to follow the Law that the whole thing became an unbearable burden to the people. That’s why He says by contrast, Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me… And that is precisely what Jesus was talking about in verse 28 when He said Come to me all you who are weary and burdened. He was talking to the common folks who didn’t know a thing about the traditions, and even less about theology, but who were laboring under the burdensome laws of these elite religious leaders. Jesus said of them,  "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of heaven in men’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to. Woe to you…you travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are…You give a tithe [even] of your spices…But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness…You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence…You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and everything unclean. In the same way you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness." (Matthew 23:13-28) If you are allowing yourself to be taught and led by religious leaders who are teaching you anything beyond the clear and rightly interpreted Word of God, here’s what you’re doing. You are allowing yourself to be religiously shackled by a carnal yoke. Any church or teacher that makes demands of you that are not clearly taught in the scriptures is involved in false teaching. Any leader who demands that you do certain things to make him or her look good or to satisfy any kind of need for security in themselves is trouble, with a capital “T”. If you’re jumping through hoops to keep some religious system satisfied, but it’s been a long time since you felt sure you were doing the will of God, you’re under a false yoke. If you’re feeling terribly busy but unfulfilled in your service for such a church or such a leader, I’ll tell you what your problem is: you’re weary and burdened. Flock of God, always serve the Lord, as best you know how, and never, ever, trade that glorious privilege for the mistake of serving religion. And do not allow yourself to be led by any self-serving so-called Christian leaders if they have not unmistakably demonstrated genuine humility. Do as the Lord said in chapter 7: "Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them…Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven…" Jesus invites all those weary and burdened from the emotionally and spiritually devastating fallout of legalistic and man-centered religion to trade in their heavy and useless yokes for one that fits. The fact is that only cruel farmers settled for the cheap wooden yokes for their oxen. You know, the discount yard variety that is made quickly and sells cheap, but never fits well. They never fit the animal right, and within hours of pulling a load with such an inferior yoke their necks and shoulders were rubbed raw. The compassionate farmer had yokes specially made for his animals. He took them to the carpenter to be measured and fitted just right. And he took them back if they didn’t fit just right and had them adjusted for the comfort of the ox or the donkey. Those privileged farm animals that had such caring owners would be able to do a lot more labor, because they would work more comfortably, they would be less cantankerous because they weren’t blistered and scraped raw, and they would live longer. Brothers and sisters, that is why God called pastors to lead churches, and not CEO’s. That’s why He placed elders over the church and not the “up-and-comers.” That’s why Peter warned church leaders, "Be shepherds of God’s flock that is under your care, serving as overseers—not because you must, but because you are willing, as God wants you to be; not greedy for money, but eager to serve; not lording it over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock." (1 Peter 5:2-3) A lot of people allow themselves to be abused by rough taskmasters who don’t care for them. Legalistic and demanding, high and mighty, greedy for personal power and prestige and almost always off the mark biblically, such leaders lean hard on their disciples to bolster their own egos and sad insecurities. They lead militaristic churches and misleading charities; they abort the faith and abuse the faithful; they distort the Word and misrepresent the Holy Spirit; they spin the gospel truth to their own ends and manipulate people for their own gain. Don’t wear their yoke! The Nature of Jesus and the Nature of His Yoke Looking at the last part of verse 29, Jesus encourages His congregation to take His yoke instead of the yoke of the false teachers. He says, "…for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls." He clearly gives two reasons that weary and burdened people should come to Him. They are: His own nature, and the nature of His yoke. The Lord describes His nature as gentle and humble in heart. This kind of a shepherd stands in stark contrast to the false teacher with the wrong yoke, doesn’t He? Not a taskmaster who is interested only in himself, and not a proud megalomaniac whose chief concern is building his reputation. No, he is gentle—the word PRAUS meant mild, friendly, not a threat to harm. Matthew 12:18-20 recognizes Jesus as the fulfillment of Isaiah 42, which describes the messiah as one who will not even break a bruised reed or snuff out a smoldering wick, until the nations put their hope in his name. The other adjective Jesus uses in describing Himself is humble in heart. TAPEINOS meant to be lowly, though not in a moral sense. It meant that a person was not full of himself, puffed up, self-promoting. To be humble in heart then meant to not be driven by attitudes and motivations of profit or prestige. This is exactly what the apostle Peter said in the passage about Christian leaders, isn’t it? Jesus serves as the model of what a Christian leader is: gentle and humble. Of course that kind of leader is the polar opposite of the kind of religious leaders who were known for their ruthless legalism, their harsh rule over people and the carnal yokes they kept trying to crush people with. Now He also adds a reminder of what He had already said. In the previous verse He said, I will give you rest. Now he says again, as if to punctuate the promise, you will find rest for your souls. Markedly different was the yoke of Christ, which He describes as easy. This word meant serviceable, usable, comfortable. It was often applied to clothing or tools, as well as to yokes. Jesus says, When you yoke up with me, I will make certain the yoke fits you well and doesn’t chafe or hurt. That’s what the Lord means when He promises you will find REST for your souls. There will be no discomfort in this yoke-bearing like what you experience under the carnal yoke of the false teachers. Serving Jesus out of the pure motivation of gratitude and joy of salvation is not draining at all. It is energizing. It isn’t at all like doing religious duty; it is joy and privilege and fulfilling. Coming to faith in Christ turns old religious attitudes on their ear. He turns duty into privilege, drill into thrill, service for Him into fellowship with Him; He changes your got to into a get to. The story is told of a woman in Bulgaria who was married to an ogre of a man whom she tried to love, but could never manage to please. Every day he would come home demanding that supper be on the table, warm and ready to eat. He demanded that she take off his boots and polish them, and that she serve his every need with no excuses to the contrary. She complied, but grew steadily to despise him and resent him deeply. By and by, her husband died. And the woman met another man. This man was all her first husband was not. He was loving and merciful and kind toward her. She fell in love with him and they were married. This husband was never demanding and was always sensitive. One day she realized that without thinking of it she had been serving him hot meals as soon as he came through the door, with a smile on her face and a kiss for her lover. It struck her that while they talked in the evening, she always mindlessly picked up his boots and shined them for him, all the while humming a happy tune. Giving her love to this man was effortless and delightful. All that she had to do for one man she did with relish for the other. So it is when we trade in our old, ill-fitting yokes of religion for the new yoke of relationship with Christ. It fits. For the first time in our lives we learn the true joy and glory of serving our benevolent Lord. And this is the meaning of the words of verse 30, For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. What makes Christ’s yoke so easy and so light? Two things: forgiveness of sins and the Holy Spirit. When you come to Him He will forgive you and remove the burden of guilt. When you come to Him He will enter your life by His Spirit, and He will change you from the inside out. A pastor in Grayson, KY, named Phil LeMaster wrote recently about an encounter he had. It was nearing Christmas, and I received a phone call from a man who needed to talk to a counselor. I met him at my church office, where he told me his tale of woe.  A decade earlier, he killed his wife in a fit of anger, was convicted of manslaughter, and spent several years in prison. He and his wife had a daughter who was in the custody of his in-laws. He had not seen her since the crime, and now, as Christmas neared, his heart ached. Tears streaming down his face, he lamented, "I could pass her on the streets of this city and not even know who she was."  What I remember most about our counseling session, however, was what he said when he first walked into my office. Dramatically raising his arms he said, "Now, preacher, let's just leave Jesus out of this, okay?"  As he sadly went his way that day, I thought to myself, That's the whole problem. You've left Jesus out. In December 1999, an extreme sports fanatic scaled the 120-foot statue of Christ the Redeemer on Brazil's Corcovado mountain and jumped from its outstretched arms. For the first ever such leap, Felix Baumgartner, 30, an Austrian, smuggled his parachute on board the little train that takes dozens of tourists up the 2,000-foot mountain to visit the statue. Once at the base of the Christ, he scaled the gray-stone figure, climbed on to one of its fingers, and jumped. Baumgartner's parachute worked, and he walked away in one piece from the stunt. A lot of people approach life like this daredevil. Jesus invites everyone who is weary and burdened to come to him and find rest. But most prefer to jump from the safety of His saving hands. Unlike Felix, though, their landing will be far different. There are no spiritual parachutes if we spurn Christ’s offer. What about you today?    [Back to Top]