Sinclair Ferguson: My Yoke Is Easy

if I told you that I had spent time and knew one of the most famous instantly recognized people in the world if you knew me well enough to invade my private space first of all to ask me who that was on the assumption that the statement was true I think you would then go on to ask two questions the first would be well how long have you known them because that would be an indication of probably how well you knew them and then the second question would be like unto the first question you would say to me what are they really like what are they really light think about those questions and connection with our Lord Jesus Christ how long have you known him probably for many of us relatively easy to answer but the second question is a little more testing isn't it tell me what he is really like tell me what he is really like it's a question that a row is isn't it in the Upper Room in John 14 immediately following the words that dr. Mohler was citing I am the way the truth and the life no one comes to the Father except through me the question arises Jesus shows the father this is a disciple who's been with Jesus we think for about three years and you remember Jesus response to him have you known me so long time Phillip yet you do not know who I really so if a non-christian eschew indeed if a Christian asks you tell me what Jesus is really like I don't mean give me the theology that is to say the categories of interpretation which I don't think anyone would doubt I regard as of immense value but were to ask the question what is he really like how well would you do with the answer I was imagining our Bible study as dr. Mahler was speaking in which the Bible study leader asked the question what is Jesus really like and I I could see mrs. McDonald and her husband Joe in the corner smiling at one another and mrs. McDonald saying WOW and looking at Joe who always does what mrs. McDonald says well the way Joe and I like to think about Jesus is and she has no idea she's a child of the Enlightenment and it's hard for the Bible study to leader d-did to say dear the way you like to think about Jesus is utterly irrelevant the real question is what is Jesus really like not just how do you like to think about Jesus but what is Jesus really like and these verses at the end of Matthew chapter 11 stand out in Matthew's Gospel in a sense they stand out in the synoptic Gospels as a place in which in a very singular striking way the Lord Jesus himself tells us what he is like this is what I am like this is who I am this is what you will find in me this is what you will discover from me this you will experience in me this is Jesus or an answer to the question Jesus what are you really light and I'm using the present tense I'm not asking the question what was Jesus like I'm predicating the question on the basis of Hebrews 13 verse 8 he is the same yesterday today and forever that is not long hand for Jesus is eternal truth all that is that's a statement underlining that the Jesus of whom we read here in the Gospels as he was yesterday from the perspective of the author of Hebrews as he was yesterday so he is today and so he is tomorrow so this is what Jesus is like and he's inviting us in as it were into his ownself interpretation of who he is and what he is like it's an astonishing statement really there's a kind of there's a kind of paradox written into the very things that he says about himself he is he is meek and lowly in heart and yet this is one of the places where he says I am meek and lowly in heart if I say that to you I am meek and lowly in heart you say to me you are lying through your teeth or you would never say that kind of thing you have no self knowledge he is the one who has perfect knowledge of himself opening himself to those who are listening to him who are burdened and who are heavy laden and here he is telling us who he really is and the the implication of that is as if we if we don't know him like this we still do not know him how long have I been with you and yet you still do not know me Philip and the way of course that that emerges in our lives is the degree to which we are unlike him because it's part of the dynamic of relationships between people but the people we come to know best or the people that we become most wise so how does Jesus tell us who he is well let me pick out three of the strands of his teaching in these verses for us to explore together for a few minutes this morning we we know what Jesus is like first of all by the invitation that he offers us the invitation is come to me but what's interesting about the invitation is those to whom the invitation is extended at times in my life teaching and theological seminaries I've had inquisitive students coming up to me and saying if you were able to have a dinner party at the end of the week then which for theologians from the history of the church would you invite they usually kind of surprised by the people who would be at my table and you know we'd all ask that kind of question of the way famous sportsmen on a snowy four of your time who would you invite now look at Jesus guests those to whom the invitation doors come he says to me you who labor and are heavy-laden you who are we you who are pertinent those are not the people you want a certain I guess because Louis people are enormously hard work those people are enormous ly difficult to love most people are enormous ly difficult to draw how to unpick to untangle the complexities that make them weary and heavy-laden and burdened and sore Jesus says that's the people he wants to invite it's amazing it tells you so much about the kind of Savior he really is and it's interesting just to think about this for a moment because the language he uses is deliberately general we're not able to tell from this text exactly what was it that buttoned these people what was it that oppress them and made them feel they were heavy made and made them feel that they were somehow or another yoked to something that was uncomfortable and irritating and caused friction and distress we can speculate what it was with these people can speculate that they are socially oppressed there they're under Roman domination that they're oppressed by taxation and by tax collectors we can we can speculate on that and that they are burdened because they are conscious that they cannot live up to the law of God never mind the Pharisees interpretations of the law of God and I can imagine in our world people might read a passage like that and say well that was fine for them but it's no longer fine in our society because we have got rid of the law of God but as you remember the Apostle Paul points out on more than one occasion when he's writing to Gentiles who do not have the law of God his basic response to them is you may not have the written law of God but you cannot escape having been created as the image of God and so long as you're the image of God created to function according to the law of God then there will manifest itself in your life the same kind of weariness the same kind of burden because of what the Scriptures call your sin and your iniquity your transgression your rebellion or what you may experience as your failure and it's interesting isn't it when people have the integrity as some academics have had to bring out the statistics that result from our throwing away the law of God and all the energy and the expanse that now goes into teaching young people who have no sense of who they are because they've never been reared and they undergirding significance of being created as the image of God for the joy of God for the presence of God and for the glory of God every single substitute that our Western governments put in its place you can be anything you want you are a prince you are a princess billions in the Western world spent on raising people out of their sense of failure and simply accelerating their sense of failure I'd rather suspect there has not been so much self harming in the Western world since there were monks living in monasteries seeking to deal with their infamous by self-harming and while the world knows it by other names it's exactly what Jesus is speaking about here and if you think of the order of these messages this morning you can see the coherence of this that there is no other one in whom dignity can be restored from whom burdens that we feel can be taken away than the one who is meek and lowly in heart and who is able to give us rest for our souls from our sense of failure from our sense of guilt this is a wound our society cannot heal and the more the individual and the society seeks to heal it by itself inventions the worse that makes the wound the harder becomes the York to bear and our grandchildren were eyes to say that we cannot bear this burden but our grandparents and parents are placed upon us so it really means something special to us to be Christians in this world to know that Jesus is the light of the world that Jesus alone as the one in whom true truth can be found and to whom we can come because he invites those who are burden and heavy laden to come to him he will give us rest it was it happen to be reading a book by dr. RC sprawl a couple of weeks ago and came across this nugget those of you who ever heard him knew he was the kind of man to whom things happened there are some preachers to whom things happened and they see it and there are more preachers to whom things happen and they don't see it and so it never appears in their illustrations and he was telling a story that I'd never had from him that at one point a psychiatrist with a very large and successful practice had offered him a job and a fortune to take the job in his psychiatric practice an RC said but I'm not a psychiatrist and the psychiatrist said that doesn't matter he said about 95 percent of my patients do not need a psychiatrist they need a priest who will tell them how to find the forgiveness of their sins the release from their shame and their guilt that will deliver them from the burden that is crushing them that my colleagues miss exegete and therefore misfunction in their diagnosis and in their prescription and it's in the papers all the time isn't it in the NHS that the burden about over prescription of drugs it's partly a financial matter but it's more than a financial matter it's a recognition that actually unless the problem is biochemical putting chemicals in is not going to heal the problem here is our Lord Jesus Christ one day he will remove all these burdens one day we will no longer be weary even the oldest person in the room will no longer be weary but even now he says if you're burdened heavy laden come to me and I will give you rest and that of course is the second thing to notice that he says there's the invitation that he offers us and then there's the promise that he makes to us I will give you rest I will give you rest what does he mean and back till they come back to the same question I know what he says but what does he mean and I hear mrs. McDonald again saying well the way the whig show and I like to think up about it is and I'm usually too embarrassed to say good so what does Jesus mean how would we find out what Jesus meant how would you find out what Jesus meant when he said come to me and I'll give you rest not by looking up the dictionary but by coming to understand Jesus biblical theology so let me take a few minutes to to delve into the way in which I believe Jesus must have understood the scriptures that enabled him to say I exclusively will give you rest and when I say rest you know what I'm talking about it because of rest if you think about it rest in God the rest of our souls that we abide in God and the resting of creation so that it functions as a perfect creation of God where where there are where there are no irritations in the way in which the cosmos functions rest was how God created the world indeed he created the world with so much rest but on the seventh day he was able to rest wasn't he what a wonder if you ever thought about it like this the day of rest which was the seventh day was Adam's first day isn't that right he was created on the sixth day he apparently went to sleep twice one occasion this beautiful woman appears the other occasion the seventh day appears and he begins his life resting you know many of our forefathers believed it was on the day of rest that Adam fell the very first day man did not abide for a single day was the text they tended to hang it on and actually the narrative gives you that impression that he is created in a world that is functioning so beautifully he's given this woman to live in harmony he's given this world to enjoy he is told but there is work to do because he's put in a garden and he's to extend that garden to the ends of the earth and the next day is the Sabbath and there's a kind of indication to them that they're to live the whole of their working life with their family extending the garden to the ends of the earth out of a position of rest and we even understand that don't we that is only from a strong position of stability and rest that we can create energy and force otherwise everything is unstable and so from one point of view we might say that in the sights and the crosshairs of the serpent there is the destruction of the rest the harmony between them and the heavenly father the harmony between each other the harmony between them and the cosmos and the whole of the rest of the Bible narrative is a story of the restlessness of our sinful condition with the promise that one would come who would bring rest it would be it would be a rest but would be bought at a bloody price genesis 3:15 and you remember a couple of chapters later on when Noah's parents of their baby boy you remember why they called him Noah the name Noah sounds very like the Hebrew verb for rest and remember what they said about him perhaps this is the one who will bring wrath and they weren't just making that out they were understanding what they knew of divine revelation God had promised a redeemer a conqueror who would restore rest and they were desperately hoping their baby boy might be that seed of the woman who would bruise and crush the head of the serpent even as his own heel was crushed and bruised and that was a sense of which out of judgment there was a new rest created through Noor but it disintegrated again remember how the picture of the exodus is of God bringing them out of their bondage under the yoke of slavery you'd see that background in what Jesus is saying here and he brings them into the land of rest he makes a covenant with them and it's it's often a puzzle to people why is it that the sign of that Mosaic Covenant is what it's the Sabbath not just the weekly Sabbath but the the Sabbath Sabbath the six years and then the seventh and then the the seven seven years and the year of Jubilee and and what God is doing is creating four mechana pop-up picture book in which they can't move in the week or in the years or in the half centuries without being reminded that what God has promised in his great gospel promised is that he will bring rest but all of these things are but signs of a reality that is not fulfilled in the Exodus remember how Isaiah gives the interpretation of it in Isaiah 63 how the spirit brought them into a land of rest but they rebelled against him and just as we sometimes sing at Christmas if we sing Christmas carols o little town of Bethlehem the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight and when Jesus says come to me you who labor and are heavy-laden and I will give you rest he's saying the hopes and the fears of all the centuries the fulfillment of all the promises I am the one in whom the promises of God are yes and our men and this promise that God gave in genesis 3:15 his oldest promise and scripture his most difficult to keep promise in scripture his longest lasting promise in scripture is being fulfilled in me I am that rest to which all those shadows pointed remember how in Luke's Gospel when he's discussing with Moses and Elijah significantly they the death is going to die in Jerusalem remember how Luke uses the word the Exodus that he would accomplish because he's going to bring rest now how does our Lord Jesus bring rest well there are there are two aspects to the way in which he doesn't antler he does it first of all by entering into the deepest darkness of our restlessness and the the Gospel writers especially mark bring this out in very powerful terms as they as as mark sees Jesus going into the Garden of Gethsemane and describes Jesus experience in the Garden of Gethsemane he uses violently emotional language about what Jesus was going through his soul was sorrowful troubled and mark says that that Jesus began to be filled with sorrow and was greatly distressed I've never forgotten the day when I was a student and I came across a great Anglican scholar from the 19th century totally sane New Testament scholar of legendary ability and status and he comments on the fact that the very same verb is used in Philippians chapter 2 verse 29 of a of Epaphroditus who was sick out of his mind because he'd heard that his own people had heard that he was sick he was like your mother your mother was more worried that the family were worried that she was sick when she was worried about being said and Paul uses exactly the same verb and here's what this level-headed anglican scholar said he said this verb describes the overwhelmed half distracted state that he merges from physical derangement or mental oppression I think that's why the gospel writers are at pain to point out that Jesus fell on the ground and when you watch him in the Garden of Gethsemane there's a there is a there is a certain sense and actually it's accentuated after the angel comes to strengthen him that he is undergoing our restlessness of an unfathomable unparalleled nature and the reason of course is he's just given the cup of blessing to his disciples in the upper room and he's just taking from his father's hand the cup his disciples should be drinking the cup of that terrible restlessness but as the fruit of sin and he's tasting it to a level none of us has begun to it's it's as though he needs to go into the darkest chamber of human restlessness in order to in his active obedience take that upon his own shoulders in order in or of himself to have tasted the fruit of our sinfulness in our restlessness and on his own shoulders yoked to him bring us back to rest in God and of course he not only does that but on the cross he deals with the cause of that restlessness as Isaiah saw he would be wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities the chastisement that would bring us peace Shalom for our restlessness he tasted and with His stripes we are made whole it's interesting isn't it a few you know the chapter divisions were not written by the Gospel writers so there was Matthew did not write number 12 here and because somebody wrote number 12 here we tend to think verse 30 finishes it but you notice what happens next at that time at exactly that time do you notice what the next two passages are about they're about Sabbath day controversies in which Jesus is taking people whose lives have been marred by sin on the Sabbath day and he is recreating them he's bringing them back to the rest in God for which they had been created so much so that Matthew actually cites the first of those servant songs that appear in the second half of the prophecy of Isaiah and you'll notice what he says about him and he quotes him in chapter 12 verse 19 he will not quarrel or cry aloud nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets a bruised Reed he will not break and a smoldering wick he will not quench that's what he's lying it's what he was to be like it's what he was like it's what he is like it's what he will always be like and he invites us to come to him so there's an invitation and there's a promise and then of course very specially there's this unique self description he gives I am meek and lowly in heart I don't think I need to spend any time saying meekness is not weakness Boyce is the meekest man and all they are leading those endless people through the wilderness Jesus speaking these uncomfortable words to people who knew him there is no weakness here but there is the the meekness but is as it were forged into a person's being by the way in which they bow themselves to the will of God as he revealed in his word and in the harshest Providence's of life and this is what Jesus is saying that exudes in my personality meekness you know if you've really messed up you do not want to open your heart to somebody who lacks meekness you know what to go to the proudest elder in your congregation or the proudest Minister you know are the one who exudes his success ability you want to go to somebody who's meek and who is lowly in heart number Oh John and John chapter 15 before Jesus discourse gives us that picture of Jesus Baldy and heart taking the servant's position the thing that's always moved me most is is actually something that isn't said in the text but the text makes clear happened what's clear in the text as he washed the feet of the person who was going to deny him what the text doesn't specifically say but the flow of the text makes clear is that he also washed the feet of the one who was going to betray him and John's narrative Judas leaves the room after the feet washing washing those feet that's the expression of a lowly heart that's the expression of one who as Paul says did not count equality with God as a situation that would exclude him from humbling and even humiliation and he comes and kneels kneels before his denier kneels before his betrayer and he invites us to come because he is the way to the Father and as we come with him I am meek and lowly in heart he says come with me I'm inviting you you labor your heavy laden and I will give you rest you notice the words that precede all this not the uncomfortable words but the words that identify him as to who he is I thank you Father Lord of Heaven and Earth that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and you've revealed them to babes this was your gracious will and then he goes on to say this it's really staggering all things have been handed over to me by my father and no one knows the son except the father and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the son chooses to reveal him and he is coming to the the poor the humbled the pained the burden the anxious the distressed the failed and the failing and he saying just come with me and we say trembling to him but where you go into the presence of God what shall I say and it's as though he says just say what I say Abba Father you know there was there is nobody in the Old Testament whoever says that they lived in days of wonderful revelation but in days of the shadows that is not a single Saint in the Old Testament who is described as coming to God and saying our Father and here is the meanest and purest believer in this new covenant age and we think tremblingly of going into the presence of the one who is seated on the throne and all these majesty and the Lord Jesus says I've come to make him known to you so just say what I say and when we say our Father we know that at last we found rest but perhaps were still a little afraid dr. Mahler mentioned CS Lewis great imagination theology not so much behind CS Lewis says most of you know Lee a Scotsman called George MacDonald Lewis says he basically didn't ever really write a book without using the thoughts of George MacDonald not for theology but listen to this for imagination in his fantasy called the golden key in which little girl tangle eventually meets the old man of the earth who raises a stone in the ground where there's a huge hole that goes plumb down and the old man of the earth says to tangle that's the way and she looks down and she says but there are no stairs and the old man of the earth says nor there are no stairs you must throw yourself in there is no other way but throwing yourself in means throwing yourself into the arms of Jesus who invites you to come because we're all wee buttoned to a geladen and he promises to give us West let's throw ourselves into his arms today our Heavenly Father we have tasted so much in these last hours together too much for us to be able to take in easily or quickly we thank you for the way in which our Savior Jesus Christ has been exalted and we pray that by your grace we may catch fresh glimpses of how utterly reliable he is how utterly reliable for us intellectually how the gospel is able to stand on its own feet in our world and we stand in it and the power of its truth in its clear thinking and we thank you for our Lord Jesus who has come to raise us up on his shoulders to yoke us to himself to give us a burden in discipleship that fits well is easy and light because he is undergirding that burden in His grace Oh Lord Jesus we thank you that you are meek and lowly and that in you alone we find rest for our souls here our trace receive our hearts love strengthen us to Sevilla we ask it in your name you

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Keywords: ligonier ministries, ligonier conference, london conference, the light of the world, reformed theology, Sinclair Ferguson, matthew 11 28-30, philippians 2 15, hope in christ, jesus takes our burden, christian trials, ligonier conference 2019, yoke of christ, my yoke is easy, peace of christ, biblical theology, my yoke is heavy, ligcon, matthew 11:30, following jesus, the christian life, cost of discipleship, gentle and humble in heart, rest for your soul, burden is light

Id: SxbLKzZZpjo

Length: 39min 58sec (2398 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 04 2019