"Take my Yoke" Matthew 11-28-30

we're talking I'm talking you're not doing too much talking but I was thinking about that I'm trying to provoke you encourage you push you and confront the issue of you know am i a fan of Jesus or it might have follower of Jesus very different things right the fan comes he pays his little admission ticket and he expects to be entertained the follower of Jesus is called to abandon all to take up his cross and to follow him very different than our culture and even our church culture and so I wanted you I thought at first I'd do this for about three weeks four weeks and I have to tell you that God just keeps giving me one message after another so this could go on all summer but we will get back to Ephesians this morning I want to talk to you about Jesus has called to take my yoke there's all kinds of yokes the yoke of religion the yoga religion is the yoke that says do all of these things and then you you might be pleasing to God and don't do any of these things so that you can be pleasing to God it's the performing yoke the achieving yoke and all of these yokes wear you out whether you know you taking the yoke of Judaism and Jesus came in the and there was the the yoke of Judaism on the people and the Pharisees had taken and made rule upon rule upon rule they even made rules for the Sabbath I mean the whole idea of the Sabbath rest was to rest to experience the rest of God and they had so many rules that became a heavy burden for them to bear and then I started thinking there's yokes of expectations if someone has expectations of you and you try to live with their yoke over you you'll wear out or you'll drain out you know though they used to be the use determine he burned out then some of us burnt out some of us drain doesn't matter he said you're wearing the yoke but sometimes the yoke is and even the expectations that others have of you the yoke is the expectations that you have of yourself that'll wear you out the Lord had just completed one of his confrontations with the Pharisees when you we don't have time to go into the exact detail of every every passage when we when we come to him but but he's just had another confrontation with the religious people and he confronts them and he tells them you know father you're gonna give me all that that belonged to me and he was basically scolding I'm saying listen you religious leaders you're you're unwilling to come you're unwilling to respond and and he was trying to get them to realize all of their laws all of their traditions become such a burden that they couldn't carry them anymore if you've tried to live now some people don't try to live under a legalistic yoke but sometimes you people live in a driven yoke right we have a driven personality talking about that and and I live with that I mean just unbearable thinking you know you couldn't I had it in business and I took it into the ministry and it was about how many you know how many churches you have to start before God is happy with you how many people do you have to share the Gospels before God is satisfied how many people do you have to baptize and no one had this expectation of me but me and I wore myself out I wore my beautiful wife out I wore my kids out I wore everybody out and what I was trying to realize is this and this yoke is in Jesus's yoke I remember I was in a Thai village this is gosh probably 1989 and I was in this Camus village where I'm the border of Laos and I was sharing handing out gospel tracts you know like I always did and and evangelizing and there came in an oxcart one ox with a cart full of corn they had been know how that translates hot cop hold no anyway they called breaking the corn but it's not like the if they go in the socks and then and this it was late in the eat like dusk and the the the ox came in and it had this yoke that harnessed it to the car and the Ox started collapsing under the weight and instantly this Camus guy he's probably about five foot two but he had legs like huge he ran out he run under the the the oxen and picked up the yoke and what just went like this until they could get the oxen free and I thought to myself that's what Jesus wants to do for you do you see I don't know what burden you're carrying I don't know what yoke has got you grit what's draining you out or burning you out or what expectations if someone has of you or maybe even worse what expectations you have of yourself to perform to achieve to come to this place but he's saying to you this morning Jesus is saying let me come in and bear this burden up look at what he says in Matthew 11:28 through 30 come to me all who labor and are heavy-laden and I will give you rest take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and lowly in heart and you will find rest for your souls for my yoke is easy and my burden is like father we were singing earlier you are the air that we breathe and it just reminded me that I am desperate for you no one needs to hear what a man thinks they need to hear from you and from your spirit and so I just pray that you would speak truth in life and liberate your people from the yoke of expectations the yoke of achieving the yoke of religion whatever yoke we'd been trying to pay and that we would answer your invitation in Jesus name Amen this is a beautiful invitation Jesus says come to me he speaks out to a crowd and these were people who had religion they had religion don't miss him san they had all the religion they need they had all of the Performing they need they had all of the achieving that all of the rules they had it all down and yet they had no life and Jesus speaks out to this crowd that's burned down he says come to me do you realize friends no matter what's going through your life I mean this is an invitation to salvation it is come to me and accept and receive the salvation of the Lord the forgiveness of sins but he's saying listen to me Monday come to me with whatever your burden would come to me it's a daily invitation to come and to receive Christ and to live in the fullness of his life Jesus had been rejected by Israel and he offers himself him who is love to come to know him it's amazing thing to me is that Jesus never forces himself on someone he simply says will you come come to me our part in all of this is to share his invitation with our community with our world and I love the proclamation the prophecy of John the Baptist and he says behold the lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world can you imagine a people hearing this for the first time who were completely sin centric people everything was about their sins and the sacrifices they were absorbed and consumed with their sins and everybody else's sins and the more sin he had the more of a burden the more heavy this up came upon you and Jesus has come unto me this was the fulfillment of John's prophecy that he who takes away the sins of the world he wants to take that yoke that burden of sin and he wants to take it away from us first John 2:2 says that he is the propitiation for our sins can anyone say Amen aren't you glad that God is not dealing with you according to your sins there's no way why you say why is this important preacher because sin is a horrible yoke a horrible burden a horrible harness on you and he says listen he is the propitiation and that propitiation is a is a fancy word you're talking about your sacrifice that satisfies he said whatever that propitiation could be used to satisfy God he says and he came to be the propitiation for your sins so you need to see that he already paid for your sins and this is amazing two thousand years before I was born he came to be the propitiation for my before I committed my first sin he paid for my sin but not only yours you see it and not for ours only but for your spouses Wow I expected a big Amen on that one right because don't we live live kind of relating to one another based on how they've interacted they've committed these infractions against us and what do we do when someone wounds us and someone hurts us we put a yoke on them and Jesus says come unto me why because I've been the propitiation for your sins but not yours only but also for the sins of the whole world and he comes and he says listen come unto me he invites the world to come in and he says every day come to me reconnect with me as your life so all who labor and are heavy-laden and I was thinking about this this this is the world system everybody who's had a job knows it's a performance-based system he said you're laboring you're heavy laden all the religions of the world put people under a work system and the results is a weary heart he calls him he says come unto me and the religious leaders of Jesus as they were putting burdens on people that they could not bear he says you you don't even help lift a tiny finger to carry this burden but you know what my experience is that religious leaders are still putting heavy burdens on people do this and then you'll be okay do this and then you'll enter in do this and we can we take this yoke and we wear and we try and we try tried you tried and we miss out on the invitation of Jesus he says come to me all who labor and are heavy-laden and I will give you rest now this is the dilemma we all labor were all a burden down we're all kind of living like Martha much encumbered with our service much burdened down we miss out on what we talked about last week was that worship of Jesus the intimacy with Jesus that leads us to the generous sacrifice and we get it all backwards and we think it's our serving the NARC that pleases him and there is a service for every one of us but it flows from the abundant life source he says and I will give you rest rest from all of your laboring let rest from all of your burdens he's offering to them an alternative the busy world that we live in I mean I'm just as guilty as anybody people say how was your week busy it's almost like we get our identity from how busy we are right busy life is busy the world is busy and this morning I read in my meditation time be still and know that I am God and this is how I did it I just sat there and i started meting i say be still and know that I'm God because what my personality is I you know Vanessa's alarm went off this morning at a different time than my alarm of course she didn't wake up but I woke up and I thought no just go back to sleep and then I don't know if anybody else is like that once this brain goes from off to on it's just like spinning out of control do this go here do that you know you know preparing things and I sat there and I said Lord be still and know that you are God then I said be still and know and then I said be still and then I said be over maybe 20 minutes but was until I got to the very end you see he's just telling us be all that this busyness isn't from God God is inviting us to an experience that says be still and know that I'm God and I will give you rest rest from achieving rest from performance-based living rest from new rules and new regulations for all who come he offers rest from all of the works of the law he offers us relationship you see this is the beauty of the gospel that Jesus didn't come to give us a new set of Commandments he really if you if you understand the scripture he sums all of the commandments up into what is our preoccupation to love the Lord our God with all of our being and to love our neighbor as ourselves and when we live in relationship with Jesus we might default end up fulfilling all of the law and the laws never the preoccupation but if you make the law your preoccupation you never fulfill it and you never live at rest and he says listen I'm calling you to be a people who are at rest if there's just one more list of things that you need to do you miss out on what he came to give you and that was rests under the law all we are ever going to be were sinners but under grace in Jesus Christ we are the saints of God there's only rest of the soul when you know that you are accepted and received when you know he calls you friend there's just so many dimensions to this and I think you got to grab ahold of all of them together because on one side of it we are slaves of righteousness and on one hand we are the Friends of God and you might say well those seem to be a contradiction but he says no there's no contradiction there might be tension in our understanding but he's saying come and accept and believe and here who I've made you to be find rest for your souls you're accepted you don't need more things because less really is more you see we get so much and we get the things that we have and the properties that we own and the you know the vehicles and all the possessions and we come and and it robs us of our rest Wayne did a beautiful tribute for the Lord's Supper and I'm so grateful for waning in this ministry in our church and you know he comes and he says this you know flee from idols and he's like why would he write that to Christians you don't have to go to India to find a country full of idols we live in our idols at least the Indians have their idols in a separate spot we've confused right whether we bowing down before what are we serving and he says listen I'm calling news of people into a kingdom life an alternative lifestyle I've said a lifestyle where we seek first the kingdom of God and trust him to add unto us all the things that he desires for us to have but we make an idolatry of seeking we we rob our souls of rest thinking we just had one more thing or we accumulate just more more we have just this amount of money in the bank and they said then we could be at rest he says no you'll never have it rest is your possession in Jesus Christ and then he says take my yoke upon you saying listen he say mark can I want you to take and exchange this yoga performing but I want you to take my yoke and please don't don't I hope you don't take this wrong but this is what I see in our church our code the culture of our church is that most of us came out of some form of legalism some harsh Christianity that burned down that we couldn't achieve and we said forget that yoke and we think that the answer is a yoke list life so we pretty much do what we want to do because we want to do it and we're miserable I mean I shouldn't say this but you know like if it's working for you awesome but do you have rest for your soul because the yoke of a self-absorbed life you see there is this unseen yoke where we're the center of the universe that's a burden that robs us of the rest of our souls and he's saying listen exchange the yoke of performing but take my yoke upon you he doesn't force it on you no one force Mary to come with this alabaster box of pure nard and brake it upon the Lord no one told her she had to do it she just did it as a response because she had taken a different yoke and then she gives this year this offering that is just inconceivable she takes the whole year salary and dumps it in the offering plate if you will she breaks it out on the Lord no one told her she had to do that she just did it why because she had taken the yoke of Jesus Christ and he who had given her his all for her she now desired to give all that she had she took his yoke there's no rest while our lives are filled with rules or rules based acceptance but there is a yoke and it's a yoke of relationship where we hear the voice of God and we're never going to hear the voice of God if we work constantly talking I was talking to somebody at the pool party yesterday and we were talking about this author that we're both reading and I go you know what struck me was I am so addicted to my own thinking everything's got a cut and I'm like what I mean there's just got to be a time when you shut that thing off there's a point where he says you know come take my yoke upon you and hear me and if you're not hearing the voice of God or you're not hearing the heartbeat of God beating love for you you're not hearing it he says I have rest for your souls my friends he goes come and take my yoke trust me and there's a purpose a definition for the yoke sometimes you would see a yoke sometimes you'll see in Asia now we don't do it but in America we used to have this you know you'd have two oxen or two horses and you would harness those together in a yoke so that you can harness the power and sometimes it's a single oxen and the purpose of the yoke was to bring the power of the animal under the control of the master to harness him now we're Americans and we're like don't be harness and me but do you see what he has for you he says if you're the master you're gonna live an unruly life and you're gonna get yourself in all kinds of trouble he said so well I'm gonna invite you to take my yoke so that you can have rest for your soul but there most definitely is a yoke a yoke that frees us from doing just what we do because we want to do it a yoke that says okay Lord here you have me I'm I'm yours I am NOT my own I'm in your harness now leave me because if we don't live with this yoke think of the furrows how unstraight they would be they'd be every direction if you followed our life what would it look like you know if you had the movie of Tim Eck know during the week you'd be like but when the Tim MacNeil lives under the yoke of Jesus now performing to be accepted but performing from him who is my life what is he says just it's a straight road you said make way make straight the way what is that that's coming under the yoke of Jesus he calls us to be a people who anticipate the baptism of the Spirit in our life being immersed into the Spirit of God I mean we sing these songs but I'm thinking what are we hearing what we're singing we're never gonna be death sprut for him like we sang as long as we have our yoke on he's saying I'm offering you take this yoke off and put my yoke on and then you'll find this cry in your heart that's old I'm desperate for you and if your heart doesn't cry out in desperation for the Lord you've probably got the wrong yoke if your life is burdened down and distracted from the person of Jesus Christ you've probably got the wrong yoke and it's not about me giving you a yoke it's you taking the yoke of Jesus Christ take my yoke if your life is full of disorder and hectic eases come take my yoke that our way may be straight that we might fully Express his life through us our church's mission our god-ordained mission is a liberation project to humanity because Bernie and San Antonio and comfort and Centerpoint and everywhere in between and the world that we live in he says is in bondage to all kinds of yokes and the gospel is good news it says listen I have a different yoke for you and that's what our mission in life really is all about friends is proclaiming the invitation to come unto me Jesus come to Jesus and take his yoke Christ our life is our yoke not a self-absorbed life but a christ-centered life Romans 12:1 and there's a beautiful verse I'd beseech you or I'm sorry I memorized it in King James I should read what I wrote on there I appeal to you therefore brothers by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice holy acceptable to God which is your spiritual worship your reasonable service do you see what he's saying he's saying listen you and I come and we submit ourselves to the yoke of Jesus Christ we place ourselves in his harness if you will we place ourselves under in submission to him who I said it in church the submission word because he knows what's best for me and I say Lord Here I myself to you I submit myself to you lead me guide me mold me what all the different things that we say is all about the yoke there's no spirit filled life without taking on his yoke it's a walk of union with him he says and learn from me for I am gentle and lowly in heart and you will find rest for your as long as you've got the wrong yoke you're never going to be at rest until you begin to hear the heartbeat of God for you you won't be at rest it's not a list of rules that you've got to do and things that you cannot do our soul never finds rest until we take upon us our yoke which freezes from a self-directed self-absorbed life it's a yoke of complete and utter dependence on him Jesus did not come to present another way he is the way he didn't come to teach us the truth he is the truth he didn't come to present a manual to live by he is is our life and when we submit ourselves to his yoke then we experience what we can never experience in any other way the the life of freedom the life of liberation the life being free from expectations is not a passive or rebellious life it's yielded to the life of Jesus Christ look at Philippians 1:6 he says and I am sure of this that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ this is the promise of God our sanctification is very real the moment we believe but we don't experience it all do we and he says this is God's promise to you take his yoke and I taught you and as I began teaching you I will never leave you and I will never forsake you and I will take you on this beautiful journey that was straightened out the the rose that will bring order to your life that will give you rest for your souls he goes the work I began I'm going to keep working for my yoke is easy and my burden is light for my yoke is easy and my burden is light what's your experience see I keep wondering Lord if we come to be fans we're just going to come to see what we can get and we're resisting and rejecting the yoke of Jesus Christ but when we come as follows we submit ourselves to his yoke and then we find out wow this yoke of my own expectations is killing me this thing is heavy he says but my burden is lying what God desires to do in and through you is not some horrible gruesome life it's far better than anything that you could conceive for yourself back in the early missionary days Vanessa and I would minister we lived in the town called Chang calm was a border crossing into Laos it was at the end of Thailand was the end of the lecture city line it was the end you it was the end of civilization as we knew it and we would go up and down the river the Mekong River sharing the gospel and I had this man a beautiful guy he he he blessed us with this truck and I got this six wheel truck and I made like a bus out of it had two benches down the knee and I go village to village up and down this road and I take people to meetings and we take people and share the gospel and so over the over time people would they'd see that truck come and they would like they'd get out there and say teacher can I have a ride and the kamut people would wear this basket that they would weave and they'd go into the to the fields usually in the hills and they would either you know they cut their rice or their corn or whatever they were growing and they filled their basket and they have a strap on their head and the strap held the basket on the head and that the basket would be back like a backpack so there was this old guy and I I saw him he waved me down I stopped and he jumped in the back of the truck and I was looking at you know you're bouncing down this jungle road you know and there he is sitting squatting like this with his backpack on and I started laughing I'm like uncle take your backpack off what are you doing he goes oh and I don't know how to translate this into English he says Grange is on Grange I and basically he was telling me because I don't want to burden you by taking this load off now we all laughter like what cuz if he's in the truck the trucks got the whole burden whether he's carrying it or not but you know I'm taking you somewhere right don't laugh at that jungle man 90 percent of you do the same thing you come to Jesus and you say Jesus saved me of all my sins and you strap a yoke and you fill up all of your obligations and all of the expectations and you carry it and you go through life and you're burdened down and life is hard and you go through life and I just I can't wait til I get to heaven and Jesus is saying listen if you're in me I've already got the whole thing will you take off the yoke of whatever it is you're carrying your expectations your spouse's expectations your kids expectations your works expect whatever it is that you whatever you think you gotta have and just place it down this morning and say Jesus I take your yoke because if you're wearied and burden you got the wrong yoke have you taken the yoke of Jesus this is God's promise for you it doesn't mean you're gonna have an answer for everything that comes into life it just means that you have Jesus as the answer for everything that comes into life are you experiencing rest of your soul I don't know if you know I you you want everybody I guess to have your own experiences but they can't you know in the same way but I for the first time in my life have been entering into where I feel rest not all the time still sometimes catch myself planning way too much but he wants to do a work in you so I want you to think Lord whose yoke am i carrying father we present ourselves to you take this yoke and I take on your yoke teach me mold me transform me that others might be transformed in Jesus name we pray amen

Channel: Faith Bible Church

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Length: 33min 20sec (2000 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 11 2015