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  COME, TAKE, LEARN
  by Bill McLeod
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Summary: Bill McLeod's sermon emphasizes the importance of coming to
Jesus, taking His yoke, and learning from Him to experience true rest
and transformation in faith.

Duration: 36:48 Topics: "Learn"
Scripture References: Matthew 11:20-30

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DESCRIPTION
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In this sermon, the pastor emphasizes the importance of humility in the
eyes of God. He mentions that even those with impressive degrees may not
have the knowledge or understanding of God. The pastor shares a story of
how a small group of ordinary people, led by a pastor and his wife,
started a church and grew it to 400 members in just one year through
their dedication to sharing the gospel. He encourages believers to
actively share the gospel and invites both sinners and Christians to
come to God. The pastor highlights the significance of the words 'Come,
Take, and Learn' in the context of preaching the gospel.

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CONTENT
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I'd like to read from Matthew chapter 11 if you have a Bible. Verse 20,
the Lord Jesus, then he began to upbraid, that means he began to
reproach the cities wherein most of his mighty works were done, because
they did not repent. Woe unto thee, Chorazin! Woe unto thee, Bethsaida!
For if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Tyre and
Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.

But I say unto you, it should be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at
the day of judgment than for you. And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted
unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell. For if the mighty works
which have been done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have
remained until this day.

But I say unto you, that it shall be more tolerable for the land of
Sodom in the day of judgment than for you. At that time Jesus answered
and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you
have hid these things from the wise and intelligent, and you have
revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in your
sight.

All things are delivered unto me of my Father, and no man knows the Son,
but the Father, and neither knows any man the Father save the Son, and
he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him. Come unto me, all you that
labor 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 you shall
find rest unto your souls, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

The 28th verse, the Lord Jesus Christ said, Come unto me, all you that
labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. And I wouldn't
doubt but what those words are found hanging in some homes and wall
texts. I've seen them all over the countryside, and it's always a
blessing to my soul.

But I do want to say this, that those words in Matthew 11.28 cannot
really be rightly understood apart from the context, and the context is
that portion of scripture that precedes and that follows. Remember that
old saying that a text that's taken out of its context then becomes a
pretext. You can make it say just about anything that you want.

Like I heard about a certain pastor at a Parliamentist church and that
the ladies were wearing a hairdo that he thought was very worldly, it
was called a topknot. And he ransacked the scriptures to try and find
some scripture that would give him something he could use to really
hammer the ladies about their topknot hairdo, and finally he found it.
And it was that verse where Jesus Christ said, Let him that is on the
housetop not come down.

He just took a topknot comedown. And you can do that with the word of
God. It's very important that we know what the context is.

And the context here goes back, I think, to the scripture we first read
a little while ago, where Jesus Christ began to reproach some of the
cities where he'd been doing his mighty works, his miracle-working power
had been wonderfully displayed in many areas of the land. And yet, like
it says in John 12, though he had done so many miracles before them, yet
they did not believe on him. Often people have said to me, Oh, if I
could only see a miracle, I would believe.

That's nonsense, because that's been tried. And you remember, after
Jesus Christ, he'd lived a miracle life, he had a miracle birth, why,
miracles dropped from his fingers by the thousands, and they had the
nerve to say, Show us a sign. And he said, A wicked and adulterous
generation seeks after a sign.

And there will be no sign given it but the sign of the prophet Jonah.
For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the fish,
so I'll be, he said, the son of man three days and three nights in the
heart of the earth. That man, Luke chapter 16, had found himself in a
lost eternity, and he begged that somebody might go from paradise to
talk to his five brothers who were still on earth, so that they would
repent.

And Abraham said, They have Moses, and the prophets, let them hear them.
And he said, No, father Abraham, if somebody went to them from the dead,
they will repent. But Jesus Christ went to them from the dead, and they
did not repent.

And the answer that Abraham gave was this, if they will not listen to
Moses and the prophets, they will not be persuaded the one rose from the
dead. There are those who tell us that the preaching of the gospel has
to be accompanied by the working of miracles, or it won't have any
power. The Bible says John the Baptist did no miracle, but I'll tell you
there was power attending his ministry.

He never wrought one solitary miracle. And while Jesus Christ did, we
see that the miracles did not persuade the majority of the people. They
saw them, and so here Jesus Christ, he pronounced a blow upon Chorazin
and Bethsaida, because he said, All these mighty works which their eyes
had seen, but they had not repented.

And also for Capernaum, a place noted for its pride, exalted to heaven,
he said, You'll be thrust down to hell. Oh, that was a prophetic
statement. To this very hour they do not know the exact location of
Capernaum.

They know where Bethsaida was, and where Chorazin was, and there's been
a lot of guessing as to where Capernaum actually stood, but they're not
sure because of what Jesus Christ said here, thrust down to hell because
of their pride. Now here's something interesting to notice. In the
hometown of Nazareth, Jesus Christ came there, ministered in word, and
then began to work some mighty miracles, and the people began to scoff
and to question, and they said, Well, his brothers are here, and his
sisters are here, and his father's a carpenter, and who is he? Where
does he think he comes from, that all these mighty works are coming from
his hands? And so Jesus Christ said, A prophet has no honor in his own
country and in his own house, and then it says he could there do no
mighty works because of their unbelief.

So Nazareth's problem was straight unbelief. That was not the problem in
Capernaum, nor was it the problem in Chorazin or Bethsaida. Apparently
they didn't doubt he could do it, and they didn't question him after he
did it, but they did not allow the miracles to speak to their hearts,
and they did not repent.

So in the long run they were just as bad and evil as Nazareth was. Peter
said in that great sermon of his on the day of Pentecost, Jesus of
Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and
signs which God did by him in the midst of you, as you yourselves also
know him being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of
God, you have taken and by wicked hands have crucified and slain. What
is your attitude to Jesus Christ? You know about his miracle working,
you know about his miracle birth, his miracle life, his death was a
miracle, his resurrection.

Have you repented? If you haven't, you're worse than Sodom. You are
worse than Tyre and Sidon, and it will be easier, the word of God says,
in the judgment day for the Sodomites than for the person that heard the
gospel and did not repent and did not believe. Don't ever forget it,
dear friend.

Sodom had a Bible. There's a sermon, Sodom had no Bible, and their guilt
was less. Our guilt is greatly aggravated by the fact that we live in a
gospel-enlightened country and we have Bibles in our homes and many
opportunities for hearing the gospel.

So when you listen to Jesus Christ pronouncing a woe upon Capernaum,
Chorazin, Bethsaida, my dear friend, remember if you're unconverted
tonight, that woe rests on your head also. Jesus Christ loves you, but
he loves you so much he's faithful to warn you. If anybody stumbles into
hell, they'll have to stumble over his cross to get there, because he
put the cross right in the way.

This thing was not done in a corner. The Bible says that. It was the
greatest event in the history of the earth.

Jesus Christ is the true light that lights every man that comes into the
world. His coming 1,900 years ago has affected the entire human race,
and even people that are not converted have been affected dramatically
by it, whether we understand it or not. There's a great book called This
Freedom Went by a man called Breedy, and all he did was research in the
area of reforms that have come among men in civilized nations like
Britain and the United States and Canada.

And he shows that practically every penal reform, reforms in prison,
school reform, the educational process, and reforms in other areas.
There was a time when children eight years old worked for 12, 14, 16
hours a day in factories. And in almost every last case, it was people
who had received Jesus Christ in their heart who brought these reforms
and who fought the men like Wilberforce and the Clanton sect, as are
known over there in Britain, godly men, who hammered away until these
reforms came in.

And Britain set the example for the rest of the world, but it began with
the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus has lightened every man's
lot, whether we know it and believe in him or not. Then the Lord Jesus
Christ, after saying this, he prayed, I thank you, O Father, Lord of
heaven and earth, that you have revealed these things unto babes, but
you have hidden them from the wise and the intelligent.

Some people know too much to know Jesus Christ as their personal Savior.
They are too wise to know Jesus Christ, who is the wisdom of God. In him
dwells all the fullness of the Godhead.

The Bible says this, and in Jesus Christ are hidden all the treasures of
wisdom and knowledge. The big words today are science and philosophy. In
the book of Proverbs we read this, that the fear of the Lord is the
beginning of knowledge.

That's science. And it says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of
wisdom. That's philosophy.

And the beginning of all true science and all true philosophy is Jesus
Christ, the fear of God. And so God has hidden these things from the
wise and the intelligent, and he has revealed them to people that are
babes, and whose hearts are tender. You remember in the book of James,
the writer says, My beloved brethren, has not God chosen the poor of
this world, rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which he has
promised to them that will love him? You know, some people are proud
because they have a degree after the name.

I was in a church and they said, Every man in the church but one had at
least one degree after his name. But you know something? They were a
humble church, thank God. Why, those men with all their degrees, they'd
come walking down the aisle and kneel at the front and get their lives
straightened out with God.

A psychiatrist, a man, came down the aisle one night, one morning while
they were in Nelter, Sunday morning, and got his life straightened out
with God. The chairman of the church who had so many degrees after his
name that he could hardly get them on a postcard, he gave his testimony
one Sunday morning and told the church how God Almighty had waken him at
three o'clock in the morning and smashed his heart. So it doesn't really
matter whether you have degrees after your name and a good education or
not.

Either way, it's the attitude of the heart of those people who are self-
wise and self-intelligent and proud about it. You know, there's an old
saying that in a kingdom of blind men, a one-eyed man is the king, and
in a kingdom of total ignoramus is a guy with a grade one education
while he's the king. And everybody is hanging on the intellectual tree
on some branch.

No matter how high you hang, there's somebody hanging higher than you.
And yet I think of a man who had a less, I think, than grade five
education, and he drove a caterpillar tractor with a big blade on front,
and it used to be nice just to watch that fellow swinging that machine
and cutting down a bank. Oh, that thing was just like an artist at work.

It was beautiful to watch. And I'll bet there were people with four
degrees after their name that wouldn't even know how to start the
starting motor on his machine. So each to his own.

Carpenters, plumbers, fishermen, and all the rest of it. But all be
humble, because God resists the proud and God gives grace to the humble.
And I'll tell you something, you can figure out equations, and you can
study philosophy and history and all the rest of it, and you can get a
lot of answers, but you can't study God that way, because God only
reveals himself to humble hearts.

And you might only have grade one education or less than that if your
heart is humble. God will talk to you, and God will reveal himself to
you. You can't discover God on your own.

It's he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him. Why, Jesus Christ said
this here in Matthew 11. No man knows the Son, he said, but the Father,
and no man knows the Father but the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son
will reveal him.

And unless Jesus Christ, the Son of God, reveals God to your heart, you
will never know him. You can never know him. And that's why your
attitude and mine to Jesus Christ must be right.

I must be humble. Canst thou by searching find out God? Can you find out
the Almighty unto perfection? It is as high as heaven. What canst thou
know deeper than hell? What canst thou do that measure their office
longer than the earth and broader than the sea? And anything I know
about God I'll have to find from Jesus Christ through the word of God,
as God speaks to my heart.

And so God is deliberately hiding these truths from the wise and the
intelligent and the proud and the great, and he's revealing them unto
babes. That's the introduction. Maybe I'm too proud to come to Christ.

Maybe I don't want to repent or turn away from my sins. Forsake them,
let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts,
and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him, and
to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. Repentance is a word that's
almost forgotten nowadays.

We tell people, Believe in Jesus Christ and you'll be saved. That's not
really true. You have to repent before you can believe.

When Jesus Christ began his public ministry in Mark chapter 1, what did
he say? He cried, Repent and believe! And you can't believe until you
repent. And he said the same thing to the leaders of his day, the
religious leaders. He said, John the Baptist came unto you in the way of
righteousness, and you did not believe him.

But, he said, the harlots and the publicans, the great sinners, they
believed him, and you, when you'd seen it afterward, did not repent that
you might believe. So you can't believe until you repent. Unless I'm
willing to forsake my sins with all my heart, I can't really believe on
the Lord Jesus Christ.

Jesus himself said, John 5.44, How can you believe who receive honor one
of another, and seek not the honor that comes from God only? That's the
problem. I'm so concerned as to what somebody else is going to say or
think or do if I become a Christian or take an open stand for God, that
we walk around like a mouse. Like the Mackenzie River in Northern
Canada, it was frozen at the mouth, and some Christians are, believe in
Jesus Christ in their heart, but they will not talk about him, because
they're afraid of what somebody else might say.

Somebody might throw a rock, somebody might lie about him, somebody
might say something unkind. We have to be prepared to run the risk.
Wherefore, Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own
blood, suffered outside the gate.

Let us go forth therefore unto him outside the camp, bearing his
reproach. For here we have no continuing, no lasting city, but we seek
one to come. All right.

All this brings us then to the text, where the Lord Jesus Christ said,
Come unto me, all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give
you rest. Is there any weight as great, as heavy, as the weight of sin?
Oh, there in Lamentations 1.14, it talks about the yoke of my
transgressions. And who can break that yoke but the Lord Jesus Christ.

The prophet Isaiah talked about this, and he said, the yoke shall be
destroyed because of the anointing, and Jesus Christ is the anointing,
he is the anointed one, he's the only one that can break that awful yoke
of sin, and the worst yoke of self, and set a sinner free. He said, You
come, and I will give you rest. I like that, I like that echo in the
last chapter, I think that's the proper place for it, in the last
chapter of the word of God.

It's a word you find scattered all through the Bible. It begins in
Genesis 3, when God calls, Adam, where are you? Adam, where are you? And
God's been calling ever since. Where are you hiding tonight? Where are
you hiding? God is calling.

And the message is, Come, and come as you are. Alright? Over there in
Isaiah chapter 55, it says, O everyone that thirsteth, come ye to the
waters. And he that hath no money, come ye, buy and eat.

Yea, come, buy wine and milk, without money and without price. Why do
you spend money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that
which doesn't satisfy? Now, we wouldn't do that in the natural. If you
went to a restaurant and got a bad meal, you'd probably never go back
again.

And if you had a job that didn't pay you enough to keep you going so you
could pay your bills, you aren't going to stay at that job. But in the
spiritual, people are doing it all the time. And so God says, Come,
come, come.

And then, in the last chapter of Revelation, it says, And the Spirit and
the bride say, Come, and let him that heareth say, Come, and let him
that is a thirst come, and whosoever will, let him take the water of
life freely. The Holy Spirit is crying, Come tonight. And the church of
God is crying, Come.

And people are giving personal testimonies and inviting sinners to come.
Yes. And inviting Christians to come to God in a new way also.

Because, you know, this text doesn't stand by itself. There's a context
that follows. What does it say? You see, there are three very important
words here.

The first one is Come, and the second one is Take, and the third one is
Learn. And many of us have stopped at the first one. We've come to
Christ, we've received forgiveness of sins, the Holy Spirit lives
within, we've got eternal life, and that's as far as it ever goes.

What about Take? What about Learn? When Jesus Christ said, Come unto me
all you that are laboring or heavy laden, and I will give you rest, he
went on to explain what he meant. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me,
for I am meek and lowly in heart, and you shall find rest unto your
souls, for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. So that I do not
find, and I cannot find, complete rest of soul, just by coming to
Christ.

After coming to Christ, I must take his yoke upon me, I must learn of
him, and then the promise becomes mine in a glorious way. You know,
oftentimes Christians say, Well, I accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as my
Savior, and oh, I was so happy, and things were so great for about six
months, and then brother, I started running up problems, and I've been
backing up ever since, the devil is pounding me, and I don't have that
joy I used to have, and I don't know what's happened to my life.
Alright, we come to Christ, we find salvation and forgiveness, and
that's the greatest experience in life, but if it is not followed by an
understanding of what it means to take the yoke of Jesus Christ on us,
and then to learn of the Lord Jesus Christ, it will not be long until we
begin falling into problems, and this will continue as it does in some
cases to the end of life, because sometimes when we know, we're still
not willing, so we come, and then we take his yoke upon us.

Now, the yoke of Jesus Christ is the cross, and somebody said, Jesus
always carries the heavy air, and he does. He will not lay upon man more
than is right, lest man should enter into judgment with God. There is no
temptation taking you, but such as is common to man.

But God is faithful who will, with a temptation also, make a way to
escape, that you may be able to bear it. Many are the afflictions of the
righteous, but the Lord delivers them out of them all. I had a tent camp
at Brittle, Manitoba, one time, you know, just a bunch of tents and so
on, and I was supposed to have some help, you know, helping put the
tents up, and the help never showed up, as often happens, even in
Christian circles.

It was a very hot day, and some of these tents, you know, you get one
pull up at this end, and then it'd tear down. By the time I got here,
this end was down, and my arms weren't long enough to reach both ends,
and I was sweating, and, you know, having little problems inside my
heart. Where were those guys? How come they didn't show up? And I was
really having a time.

And then I happened to hear a noise, and I looked up, I'd been totally
oblivious of anything, and here there was about 50, 60 cows that moved
in, and they had completely surrounded me, they were standing all
around. And they were watching me there, and they were chewing their
cuds, and I thought, what a perfect picture of the average church, one
person working and 60 cows chewing their cud. But the Lord Jesus Christ
said we have to take his yoke, and the yoke, remember, is the cross, and
don't forget, Jesus carries the heavy end, as we said just a moment or
two ago.

But here's something else that many of us have overlooked, I think, and
that is that taking a cross of Jesus Christ is associated with
proclaiming the gospel. He said, for my sake and the gospel's. He that
will lose his life for my sake and the gospel's, the same will save him.

So then, when I think in terms of myself being nailed to that cross by
faith, and dying to myself that I might live unto God, I am really
thinking in terms of sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ with other
people. And I must ever keep this in mind. You remember in Ephesians
chapter 6, it talks about the armor for the average Christian, you know,
so we can stand against the wilds, the power, and the wisdom of the
devil, and the fallen spirits that serve him.

Do you know what a part of the armor is this? Our feet shot, it says,
with a preparation of the gospel of peace. How beautiful are the feet of
those that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good
things. The Lord takes not pleasure in the legs of a man.

He's not looking at your legs, he's looking at your feet. He doesn't
care what kind of a shape your body has, what kind of a face you've got.
That's not important.

But your feet, to God they're beautiful. If you're tramping the
mountains trying to win a few people to Jesus, for a little while you
have here on earth. Oh my dear friend, if you know Jesus Christ as your
Savior, and you've never honestly tried to win other people to Jesus
Christ, you need to look at your Christian life.

Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me as
prisoner. I think of a pastor and his wife with twelve people from a
certain church. They decided that this particular city they were in
needed a new church, and so he met with these twelve people who had a
concern for soul winning in his church.

He said, you know, I feel God would have us start a church over here.
There's no evangelical work, it seems, for many, many blocks in that
area. Would you be with me? They said, Yes, Pastor.

So he resigned his church, and he and these twelve people began to soul
win. Now these twelve people were not professionals, I mean they had
jobs. But every spare minute they were out on the golf, no pardon me,
they weren't, they were out ringing doorbells.

At the end of one year they had four hundred people in their church.
When I read the story they had twelve thousand members in the church.
But it all began when fourteen ordinary people, a pastor and his wife
and twelve others, got concerned.

Feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace. There's no use
fooling ourselves about it. God expects it of every born again believer
that in some measure will be trying to share the gospel.

A lot of us do it, you know, by wholesale rather than by retail.
Wholesale is what's happening now. A preacher preaching from a pulpit.

But you know it goes better by retail. One person eyeball level talking
to another person saying the goods are great. Why don't you try them?
You can do it.

God could use any person in this building to win others to Jesus Christ
in his next twelve months if you would give yourself to this and let the
Holy Spirit work through you and in you. Isn't anybody here couldn't do
it? So they had, you know, in Akron, Ohio, our particular conference of
Baptist churches out west, we had a church that I guess was established
eighty-five years ago over there in Akron. And I was in that church
about ten years ago and they had a little, just a little house.

It would only hold about sixty-five, seventy people in a little chapel,
knocked out a couple of partitions, and yet they've been there for
eighty-five years. So thirty-five years ago, I guess the Lord got sick
and tired of our church and some other churches weren't doing anything.
And so he tapped Dallas Billington on the shoulder, a guy who worked in
a rubber factory in Akron, Ohio, a fellow with grade five education,
said, Dallas, I want you to start a Sunday school in the Reimer
Auditorium.

So he rented the Reimer Auditorium and started Sunday school. And they
had, I think it was fourteen or sixteen people, including the caretaker
and his wife, and the offering the first Sunday was a dollar and seventy
cents. And my dear people, on Sunday I was there not to preach, I was
solely a spectator.

There were five thousand people in the adult Bible class that Sunday
morning. They baptize over a thousand converts a year. They have five
pastors in the church.

And Charles Billington, who is now the senior pastor because his father
passed away about three years back, my wife and I talked with Charles
and said, what kind of a program do you have? He says, a Bible program.
I said, what do you reckon that's to be? He said, a lot of prayer and a
lot of talking about Jesus. You know, Saturday night, they had a men's
prayer meeting that started at eight o'clock and sometimes went to
twelve o'clock at night.

And he said, we often have, usually have at least five hundred men in
that prayer meeting. And he says it goes on and on. And he says, heaven
comes down, our soul to greet, and glory crowns the mercy seat.

And Sunday evening, before the evening service, they had five separate
prayer meetings going on in the church. They meant business for God. But
there was our little church sitting there for eighty-five years, never
got anything done.

I suppose they were telling people, you know, it's such a hard city. I
hear that every place I go. Almost every pastor, your pastor didn't.

Almost every pastor I've talked to in North America says, oh Brother
Bill, this is the hardest place in North America. I say, but everybody's
telling me that. All across the country I hear that.

It's not so. The fields, listen, dear people, the fields are always
white unto harvest. And he that reaps receives wages and gathers fruit
unto life eternal, that both he that sows and he that reaps may rejoice
together.

It's always harvest time, for the Holy Spirit is alive and the gospel is
the power of God and people can be one. If we'll go after them, feet
shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace. Jesus Christ said,
take my yoke upon you, and that has to do with soul winning.

Remember, dying to self for the gospel's sake. For my sake, Jesus said,
and the gospel. And then he says, and learn of me.

Wouldn't it be wonderful to go, to be able to go to a Bible school where
there were only twelve students and Jesus Christ was the teacher, and to
be there for three and a half years and see all those miracles, people
raised from the dead and the sick people healed, all this kind of thing,
and the marvelous teaching that Jesus Christ gave. Well, now people say,
you're referring to twelve apostles. Yes, I am.

But do you know something? You and I can be taught by Jesus Christ also,
because in Ephesians 4, 20 and 21, Paul is writing to the Christians at
Ephesus. Jesus was never at Ephesus, and yet he said, you have not so
learned Christ. If so, be you have heard him and have been taught by him
as the truth is in Jesus.

So the Christians at Ephesus had had Jesus Christ teaching them there.
How? By the Holy Spirit. Didn't our Savior say, it is expedient for you
that I go away, it is better that I leave, because if I don't go, then
the Holy Spirit will not come.

In other words, the Holy Spirit coming into the church is better for the
church than if Jesus Christ were here in the flesh. Because now every
believer can have Jesus Christ. You can be in a better Bible school than
the one I talked about.

You're the only student, and Jesus Christ is the teacher, and you have
personal attention every day. Learn of me, he said. Learn of me.

Learn what? Well, you know, some people are great doctrinal fighters.
They can tell you what they believe just about everything you know. I
remember seeing a cartoon one time that showed a hippie-type fellow, and
he had this big sign.

He was marching up and down the street, and the sign said, I'm against
practically everything. So the Christians at Ephesus had had Jesus
Christ teaching them there. How? By the Holy Spirit.

Didn't our Savior say, it is expedient for you that I go away, it is
better that I leave, because if I don't go, then the Holy Spirit will
not come. In other words, the Holy Spirit coming into the church is
better for the church than if Jesus Christ were here in the flesh.
Because now every believer can have Jesus Christ.

You can be in a Bible school than the one I talked about. You're the
only student, and Jesus Christ is the teacher, and you have personal
attention every day. Learn of me, he said.

Learn of me. Learn what? Well, you know, some people are great doctrinal
fighters. They can tell you what they believe just about everything you
know.

I remember seeing a cartoon one time that showed a hippie-type fellow,
and he had this big sign. He was marching up and down the street, and
the sign said, I'm against practically everything. And you know, some
Christians are like that.

I mean, well, they oppose this, and they oppose that, and there isn't
much that's positive in their life. There's not much joy. There's not
much peace.

And people look at them, and they want to run. We are to earnestly
contend for the faith, somebody said. That's in Jude.

But somebody added this, without being contentious. Ah, that's
different. With a spirit of love.

We've got to go a long way. It says in Proverbs about the virtuous woman
that in her mouth was a law of kindness. The law of kindness.

And we ought to be kind, tenderhearted. All right. Taught by Jesus.

What does he want us to learn? Learn of me, he said. Well, the next
sentence tells us. And learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart,
and you shall find rest unto your souls.

And that's what Jesus Christ wants us to learn. To become a person that
is meek, and a person that is lowly. Who is the man of the Old Testament
that God used in the most mighty way of all? Greater than Abraham.

Greater than Isaiah. Who was the man? Moses. And the Bible says he was
the meekest man on the face of the earth.

That's why God could use him. His brother Aaron was older than he, a
couple of years older. And Aaron was a great public speaker.

He could really wind out the words. Why God said that. God said, I know
your brother Aaron can speak well.

And if God said that, that's a pretty high recommendation. Why didn't
God choose Aaron instead of Moses? Oh, you'll find out why when the
people came to Aaron and said, we want to make us gods. If that hadn't
been Moses, he'd have taken a strong stand for God.

But Aaron didn't. He was weak and afraid of men. And he went along with
a crowd and things went crashing.

Why Moses, the Bible says he was of slow speech and of a slow tongue.
But he was meek and lowly in heart. And that's why he's the only person
in the Bible concerning whom it is written, like unto me, Jesus.

Deuteronomy 18, there are two verses there in which Moses declares that
God was going to raise up a prophet like him. Like Moses in what
respect? Meek and lowly in heart. He shall not strive nor cry, neither
shall any man hear his voice in the streets.

A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flanks shall he not
quench. Oh Jesus Christ won't put you right out. He's waiting to fan
that whatever is there into a flame and a fire.

He loves us so greatly, but there does come that time when we have to
totter off into eternity. And that's something that can't be altered.
All of us are caught in that river of time.

Oh, we wish we could back paddle, but you can't do it. Nobody's getting
younger. Nobody in this building is getting younger.

We're all getting older, closer, closer to our God in eternity. And
every one of us shall give account of himself to God. It says in Romans
chapter 14, we need to take that into account and be prepared.

Learn of me, said Jesus. Learn what? Meekness and lowliness. The Bible
says the meek will he guide in judgment, and the meek will he teach his
way.

Maybe I'm too proud. God can't teach me because I'm too proud for that.
But the meek God will guide, and the meek God will teach his way.

He will beautify the meek with salvation. Well, I can't even be saved
unless I'm meek. I've got to come down, down, down to be nothing.

So the Lord Jesus Christ can be everything in my heart. I am meek and
lowly in heart. We live in a world that says, brother, you got to go out
there and blow your own trumpet.

You got to be something. You got to declare yourself and stand up for
your rights and all this sort of thing. I got a letter from a fellow
when I was down in the Maritimes one time, and this fellow wrote me this
letter.

He told me how somebody in the church had wronged him, and boy, he was
standing up for his rights, and he was going to take it to the whole
church. Matter of fact, if the church wasn't going to do it, take some
disciplinary action, regard this other fellow, he was going to go right
up on the platform, and he was going to lay it out. And I could just see
the devil using that man to split a church, and I wrote him a pretty
warm letter.

I ended in a spirit of love. I said, my brother, you don't have any
rights. You don't have any rights at all.

And I just laid it on the line. If you belong to Jesus Christ and you
love Jesus Christ, you don't have any rights. Go to this brother and
make things right.

And he did. Matter of fact, it was a stormy night, and he got stuck in a
snowbank and had a lot of problems, but he went and he got there, got
all straightened out. Later on, he thanked me for the letter.

God doesn't want a bunch of proud people going around beating other
people over the head. Learn of me, I am meek and lowly in heart, and you
shall find rest unto your souls, for my yoke is easy and my burden is
light. One translation says my yoke is sweet.

One translation says my yoke is amiable. It's easy and it's sweet and
it's light. If you'll just walk with Jesus, yoked up with him, bearing
his cross, the devil tells you that's horrible.

Dying with Jesus, that's terrible. I know something a thousand times
worse, and that's allowing that awful yoke of sin and self to stay where
it is. God said, I was to them as they that take off the yoke.

And God wants to take off the yoke. He said, I taught Israel to go
taking them by the arms, but they knew not that I healed them. You know
when a child starts to walk and you take it by the hands and you
encourage it to come.

And the Lord said, that's what I did with Israel. I took her by the
hands, by the arms, teaching her to go. He's doing the same in your life
if you're a Christian believer tonight.

He's trying to teach us how to walk. Some of us are so slow learning.
Must be very disappointing to God that after being a 5, 10, 15 years, we
still can't walk a straight path for the glory of God.

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Audio: https://sermonindex1.b-cdn.net/18/SID18389.mp3
Source: https://sermonindex.net/speakers/bill-mcleod/come-take-learn/
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