Jesus 1975

I counsel you, says Jesus, that we become indeed like them. Matthew 11, 28. Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me. For I am meek and lowly of heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

There was this man who somehow managed to fall in love with a woman worth thirty million dollars. At the wedding, all his friends had a smile to each other, you know. True love, they said to each other in snickers as their friend drove off on his honeymoon.

Six months later, the bride's fortune was completely wiped out. There wasn't an acre of land or a sock or a dime left. And to the amazement of his cynical friends, this man's love for this woman just increased.

Best thing that ever happened, he said to his wife. Now you can know for sure that it's you I love and not your money. But the friends were caught still cynical.

After all, they said, she is a beauty. In the second year of their marriage, there was an accident. The car rolled down a bank and caught fire.

And after eight weeks in the hospital, his wife came out and all her ravishing beauty was gone for good. And yet every evening when her husband came home from work, his face just glowed with joy. It set his eyes once more on the treasure of his life.

So finally, his old friends just couldn't figure this out. And they had to corner him one day and say, man, you've changed. You just aren't like you used to be.

And he answered, that's right. When I first married her, I really didn't know whether it was her money or the woman that I loved. But the more I got to know her, the less money meant to me or anything else that I ever thought she might be able to do for me.

It's she I love. She herself I just love. When we first came to Jesus, it's not one of us who came to him because of our great love for him.

We were driven to him by some need. At that point, Jesus was really nothing more for us than a means to an end. It was, Lord, heal me.

Lord, I just can't stand to live with this sin. Deliver me, Lord, from this guilt. Get me out of this prison.

And he answered the cry of our heart. And should there be in this gathering right now anybody who still hasn't experienced that, and you have a need today, I don't care how impossible it may seem, there's no better way for you to come to know God's love for you in his son than to take that need, whatever it is, and bring it to Jesus. Lord, heal my child.

Cure my mind. Deliver me from this chain. And he will do for you more than you could dare ask or think.

But these healings, these answered prayers, these outpourings of God's grace through Jesus are only signs, little tiny samples of the joy, the unspeakable joy that you will experience when you come to the goal of your journey. And the goal is to know Jesus himself, just to know him. Now, the question we need to be asking ourselves today is not, have I ever seen a miracle? Have all my prayers been answered? But rather, is Jesus real to me? Do I know him? Is he, in fact, guiding me, teaching me, directing the steps of my feet? If a man loves me, he will keep my words, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.

And when the Father and the Son come and make their home with anybody, do you think this is a matter of unconscious, unaware? You know, a presence that I don't even know is there? I will not leave you desolate. I will come to you. And when he comes to us, are we going to have to guess about that? I no longer call you servants, for a servant doesn't know what his master is doing.

I have called you friends. And if Jesus calls us friends, what kind of friendship is this going to be? Is this friendship with Jesus to be relegated to the sphere of fantasy? The only possible reason for anybody getting caught up with the gifts and the signs that Jesus brings, and losing sight of the giver himself, Jesus, is because this person simply doesn't know Jesus, and has no conception of the glory and the wonder and the joy and the sheer pleasure that come to those who walk with him and talk with him. And so today we come back to that invitation that we've heard a thousand times, and may God give us the grace to put everything else out of our minds and just answer this invitation.

Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden. Come to me, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and lowly of heart, and you shall find rest for your souls.

First of all, come to me. Don't come to my blessings. Don't come to some experience you think I might give you.

Don't come looking for visions and revelations. Just come to me. There are not many things in this world anymore that are simple, if there ever were.

But there is one thing that is simple. In fact, it's easy. Anybody who wants to can do it, and this is to answer his call to come to him.

All we have to do is take that one step in front of us, and immediately the Spirit of God is there to guide all the other steps that we need to take. Now, it may mean that I'm going to have to swallow my pride and give it up and fall on my face in repentance. It may mean that I'm going to have to cry out for forgiveness for the way in which I've spurred his grace again and again.

It may mean that I'm going to call upon his mercy for the way in which I've refused for years to forgive somebody else. It may mean a change in my plans. But if I want to come to Jesus and really walk with him and know him, I can do it.

Anybody can do it. And it doesn't take six months or five years in some kind of Bible college to do it. All I have to do is take that one step and all the other steps God will guide me on.

Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden. The problem with many of us is that we're laboring something awful, trying still to work off our guilt, even though we know all the theory about the Lamb's blood and we preach it to other people. And yet half our energy is expended trying to work off a troubled conscience.

We get ourselves in the most impossible situations. We take on 50 times more than we can really handle. And the reason we do this is because we're in a subtle way trying to work off our guilt.

And so Jesus says to us, look, leave that and come to me. Guilt and all. Don't try to work your guilt off before you get to me.

Come to me with your guilt. And others of us are heavy laden with our own egos. And we're still obsessed with this idea that we somehow have to be a success before we die.

We have to make our dent. We have to prove our point to somebody. And Jesus says to us, leave that futility, that garbage, and just come to me.

Take my yoke upon you. In other words, when you come to me, he says, we're not going to just sit around and talk, but we're going to work together. If you want to get to know somebody, work with them.

If you want to find a fellowship of believers who really know each other, look for a fellowship of believers who know how to work together. And if you want to get to know Jesus in the power of his resurrection, in the fellowship of his sufferings and become like him in his death, work with him. Here's my yoke, he says.

Here's work that I want to do together with you. I want you to commit yourself to it. Simple, concrete, down-to-earth things, writing those letters, going to see those people, spending time with that troubled saint, picking up those children week after week after week, taking that lady for her groceries.

You wonder how that woman, who's only known Jesus for three years, knows so much about him. The answer is that she, for three years, has been under the yoke with him. And every day anew, he reveals himself afresh to her because she's working with him.

And so he holds out a yoke to us. And it's not something vague, it's something specific, it's down-to-earth, it's within our reach, and if we want to, we can take it on and get underneath it, and immediately everything begins to change. And nobody ever gets to know Jesus until he gets under Jesus' yoke.

Then he says, learn from me. If I spend a lot of time around a man who has a critical spirit, it becomes easy for me to pick up that critical spirit, especially if you have one already. And if I spend a lot of time, maybe I'm a slob, but now I'm spending a lot of time with people who are aggressive, and in no time I begin to learn to be aggressive.

And if I walk and talk with God the Son, not with some white metal image of Jesus, but Jesus himself, if I walk and talk with him, I become like him. And the sure sign of a man or woman who has been indeed walking under the yoke with Jesus is that that person has now been delivered from a sense of his own importance. He's learning now to be meek.

She's learning to be lowly. They're satisfied at last to be children learning from their teacher, pupils glad to simply learn from him who is meek and lowly of heart, and in learning this, they're finding rest for their souls. In the book of John, chapter 6, we see this place where the vast majority of Jesus' disciples draw back and no longer walk with him.

This gives evidence that they never really were following Jesus, they were following the goodies. So immediately, when Jesus throws in a few hard words and mixes them with the goodies, words about eating his flesh and drinking his blood, they split. Then Jesus turns to the twelve, and he says, Do you also want to go away? And Peter answers, Lord, to whom shall we go? You know, why should we be chasing the goodies? And why should we be offended by your truth? You have the words of eternal life.

We have believed and have come to know that you are the Holy One of God. All we want is you. God, bring us to that place.

For many of us have really been like the man who fell in love with a woman's money instead of with the woman. We've been taken up with the signs and the gifts and the manifestations of power and have lost sight of Jesus himself. Some of us are taken up with our ministries and have lost sight of Jesus himself.

And we think our hearts are rooted and grounded in Jesus, but let some rough days come. Let's have a string of really bold days. You know, let things start going wrong and people misunderstanding us and giving us a hard time.

And then let the goodies be taken away from us, and immediately we're in despair. Every gift that comes from God's hand is but a sign to bring us to Jesus. He is the gift.

Even the blessed Holy Spirit comes to us for no other reason than to open our eyes so that we can see Jesus and our mouths so that we can speak forth his word. May God help us this day to turn away from experiences and blessings and plans and schemes and wishes and dreams and thrills and to just see Jesus. Who is our Lord and our God and our life.

Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden. I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me.

For I am me and Lord of hearts. And you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

Let's pray. Lord God, we pray that by the power of your Holy Spirit you'll help us all to get the clutter out of our minds and to throw away, Lord God, those things that have distracted us and got us confused and to come back on center and to revolve around him who alone is meant to be the center. Oh God, your son Jesus and him crucified.

Open our eyes that we may see him afresh this day and our ears that we may be aware of the things that he's telling us. We ask the Father in his name. Amen.