Matthew 11:28-30 ESV
“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 light.”
Laboring and Heavy Laden
There are many ways in which we can labor and be heavy
laden. One of them can be an obvious reference to physical labor. We work hard
physically and we get tired, sometimes to the point of physical exhaustion, and
so our bodies need physical rest. And sometimes when we work hard physically
our muscles get tight and it is hard for our bodies to rest until our muscles
have time to relax. Or our muscles may have aches and pains and so we can’t
rest due to the pain. And the older we get, the worse it gets.
Another way we can labor and be heavy laden is emotionally.
This could be via lack of trust in the Lord and via worrying, or it may be we
are weeping over the sins of the world and over those who are lost in their sins
and over the rebellious and the unrepentant who are stubborn and hardheaded and
who think they can go on in their habitual sin without true repentance and
absent walks of obedience to the Lord. For it should grieve us that so many
people professing faith in Christ don’t have true biblical faith in him.
And yet another way we can labor and be heavy laden is via
Christian ministry and persecution and opposition. When Satan fights against
us, and he uses other humans to oppose us and to come against us, it can be
wearing on us. Especially if we have consistent opposition from the same
enemies who keep coming against us in many of the same ways, and this goes on
for years and years without relief, it can wear us down to the point of
exhaustion and even to tears. Paul expressed this:
“For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead” (2 Corinthians 1:8-9)
Trials and Tribulations
Something else which can cause us to have to labor and which
may bring us to the point of being heavy laden are trials and tribulations
which come into our lives to test our faith and to mature us in our walks of
faith and to teach us perseverance and to rely on God and not on ourselves. We
learn, if we are willing, to trust the Lord with all the circumstances of our
lives, even the difficult ones which come into our lives, even the recurring
ones that seem to never end and to never go away. I think those are the
hardest.
Right now my husband and I are experiencing some trying
times, although minor by comparison to what many people are suffering
throughout the world. For the past month we have had our water cut off to our
apartment 4 times (once a week for 4 weeks), but the 4th week was
due to a flooding of our apartment from a burst pipe in the attic above the
apartment above us. So the apartment above us was flooded and then the water came
down and flooded us and then flooded the apartment below us.
Now the apartment management has hired a contract company to
come in and tear out the sheet rock that is wet and they will replace it with
new sheet rock and then they will have to paint, so this is a 3-day process,
and in this process our apartment is in total disarray and our lives are being
disturbed and we are not able to function as we normally would, and so we are
also not getting adequate rest, and we are exhausted from all the labor we are
having to do in this process, as well.
Receive His Yoke, Learn from Him
And then there are people who labor and are heavy laden
because they are not in relationship with Jesus Christ, although some will
profess that they are, but they are still the ones driving their own lives and
charting their own course and choosing what they want to do regardless of what
God has planned for their lives. And some of them claim to be trying to be free
from addiction to sin, but they are trying in their own strength and that is
not working because their hearts are not really committed to change.
So, the solution in all of these situations is to come to
the Lord, to take his yoke upon us, to learn from him, and he will give us
rest. Now this is no guarantee of physical rest or of rest from persecution and
trials and tribulations, etc., for the Scriptures teach us that we will have
hardships and trials and persecutions to try our faith and to teach us
perseverance and to bring us to maturity in our walks of faith in Christ. And
trials oftentimes involve extra physical labor and lack of rest.
But if we take his yoke upon us and we learn from him, he
will give us rest for our souls and he will give us peace of mind and heart. So
what is his yoke we are to take upon us? It is a partnership (a cooperation, a
joining together) with Jesus Christ and with his gospel, but it involves him carrying
the weight of it and us resting in him. But it means we are yoked together with
him and now we are living under his direction and control. He is now Lord and
Master and we now work for him and not for ourselves.
But there is peace in this relationship because God has it
all under control. He has it all worked out way in advance. We can be totally
at peace within even if everything around us looks like our apartment looks
right now, which looks like a war zone. And I am a person who does not naturally
do well in clutter or closed in spaces, and I like things neat and tidy, but
neat and tidy is not what we have right now. But I am at peace. I am really
okay with it. I am tired, but I am resting in the Lord and in his strength.
So, what’s the bottom line here? It is that whatever we are
going through, if we are true followers of Christ, we can trust him to work it
all out for our good. We just have to take his yoke upon us and learn from him
and then follow his lead. We must die daily with him to sin and live daily to
him and to his righteousness and trust him in every situation he brings into
our lives. And if you have not done that, I pray you will give your life to
Christ today and that you will surrender all to him and come under his yoke.
[Matt 5:10-16; Matt 10:16-25;
Matt 24:9-14; Matt 28:18-20; Lu 6:22-23; Lu 9:23-26; Lu
21:12-19; John 15:1-21; Jn 16:33; Acts 1:8; Acts 14:22; Acts 26:18; Rom 5:3-5; Rom 6:1-23; Rom 12:1-8; 1 Co 12:1-31; 2 Co 1:3-11;
Eph 4:1-16; Eph 5:17-27; Phil 3:7-11; Col 3:16; 1 Thess 3:1-5; Jas 1:2-4; Heb
3:13; Heb 12:3-12; 1 Pet 1:6-7; 1 Pet 2:9; 1 Pet 4:12-17]
Hide Me, Rock of Ages
Brantley C. George,
1946
Oh Thou blessed rock of ages
Trusting now dear Lord in Thee
Keep me till my journey's ended
Till Thy blessed face I see
Keep me when the storm clouds gather;
‘Til the sun comes shining through;
Keep me ‘til my work is over;
‘Til I bid this world adieu.
Hide me oh blessed rock of ages
'Til Thy blessed face I see
When the storm around me rages
Rock of ages hide Thou me
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRKU-D5k21w
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