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Sunday 9 April 2017

'REST FOR THE WEARY'

Rev. Brian Wilkie
By Rev. Brian Wilkie                                                                                    

Pastor of St. Andrew's Christian Community
Rockland, Ontario

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PODCAST LINK to CFRA broadcast - Sunday, April 9th, 2017:
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Broadcast Notes:

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Welcome to Good News In the Morning a program of words and music bringing a Christian message of hope and encouragement to those who are looking for intelligent meaningful and spirited approach to faith and to life.

This program is sponsored by Good News Christian Ministries PO Box 184 Rideau Ferry, Ontario K0G 1W0. I'm your host today, Brian Wilkie of St. Andrew's Christian church in Rockland. As always I want to start by thanking you our listeners. We are so grateful for your encouragement and support. In fact, your support is essential to continuing our broadcast.  And today I want to give a special call out to Wills Transfer Ltd, and especially the proprietor Terry Wills, who has sponsored this show and done so much for our program: indeed for Christian Ministries throughout the city. You too can support our show, as well as find materials to encourage and support you in your Christian walk. 

If you visit our website, GoodNewsChristianMinistries.ca, or GNCM.ca for short. Details for how you can support us and find our devotional materials can be found on that website.



Rest for the Weary
Today I should probably do a program about the approach to Easter because this will originally be broadcast on Palm Sunday. But I want to focus on what Christ has accomplished for us through this death and resurrection, and so it may seem a little bit tangental to Easter, but the scripture we're going to read is about the gift of rest that God has given us through his son Jesus Christ. And so the scripture is taken from Matthew 11:25-30;

25 At that time Jesus said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. 26 Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure.
27 “All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.
28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” [1]


[1] The Holy Bible: New International Version. (1984). (Mt 11:25–30). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.
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We're going to take a look at the rest that Jesus offers to his people. The rest that he's offering to you and to me, and we'll do that in a few moments. But in a nod to the Palm Sunday date, when Jesus entered Jerusalem peaceful and riding on a donkey, I'd like to have you listen with me to the song, sung by Steve Bell-Ride on King Jesus from his album Beyond The Shadow.

I always enjoy listening to Steve Bell's music and that song which mixes the triumph of his entry into Jerusalem and the paradoxical surrender that he's making of offering his life for the sake of his people. That beautiful hymn is sung so well by Steve Bell, I'm anticipating, as I record this, going to see Steve Bell at the Metropolitan Bible Church on March 25. But that will have passed by then. I'd like to encourage you to look for his music on line and so on, because there's a great witness to the glory of God in his music.
This scripture that I read today about Jesus offering rest to the weary, is given at a time when he's speaking to the Pharisee's who are having a lot of difficulty accepting his message. And Jesus notes that his disciples who may not be academically honored with degrees and years in rabbinical school, or seminary. He's delighted that his own disciples are getting this. Understanding why he's come and who he is. And so he praises God, his father, that God is revealing this to little children as he describes them. It's not that the wised learned are not liked by God, but so often when we think we know stuff, we're unwilling to learn new things, and God is revealing a new thing in Jesus Christ to these people who have a very strong religious tradition and believe they know exactly what it is that they have to do.

When he describes his invitation, Jesus describes it in a great contrast, to the kind of religion that people are used to. You see, he tells them that they can come to God for rest. Now, in the religions of the time, and in the circle of world religions, there are many different things that you expect from your relationship with God. You may expect that your god demands all kinds of sacrifices in order to be convinced to do something good in the world.

Many religions in the day of Jesus and in the generations before, people would practice all kinds of rituals to try and convince the gods to show them some favor and to bring rain on the land, or to bring them defense from their enemies, or to come against disease in their country. That they felt that the gods were basically opposed to them, but if you really gave enough sacrifices, if you sacrificed something valuable enough, then you could convince them to do something for you. That was the attitude that many people had towards gods in those days, and I must say I still see that attitude today. Where even Christians have an attitude that God must need some convincing in order to do good. It's a kind of sad attitude, because Jesus reveals a God who says “come to me if you're weary, and I'll give you rest.”

Not come to me if you're rich. Not come to me if you're really, really wise. Not come to me if you're willing to make a sacrifice of a thousand oxen, or rivers of precious oil. Especially not he says, if you're willing to sacrifice someone else for your own good. For many of the gods that Israel had, was lured towards in their day, were gods that required sacrifices of humans and of children. And God absolutely rejects that kind of an image of the God who created the universe and who rules all things. So, on the one hand God is not a god that has to be convinced to do good. But the Pharisee's that Jesus contended with and the religious mindset of his day was, that God would do good, if you're good enough.

God wants to do good, but he'll only do good for people that prove that they are really good themselves. And so people were carrying what Jesus described as heavy burdens. Heavy burdens of responsibilities and requirements that they just felt that they had to get everything right and all their ducks lined up or else God's blessing would pass them by. But Jesus now specifically addressed people who are weary of those burdens. Weary of carrying that weight and that uncertainty. Weary from not knowing whether they've been good enough to qualify for the blessing of God. And Jesus says come to me. Are you tired? Are you fed up with all this striving? Are you burdened? I'll give you rest.

It's incredible to me, that the God of the universe, the Lord God Almighty, would look upon us and say you look tired. How can I help you? And yet, that's what he does. I can't help but be reminded that in the opening pages of scripture, as God creates the universe and the story is told of six days of creation and through those six days God labors mightily. He creates light and distinguishes from darkness. He creates the stars and the planets. He creates the earth, the land and the sea and the sky. He sets the seasons and life comes into being and green plants, and ocean animals, and birds of the air, and the things that creep and crawl and run upon the earth. All these things are brought into being. And finally at the end of the six days he brings into being humanity. Male and female he creates them in his own image he creates them. And he brings them into being at the tail end of creation and then when they wake up after their first night, God says- take the day off. Have a rest. I'm going to take a break now. Have a rest with me. God's first command, if you will, to his creatures, his sons and daughters, was have a rest.

The scriptures highlight how important it is that we understand that God is a God who gives rest and peace to his people. I don't know how we manage to continually get mixed up and to see life as an endless marathon of desperate striving that is beyond our capability , but maybe, maybe, maybe we can do it just about good enough to get God's favor. NO. That's not the picture of the universe we have. Yes life is full of challenges but God is offering grace. And so we have this beautiful message about a God who is willing to give rest to his people.

And as we continue to think about this, let's let someone else remind us the grace of the God who is worthy of so much worship. This is going to be a song from Steven Curtis Chapman singing again a familiar hymn, At The Feet Of Jesus. And this is from his wonderful album, The Glorious Unfolding.

Here we are invited to bow at the feet of Jesus. We're invited to give our lives to him and as soon as we here those words we might start to get a bit of a hesitation and wonder is this the hook. Is this the price that we must pay?

Jesus in his invitation has said come to me all you who are weary and heavy burden, and I will give you rest. And then he says something that seems at odds with that. He says take my yoke upon yourselves and learn from me . Now we know what a yoke is. A yoke is what an ox or a horse wears in order to pull a plough or a cart. It enables their energy to be used to do work, and all of a sudden from the word rest we're suddenly brought to the word yoke and there seems to be a problem here. Something causes a bit of confusion. If you're going to bring us rest Lord Jesus, what is this yoke you're putting upon us?

Well, Jesus is actually making a huge contrast here. When he says take my yoke upon you, he's making an assumption here. And it's the right assumption . You're going to be wearing somebody's yoke. You're going to be yoked. You might be yoked by the expectations your parents put upon you. You might be yoked by financial necessity. Debts that you have to work off. You might be yoked by your own expectations, your own ambitions. And you're going to be driven by those things that yoke you.

Now he also knows that he's speaking to people who are under the yoke of a complex law of ritualized religion. And he's saying that there is a different yoke then the one which you're currently burdened with. This yoke, is the yoke of Jesus Christ. And here's the thing about yokes. You can only wear one, and that's the good news of putting Jesus' yoke on. If you are yoked to Jesus, then you can't be obligated to pull the ploughs of another. You can't be obligated to do the hard labor that is required by another employer or another lord. You have one Lord. Jesus Christ. And he immediately says after that we should take his yoke upon himself and learn from him. He says I am gentle and humble in heart.

Has that been your experience of the yokes you're bearing. That they're gentle. Even your own expectations, have they been kind to you or have they pushed you beyond what you're capable of or left feeling inadequate because you've tried to do things that you thought you should be able to do and you found yourselves falling short. Jesus' yoke is a different yoke. He says my yoke is easy and my burden is light. It's very similar when Jesus says take my yoke upon you to that initial moment of creation that I spoke about earlier. That God calls the people of earth into being and he says go forth and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, but first-take the day off. And he tells us, come to me for rest. Come under my yoke because I'm the one who will command rest upon you. I'm the one who will command blessing upon you. And if you're receiving my commands you're free the commands and demands of others. And so Jesus calls us into an attachment to him, into a relationship with him. Into a firm and fixed relationship with him, in which he promises us this rest.

Now what does that rest look like? I know both my messages from last week and this week come out of an experience at a prayer summit where I learned to look at myself and my own relationship to God in a fresh way. And I note that I'm in the same bind that I find the others in. That we play, but not necessarily find rest. We sleep but we don't find ourselves restored. We do the things that seem best and seem good for us, and yet we find the law of diminishing returns. That peace can be far from us.

Jesus is offering us a different yoke. A new rest. A rest which he himself is giving us what we need. In which he himself is leading us in the paths that actually lead to a restored soul. Not things that give promises that can't be fulfilled, but to a walk with Jesus that is in a relationship for those who have been weary and burdened, and are deeply in need of the peace that God gives.

When I look at Jesus' experience of his father, I see that he is one who in his human life has learned peace from his own father. For whenever the father speaks to Jesus, you hear a voice from heaven saying -this is my son whom I am well pleased. God's love for his son is one which communicates peace and satisfaction. In which a child who has a father like that can go to the father and know that however thy may feel they haven't done well that day, however they may feel about their kindergarten art work, or their stumbles and their bruises as they learn to run and play. They know that they will be received by a father who's pleased with them.

That is the relationship that Jesus offers to his people. The one that he learned from his father, the one that he passes on to us. Is this relationship of giving rest and peace to the weary and the burden. This relationship is offered to all people. Regardless of what yokes you've been wearing. What you've been committed too, or what you have done in the past, God is offering to take away those burdens and replace them with a life that is entirely different. That is free and light and easy. Not a life without effort or challenge, but a life with challenge and effort that is combined with peace. This is the offer that Jesus gives to us.

So let's turn our hearts to him in prayer;

Almighty Father, my your peace descend upon your people. Even upon those who have already accepted Jesus Christ as Lord, we know there are many of us who are having trouble finding the place of peace in our relationship with you. That we sometimes believe in our own expectations more than we believe in the grace that you offer to us. So help us Lord to rest in you. And to find the place where our rest is filled with grace towards others. Where our rest is not an impatient, demanding life but a rest which is able to give others that same peace. We pray that Jesus would complete the work that he has begun in his followers, and that work would begin in new people as they receive him as their Lord, and their savior. We pray all this in Jesus' name , Amen.

Once again I want to thank you listeners for your encouragement and support. We do thank you because you keep us on the air week by week. We want to encourage you to support our ministry financially. Did you know the good news ministries has only one major cost? The four hosts Brent Russett, George Sinclair, Juliet Schimpf and myself are volunteers. So are the people who manage our website, organize our events and operate our board. Your gift can help us to continue to meet that one vital expense, the cost of broadcasting, which enables us to reach you and over 7000 listeners in the Ottawa River Valley.

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Be sure to worship in a church where the gospel is soundly proclaimed and lived out with compassion, integrity and resolve.

And now to conclude our program, I'd love to have you listen with me to a song by Terry Clarke, All Hail King Jesus, and this is a song just praising him for his glory and his love.


I do pray that the Lord will hold your heart and you would know Jesus personally and profoundly. May the Holy Spirit reside deep within your heart, may the heavenly Father surround you with his constant and abiding and accompanying love.

Good News In The Morning is produced in the Studios of News Talk




Rev. Brian Wilkie
St. Andrew's Christian Community, Rockland, Ontario
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To listen to the above broadcast, click on the following link:

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