Church: Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia | Text: Matthew 11:28-30 | Date: February 23, 2020 | Speaker: Fred Zaspel

This morning, it’s been a blessing to be here already. That last song written by Robert Robinson—he’s the author also of Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing—is rich with biblical expressions, biblical imagery. Psalm 148 got two showings this morning. Psalm 148 was what Pastor Greg read, and we also sang it in one of the songs. And who said a light touch of jazz can’t come in the Reformed Baptist Church? There it was during the offertory.

The experts, church experts, always say not to mention by name visitors who are here, and I know they’re right, but we have a special guest this morning, and I’ve just got to mention them. Court and Kate Hill are here with us this morning. We had a wonderful time yesterday morning reacquainting, and after some few years we haven’t seen each other. I think the last time was a few years ago. She asked me to come and teach a ladies’ Bible study at their house, and I think before that Court took a seminary course or two that I was teaching at Calvary Seminary. But anyway, we have some good history. It was great to catch up and it’s just wonderful to have you guys with us here today.

Matthew chapter 11. Matthew chapter 11. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, Dan Fawcett asked, after Pastor Boyd had preached a series of a few messages on the Great Commission in Matthew 28, he asked that we follow it up with a message on “What is a disciple?” Just what is a disciple? I mentioned that request to Pastor Boyd, and as I told you, with his usual pontifical tone, he said, “That’s a good idea, you do that.” And so I have been assigned with that.

But actually, it’s been a pleasure, and I decided what I wanted to do was look at the subject starting with verses 28 to 30 of Matthew chapter 11. But I really didn’t want to deal with those verses until we’d dealt with them in their context. And then I didn’t want to deal with that until its larger context. So I settled for Matthew chapter 11. And we’ve been working our way through that. And we have looked at some profound truths that are taught for us here by our Lord. And now today, it comes to very practical application in these last verses, and we take up the subject, what is a disciple?

Let’s read beginning with verse 25:

At that time, Jesus declared, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him. 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.”

Let’s bow together for prayer. Our Father, we are grateful for this wonderful passage of scripture that we’ve been examining together this month. Such profound truths, such exalted themes, and we have come away from it with our hearts refreshed with big thoughts of God, great thoughts of our Savior, humbling thoughts of your sovereign grace, and thrilling thoughts with regard, as we saw last time, to the generous and free invitation that you give us to come to Jesus and find rest. And now today, as we explore that further, what it is to come to Jesus, we pray that you would open our hearts and our minds again to see it. We pray that you’ll enliven in our hearts a desire to be what a disciple is called to be. For your glory, we pray in Jesus’ name, amen.

We began in the early part of the chapter and saw the subject of true greatness, where Jesus compares the greatness of John the Baptist to the greatness of the least in the kingdom of heaven. And he shows that we who are on this side of the cross and empty tomb are greater even than John the Baptist, who in turn was the greatest man ever born to that point. And we saw that the thinking of all of that turns on the consideration of who bore clear witness to Jesus. John the Baptist was the greatest of all who came before him because, unlike all the others, he did not say Jesus is coming; he pointed to Jesus and says, “He’s here.” It was the clarity of his witness that made him the greatest ever. And yet, Jesus says, the least in the kingdom of heaven can bear even clearer witness to Jesus than John the Baptist did, and hence we, on this side of it, are even greater. But in all of that, we see that the essence of what discipleship is, is bearing witness to Jesus.

Now caught up in all of that is Jesus’ own assumptions regarding his greatness because all true greatness turns on our relation to Jesus and bearing witness to him. But still it is our greatness and the essence of our responsibility then to bear witness to Jesus. This revelation from God that came in Jesus was not unanimously accepted; it was opposed, and Jesus begins in the next section to condemn those of the towns of Galilee who heard Jesus and saw his miracles and yet did not repent. And he gives that strange, solemn warning that because you have been so privileged to hear me, you’ll be worse off in judgment even than Sodom and Gomorrah, which is a striking and a startling kind of thing, but Jesus says that is a result of the privilege that you have had.

Now in saying that, that Sodom and Gomorrah would have repented, we brought up the question then: If God knew that giving Sodom and Gomorrah that kind of revelation they would have repented, why didn’t he give it to them? And Jesus takes up that question beginning in verse 25 and we see that Jesus’ answer was God was pleased to hide it from them and to reveal it to others. And there we’re caught up in the mysteries of divine sovereignty and divine providence, and God does what he wants. He is under obligation to no one to give saving revelation because all are equally condemned.

But in the midst of that, then, we see that Jesus makes this striking claim about himself, that he is such an exalted being—this is what we saw last week—that only the Father can know him. And in fact, no one can know the Father except the Son. We saw these exalted claims of Jesus that the Father and the Son share equally in the divine being and the divine knowledge. And because Jesus then is this exalted being, he shares in the will of God, and no one can know the Father—he knows the Father on equal ground. No one can know the Father at all, except the Son reveal him, except the Son chooses to reveal him to you.

And so we have Jesus here uniquely equipped, and in the flow of the narrative of Matthew that brings us to the end with a description of the cross and his death for sin and so on. But here we have Jesus then uniquely equipped to give saving revelation. And it’s in that context now that we saw last time, verse 28, his offer, free offer: “Come to me,” because he is uniquely equipped to give saving revelation of God, “come to me and I will give you rest.” And we saw that marvelous description of salvation—rest. Rest from guilt. Rest from alienation and estrangement. Rest from that constant pressure to try to do well enough to be accepted of God, wondering always if you’ve done well enough. Rest. And the connotations of peace and freedom, and we have that with God when we come to Jesus for it, because he is uniquely equipped to give it.

And see how it tells us then that all of that is given to us. “I will give you rest.” It’s given freely. There’s no works associated with it. There’s no pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. There’s no throwing you back on your own merit, your own abilities. But he gives it. In the work and the person of Jesus Christ we have for us everything that God requires of us. And that then, verse 28, becomes in turn the testimony of every Christian, every one of us. We may not think to put it in exactly these terms, but every one of us who has come to Christ recognizes immediately when we hear this word rest, that’s what we got. We came to Christ and everything was at rest now. No longer the smiting conscience, the struggle with guilt, no longer trying to perform to make ourselves good enough for God, but we’re at rest and at peace with God. And that then in turn becomes the essence of our witness when we speak to our friends and family who are lost. We want to tell them just what Jesus says here, that salvation is free. Jesus has done the work. We can come to him, and coming to him we find rest.

Well, all of that then catches us up from earlier in the month, and now we come to verses 28 and 29 again. And I want you to notice that the invitation that Jesus gives is actually a double command. “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.”

“Take my yoke on you.” We live in the modern age. We’re not as closely familiar with it, but you’ve seen the pictures. You know what it was like in that day. You know what a yoke was. It was a wooden harness around—you can see it around a work animal, an ox or a donkey—and with the leather straps to pull and to guide the animal where you wanted to go. It’s obviously here a metaphor for discipleship. “Take my yoke,” and he explains what that means in the next phrase, “take my yoke upon you and learn from me.” I’m your teacher now. Come to me. I’ll give you rest. Take my yoke on you and learn from me.

Now if you’re familiar with the Gospels, even a little, it’s impossible not to read this and not think of, in contrast, the heavy burdens that Jesus said the Pharisees put upon people. It was a heavy yoke that was impossible for them to bear. All of these endless demands of “do this, do that,” endless laws and requirements, all in efforts—as Jesus and later Paul condemned them—for trying to establish their own standing before God. And in fact, that’s the essence of all false religion. At the end of it, whatever else they do, they throw you back on your own arm and tell you what to do that you may find peace, that you may establish it. And Jesus is arguing against all of that here, and he says, instead of that yoke of endless performance, “Take my yoke on you. Come to me, find rest, throw off that old yoke that burdened you so, and instead, take my yoke on you.”

So there’s an exchange of yokes. To be a disciple of Jesus is to be yoked to Jesus. It is to follow him, and it is to submit to his lead. Now notice in this that Jesus is not, when he adds, “take my yoke upon you,” he’s not reversing the offer of “come to me and I’ll give you rest.” Oh wait a minute, there’s an extra requirement I have of you and you gotta earn it this way? That’s obviously not what he is saying. He is simply expressing here the demands of all who come to him for rest. That when we come to him for rest, we come to him as a disciple and he saves us, but he very certainly saves us for himself. And that’s what we’ll explore then for the rest of the message. So judging from this passage and maybe some more, we’ll look at what are the responsibilities of discipleship or what is a disciple of Jesus? What does it mean to be a disciple?

Learning From Christ

Number one, and it’s obvious here right on the surface of the text in verse 28, verse 29, learning from Christ. “Take my yoke on you and learn from me.” The first responsibility of a disciple is to be a learner, a learning from Christ. In fact, the word disciple means a learner. Both the Greek word here and the Latin word from which we get our word disciple, discipulus, means a learner. It’s from a verb that means to learn. So we are learners. That’s what a disciple is, first of all. Now, it’s not just that. We’re going to move on in a minute. But at the very first, we see that a disciple is one who learns from Christ.

And that is portrayed for us all through the Gospels. We see the disciples sitting at the feet of Jesus. We see the broader community of disciples sitting and listening to Jesus. We find it at the Sermon on the Mount where they come to listen to Jesus and learn from him and to be taught. We find a wonderful illustration of this, I think, in Luke chapter 10, where Mary and Martha—in that famous incident where Jesus is at their home—sit at his feet and learn from him. And you got this picture of not only just learning from Jesus in an academic sense, but an adoring kind of learning with Mary, where she listens and just laps it up and drinks it in and just loves to learn from Jesus, waiting for every next word that comes out of his mouth.

And then we come to the book of Acts and we find the very same thing. And in fact, one of the chief marks of the church in the book of Acts that we find is that they come together, they gather together to continue in the apostles’ word and teaching. All the time they come together and they come together for teaching and they come together for preaching and it’s just like we do still today all these centuries later, the mark of the church. We come together and what do we want to do? We want to hear the word of God opened and be taught and we want to learn some more and we want to learn some more.

One of the most frequent criticisms that I hear from people in other churches—and I’ve heard some early this week, just this week from others—and it’s a complaint sometimes given in a snide way, sometimes just in a disappointing tone: “We never learn anything. We go and we go and we never hear anything. And there’s lots of talk and lots of talk, but there’s nothing being taught.” Well, this is one of the privileges of discipleship, and we love it as disciples, and that is to be taught by Jesus.

And one of the reasons it’s such a happy thing is the privilege of it. We find an example of that, but we won’t take time, but over a couple of pages in Matthew chapter 13, the disciples ask Jesus, “Why do you speak to us in parables?” And Jesus’ answer—you remember it? “Because to you, to you it’s given to know the mysteries of the kingdom. I tell these parables and in a way they mask the truth from the unbeliever, but I give them to you so that you can know.” And then he sits them down and he explains the parables to them. And here we have this privileged session where the disciples get to hear from Jesus and learn and learn more from him. It’s a privileged thing.

And it’s a joyful kind of thing. It’s the kind of thing we learn, and we rejoice, and we revel in the things that we’ve learned. And I think we’ve all been there many times, whether in a public meeting like this, or in a Sunday school class, or a small group session, or in your own Bible study individually. You have the scriptures open, and suddenly you see it, and you get it, and your heart jumps, and you think, “Oh, I just love this.” And one of the reasons, and I guess suppose the chief reason that this is an exciting thing, is because by learning from Jesus, we have a growing acquaintance with him. It’s not just that we’ve learned what he had to say, but a relationship develops. Haven’t we all experienced that as we learn the word? We find ourselves in a communion with God, a communion with Christ, learning from him—now I know him better.

We find an example of that in, I guess, a page over, Matthew chapter 12. It’s a wonderful scene. Let’s take time to look at it. Chapter 12, verses 46 and following:

While he was still speaking to the people, behold, his mother and his brothers stood outside asking to speak to him. But he replied to the man who told him, “Who is my mother and who are my brothers?” And stretching out his hand toward the disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”

This is a family fellowship. And this is Jesus’ view of it as well, that learning from Jesus is a privilege. And in fact, it is a happy occasion for Jesus himself. We have a marvelous example of that—we won’t take time to turn to it, but you might want to mark it down—Hebrews chapter two, a marvelous example of this where Jesus quotes the Old Testament and says, “Here I am and the children you have given me.” It pictures Jesus as standing in the congregation as the congregation meets together and he says, “I will declare your name to my brethren.” So here’s Jesus in the congregation situating himself as the worship leader. “I’ll declare your name to my brethren.” Well, haven’t we experienced that? Isn’t that the joy of what we call going to church? We go to church, the scriptures are expounded, and you start learning, and suddenly you realize there’s somebody besides the preacher preaching. And as Christ himself ministers to his people and teaches them, it is an exciting and a privileged thing.

Clearly now, back to Matthew 11:29, Jesus has in mind here much more than just learning in an academic sense. It’s not just learning in a theoretical sense.

Obeying

Second mark of discipleship, obeying. “Take my yoke on you and learn from me.” The yoke is for the purpose of guiding—guiding the way we think, guiding the way we speak, guiding the way we live. Well, that’s not unique here either. You remember in the Great Commission, Matthew chapter 28, verses 18 and following, Jesus commands us to go out and make disciples—you remember how he puts it? “Go and make disciples of all the nations,” not just teaching them to learn everything I’ve taught—remember how he says it? “Teaching them to obey all things that I have commanded you.” And so he establishes himself not just as our teacher, but as a teacher whose teaching is binding on life that ought to and must shape the way we live and behave.

Many times in the Gospels, we find examples of this with Jesus and the twelve, commanding them or commanding other disciples, commanding them what to do. The role of a disciple is one of submission and obedience. Luke chapter six, verse 44, Jesus asks the rhetorical question, “Why do you call me Lord and do not the things that I have commanded you?” In John chapter 13, Jesus, you remember, takes that towel and begins to wash the feet of the disciples. And then he says, “You call me master, and rightly so. I’m your master, you do as I do.” In other words, our obligation as disciples is not just to learn from Jesus, but to learn from Jesus in order to follow Jesus.

And in fact, that word “follow” is used in the Gospels to express discipleship several times over. In Matthew chapter 4, Jesus calls the original twelve disciples. He calls them and says, “Follow me.” In Matthew chapter 9, when he calls Matthew—Matthew writing this Gospel, recording it about himself—Jesus says, “Follow me.” And it says immediately he arose and followed him. Luke chapter 5, we have the same of Peter. “Follow me,” and immediately Peter forsook all and followed him.

Now, it’s interesting that word follow—I don’t usually quote Greek words here, but here’s an interesting one for you. Akouloutheō is the Greek word here for follow. Liturgical churches have picked up that word, akouloutheō. You ever heard of an acolyte? Those of you from liturgical backgrounds, one who follows the cross in procession, an acolyte, a follower. Well, what Jesus is after here is not just someone to follow a symbol walking down an aisle, but to follow Jesus in order to learn from him and to imitate him. And so although the disciples in a kind of literal sense followed Jesus around as he went and taught, the idea is not just following along behind Jesus, but learning from Jesus and learning to be like Jesus in order to imitate him. So it’s a metaphor. The following is a metaphor again for discipleship.

Matthew chapter—if you want to back up just a little bit—in Matthew 10, verses 24 and following, we see an example of this: “A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master. It is enough for the disciple to be like his teacher and the servant like his master. If they’ve called the master of this house Beelzebub, how much more will they malign those of his household?” That is to say, then, a disciple is one who follows Jesus in this sense: he’s like Jesus. And one of the unhappy results of that is that just as the world hated Jesus for who he was, so they will also hate his disciples who act like him and imitate him. But notice how he says that. The whole sum of a disciple’s responsibility is to be like his master. There it is. In fact, that’s the predestined goal of every believer, isn’t it? We’ve been predestined to be conformed to the image of Jesus. And the responsibility of the disciple in this life is to pursue exactly that.

Well, there are plenty of examples of this even in the context back to Matthew 9. Verse 14, the disciples of John the Baptist ask Jesus, “How is it that your disciples don’t fast like we do?” The real question, of course, is not why the disciples don’t fast, it’s what about you? Why don’t you fast? And they’re getting to Jesus by way of his disciples because they are like him. Going the other direction, Matthew chapter 12, the Pharisees see the disciples plucking heads of grain on the Sabbath. “Look what your disciples are doing!” And their real concern, obviously, is not to condemn the disciples. It’s to condemn Jesus. But they’re being like Jesus and imitating him; Jesus ultimately becomes responsible for them in their view, and they criticize them to get to Jesus. But that’s the idea of what a disciple is. He is one who follows Jesus. Or as Jesus says in Matthew 10, it is enough for the disciple to be like his teacher.

Well, that’s what Jesus is telling us here in Matthew 11. Yoked to Jesus, we go where he goes. We follow along submissively wherever he leads. And that’s what it is to be a disciple. A disciple then is one who learns from Jesus—probing a little deeper to say the same thing, only probing deeper—he’s one who obeys Jesus, learns from him in order to be shaped by Jesus. And if we can probe just a little bit deeper, third, responsibility of the disciple is to submit to Jesus. Or if I can say it just a little better, self-sacrifice.

Self-Sacrifice

Responsibility of discipleship is self-sacrifice. That’s entailed in the whole idea of taking Jesus’ yoke. Our wills are harnessed to his. The way of Christ is the way of the cross, the way of self-sacrifice, and Jesus commands the same of all of his disciples, that everything about us must now be subjected to the interests of Christ.

I want you to see how serious Jesus is about this. Look back across the page to Matthew 10, verse 37, we’ll pick it up there:

Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. Whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it. Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

That is, here’s the requirement to be Jesus’ disciple: every day of your life, you have to subject all interest to mine. Put yourself on a cross and die. That’s the metaphor. And follow Jesus. If anyone comes after me, let him take up his cross and follow me. And notice how he stresses that in verse 39: “Whoever finds his life will lose it. Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” You want to live for yourself, go live for yourself, but you can’t be mine. The requirement of discipleship is self-sacrifice. Put aside self-ambition, lay it down, and take up Jesus’ cross.

In Matthew chapter 8, if you’d like to look back there, Matthew chapter 8, verses 18 and following:

When Jesus saw a great crowd around him, he gave orders to go over to the other side and a scribe came to him saying, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus said, “Great, sign this card, you’re in.”

That’s not what he says. Jesus said to him, “Foxes have their holes, the birds have their nests, the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” What do you mean by that? Well, it sounds like he’s saying, “You better count the costs because following me requires some sacrifice.” And so, verse 21, another of the disciples said to him, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” Jesus said, “Follow me and leave the dead to bury their own dead.” Whatever else is caught up in that is: every interest must be subjected to mine. That’s what it is to be a disciple. You want to be my disciple, count the cost. You must seek first the kingdom of God and recognize that Jesus has prior claim over everything about you. And in fact, as we saw in chapter 10, this is not some optional kind of extra. “Whoever does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. You find your life, you save it, you won’t have it. Come to me and take my yoke.”

Now we’ve got to clarify this somehow because Jesus is the same Jesus who in the same breath has said, “Come to me and I will give you rest.” We love to say here that salvation costs you nothing. Jesus has done it all. Come to him and find the salvation in him that he has accomplished. Salvation costs you nothing in that sense. In another sense, salvation costs us absolutely everything because now we come and bow before the Lord Jesus and acknowledge him as king and we take up our cross and we serve now his interests above all others.

So the identifying mark of a true convert is discipleship. Now we use that word discipleship in a bit different way than what the New Testament uses it. We speak of evangelism and then discipleship. And we know what we mean by that: bringing them to Christ initially and then teaching them further. But in the New Testament the language is all the same. It’s discipleship. Bringing them to Jesus to take his yoke. And in fact the language of a disciple is used exactly that way all through the Gospels. These disciples are not just people who have signed a card and acknowledge certain things about Jesus. These are men who must follow him now and submit to him and learn from him, have their lives shaped by him.

And we come to the book of Acts and the language keeps going the same way. These who come to Christ are called disciples. There’s no distinction that we have commonly today in evangelical circles that there are Christians and then a subset of Christians are disciples. A Christian is a disciple. It’s what he is. And so in other words, this study of discipleship is one that pushes us to consider the genuineness of our profession. If discipleship is no optional matter, if all true converts are disciples, if discipleship is a recognizable thing, well, then our claim to safety in Christ is a claim that can be objectively tested. And that’s what Paul means, for example, when he says, “Examine yourselves to see if you are in the faith or not.” It’s a curse of our age that we have converts that are notoriously unconverted. And Jesus is arguing against all of that. “Come to me, I’ll give you rest. Take my yoke on you and learn from me.”

My Yoke Is Easy And My Burden Is Light

Yet, lest you think all of that seems harsh, oppressive, overly demanding, look at verse 29 again. Let’s back up to verse 28:

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke on you and learn from me, for—notice the explanatory clause here—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.

Notice the motivating clause, verse 29. “Take my yoke on you and learn from me.” Why? “Because I am gentle and lowly in heart and you’ll find rest for your souls.” Now on one level this is just a startling kind of thing. This is the same Jesus who at a previous breath, verse 27, is making unbelievably exalted claims about himself: “No one knows the Son except the Father. No one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal.” He is the exalted Son. And yet he says, “I am gentle and lowly in heart. You’ll find that I’m not a harsh taskmaster. I have interest only in relieving you of your burden.” And again, we think in contrast to the Pharisees’ impossible yoke that they put on—the over-demanding, trying to make yourself acceptable to God. But Jesus says, “Take my yoke on you because I am gentle and lowly in heart.” That is, you’ll find that my yoke is a comfortable one. I’m a teacher who’s never impatient with his students. Entering my service, you’ll not find it oppressive. You’ll not find that the yoke chafes, but you’ll find that “my burden is light.”

Now one thing that to me is just fascinating about this is that in contrast we have the Pharisees’ yoke, which was impossible, and Jesus’ yoke, which he says is easy. So what’s the contrast? Is Jesus saying their yoke is heavy and impossible because it’s demanding, and my yoke is easy because I don’t demand anything of you? That’s not what he says. In fact, Jesus’ demands are much higher than the demands of the Pharisees. Now, they are making demands in order to gain favor with God; Jesus is not doing that. He’s giving salvation freely in that sense. But yet there are these demands: you must subject every interest to mine.

So how do we account for all of this? Jesus is not contrasting their legalism with his antinomianism. “They demand a lot; I don’t.” So just how can Jesus say this? I think we have to start with the simple observation that Jesus works from the inside out. Wasn’t that the new covenant promise? “Gotta make a new covenant with you. The old one told you what to do and you couldn’t do it. So I’ll make a new covenant with you and I’m gonna forgive your sin and I’m gonna put it in your heart to follow me. I’ll take out your heart of stone, I’ll put in a heart of flesh, and I’ll cause you to walk in my ways.” He works from the inside out. This is the whole teaching that we’ve seen so many times that every command, every imperative in the New Testament—every one of them—is grounded in (remember the big words) the indicative. What is required is grounded in what is given. Follow Christ; he enables us. There’s a transformation of the whole being from the inside out to enable us to do what God has commanded.

It’s not far from that old story of the little boy who was carrying a smaller boy on his back, and he’s walking down the sidewalk, and a man saw him. “That’s a pretty heavy burden you have, isn’t it, son?” “Ain’t no burden, mister. That’s my little brother.” And somehow love had transformed the duty into a joy. And there’s something like that that happens with us. And actually, I think we might say it just a little bit differently. There is something about obedience to Christ—there’s something about submission to the will of Christ—that we find satisfying. Isn’t that the case? That’s not perfectly the case. We still struggle with remains of indwelling sin and all of that. We all have that. But haven’t we found this, that obeying Christ is satisfying? Isn’t that what John tells us? His commands are not grievous, but joyous. Haven’t we found that there really is a gladness and a joy and a satisfaction that’s found in obedience to Christ that we just can’t find otherwise? Now in our depraved hearts, our twisted minds made us think otherwise previously, but we’ve found differently, haven’t we?

In fact, there’s a statement like this in the Psalms that I think is just fascinating. In Psalm 19: “The statutes of the Lord are right.” Okay. God commands. He commands what is right. “The statutes of the Lord are right.” Remember the next part of the line? “The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart.” God commands us what to do, and it really makes me happy. And I think that’s the case we find in the New Testament, even with this idea of self-sacrifice. You might remember in Acts chapter 5, the disciples, following Jesus, ran into trouble with the authorities. They’re threatened with their life. They’re whipped. And Acts chapter 5, verse 41 tells us they left the council rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer for the name.

Luke chapter 18, you remember the incident with the rich young ruler? “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” “You’ve heard the commandments.” “Oh, I’ve done them all.” “Okay, take all that you have, sell it, and give it to the poor.” Not willing to do that for Jesus. The disciples are kind of doing the math, and Peter says, “We have left our homes and everything to follow you.” And Jesus responds, “Truly, I say to you that there is no one who has left houses or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God who will not receive many times more in this age and in the age to come eternal life.”

It’s really an amazing thing that submitting ourselves to Jesus’ yoke, surrendering to him and following him—something has happened on the inside where we recognize satisfaction and joy that comes in following Jesus. That very simply is why you do what you do in serving Christ, isn’t it? We were talking at the table the other day about so many people in our church that give up so much time to serve the rest of the body. It’s high school teachers, our deacons, our musicians, servants in other ways. This is why you give up such a significant portion of your paycheck every week, put it in the offering for God. There’s something about it we find satisfying and joyful. And that is what Jesus says here, “You will find that my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Well, here then is what a disciple is. We are people who have come to Jesus and have found rest. We are people who learn from Jesus, people who obey him, people who imitate Jesus. We are people who give everything we are to Jesus. We are people who know Jesus as Lord and Redeemer, and we find in Jesus our highest joy. To put it very simply, a disciple is one who freely receives from Jesus everything. A disciple is one who freely receives everything from Jesus and finds rest. And two, a disciple is one who freely gives everything to Jesus in return and finds joy and reward in doing so.

“Come to me, you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke on 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.”

Let’s bow for prayer. Our Father, we pray that this challenging portion of your word will work its way into our hearts and lives and shape us accordingly. Help us to be in every sense we are called to be a follower of Jesus. We thank you for him and the joy, the satisfaction we have in receiving from him all things. We gladly give our hearts and our lives to him in return. In his name we pray. Amen.