“Take My Yoke Upon You, and Learn of Me”

One of the thoughts that just is a thought that's continually in my mind, or a subject that's continually in my mind, is resting in the Lord and how to do that.

And how we get to that place of rest in the Lord. Because all around us, everything is unrest and turmoil. And I find that Satan wants to so often bring that into our life and to play in our Christian life too, as unrest and turmoil too.

So I'm—and I can't think about rest without thinking of my favorite passage in Matthew where Jesus said, "Come unto me, all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." And that is going to be my theme passage today, but I'm going to look at some others too.

Spiritual rest and renewal is sometimes something all of us seek, and many times we feel like if only we could create the right environment, find the perfect getaway, or see a few more miracles. I'm not much of a miracle seeker. There was a time where I would have liked to do that a little bit more, you know, but for some people, that's something that would give them more confidence and rest.

We would feel more confident and hence more at rest if we saw more of these things. And I'm going to say today's message is not deeply theological. It's not something all that new or exciting, but it is exciting to me because I think it's something we can believe and trust that we're going to get it from the Lord. But it might come by different means than what we think. And that's something that I've been learning in the few years I've been a Christian.

I feel like I'm always just starting off. I don't know if any of you all have experienced that with your Christian life, but sometimes I feel like I'm just starting off. I'd like to read in Psalm 23, verses 1 through 6 to start off with here. "A psalm of David, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul. He leadeth me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.

Thou preparest the table before me in the presence of mine enemies. Thou anointest my head with oil. My cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever."

I've chosen this passage to begin because it appears that King David had gotten a hold of the essence of true rest. Notice some of the things he says here in this psalm. First of all, and this is key, "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want."

Rest does not come from freedom to move about as we please, but rather rest comes from having a reliable shepherd because the good shepherd knows what we need, or a good shepherd knows what we need, and he will provide in due time. And I think about what David goes on to say, "He leads me beside the still waters. He makes me to lie down in green pastures." Those are some of the more pleasant aspects of what our shepherd does for us. But that's not all of life. I think we would all agree on that. That's not all of life for us a lot of times. We're not always beside the still waters, and we're not always in green pastures either.

So we're going to go on and keep looking at this. "He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. The shepherd cares deeply for his sheep. He takes deep pride in his ability to keep them healthy. Hence, he will choose out pasture. He'll choose out the path, the pasture, and the water. And our Lord is no different. He will choose out what's best for us at any given time." It makes me think about what it says in Ephesians 5:25-27, "Husbands, love your wives even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it."

And I'm just going to pause here to say that in the ancient times, and I think still in the Middle East, the shepherds do really knock themselves out with their sheep. And in centuries gone by, that was really the way they were. They would face almost anything to save one sheep from a lion. We see that in David's life. And that's why David can say these things as he's going through here. He's experienced about everything. And then as king too, he experienced just about everything.

So it says that Christ gives himself for the church, the body of Christ, that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish. He takes great pride in his bride, the body of Christ.

So he's going to do everything he can for it. And David can see that in his life as a God seeker, a God follower, that his shepherd, his heavenly Father, was going to do what was best. Then in John 10:1-11, I would like to read this, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same as a thief and a robber. But he that entereth in by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him the porter openeth, the sheep hear his voice, and he calleth his own sheep by name and leadeth them out.

And when he puteth forth his own sheep, he goeth before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. And a stranger will they not obey, but will flee from him, for they know not the voice of strangers.

This parable spake Jesus unto them, but they understood not what things they were which he spake unto them. Then said Jesus unto them, 'Verily, verily, I say unto you, I am the door of the sheep. All that ever came before me are thieves and robbers. But the sheep did not hear them. I am the door. By me, if any man enter in, he shall be saved and shall go in and out and find pasture. And the thief cometh not but to steal and to kill and to destroy. I am come that they might have life and that they might have it more abundantly.

I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.'" You can't read or think about Christ as our shepherd without reading those verses.

Then David goes on to say, "Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me." I don't know what kind of picture you get. When I think about rods and staffs and stuff like that, I think of instruments of discipline.

Many feel today that if they could orchestrate the circumstances of life the way they believe best, they would feel more at rest and have more peace. But David said he got comfort from the fact that the shepherd had a rod and a staff.

Both are instruments of restoration, rescue, and correction. Staying with the shepherd is the most secure place for any sheep because he will guide them. And if one gets lost, he will pursue that sheep with all his heart. And Jesus demonstrates that by the passage where he says that if one sheep wanders off from that fold, he will leave the 99 and will run after that sheep and try to find it. And that's the way God watches each one of us today.

Here again, we will only come to experience these things if we stay close to the shepherd and learn how to learn to know him. So we should be comforted that we have a heavenly Father that's going to sometimes call us up short. That's a comforting thing. It's for our protection. He might use his crook one time to get us as we're slowly wandering off track somewhere in our lives. He might pull the rug from underneath us in a sense, or he might allow it to happen to us so that we stop and take stock where we're at. And so we turn around and go back to where we belong.

It should be a comfort to us that he's not just going to let us wander off and say, "Oh, well, I have a hundred of them still. So there's so many more. Why would I worry about this one?" That's not the way he feels.

"Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death." That's the other part here. This is where we go from the green pastures and the still waters, and now we're looking at something just a little bit different. It's easy to relax and rest in the green pastures and the still waters. But he says, "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death."

And David knew that as long as he was with the shepherd, that valley of the shadow of death could not destroy his rest and his peace and his strength and his hope in the Lord.

And as a king, he went through many, many valleys of shadow of death, especially when he decided he was not going to kill Saul. He was not going to try to eliminate Saul from his life. He could have eliminated Saul and thus eliminated a lot of his problems, humanly speaking, of course. But he didn't. And he went through many valleys of shadows of death because of that. And then other times in his life, he chose not to fight. He chose not to fight against his son and just eliminate him.

So he went through another valley of shadow of death. But the things that kept David was the fact that he had that heart after God, and he understood God. He understood God's keeping power. He understood God's love for him. So even though, "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil, for thou art with me."

And that phrase keeps coming up, "For thou art with me." "Thou preparest the table before me in the presence of mine enemies. You may think if only I could remove some of the people from my life who hinder me from succeeding or keep me from the true rest and relaxation that I so much need and desire." David says here in the psalm that the Lord sets a table for him, never mind the enemies.

God is going to feed us and make sure that our needs are met no matter what kind of surroundings we have, no matter who's looking on or who's critiquing us or who's picking us apart, we might think, or whatever. Even if people are scoffing at us, God is still there, and he's going to prepare a table for us if we stay with him. He's going to make sure we're fed and taken care of.

And then he ends with this, I'm just going to say it's like an aspiration of joy and fullness. "Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever."

David had confidence and peace that anywhere, anytime, he was safe because God's goodness and mercy would be with him. And finally, he knew and longed for that eternal rest that would follow. And I'm going to say that we need to have that in our focus too. Being focused on working for God's kingdom, serving God's kingdom is very important. But if we as Christians today have no hope for a rest in the future, we're going to start having depression problems in our life. We need to remember that there's an eternal rest. This is not the end here. This is not the end. This is just the beginning of eternity.

There's a rest to be had at the end, and we can trust in that, and we can delight ourselves in that.

I would like to look at one of my favorite passages where Jesus talks about his definition of rest or how we get, it's not necessarily just a definition, but it's how we get there.

This passage is quoted so many times that it may become old to you, but I always feel inspired and comforted when I hear this passage read. And I'm going to read that now, and then we're going to talk about that. In Matthew 11:25-30, I backed up a few verses to get the context of this passage and to get a sense for the foundation of where this all starts. "At that time, Jesus answered and said, 'I thank you, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the sophisticated and cunning and revealed them to babes. Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in your sight.

All things are delivered to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and the one to whom the Son will reveal him.'" Are we staying with the shepherd? Are we walking with the shepherd? If we are, he's going to reveal the Father to us and reveal the Father's heart to us.

And then he goes on to say, "Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke on you and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

You have hidden these things from the sophisticated and cunning and revealed them to babes."

As I was thinking about that, I was thinking about what is the best kind of pupil that a teacher could wish for.

And I thought about that last time I did a children's lesson here at church, and I just thought about how gratifying that is as a teacher. It's when you're teaching a group of young people or children, and they are watching you. They're all attentive. You look along the line, and their eyes are all focused on you.

And then you ask a question, and the hands go up. And they're ready to answer or ask a question. And it's guileless. It's pure. It's really wanting to know. It doesn't have any of that smart mouth type of stuff that sometimes happens later on in life, which I'm sure Bill's had that type of thing. It's always a delight to a teacher when his pupils are actually focused on what he's saying, and they really want to know. They want to know, and they raise their hand. And you can tell by the way they look at you that they're listening. This is what Jesus is talking about here.

If you think that you're smart, if you think you somehow got something figured out, you're going to miss it. Jesus said he has hidden these things from the sophisticated and the cunning and revealed them to babes. We have to start off at the bottom. We have to start off as a child with our ears and our eyes open wanting to know. "Except you become as little children, you shall not see the kingdom of heaven." So that is the foundation. That's the beginning.

And he says, "Even so, Father, for it seemed good in your sight. From the very beginning of time, from the first humans created, God delighted himself in that childlike trust in him as a father." So it's not just Jesus that's saying this. This was God from the very beginning. He loved the way Adam and Eve walked with him and talked with him. It was only when Adam and Eve began to listen to the voice of the evil one that trust and rest was destroyed.

It's when they became knowledgeable that trust and rest was destroyed. And what is that? And what is it? It is that so often, this is what so often sabotages our trust and joy and hope in the Lord. As in the garden, so it is now. We begin to think we have found the essence of God's will without actually obeying it. And as Adam and Eve, we begin to think we know better.

And as from the beginning, so it is today. When we simply trust God and obey the commandments of Christ, our Lord, living and abiding in him, looking to him for our daily needs, we will find rest.

So that's one of the things that is key, is important to beginning to find rest. Then he says, "All things are delivered to me by my Father." Jesus looked to his Father for guidance, for strength, and his approval, not that of man.

This he did perfectly. Hence, we can latch on to his example and follow that through. And we need never doubt because God the Father said, "This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased." As we trust and obey the example of our Lord, we begin to know the Father, and we begin to experience his approval firsthand.

Let us not waste our time trying to come to rest through intellect or any other means. Nothing but truly knowing and emulating Christ brings us to the Father. And then he says, "Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." After he says that, after he talked about becoming as little children, are we weighed down? Are we troubled? Are we struggling? Is our life a shambles?

And he says, "Come to me, and I will give you rest. Come to me like a little child." As human beings, we fight so hard to create security and rest for ourselves. And yet it's only when we stop seeking that for ourselves and start knowing Christ that he gives us rest. I know that sounds funny, but we seek rest that thing by itself so hard it becomes a selfish thing when we'll do it at any cost. But it's when we forget about that thing and we begin listening to what Jesus is telling us to do that we find what we were looking for. It's like the whole thing what Jesus said about losing your life to get life, about dying to live.

It's the way his kingdom works. You have to put down that thing and follow Christ. And we all come with our own baggage. We all come loaded down with our own unique set of cares. My set of cares might be different from Justin's or Mike's or Bill's. We all have a background. We all have baggage. We have things that we have to deal with.

And yet there is nothing that helps us more than to begin to know Christ. And I think we can all echo that. Luke 10:38-42, he says, "Now it came to pass, as they went, they entered into a certain village, and a certain woman named Martha received him into her house.

And she had a sister called Mary, which also sat at Jesus' feet and heard his word." There you have another person who's sitting at Jesus' feet like a little child hearing his word. "But Martha was cumbered about much serving and came to him and said, 'Lord, dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? Bid her therefore that she help me.' And Jesus answered and said unto her, 'Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things.'" There's that unrest, troubled about many things. "But one thing is needful, and Mary hath chosen that good part which shall not be taken away from her." It is good to be responsible and work hard and to be consistent.

But at some point, we have to stop running. We have to stop running from ourselves, and we have to stop, just simply stop and recenter in God. Be still and know that I am God. And simply sit at Jesus' feet. And that's what Jesus was saying. Stop and forget everything you know. Forget everything that you want to get done. Forget everything that you think is the right thing to do. And stop and just listen for a while.

Then he says, "Take my yoke on you and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and you shall find rest to your souls." But what does Jesus say? Does he say that we should just go to him and unload, and then ever after we have no more load to bear?

Or does he say, "You need to think positively, and by and by you will get on top of things"? Has that ever really worked for any of us in the long term? Thinking positively is a good start, but that's not going to take care of it.

And just thinking a little bit about this idea of a yoke, and there might be different ways to approach this. This is just something I think of when I think about what Jesus says about the yoke. A yoke generally has two sides so that one can put two oxen in the yoke together, and they learn to pull together. Each will only experience 50% of the load he would have to had to pull otherwise if he didn't have another ox beside him.

I was once told by a friend in Chile, and this is an illustration I think I've used here before, but I can't remember for sure, that often when they have a younger ox and they put him in a yoke, and they still use ox yokes in chilling some of the rural areas, like to pull trees and stuff out of the forest and such like. But he said, "If they have a young ox, they will put an older ox beside him because the young ox does not know how to manage his energy. He doesn't know how to regulate himself." So the old ox kind of holds back and pulls steadily, but he doesn't get carried away or try to run off or anything like that.

And over time, as he's in that yoke with that young ox, the young ox begins to, in his own dense way, begins to realize that, "Hey, it's easier if I just work with this guy. And actually, I'm not pulling as much weight, and I'm not worn out all the time." Well, that's what Jesus does. I feel like that's what Christ does for us. He gives us a yoke, and yes, we have a burden to pull. We have a burden to bear as Christians. We have things that we do have to do as Christians.

But then he gets with us into that yoke, and he's like that older ox that's going to help us learn how to manage what we have to deal with today.

And there are things that he will lift for us and just totally remove, but there are some things he will not remove for us, and we have to learn how to work with them. I believe that Jesus gets into the yoke with us, and he is never rash, never immoderate, and never startled by new challenges.

And that's really important when you have a good horse, is that he doesn't get all excited and get out of control as soon as something changes a little bit. He is gentle, leading us forward one step at a time, one situation at a time. On our own, we become impatient. We rush ahead, trying to conquer, sometimes trying to destroy. And we soon burn out and get discouraged. Have any of you experienced that? I have. But when we're in the yoke with Christ and we take it at his pace, we'll find that that doesn't happen as soon.

Jesus said, "Take my yoke upon you." We might say, "I am not in bondage to anyone or anything. I am a free American." This is where this idea of a yoke does not set well with us as Americans. We don't like to think of being tied to something or somebody. But that's not what Jesus said. Jesus didn't say that the Christian life was just freedom, that you're finally free and now you can go and just live. He says, "There's a yoke. If you want rest in your soul, there's a yoke."

So if you want to be a free American and be a Christian, you might find it doesn't work out for you. You might find out you have less rest in your soul than ever before. Think with me about the free American, if you will. I say this because I'm an American, and I feel like I'm allowed to say some of these things.

He or she, more often than not, is in bondage to what people around them think of them. They are in bondage to what others think is fun, cool, or meaningful. I think about even just vacations. It's amazing how it doesn't take long. One person says, "Well, our family did such and such a style of vacation this year," and it doesn't take long until everybody else is following in their suit because all of a sudden, what they did before isn't enjoyable anymore because it's not the thing to do. And the same thing happens with cars and properties. I've seen this happen with cars too. Just like a person will be perfectly fine with a vehicle that they're driving, but then someone comes along and it says, "But this is, it might not be an outstanding vehicle, but this is a better car.

These things are, that's the way to go." And after a while, there's dissatisfaction in what you have. You have a person going sometimes beyond their means to try to keep up. What does that create in my life? It creates unrest and discontentment.

That's why being an American, what we consider as a free American individual, does not work with the yoke of Christ. And I think all of us have to know where that stops and starts for us. I can't tell anybody here exactly how they have to manage that whole thing. We just know in our minds when that starts happening, and we need to deal with it.

And I'm just thinking about this. We often start out our young life in the vigor of youth. And then we begin to realize that indeed, we are pulling something, and our Master who is behind us just keeps adding to our load. And it takes sometimes a person years to realize that I'm actually in bondage. I'm not actually happy. That's what happened to me. Thankfully, I got to that a lot faster than some people because I was living faster.

And I just got to the point where I realized, "I'm not happy. I'm doing just about everything I want to do, but I'm not happy." And we realized that the one that's driving us to live faster and faster is just adding to our load. He just adds one more care after another to our load.

What started out as fun becomes a race and the worst kind of race. It's a race without a goal. It has no end, has no purpose. And then finally, when we cease to amuse our unseen Master, he allows us to destroy ourselves or self-destruct, which that's the epitome, what he wants to happen with all of this.

And I experienced that. I started to experience that in my life, and that's what scared me about where I was going before I became a Christian.

And that's not what Jesus wants for us. So that's just a little bit of the other side of this picture. We have the yoke of Christ, or we have something like that. Jesus sees our plight and our bondage. He knows we were all made for a purpose. We are built to pull, but we need some patient training. And we need sustenance. We need strength we don't possess in ourself. And there is a supernatural side to being a Christian.

We need the strength that Christ gives us. Jesus has a well-formed yoke that is built to fit each individual person. He knows what we can handle, and he is at our side, not a monkey on our shoulders. There's a difference between having Christ at our side or a monkey on our shoulder.

Satan sometimes would like to let us think like he is God, but he's actually the monkey on our shoulder. I don't know if you get that term or not, but when you're striving to live what is right, Satan has this way of whispering and putting things into your mind or whispering things in your ear to make you feel like, "I'm not doing it quite right. I need to do something different. I need to keep." And he gets us off track like that. But that's not the way Christ is. He doesn't just sit on our shoulder and nag us, but he pulls along with us gently. I think there's a difference, and that could be another whole subject.

Sometimes there's a difference between conviction and what some people think is conviction. Sometimes what some Christians think is conviction isn't conviction. It's that monkey on the shoulder thing that Satan does to us to discourage us.

And with Christ as our Master, we have an eternal goal, God's kingdom. We can be assured that if we work together with Christ, we will begin to experience parts of that kingdom here and now. And yes, we have eternal rest that we can look forward to. I think that we all need to have this desire burning in our hearts, as I said before.

And then he says something that has always been a little bit of a question in my mind. He says, "My yoke is easy and my burden is light." And I'm not going to claim I understand all of that, but I'm going to talk just a little bit about that. First of all, I'd like to ask us some questions. Is the Christian life easy?

I think that all of us who are truly seriously wanting to follow Christ are going to say, "No, it's not easy." Is Jesus promising that we will face no hardship or trouble? No, he never did. He told his promise to his disciples that they would face persecution, that Satan would sift them as wheat. He told Peter that. He said, "Satan would like to sift you as wheat."

He told them that they were going to have people standing against them. And almost all of them, except for John, died of persecution.

Will we always feel like pulling? Will we always feel like moving forward? Did Jesus himself have an easy time of it when he was here on earth? No. In fact, Jesus promised his disciples that there was going to be a struggle. So what does he mean by saying, "My yoke is easy and my burden is light"? First of all, Jesus was not like the Pharisees who loaded their subjects with more and more arbitrary burdens, and yet, as Jesus put it, they would not lighten the burden with a help or help with one little finger.

Jesus isn't like that. He's not going to do that to us. He's not going to just keep loading one thing on another on top of us as we're bent down. If you start feeling that way, maybe you need to reevaluate a little bit where we're at because that's not what Christ does to us.

Jesus spent time and time with his disciples teaching them, building a relationship with them. There were things he told them that he knew they were not able to bear at the present, but he would empower them later to carry out and accomplish his will. Jesus led the way from birth, through baptism, through temptation, and then through death. He said, "Follow me and I will make you fishers of men." And he taught them how to be fishers of men.

Do we get the picture that Jesus showed them through every step of life, through everything in life that they were going to face, he showed them how to deal with it and how to work with it? And that's what he's saying to us. It echoes down through the ages to us today as he's saying this to us. "Take my yoke upon you and learn of me. Be my disciple. Come and follow me like my disciples did."

And we have even more to see now. We have Jesus' disciples who followed him faithfully. We have Peter and Paul, and we can read all that they wrote and their experience, personal experience, and also their practical outworking of all this. We have all of that going for us. So we have no reason not to learn from him.

Now, I'd like to just talk a little bit about this word, easy. I personally believe that the word easy was perhaps a mistranslation. I looked it up. I looked up the word used in Greek and found three other plausible renderings of this word. And I will say that I found, as I was looking, and I looked at the commentary, David's commentary about this too, and I found that the early Christians also looked at this word just a little different than what is translated in our Bible.

The first definition they had there was good, that the yoke is good. And we know that anything that Christ gives to us is going to be good, or anything that he puts into our life is going to be a good thing. So the yoke is good. The second translation for that word could be gracious. I think of a kind farmer who carefully places the yoke on his oxen. Perhaps he even made the yoke himself, and he carved and shaved it to fit his oxen.

I know that years ago, when a man, some men, when they made the yokes for their oxen, they would actually go, after they had it all shaped out and everything, they'd take a piece of glass and go over that thing and scrape it to make sure that there was nothing there that would chafe the ox when he was pulling on it. I think of Christ that way. He looks at those things, and he cares about those details.

He wants to make sure that it's something that's doable. So the yoke is gracious.

And then the last one is kind. This third translation is something we all know to be true of our Lord. He is kind, and hence we know that the yoke he asks us to bear has been shaped with love and kindness. Do we believe that as we have begun on the Christian life and as we take it up each day, that the yoke that Christ has given us is a good yoke, it's a gracious yoke, and it's a kind yoke?

It's not easy, but it's all those other things.

And what and how are we learning from Jesus?

"For I am meek and lowly in heart." What is meekness? This is the word that is forgotten and despised in our country, where men and women pride themselves at being able to stand up for their own rights. However, it takes more inner strength to be meek than to be loud and proud.

Meekness is power and ability channeled in the right direction. Meekness is that inner awareness that I am God's child and the good I possess was given to me by him. Meekness is born of the inner realization that in spite of the present challenge or difficulty, our Father, the King, will win, and someday we will all bow before him.

The fact that we will all bow before him helps us to remain humble, realizing that even though we belong to the King, we cannot be arrogant about it. We're humble because we realize we're going to be with everybody else bowing before him.

Jesus was meek and able to be meek because he was about his Father's business, not his own. His agenda was the Father's agenda. Hence, he did not waste time trying to promote himself in the eyes of the elite of the day.

Meekness is a powerful Belgian horse, well-trained, as gentle as a child, but able to pull when and where it counts most. I don't know if any of you ever saw a Belgian workhorse, but they're enormous. But they can be as gentle as can be, and they can pull a tremendous amount of weight. I've heard this illustration given about elephants too. They said elephants that are well-trained can do a tremendous amount of work and yet be as gentle as a child.

Meekness is not weakness, and it's not wimpy.

And I just have a few verses, I'm going to say promises about to those who are meek. "The meek shall eat and be satisfied, and they shall praise the Lord that seek him. Your heart shall live forever." That came from Psalm 22:26. Then in Psalm 25:8-10, "Good and upright is the Lord. Therefore, will he teach sinners in the way. The meek, he will he guide in judgment, and the meek will he teach his way. All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth unto such as keep his covenant and his testimonies." This is in the Old Testament, and this is the way the psalmist had learned to know God to be. And then we're seeing that in Jesus too. "All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth unto such as keep his covenant and his testimonies."

And then Psalm 37:11, "But the meek shall inherit the earth and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace." So if we want rest and peace, we need to learn from Jesus how to be meek.

And Isaiah 29:19, "The meek also shall increase their joy in the Lord, and the poor among men shall rejoice in the Holy One of Israel." And then onto this word, lowly. I call this promises for the lowly. What I see in the translation it gives for that word, I'm not even going to try to pronounce it.

It can mean depressed, base, humble, or low. Let's just reflect back a little bit what kind of beginnings Jesus had in his life, why he could say that he was meek and lowly. Jesus was born in a stable. He became a refugee at a young age, had to flee to Egypt. Then he returned and grew up in a town or village that would have been considered low-class or a backwater or the other side of the tracks, like some people say today.

Galilee of the Gentiles. He didn't even have the privilege of growing up in a Jewish city. He grew up in Galilee of the Gentiles. Yet in all this, he remembered his Father. He spent his time among the poor. He did not use his power to become approved by the ruling class. He was humble, and he humbled himself unto death. In short, meekness, humility, and lowliness are much the same, but to me, meekness speaks of inner strength, whereas being lowly seems to have more of the idea of being downtrodden.

The result of these qualities in our hearts is that we become more teachable and more willing to relinquish our hold on this life for that of the kingdom life. So sometimes God does allow things to come into our life that crush us, that can make us feel downtrodden for a time. But that's when our faith needs to come into play.

Remember that Jesus was meek and lowly in heart. He was also called the man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.

And then we have some promises to the lowly. Psalm 138:5-7, "Yea, they shall sing in the ways of the Lord, for great is the glory of the Lord. Though the Lord be high, yet hath he respect unto the lowly.

But the proud, he's not far off. Though I walk in the midst of trouble, thou wilt revive me. Thou shalt stretch forth thine hand against the wrath of mine enemies, and thy right hand shall save me." I just like this picture here. He says that he has respect to the lowly. I think of a tall man like Bill coming up to a child and getting down on his knee to talk to them. And that's God to us. That's Christ to us. He forgets everything else he was doing. Bill might have had in his mind that he was going to head back to Kingdom Fellowship weekend and share a great big message. And he comes across Andric, and he gets down on his one knee to talk to him.

That's God. But then on the other side, he says, "But the proud, he knoweth afar off." If you see a person standing in the back corner back there, and you can tell by the expression on their face that they're arrogant and proud, you're going to feel like going out that door rather than going past there, in a sense.

I know we all try to talk to everybody, but I'm just saying as an example, that's the kind of feeling that comes across you. And that's the way God feels. If we're a person that's standing in the corner or standing there just smugly looking over everybody and saying, "It's too bad you guys just can't get this thing together," God is going to make a big circle around us. We're going to end up having to run on our own knowledge, basically. And that's not a good place to be.

Then in Proverbs 3:34, "Surely he scorneth the scorners, but he giveth grace unto the lowly." Proverbs 16:18-19, "Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall. Better it is to be a humble spirit with the lowly than to divide the spoil with the proud."

So you can crow proudly with the people who feel like they have it together if you want to, but the Lord's going to pass you by.

He said it's better to be a humble spirit with the lowly, those who don't quite have it together, than to sit there and crow proudly with those who have it together. Zachariah 9:9, "Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your King is coming to you. Righteous and having salvation is he. Humble and mounted on the donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey."

Jesus came at our level. He did not come charging in on his steed, ready to make war with the Romans. He came in on a donkey. And the people, I think some of the people, even though they didn't know what it was, some of those people there cheering and shouting, "Hosanna," they saw this man, and they said, "He is at our level. We can understand this guy, and he understands us." And they threw their clothes in the road, and they threw palm branches in front of him. It's like they just were receiving him. And that's the way the poor of the earth still do today, many times, when Christ comes and is presented to them, and they see him, they want him, and they feel like they can relate to him.

And that's what God wants from us too today.

And Jesus was willing to be a fool in the eyes of the world so that all men who are broken, humble, downtrodden, mauled by Satan's mill, I don't know if any of you have ever felt that way before. I've been there a couple of times where I felt like I was mauled by Satan's mill, might look to him in hope because he understands.

And then finally, the last phrase in that passage, "And you shall find rest to your souls." Living as a disciple of our Lord day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute, may not be the easy life. However, through this process of teacher and disciple, we find purpose, we find joy, we find reality, and that brings rest and contentment to our souls.

If we seek rest just for rest itself, we may never really find it, or at least not satisfactorily. Being a true Christian involves every fiber of our being. It is not just, it's not a thing to be had in small doses.

I think of Andric's medicine that we give him sometimes when he has a breathing problem. It comes in these little vials. Sometimes it'd be nice to take Christianity that way. I feel like I need a little bit more Christian today to be able to survive what I'm facing right now. So I'm going to take a little vial of this medicine, and it's going to help me through this. That's not the way Christianity works. It needs to be a part, a very part of a fiber of our being. It needs to be a practice of minute by minute, day by day.

It cannot be canned and kept. It must be lived. So if you want a canned version of Christianity, it's not going to be a living version of Christianity. It needs to be something that is every day, every minute.

We must allow Jesus to invade every area of our life and allow him to teach us one lesson at a time. We must not avoid any part or skip one thing and propose another because of the discomfort. Have you ever done that in your life where you realize the Lord is putting his finger on a certain part of your life, and you want to kind of like hedge or something, say, "Well, I had this problem over here. I'd like to work on that one."