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You in Christ Matthew 11:28-30

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You in Christ Matthew 11:28-30 Abide The Disciple’s Identity: You in Christ Dr. David Platt September 9, 2007 The Disciple’s Identity: You in Christ Matthew 11:28-30 If you have a Bible and I hope you do, let me invite you to open with me to Matthew 11. First book in the New Testament. Matthew 11. We are going to be diving into a series called “Abide.” What does it mean to abide in Christ? We are going to look at what it means to be in Christ, walk with Christ, to be a disciple of Christ, follower of Christ. The goal of this study is not just for us to know what it means to be in Christ or to know what it means to be a disciple or follower of Jesus Christ, the goal is for all of us to be equipped to lead others to follow Christ and to lead others to be in Christ. We are no longer living Christianity for self consumption. The goal is not for us to look at some truths in Matthew 11 so that we can walk away and say I am glad that I learned that. The goal is for us to walk away from our time together this morning and be able to teach the truths of Matthew 11 so at the end of this series after walking through eight weeks in this series, the whole faith family will be equipped not just to know what it means to abide in Christ, but to lead others to abide in Christ. And so we are no longer receivers. We are reproducers. The Word is not stopping with us. It is spreading through us. The goal is that we would be equipped after our time together. The goal is not for us just to learn the truths. The goal is for us to be able to teach these truths tomorrow as the word spreads through us. Matthew 11. We are going to focus on verses 28 through 30, but I want to start in verse 25 just to get the context of the passage that we are about to look at together. Mathew 11:25: 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. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure.’ ‘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.’ ‘Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 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. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light’ (Matt. 11:25-30). Father we pray that you would open our eyes and our hearts to the mammoth truths, comforting truths, that you have given us in this text. And we pray that these words would hit home in hearts all across this room and radically transform our view of what it means to be called followers of Jesus Christ. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen. © David Platt 2007 1 Those last 3 verses, verse 28, 29, 30, I am convinced give one of the clearest, most powerful, most compelling, most beautiful pictures of Christianity the way Jesus designed it to be. And at the same time those verses give one of the most clearest, most powerful, most forceful rebukes of what we have created Christianity to be today. What I want you to see and I am trying to keep things very simple in these notes (replace with “today”), I want you to see two simple life changing truths that emerge from this text that I believe sum up what Christianity is. That depicts the radical nature of Christianity and what separates Christianity apart from every other religious system in the world. And I want for us to see two simple life changing truths that I am convinced that we have a dangerous tendency to completely miss out on their meaning in the church today. Christianity Explained… We give up all we have to Jesus. Truth Number One: We give up all we have to Jesus. This is Christianity explained. We give up all we have to Jesus. Now the imagery that dominates this particular passage is the picture of a yoke. And a yoke is a strong, heavy wooden bar that is placed over an ox in order to allow that ox to pull a cart or pull a plow. And oftentimes a yoke could be singular, could be placed on one ox, but then also you can have a yoke that can be shared between two oxen. You have one ox on one side and the other on the other side and they would share the load together in a yoke. And if you have a yoke like this that is shared between two oxen, then basically the picture is one of those oxen would be stronger than the other one. You would have a weaker ox on one side and a stronger ox on the other side. And the stronger ox would be able to basically the pull the load of the weaker ox. You would have one ox that was more trained in the commands of the master that was more experienced that was stronger. As a result, the weaker ox would come in and they would be able to accomplish more together and especially for that weaker ox to be able to be pulled along basically by the stronger ox. And so you have got picture of a yoke that dominates this passage. You have got that background. Then you come into the context here. And Jesus is speaking in the middle of the first century to a group of Jewish people who had been living under a very strict religious system, rigid religious system. They were surrounded by teachers of the law— Pharisees who interpreted the Old Testament law, and basically put the law on the people and said, “You need to do all these things.” Not only the Old Testament law, but they had added 600 plus more laws that they needed to follow, rules and regulations. And so you had a people whose religion was dominated by all the things that they were supposed to do. And that is what He is talking about with this burden that is heavy that has made them weary. You had people who were living under all these rules and all these regulations and they never felt like they could measure up. And they were constantly getting more laws and more rules and more regulations put on them. In fact, hold your place. Go with me over real quickly to Matthew 23. I want to show you how Jesus uses the same word that He used for burden here in Matthew 11:28. Look at Matthew 23. He uses the same word down in verse 4. Read with me the first few verses of Matthew 23. I want you to see how Jesus addresses the teachers of the law and the problems that were going on because they were over loading the people with the law. Listen to this, Matthew 23:1, it says: © David Platt 2007 2 “Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples: ‘The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. So you must obey them and do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach’”—here it is—“They tie up heavy loads and put them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them” (Matt. 23:1-4). And so that is the picture. You had a bunch of people that felt like heavy loads were constantly put on their shoulders in their religious system. And Jesus comes to them and He says, “Come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden, weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” That is the context that He speaks these words into. He says, “Take my yoke upon you.” Now what does that mean? We give up all we have to Jesus. What does it mean to come to Him and come under His yoke? First of all it means we give Him the full weight of our sin. We give Him the full weight of our sin. The picture that you have in 1st century Judaism is that a result of all these laws and regulations constantly being put on these people, they are constantly being reminded of the fact that they don’t measure up. You had them constantly face to face with the fact that they couldn’t do all of these things. And you had them feeling guilty, shame because they never could fulfill these laws, never could live up to these rules and regulations. And the more laws and the more regulations that were put on them, the guiltier they felt and the heavier the load was. And all the religious leaders and teachers of the law were doing was piling on guilt on the people because they kept piling on more laws and more laws and more laws. When I read this passage, one of my biggest fears is that the church today is doing exactly what the teachers of the law were doing in the first century.
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