“Then Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.”” Matthew 11:28-30
This verse doesn’t say “Let me teach you, because you have everything together.” Or “Let me teach you, because you’re perfect.” Or even “Let me teach you, because you have done all I have instructed you to do.” Instead, it says “Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart.” The Lord is sharing His heart for you! Entering into rest with the Lord isn’t about you. It’s about Him and His heart for you!
God’s love for you is not conditional. It isn’t based on your performance. It’s based on who He is at His core. He is LOVE! That verse from Matthew highlights His Good News, that we don’t have clean ourselves up to come to him. We come to Him and He cleans us up. A friend once told us “When you’re a fishermen of men, you catch ‘em and God cleans ‘em!” One of our favorite verses, 1 John 4:10, also highlights this concept. It says, “This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”
Let’s look at this verse a little more closely. A yoke is a piece of wood that is fastened over the neck of an animal to help it carry the weight of a plow or cart. When Christ died on the cross, He took on all our burdens, past, present, and future. In fact, at that time, they were all future. The word says in II Corinthians 5:21 “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.” Which just means Jesus took all our ‘bad’ and gave us all His ‘good’. Calvary is our victory. The Holy Spirit is our yoke! It’s the Holy Spirit living in us that lightens our load and helps us carry things!
Condemnation can only exist when you don’t know, understand, and accept that you are forgiven. Condemnation is nothing more than a con (or lie) of the enemy. As we have discussed in previous blogs, the only way to overcome lies of the enemy is to understand the truth. And the only way to understand the truth is to read the Word of God! So let us share some more scripture to really drive the point home.
Ephesians 2:4-6 “But God still loved us with such great love. He is so rich in compassion and mercy. Even when we were dead and doomed in our many sins, He united us into the very life of Christ and saved us by His wonderful grace! He raised us up with Christ the exalted One, and we ascended with him into the glorious perfection and authority of the heavenly realm, for we are now co-seated as one with Christ!”
Romans 6:4 ”Just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.”
1 Peter 2:9 “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His wonderful light.”
Our prayer for you, our faith family, is that you will have a new revelation of God’s goodness toward you and His love for you! A new revelation of what He sees when He looks at you. We pray that this revelation will stoke the fire inside of you and that it will spread from you to your family, your workplace, and your community! We are believing for the Word to come to life for you as you study it and drink it in! May it refresh your soul!
