2003.03.16. Calling(3) / Lent 2nd Sunday - Rev. Young Jin Cho

"All you who are weary and burdened"

Mathew 11:28-30

Today is the third Sunday in our consecutive sermon series under the title " The Calling." On the March 2nd service, we talked about God's calling, "where are you?" as revealed in Genesis Chapter 3:8-21. The question of God asking us where we are comprises the message of reflecting upon ourselves about where our lives are headed to today and about what kind of lives we are living before God. It also contains the earnest desire of God wanting us to return to Him.

Last week reflected upon the scripture of Isaiah 1:18-20, as I gave the sermon under the title "Though your sins are like scarlet." It is the calling toward forgiveness and new beginning. There is no sin that will not be forgiven by God. All we need to do is coming before God. Once you come to him by holding on to Jesus' cross, you will find hope. You will have a tomorrow. You can start anew.

I.

Today I would like to talk about the great calling of Jesus as written in Mathew 11:28 and thereafter. Jesus told the people: "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."

Scholars of the Bible say that this scripture entails both a great invitation and a great promise from Jesus. What is the great invitation? It is the invitation of calling everyone who is weary and burdened to come to Jesus, everyone who is suffering with hardships. What is the great promise? It is the promise that whoever proceeds to Jesus to take His yoke and learn from Him, that person will receive peace of mind. It is a daring invitation and promise. How many in the history of mankind would have made this invitation and promise? This is not something done by a usual person. Suppose I promised you to give rest when you came to me. Would you believe me? Would you come before me?

As one Christian stated, Jesus is one of the two personalities. He is either a lunatic, or a person who can really give us rest. Dear congregation, where do you think Jesus belongs to? Is He a lunatic? Or is He the person who can give us true rest?

History truly tells us. Your spiritual experiences are clearly telling you that Jesus was not a lunatic. His mind was as sound as anyone who lived on earth. Even people who do not believe in Jesus do not agree that he might be a lunatic. They agree that He is at least one of the world's four great saints. If He were a lunatic, or a schizophrenic, 2000 years of Christian history would have been different from what it has been. Rather, the 2000 years of Christian history would not have even continued. And human history would have been different.

Jesus, touring around the Palestine region, called those who were weary and burdened. He told them to come to Him and learn. He told them that if they came, took upon His yoke and then learned from Him, they would find rest. This calling of Jesus continues until this day. He is telling you and me to come, to rest, to put the heavy burden off and live a new life. What a great invitation and great promise in deed!

II.

I would like to explain it in more detail. Congregation, what is the heavy burden? What are those issues that burden our lives? What is the burden Jesus would take upon for us?

(1) First of all, Biblical scholars point out that the yoke of Laws oppressed the people's lives in Judea.

Originally, the Law was a guide for those new lives who responded to God's gracious work of salvation. It was given for them to keep graciously and with thankfulness. However, as time passed by, the true motive of keeping the law (thankfulness) gradually disappeared and the only remainder was the Commandments. Law was not kept with gracious and thankful manner. It grew burdensome. Especially, as the Pharisaic movement arose, the burden worsened, as they insisted on keeping the laws that were handed down orally. For example, there were thirty-nine bans to be kept in order to keep a holy Sabbath. Consequently, the law became a heavy burden for the people.

Here is an example. A poor widow lived with her two daughters. The only property she had was a small parcel of land. She was about to begin plowing the field in the spring when she realized that the law banned a cow and a donkey to plow the field at the same time. She was going to scatter seeds when she reminded herself of the law that forbid her sow seeds compounds. When the harvest season came she kept the law did not allow for a person to go back to one's field to pick up a bundle of crops left in the field as well as the law which said not to harvest a portion of a field. And after the harvest, she had to offer the first and second tenth of her livestock as an offering along with thanksgiving presents. Then, the poor woman sold the field and bought two sheep. She thought she would make garments with the sheep wool and that she might earn a little money if the sheep bore lambs. When the sheep gave birth to lambs, the priest took them saying that the first-born must be offered to God. As she sheared them, she had to follow Deuteronomy 18:4 to offer the first wool from the shearing of her sheep. She decided the only way to escape from this yoke was to butcher them. When she butchered the sheep the priest took the shoulder, the jowls and the inner parts according to the words that were written in Deuteronomy 18:3. She finally determined she could put off the yoke of the laws only by offering the whole sheep as sacrifice. Then the priest took all of it saying that these all belonged to him under Deuteronomy 18:14. The poor woman and her daughters could do nothing but watch the process and wept.

It is an illustration that criticizes the Laws given to the holy people of God became a yoke, a heavy burden oppressing the people.

Jesus told us to leave on Him the burden of the Law. He opened the way of life freed from the law by dying on the cross. Now we are being saved not by keeping all the regulations of the law. We are going to be saved by the graceful love of God. We are now free from the yoke of the Law. Apostle Paul wrote in Galatians: We Christians are free from everything, but must willingly become a servant for all of our neighbors. And Augustine said: Love your God and live as freely as you want. They were talking about the fact that a life governed by the love of God is the just life for a Christian.

Jesus frees us from the yoke of the Law. The yoke that Jesus gives us is easy. This word "easy" has its original meaning of fitting perfectly. If we take upon Jesus' yoke, a yoke that fits well, and learn from Jesus, we can put off the heavy burden of the Law and get rest. We can put off the burden of trying to obtain salvation through the keeping of the Laws. And we can live anew in the amazing love of God. We can have true rest, a life as true free man.

(2) Secondly, we could point out greed as another burden of our life.

Greed does not know satisfaction. It always puts on us a heavier burden with the appetite for more things. This greed could be the chain that binds up our lives. We see how many people are ruining their lives by being enslaved to greed. We also see how many people left shameful traces by being bound to greed. There are many greedy people who violated the Law, broke their homes and lived in regret. They could not walk straight in their paths of life under the heavy burden of greed. Some out of carnal desire ruin their own families and hurt their spouses. Some with excessive desire for wealth pursue any method to satisfy it, hurt the hearts of many people, and destroy their own lives.

Once, a thief was arrested in Hackensack, New Jersey. A policeman tried to stop a person who noticeably was carrying two large sacks in both hands at around 11 p.m. When telling him to stop he began to run away. But the thief was arrested after a short while. The reason for his easy capture was interesting. He did not wear a belt. So he could not run fast with loose pants slipping down his waste that had heavy pockets filled with coins. All the items found in the pockets of this thief named Michael Bailey were 36 nickels, 30 dimes, 22 quarters and numerous pennies.

It is a comic tale. Similar to this example, the burden of greed is likely to block our paths. Uncontrolled desire is sure to be a heavy burden. Jesus tells us to leave off this burden of greed. Real freedom is not a life following your desire, but is a life of controlling our desires according to God's will. When we lay down the burden of desire, we can also experience true rest. We can live exciting and joyful lives.

(3) There is a third burden oppressing our lives. That burden is sin. On this matter I preached on last Sunday, and therefore I am not going to discuss this in depth.

When we come before Jesus, our sins are resolved. In Jesus, we can taste the grace of forgiveness. We can put off the burden of sin with the great love of Jesus who has mercy upon our faults. Even the scarlet red sins are cleansed as white as snow. Even the crimson red sins are becoming as white as wool.

(4) One more burden is that of apprehension and anxiety.

There is no one with nothing to worry. Although there is a difference in the degree of our anxiety levels, it is a fact that anxiety is an annoying companion that accompanies our lives. Even if we perceive a family to lack anxiety, there is an apprehension and anxiety in each home.

Our Jesus tells us this morning: "Leave your burden of anxiety to me. Also turn your apprehension over to me. Put the burden down and have rest. Come to me, take on the light and perfect yoke and then live a joyful and thankful life".

1) The first remedy Jesus gives us to overcome anxiety comes from his word telling us not to worry. Jesus asked if one could make a small person grow even by a foot through worrying. He tells us to realize the limits of anxiety. He tells us that our anxieties do not solve our problems.

A journalist asked Bishop Welch, who was a great leader of the Methodist church, on his 101st birthday: "Don't you feel any anxiety with your age of 101?" Bishop Welch answered: "When I retired at age 70, more than 30 years ago, I realized one thing, although it came pretty late. I remembered that I lived my life with many apprehensions and anxieties. But they were almost always for things that did not yet occur. We are worrying for many things which may never occur. We must have trust in God, leaving our apprehensions and anxieties to Him.

That's right. We usually are diligent in worrying. We are living under the burden of apprehension and worry about what we should do if things happen. The Bible tells us not to worry. It awakes us to the fact that anxiety does not solve problems.

2) By the way, our true problem is that we cannot help worrying against our wills. Who really wants to worry? We just cannot help being anxious. That's our problem. Therefore, the Bible tells us about the second remedy for our anxiety. It's to leave our anxieties up to Jesus. It requires our trust in Him. It requires our faith in the love and guidance of God. Without faith, we cannot leave it up to God. Someone after the first session of this morning told me: "Pastor, you know, I find it so difficult to leave things up to him." In many cases, we think that sticking to the problems will resolve them. But it is not true. Of course there are certain kinds of problems that we must dwell on in order to solve them. However, in many cases worrying does no help to solve problems. Nevertheless, people can't correctly look at the reality and try to solve their problems by themselves.

Dear congregation, which kind of being is our God who we believe? Isn't God much smarter than we are? Isn't God much more powerful than we are? Doesn't God love us more than we do ourselves? Why can't we do it then? Why aren't you obeying the words of our LORD who is asking you to leave everything up to Him? Why haven't you thrown off the vague beliefs that worrying would solve your problems? Leaving things up to God does not necessarily mean doing nothing. We must do everything we can, leaving the result up to LORD. When a person does nothing that person is lazy. A theology school student kept praying to Jesus for good grades on his examination without studying. Consequently, he could not answer to any of the test questions. He wrote instead as an answer: "Jesus knows everything." Professor meditated on the answer and replied on the answer sheet while grading it: "Jesus knows every thing. He gets a 100. You don't know anything. You get 0." In many cases, nevertheless, we are saying that we leave everything up to God, even though we live under the burden of apprehension and anxiety. Once you decide to leave it up to God, leave the results also up to Him. We sometimes need to throw off our insistence that things must be done in certain ways. That things must be done in a certain way is our thought, and God's intention could differ. However, even though we believe in the great and almighty God, we are trying to convince Him with our opinions. Rather than letting Him take responsibility over the results, we are endeavoring to carry through our purpose by sticking to it, even though it may not be the proper way in God's perspective.

Our LORD Jesus tells us: Leave the burden onto me. Leave the results up to me. Leave your insistence on the results up to me. After that we would get rest because Jesus will take care of things. We can live in thankfulness.

III.

There is no one in the history of mankind that said to come to him to rest. Only someone who has real authority to rest us, or a mentally ill person, could extend this invitation. Our Jesus is giving rest to us today. Our LORD tells us to leave on Him the burden of the Law, greed, sin, and result.

There is a female table tennis player named Kim, Moo-Kyo who is a player of the Korean table tennis national team. As a member of Korean Air Line, Co., she won the national singles championship, and won medals in the Asian Games, Olympics and World Table Tennis Championships. In 1998 at the Bangkok Asian Game, she made it to the gold medal game in mixed doubles with Kim, Taek-Soo. Kim earnestly prayed to God before the game. She heard the voice of the LORD saying: "I will give you great secret." She thought that the gold medal was hers to win. Everyone expected her team to lose, but she fought well tying the sets 1:1. She was in the third set with a score of 16:19 when she prayed to God again: "God, if you let me win this game, I will never grumble and do my best in table tennis for the rest of my life." Maybe by the virtue of her prayer the score went to 19:19. But she lost the game by 19:21 in the end.

After the game finished she felt so empty. Usually she would have complained to God. But, curiously and differently than usual, her heart was so calm and at peace. Reflecting upon the purpose of her playing table tennis, she finally realized that gold medals, championships, and wins were not the most important things in life. Reflecting upon herself, she realized that there was no day gone by without anxiety when she lost games, as well as when she won. Awakened by the thought that wins and losses did not depend on her, she was determined to enjoy table tennis without clinging to results. With the feeling that this comfort was just the great and secret thing God had promised to give her, she was filled with emotions and shed tears. She knelt there and thankfully prayed to God.

From there on, her life has changed. Her personality and facial expression have changed also. Her life has been transformed into one that leaves her anxiety up to God. Table tennis was no longer boring, and she became happy to practice. She realized that God has something planned for her through table tennis. As a true witness of Christ, she is joyfully playing table tennis while earnestly spreading the Gospel. She is enjoying the rest in Jesus, and is living a life of calm and joy that she found when she left her weariness and burden up to Jesus.

Our LORD is calling us this morning. He is calling us to a real Sabbath, a true way of rest. "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." Our LORD is calling us. The LORD of love is inviting us. Dear congregation, how are you going to respond to this calling?