Transcription
in the garage and building a yoke for all of you to try on. But I wasn’t gonna go into the garage and do woodworking in 100 degree heat.
Now, when Jesus begins, he talks about a bit of a contrarian attitude of the leadership around Israel. The leaders of Judah, the religious leaders, the societal leaders, all who just aren’t able to be pleased. My mom had a phrase she would use to describe people with such an attitude, that they were only happy when they were unhappy or making others unhappy. We see that banter back and forth. Hey, we played the flute for you, but you didn’t dance. We mourned, but you didn’t cry. What’s going on? And then he hits on that main piece. John Cain, John the Baptist, the epitome of austerity. What did John eat? Locusts and wild honey. He had an interesting diet. His clothes, he’s not wearing the most, the nicest things. He’s got camel hair clothes with a big old leather belt. And when I say camel hair, I don’t mean like the nice sport coats sometimes guys get. We’re talking camel hair that maybe was treated a little bit, but really might have a few bugs in it from the animal because they didn’t have, it wasn’t comfortable. And John didn’t eat really, he didn’t drink. John was austere. And then Jesus comes and he is almost the exact opposite. When they run out of the wine at the wedding, what does Jesus do? Hang on, hang on, I’ve got this. Well, actually Mary was like, hang on, hang on, my son has this. Instead of isolating himself from humanity, he sits down with those on the margins. He sits down with everyone and anyone meeting them where they are. And yes, he eats and drinks and celebrates with them. He is an average person and they aren’t happy with that either. No matter what these two do, the prophet of the Lord or the Lord himself, no matter what they do, the people look and say, well, it’s not right. No matter how right it is, no matter what Jesus does, they’re not gonna be happy. He could have healed a thousand lepers and a thousand more and people would have still said, yeah, but he still hangs out with those lepers. He still hangs out with those sinners. Yeah, he’s doing some good in the community, but they reject Jesus. They turn their backs on him and critique him for what he’s doing, for the teaching, the preaching, and all of that. But the problem is we look at this and we don’t get it. We don’t understand their lack of understanding. We don’t get why they’re turning their back on him. Now, the reality is we could go down any number of rabbit holes and rabbit trails if we wanted to, to try and figure out why the scribes, the Sadducees and Pharisees all decide that somehow Jesus is not the Messiah and John wasn’t the prophet coming before. Jesus makes his contrarian statement about the people, not as a critique, but as more of a moment of grief and sadness, of lament, that no matter what happens, these people will find a way to not believe.
No matter how many crowds Jesus feeds, no matter what he does, the religious establishment will find a reason to reject him. Now, Jesus makes this great statement in verse 19 that wisdom is vindicated by her deeds. And as we’ve talked once or twice in worship and more times than I care to count in Bible study about how you measure and how you know that a prophet is a true prophet, you don’t. You never can in the moment. Time is the ultimate test. Wisdom is the ultimate test.
So as we look at all of these various people, the only way that they’re going to know that they are wrong is time and truth. They always will come up with a reason. Now, there’s this great interaction in 1 Kings that I want to talk to you about where prophets are shown to be who they are and how we know a true prophet. There’s this great moment where King Ahab calls in all of his prophets. And he says to them, should I go out to battle? Should I go out to battle? And all of his guys say, yes, king, great king, you’re going to win. One guy even makes horns of iron and he says, king, I’m going to give you these horns and you’re going to use them to gore the enemies of Israel. And then the king of Judah says to Ahab, it seems a little too good to be true. Are there any other prophets out there? And Ahab says, yeah, there is. Okay, why isn’t he here? He never tells me anything good. He always tells me how I’m wrong. So the other king sends for him. And then the prophet comes in, prophet Micaiah. And he says, the king says, should I go out to battle? And in the words of every teenager, yeah, go out to battle, you’ll win, it’ll be great, have fun. Literally, that is how the response sounds. And then the king gets mad and says, I told you to tell me the truth.
And then the prophet looks at him and says, fine, if you go out to battle, you will die and your army will be defeated. So of course, what does the king do? He goes out to battle. And who is the true prophet? The one who told him what he didn’t want to hear. The one he didn’t listen to because King Ahab died in that battle. That’s how you know a true prophet, the test of time.
Now, Jesus is pointing out that his critics don’t matter. They don’t matter because he’s going to be proven over time. They are going to see eventually. And you know what? He doesn’t have time to fight them. He’s not going to argue with them, bicker with them over what’s going on. He’s going to leave the door open for them. And that’s the beauty of Jesus because instead of taking his ball at their rejection and going home, instead of storming off saying, fine, you won’t follow me. He leaves it open and says, you know what? You’ll eventually know. And then he goes on and talks about coming to me all you that are weary and carry heavy burdens and you will find rest for your souls. 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. He gives them an invitation. He gives us that same invitation. Take a minute to consider what he is saying to these people. Take my yoke upon you. Follow me. Follow me because it is light to follow me. Now, many of us are looking like, well, it’s not easy to follow Jesus. It is not easy, but it’s not burdensome. And I’d like to differentiate between those two. Because when you think about where Judaism was, where the law was, you were losing when you woke up in the morning in terms of following God. When you woke up, you lost. And that’s the reality because of how the scribes and how the Pharisees interpreted and lived out their lives.
As I said to the kids, you only got so many steps on a Sabbath before you broke the Sabbath. And if you lived too far from the temple, guess what? Guess where you couldn’t go on the Sabbath? Because to go to the Sabbath, to worship on the Sabbath was work because you lived too far away. Imagine worrying about every last piece and morsel of food and what it had touched. Imagine having to know all of that. And I realize nowadays we’re like, I’ll just have the app for that. No apps, but imagine, could you fit all of what the scribes had written down in this? Not a chance. What about all three of these together? Nope. So imagine taking all the hymnals and Bibles in your pew and carrying them around with you all day long. And anytime you got to a point where you wondered, what am I doing and am I sinning? You had to go back in and check. And it wasn’t user-friendly either. Is that faith? Is that faith that enlivens? Or is it faith that burdens? It is entirely a burden when your faith is so caught up in the rule and regulation, the rule that the law had ballooned into. To turn towards God in such circumstances is impossible because every moment you are so worried about sinning that you are either stuck not doing anything and we’re in the sons of omission and not acting, or we’re doing things and we might make a mistake and we might sin.
Imagine, that was our world and our lives. How is that faith? How is that following God? That’s the burden that Jesus is talking about, that our faith is not. Follow me and my burden is light.
Because the reality is when you boil down the law as Jesus sees it, what does it boil down to? Two things. Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, with all of your mind, and with all of your strength. I think every one of our Sunday school kids could memorize that and know it by heart. What about the second part? To love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. These two things, to love your neighbor and to love God, to do these two things is neither burden or oppressive, like knowing that everything you do needs to be looked up so you don’t sin. And even then, by the time you get to looking it up, you probably have sinned. The fact is, our faith is not one of burdening, but enlivening. When we think of Jesus, when we think of coming to worship, what do we think of? Not, I have to go to worship. No, I get to go to worship. I get to praise God. I get to do all these things. I get to sing hymns. Although sometimes they’re a little dreary. I’ll own that. But sometimes, the reality is our faith is livening to us and not a burden. So brothers and sisters, let us live into that. Let us live into that live faith, that joyful faith that we have, that joyful faith of laying everything to God and choosing the light burden and yoke of Christ.
Amen.