⬇ EPUB

“MY YOKE”

The Spirit of God here calls our attention to this wonderful moment in connection with our Lord’s pathway and ministry down here. What marked the moment on the part of men was the utter refusal and rejection of our Lord Jesus Christ. Speaking morally, we have come to the climax of the rejection of our Lord by the inhabitants of the land of Palestine at that time. There have been evidences of it in the previous chapters of this gospel, but confining ourselves to this chapter, there are three things which mark the moment. First, the sorrowful and painful breakdown and failure on the part of John the baptist. And John was a wonderful man: in this very chapter the Lord Jesus Himself in His wondrous grace bears testimony to John; He says, “Verily I say to you, that there is not arisen among the born of women a greater than John the baptist”. Nevertheless, it is a sorrowful and painful breakdown on the part of this wonderful man, when he can send to the Lord and say, “Art thou the coming one? or are we to wait for another?” John was none other than the forerunner of the Lord Jesus Christ; he was the chosen of God to introduce the Son of God to Israel, and only think of such a man, the one sent before His face, sending a message like this, “Art thou he?” A man, too, who had borne such wonderful testimony to Christ: “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world”. And the next day again privately to his disciples he had said, “Behold the Lamb of God”; it was a spontaneous testimony as he saw Jesus walking. You will remember the marvellous effect that it had upon the two disciples: they turned their backs upon John, and they followed Jesus.

But now that day of testimony on the banks of the Jordan is over; he is in prison; he is no longer addressing the assembled thousands of Israel; he is no longer bearing testimony on the banks of Jordan; and no longer, we must almost fear, experiencing that same power of the Spirit in which he had testified, but he is alone, in prison. It is from that place that he sends that sorrowful message, “Art thou he?” Well, that is the first sad mark of the moment in which the Lord then was.

But there is another thing brought before us in the chapter, and that is the insensibility of the generation that was here when the Lord was here. The very simile the Lord uses emphasises the fact of their utter indifference and insensibility; there was absolutely no response from them. There were the sweet pipings of grace from the Lord Himself, but there was no responsive dancing from them. And there had been the mourning of John the baptist among them, but they had not wept; there was no responsive wailing from Israel.

Then, lastly, we have the Lord’s reproach of the cities in which His mighty works had been done, for they had not repented. He mentions them by name, and utters the most terrible woes upon them. They had been privileged to see the mighty acts of His power, but they had not repented; they had given no evidence of a proper sense of their responsibility towards God. There, in their midst, He had wrought on behalf of God these mighty acts of power, but they had not repented. I do not take up the detail of what was spoken.

Well, now, these things marked the moment outwardly, and it was at that time that Jesus answered and said, I thank Thee! I hardly know how to speak as I should—how can I express it?—how can I say how glorious the Lord appears? How glorious, morally, spiritually! Many of us have eyes and ears for that which is merely material and external. But, oh, what a character of glory we have here! What characterised the Lord at that time is like a sun-burst on a very dark and cloudy and stormy day. I have the sense, beloved, how little I am like Him! Could I raise a note of praise in such circumstances as these? Many of us can manage a hymn of praise when things are bright and fair and lovely, but how many of us could sing in such a condition of things as here depicted? I know that that note of praise must have filled the heart of the Father with sweetest music: “At that time Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth”. But the music of that note of praise not only filled the Father’s heart with joy and pleasure, but it has been sounding down all the intervening ages, and we only need to come under the power of the Spirit that we, too, may know something of the sweetness and blessedness of that note of praise that He raises to His Father.

“I praise thee, Father, Lord of the heaven and the earth”; He addresses the Father as the sovereign Ruler of heaven and earth. No matter what indifference, what insensibility, what impenitence may mark things here, He sits as the sovereign Ruler of heaven and earth. No matter how great the pressure, do not let go; do not give in; He is the sovereign Ruler; the Father is the sovereign ruler! How wonderful it is; here in this dark moment outwardly, the blessed Lord can salute Him as the sovereign Ruler of heaven and earth; it was just a suited moment for Him. Generally speaking, the Spirit of God presents the Lord to us as a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, that was what marked Him here, but, oh, how sweet this note of praise from Him; Jesus answered and said, “I praise thee”. What a contrast to the words of woe which have just left His lips, words big and black with the gathering clouds of divine judgment. But the moment His heart reaches the Father this note of praise leaps out, “I praise thee … Yea, Father, for thus has it been well-pleasing in thy sight”. How marvellous all this is, beloved; and how gloriously the Lord stands out before the eyes of our souls!

And then there is another thing: not only is there the ascending note of praise as He turns to His Father, but there is the out-flowing of grace as He turns to those around Him. There is the going out of streams of grace to men. If we had been there, it might have been a note of murmuring instead of praise: a note of discouragement instead of grace. We might have said, It is all in vain to try and go with men; it is of no use. But not so with the Lord; He raises His song of praise, and the streams of grace flow out. “For of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” (Matt 12: 34), and here, out of that heart which was filled with the eternal sunshine of the Father’s love, there leaped this note of praise to the Father. And then He can turn round to men and say, “Come unto me, all ye who labour and are burdened, and I will give you rest”. How it makes one long to be more like Him! It does not take much to chill our poor hearts; it does not take much to freeze up the springs of our love—but, oh, those streams of grace which flowed from Him!

Let me say, those conditions which are expressed here, have obtained from that day till this; they obtain all around us to-night. There is plenty of failure; plenty of indifference; plenty of discouragement, and plenty of the spirit that asks. Look we for another? There is still indifference, and still impenitence all around us. But if these things are true, the music of praise is still true; the note He raised to the Father is still going on; the rivers of grace are still flowing. We can still hear Him saying, “Come unto me ... and I will give you rest”.

Someone has said that here Matthew and John coalesce, and I do not think it is too much to say, that what comes out here, whether to the Father, or in grace to man, is not exactly of the usual character of Matthew, but runs rather more with John. I am not for a moment calling in question the absolute perfection of scripture, and we could not move this chapter without spoiling it. The very darkness and gloom which forms the setting of these wonderful words only serve as a dark background from which they shine out the more brightly and wonderfully.

We get the revelation of divine Persons here; all the interest and value of scripture centres around the Father and the Son; all centres around the revelation of divine Persons. First, there is the note of praise to the Father, “I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father: for so it seemed good in thy sight”. And then He continues, “All things are delivered unto me of my Father”. The Lord never speaks from the standpoint of circumstances; underneath all that He expressed, there ever was that wonderful divine circle of holy, heavenly relationships between Himself and His Father. It is always there: He was always there. If we speak of the circumstances then present, did it look as if all things were committed to Him of the Father? Indeed not; it looked as if His whole mission was a complete failure. Do not these things of which we have been speaking look in that direction? “All things have been delivered to me of my Father”. He had a heavenly view; an out-of-the-world kind of view, and in that view He said, “All things are delivered to me”.

He does look at circumstances in His previous utterances, but now He has retired from all the outward circumstances of His pathway; He has retreated from it all. He has retreated into that holy, heavenly circle of relationships and affections which subsisted between Himself and His Father. He can express His absolute acquiescence in and acceptance of His Father’s will: “Even so, Father; for so it seemed good in thy sight”. But He can go on and say, “All things are delivered to me of my Father”. If the Father is brought before us as the sovereign Ruler of the heaven and the earth, then He has put all into His hands. We must not limit it; we must keep to the scope of the Father’s sovereignty, it embraces the heaven and the earth; and all things are put into His hands. They are put into the hands of the Son; that is as the Son He is a divine Person in relation to the Father. But He speaks as a Man down here. It is one of the most lovely pictures of that blessed One as a Man down here.

He goes on: “And no one knoweth the Son, but the Father”—that stands in all its undimmed force and meaning as when the words left His lips; no one knows the Son; it lies outside the scope of revelation; it has not been brought into revelation, and hence it lies outside our knowledge.

Then He says, “Neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Sou will reveal him”. He had the true knowledge of the Father; it was no mere objective acquaintance with the Person.

From all eternity the Son had had His home in the bosom of the Father; He knew the Father. Then when He was pleased to take up a condition as Man down here, He brought into it all that belonged to Him morally as in the bosom of the Father. It marked Him, it singled Him out pre-eminently, that moral glory of the relationship in which He subsisted towards the Father. When here He always addressed the Father; He spoke to the Father. There is that one great exception when He was upon the cross, and cried out, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” But the Son, as here, was marked out as knowing the Father; He was alone in it, “nor does any one know the Father, but the Son”. Can you conceive what it would have meant if the sentence had stopped at that point? It would mean the blotting out of Christianity. But it continues, “and he to whom the Son may be pleased to reveal him”. The only-begotten Son in the bosom of the Father came into manhood that the Father might be morally revealed and known by men down here; that He might be known to those “to whom the Son may be pleased to reveal him”. One might say, That is Christianity. It is the revelation of the Father in the Son down here, and that becomes on our side the knowledge of the Father as so revealed in the Son, and that becomes rest. I can remember, in days long gone by, we used to sing, ‘There’s sweet rest in heaven!’ Yes, so there is; but there is rest down here, in the midst of, and in the presence of, and in spite of all the conditions which obtain down here. No one knows the Father but the Son, but the Son has come to reveal the Father to us, so that we might come into His knowledge. That is the proper connection of verse 28, “Come unto me … and I will give you rest”. He gives it by revealing the Father in Himself. He brings us to rest by bringing us to know the Father as revealed in the Son; it is involved in the proper knowledge of Himself. Think how the apostle Paul puts it in Ephesians 4: 13: “until we all arrive at the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, at the full-grown man”—it is wonderful how it is put in scripture. “He that confesses the Son hath the Father also”, 1 John 2: 23. You could not have it in any other way. Now I would ask you, beloved, has He been pleased to reveal Him to your hearts? Has He made known the Father to you? It is the “Father” here; it is not the common apprehension of the term, but it is the Father in His relation to the Son; the Father in His love for the Son. We have in scripture not only that “God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish” (John 3: 16), but as Christians we have this also, “God commendeth his love towards us”, &c, Rom 5: 8. But we have more than that: in the last verse of John 17, we find, “I have made known to them thy name, and will make it known; that the love with which thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them”. He, the Son, is the only adequate Object of the Father’s affections; He is the one and only adequate Object of the love of the Father.

By and by, beloved (and perhaps we might give that expression a little more of its oldfashioned meaning, and that is, Right away! Straightway!), well, by and by, right away, perhaps before to-morrow morning tinges the east with its rosy beams, all the saints of God may behold His glory, and that glory will be the adequate expression of how the Father loved Him before the foundation of the world. “I desire that where I am they also may be with me, that they may behold my glory which thou hast given me, for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world”. Do not lower it, beloved—you will lower your own blessedness, if you do; He desires that we should see what will express to us bow the Father loved Him before the world was.

So here He says: “Come ... and I will give you rest”. The revelation of the Father is made once and for all, and the soul is brought into the consciousness of it. But there is the pathway; we are still here. It may be for a day or so, or for a few months, or perhaps even a few years longer; and what about that; how are we going along? He takes account of us and says to us, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me ... and ye shall find rest”. No matter what your circumstances are—up or down, dark or bright, sorrow, tears, anguish, you may feel them all, for Christianity does not make stoics of us—but no matter what we may have to pass through, we shall be at rest, ye shall find rest to your souls. How absolute it is—“ye shall find rest to your soul”.

It is not now the Son as known only to the Father, nor is it the Father as known alone to the Son, and as revealed by the Son to whom He pleases, but it is the Lord saying to us, “I am meek and lowly in heart”. That is what pre-eminently characterised Him as Man down here. As to ourselves, we bump up against our adverse circumstances, and sometimes even we bump up against one another. And why is that so? Because we are so little like Him, so little like this meek and lowly One: “I am meek and lowly in heart”. It was perfectly justifiable, perfectly beautiful that He should speak of Himself in this way, being such an One as He was. He says, “learn from me; for I am meek and lowly in heart; and ye shall find rest to your souls”. What is His prescription for us? “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me”. What does His yoke speak of? Is it service? Does it speak of something imposed upon us? Yes; you know Peter in the Acts 15: 10 speaks of the yoke of law as that which “neither we nor our fathers were able to bear”. But here the Lord says, “my yolk is easy, and my burden is light”. His yolk makes the path easy. Do you know what it is? The Lord is so variously presented in Scripture; He comes before us in many ways. He was all that man should be in relation to God. He was competent to reveal the Father, but He was also the perfect expression of all that a man should be to God. Now He says to us, “Take my yoke”—that yoke is sonship. Never a fall, never a blister, never a sore spot under His yoke, will you know. And what is sonship. It is love; He brought it in, He shewed us what sonship is. Israel had been spoken of as Jehovah’s son, but the reality of sonship was never here till He was here; when He came He brought in sonship. Even Peter, in the way of contrast to what had been, speaks of the saints as “elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, by sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ” (1 Pet 1: 2)—that obedience is the obedience of sonship. You do the things you like to do—that is all; you love and you obey. Look at the expression of sonship in the Lord: “I thank thee, O Father ... even so, Father” (Luke 10: 21), as though He said I would not have it different; I would not have it otherwise; it is absolutely right; “Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes; even so, Father”.

Well, then, “Take my yoke upon you”; it is the yoke of sonship. Where do you learn sonship? Not from studying me, nor could I learn it from a study of you; it is from Him that we must learn it: “Learn from me”. We are so busy, so active, that we often do not take time to sit down and look at Him. He is not only the perfect expression of God to man, but of man to God; we must learn it all in Him. He stands out here in a very marked and beautiful way, not only as the Son who knows the Father, but down here, a blessed, meek, patient, lowly Man. It was a perfect delight to the heart of the Father to have Him here; perfect in all that a man should be for Him.

The test comes very suddenly to us, beloved. Maybe I am well today, but I may be sick tomorrow. You may be rich today, you might be poor tomorrow. You may have sudden sickness, sudden poverty. Have you not heard that riches sometimes take to themselves wings and flee away; it may be you may know sudden poverty. But look at this: whether sick or well, whether rich or poor, if we take His yoke upon us we shall find rest to our souls. The Lord can keep us in rest and quietness whatever our circumstances may be. Every heart knows how real these things are to us down here but in it all we may know rest to our souls as having come to Him, and learned from Him, and accepted His yoke.

May the Lord be pleased to add His blessing on what has been said.

CLAPHAM

17th January 1912

From Mutual Comfort vol 5 (1912)

← Previous 48 of 78 Next →