Strength of a Settled Heart 1979

This is one I've read so often over the years, everybody can say it by heart, and you're welcome to join me if you like. But it's a passage that is central and so needed by us all. Matthew 11, 28-30.

Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and lowly of heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

A certain land has fallen into anarchy. People are robbing from each other, burning down each other's houses. Pirates control the countryside.

Now the king of that land has an army stationed in castles or fortresses all across the country. And he's commanded his army to go out from their fortresses and bring the land back under his authority. But every time one of these armies goes out from a fortress and tries to do this, it ends up in a fiasco.

The people of that land, for all their misery, simply don't want the king or his army to rule them. And every time one of these armies comes out and tries to do so, they know just what to do to send them packing like a tribe of beaten rats. One morning, in one of these fortresses, the captain was giving his soldiers a pep talk.

And you're going to go out there, and you're going to bring things under control, and you're going to get some respect for our king, and you're going to set those victims free, those old people and the infirm and all the other ones who are captive. And all the soldiers said, hurrah, as they ran out the door with their swords flashing, saying, charge! They get to the outskirts of the first village, and all of a sudden, all the villagers stick out their fingers and say, shame to the soldiers! Shame! What right have you to tell us anything? Shame! All it takes is that. And the soldiers sheath their swords, hang their heads, and go shuffling back to their little fortress like beaten dogs.

They rest up for a few days, and now they're going to do it for real. They're not going to be intimidated by anything. And they march out of their fortress like the army that's going to conquer the world.

This time when they get to the village, the whole populace starts laughing. Here they come again, those clowns. They call themselves an army.

They don't know how to do anything but shuffle over their own feet. And again, they just wilt. The whole army is demoralized and retreats once more to their fortress in despair.

So now they rest up a little bit longer. They try to get themselves together, and now they're going to do it. Now they're ready.

This time, nothing's going to stop them. They're going to conquer for the king! And lo and behold, they get past the outskirts of the village this time, and get into the central square. And it looks like they're really going to bring this unjust land under some justice again.

All of a sudden, people burst out of all the houses and all the shops and the saloons. And they start shaking their fists and making those awful faces. And again, the army wilts.

And they break out into a run and chase back to their fortress as fast as they can go. It's easy enough, inside these walls, to talk about covering the world with the gospel, calling nations to repentance, opening the eyes of the blind, setting the captives free, bringing good news to the poor. How many times do we go out those doors, determined that this week we're going to take a little territory for the Lord? We're going to live by faith.

We're going to manifest the kingdom of God. We're going to proclaim Jesus Christ and Him crucified in some way. But as soon as people begin to point their fingers at us and say, Who are you to talk to us about God? Or as soon as they ridicule us.

Or as soon as they start looking cross and threatening us. Our hearts melt. And the reason we're so intimidated by accusations and ridicule and hostility coming at us from outside is because we're so unsettled inside.

When my heart is settled in God. When I know who I am in God and what God has done for me and what He's called me to do. When I know that Jesus lives in me and that whoever receives me receives my Lord.

Then I can go out and live God's will of mercy and speak the prophetic word and not be undone by a negative response. What has to happen is that our inmost heart has to come to rest in God. If we're at rest inside.

Then the restlessness and the unsettledness outside won't throw us for a loop. When Jesus says, Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. That's the kind of rest He's talking about.

Inner rest. The rest that goes on within the heart, even while we think and struggle and work and do battle with evil. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me.

For I am meek and lowly apart and you will find rest for your souls, not necessarily for your bodies. But you will find that soul rest that will refresh both soul and body. When we have that.

When we really have come to rest in God and on a daily basis live that rest. Then we can take all kinds of strains and we can live through long seasons of difficulty and still be refreshed. We need this inner rest in at least three areas.

We need inner rest from a troubled conscience. Troubled conscience puts us on a treadmill. So that we spend our whole lives trying to justify ourselves, trying to work off that guilt somehow to atone.

And it wears us out. You wake up in the morning and there's a vague uneasiness that lingers over your mind all through the day. You go to bed at night, it's still there.

Sometimes it's like a man who committed a horrible crime long ago. So long ago, he can't even remember what the crime was. But he knows that the stain of this thing is on his heart.

He knows that. And he also knows that one day he's going to stand before a judge, not a jury, but a real judge who will make no mistake. And this knowledge makes it so that he just can't get any joy out of life.

He's scared to death of death. Can't even sleep well at night. Sometimes it's like a man who not only remembers the wrong he does, he can't stop doing it.

And so the guilt keeps piling up. And his conscience becomes like a big open wound that's infected and festering and throbs and aches and sends pain all through his being. May God help us to see where.

We are being, in our own lives, unsettled inwardly by a troubled conscience. And where we need to, may he help us to repent. May he help us to bring this whole mess to the Lord.

Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden with a troubled conscience, and I will give you rest. How, Lord? I will wash your wounded conscience in my blood. Bring it to me and I'll do this and you will have peace.

For if the sprinkling of defiled persons with the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sanctifies for the purification of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered himself without spot to God, purify your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? But he was wounded for our transgression. He was bruised for our iniquity. The chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are made whole.

All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned every one to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. We also need rest from an unstable ego.

An unstable ego is an ego that is so unsure of itself that in order to find some sense of its own worth, it has to exalt itself over other people. Any man or woman who lusts for greatness in the eyes of men, and who of us doesn't in some way, has an unstable ego. We're like the fish that's endlessly swimming on, always in search of that river or that ocean or that pond or even that puddle, where it can find a little recognition and get a little bit of status.

How much of our lives are consumed in that search? It's no wonder we fall apart the minute somebody laughs at us, or belittles us, or ignores us. We're just so shaky in our egos. And so after a while we begin to pull in our horns, and we don't let anybody know that we're following Jesus.

We just can't even abide the thought of somebody ridiculing us again. May the Lord show us how the unstable ego has been driving our lives. Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden with a shaky ego, and I will give you worth.

How worth? I will make you to know your worth in the eyes of God. And once you know your worth in the eyes of God, you won't have to lust after some kind of recognition from men. You'll be able to satisfy yourself with lowliness in the eyes of men.

Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, says Jesus, for I am meek and lowly apart, and you will find rest for your soul. The cure for an unstable ego, and who of us doesn't have one, is to receive and constantly receive the mind of Christ. Have this mind in you, which is also in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men, and being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.

Therefore, God has highly exalted him. God will exalt us too when the time comes, when he's ready to, and when we can take it. And bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

What peace, what wonderful liberty will be ours when we allow Jesus, when we get to the place where daily we allow Jesus to impart his mind to us, under that yoke, to be satisfied, to be servants like he is. We also need rest from a fearful heart, fear of tomorrow, fear of rejection, fear of failure, fear of war, fear of sickness, fear of death. Sometimes our fears aren't that clearly defined.

It's just a kind of a cloud that waits for us every morning when we wake up and just hangs over us all day long. And this cloud makes us to be covetous and miserly and self-centered and all the time paranoid, as if we're running from something, constantly looking back over our shoulder to see who's chasing us, so that we have no peace and no inner quietness. So he says, come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden with a fearful heart, and I will give you rest.

How, Lord? I will give you my Spirit, and my Spirit is rest. My Spirit is not a spirit of fear, but of love and of power and of a sound mind. My Spirit of mercy will drive all fear right out of your heart.

When the Spirit came to the disciples and all the followers of Jesus, the disciples of Jesus, from Pentecost, the thing that happened to them was that they became bold. They were given boldness. Likewise, today, when we open our hearts to God and the Spirit visits us, He gives us boldness.

Now, Lord, look upon their threats and grant to thy servants to speak thy word with all boldness, while thou stretchest out thy hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of thy holy servant Jesus. And when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God with boldness. And they went out from their fortress and got the job done.

The servants who are being raised up to go out into the harvest at this hour are being given a powerful gospel, and they're being wrapped, armed in the armor of life. But above all, they are being filled inside with the eternal strength of God. And another word for that strength is rest.

God's rest. God's Sabbath. Rest from a troubled conscience.

Rest from an unstable ego. Rest from a fearful heart. It's to this rest that Jesus calls us again today.

And it's the food of this rest that he gives us in his body and blood. And if we will abide in this rest as we go forth from here, we will make disciples. We will manifest God's kingdom.

The light of God will shine forth from us. And the darkness will not overcome it. Let's just spend some time meditating and praying, okay?