The Government Shall be Upon His Shoulder - Stever Zehr

Well, good morning. It's good to be here with you again.

It's always always a joy to come to Halsey Mennonite

Church to see you again get reacquainted. And I was

blessed with the opening. My brother Joel, I'd like to

My text is from those verses he read Isaiah chapter nine,

So i'd invite you to turn that. I'm gonna I'm

gonna go ahead and read the whole thing, or the

first seven verses. But the title of the message is

from verse six that was read. But the phrase there

is the government shall be up on his shoulders. But

before I read this, I'd like to to think about

the context. Whether Joel mentioned the context of Isaiah chapter nine,

and in verse one, there you see the nations or

the tribes of Zebi a Naftali. Basically, this is it's

it's nations. It's the nation of Israel that is being

has gone into captivity for their wickedness. And so this

is the context here. But but what you see there

is these nations that are there at at odds with

each other, and in this context this prophecy of Jesus

that the government is going to be upon his shoulders.

The thing I want to bring out here at the

beginning of the message is that control for the world

has always been an issue. We talked about Ukraine and Russia.

It's just been an ongoing thing where you see, whether

it's in politics or wars, as nations strive to dominate

for resources, for land, territory, technology, just all kinds of things.

They struggle to be in control. That's what the nations

of the world do on a pretty consistent basis. You

go back through the by if we're to back up

from Isaiah and go back, what we see there is

this same conflict back through history, right back to the

Garden of Eden. You see Satan coming in and saying

questioning God's authority with a very simple question, hath God

really said this? And so this started the contest, this

conflict between God's word and the lies of Satan. So

I'm going to just do a real brief run down

through history, biblical history, to this prophecy of Jesus when

it comes to this thing of nations, because I think

this is a very good This is a good way

to set the stage for this prophecy that the government

will be upon his shoulders. And in contrast to what

we may struggle with and what the nations of the

world struggle with, and maybe where we go for our

answers in that struggle. So if you look back at

the time of Noah, you knowess became so rampant. This

was before the time of nations. There really weren't nations.

Which nations God put We're going to see in just

a second. Nations are what God put in place to

control rampant evil. Without that, it got so bad that

God destroyed it with a flood. Genesis chapter ten. I

didn't really know this till recently, but Genesis chapter ten.

Read it sometimes it's interesting. But it's called the Table

of Nations, okay, And this is where God sets out

his plan for the world for unregenerate men. And this

is just a point of interest. It is the first

time in the Bible you will see words like nations, land, kingdoms, countries.

I think all four of those words, if I have

it writer, are in that chapter for the very first time.

And so this is God saying, look, I'm going to

carve up the world in a way that it will

self regulate evil. And so while we know wars are

evil in a way, it's maybe in a well, probably

in every way that I don't understand. It's God self

regulated God, God's method of self regulating evil men. Then

in the next chapter, in chapter eleven, we see where

God this this is actually enacted. Man begins to act

evil and God says, all right, tower of babble, you're

not building to heaven. And in all the well they

speak different languages, and so these that's why when you

fly to Mexico you should know Spanish, or you know Europe,

you should know German or French, because these are different nations.

God carved it up that way, and basically that is

what nations are for, is to some extent, to limit

the scope and the depth of the evil of in

a society of unregenerate men. And you know Roman's thirteen

there says for he is the minister of God for

the to the for good, you know those he bears,

not the sword in vain. That is what the name

of the earth are meant to do. And so when

Joseph went to Egypt, you see they're a little bit

of cohabitation. He's second in command, he's actually part ruler

of Egypt. But when he dies, another pharaoh comes in

that knows not the people, and he oppresses them and

puts them under slavery. These are God's people. Okay. Years

later we see Moses and and and Pharaoh in this

sharp conflict, the ten ten plagues, and then the departure

of the Red Sea. This is this is government firmly

in the hand of Pharaoh, with God's people oppressed and

and they were become slaves to a cruel regime. Now

they finally when we when we take this into the

Promised Land, we see those those famous words of Joshua

where he said, choose you this day who you will serve.

You know, whether it's the gods of the of the Egyptians,

the gods of the Amorites. He's basically asking you get

to decide, as God's people, who you are going to

have govern your life, who's going to govern your kingdom?

And he said, as for me and my house, we're

going to serve the Lord. So that takes us up

through Uh Joshua and getting into the time of getting

into the Promised Land. And of course you know the

story then how there came a time when the children

of Israel said, we want to be like the nations.

We want to be like the nations around us. We

want to be just like them. They have a king.

We want a king. We want a king to rule

over us, to be responsible for us, for our defense,

for who we are, to make us a nation. And

so that's where Saul came in. And that whole thing

didn't turn out real great, that whole thing of kingdoms,

and it was soon divided, and then they come into captivity,

and they, as God's people, were then ruled by very

very evil men, by nations and emperors, kings who gave

absolutely no regard to who God is, no recognition to God,

the God of Heaven. They just enslaved the people they

were able to capture. And yet there was always this

line of both prophecy and godly men through this whole

time of captivity that gave recognition to a king, to

a god, to a governor. And some of the really

wise men among them recognized this prophecy that there was

going to be a king, a messiah that would reign

over them. And Daniel, he was one of those people

who went toe to toe with three very evil and

powerful men kingdoms and outlasted all of them by not

fighting but not getting involved. I will have nothing to

do with the King's meet. I will not defile myself

with his program them. When you get to the prophecy

of the Messiah, it was the prophecy that the King

is coming. That is what they were looking for, and

the government, the responsibility for his people would rest on

his shoulders. This king was going to come, and he

would take full responsibility for his creation, everything about it,

from how from all its needs, their protection, their restoration.

He would be the king that they could trust to

have their very best in mind, the very best interest

in mind. He would be the prince of peace, it

was called. He was called. And what's interesting about this

is that of the increase of his government and peace,

there would be no end. Now, Joel read some of

the verses there two and six, how they walked in darkness.

Verse three has a very interesting thing about it. There

says thou hast multiplied the nations and not increased their joy.

And so that is a very very real thing that

happens in the world. That the bigger they got, the

more powerful these nations got, it didn't necessarily mean that

they were happier people. In fact, the United States is

one of the most powerful nations on earth, one of

the richest nations on earth, one of the most privileged

nations on earth. They are not one of the happiest

nations on earth. And so this prophecy to the Messiah

was that there's a king coming who's going to expand

there's no limit to the expansion of that kingdom. And

along with that their joy will increase. And so that's

I wanted to give that context. And let's read the

first seven verses of Isiah chapter nine. Nevertheless, the dimnasts

shall not be such as was in her vexation, when

at the first he lightly did the land of Zebulun

and the land of Naphtali, and afterward did more grievously

afflict her by the way of the sea beyond Jordan.

In Galilee of the nations, the people that walk in

darkness have seen a great light. They that dwell in

the land of the shadow of death upon them have

the light shined. Thous multiplied the nations, and not increase

the joy They joy before the according to the joy

and harvest. And as men rejoice when they divide the spoil,

Thou hast broken the yoke of his burden, and the

staff of his shoulder, the rod of his suppressor, as

in the day of Midian. For every battle of the

warrior is with confusion, confused, noise, and the garments rolled

in blood. But this shall be with burning and fuel

of fire. For under us a child is born. Unto us,

a son is given, and the government shall be upon

his shoulder, and his names will be called Wonderful counselor

the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace,

of the increase of his government and peace. There shall

be no end upon the throne of David, upon his kingdom,

to order it, to establish it with judgment and with justice.

From henceforth even forever, the zeal of the Lord of

Host will perform this mm hmmm. In Luke chapter two,

and it's very familiar. We read, we read a lot

of these passages over Christmas time. In Luke chapter two,

you'll notice the world that Jesus was born into. He

was born into a world of of of regions, jurisdictions,

and cities. And so when it says there when it

starts out, a lot of us have memorized them in school, maybe,

but it says they went on a decree from Caesar

Augustus that all the world should be taxed. And this

taxing was made when Syenius was governor over Israel, and

so they they were taxed according as the nations of

the world. It has all come together. It was a

world that was carved up and ruled by powerful men

and governments and king controlled the land. And Jesus was boring,

born into this setting. And immediately this glaring difference between

his kingdom and the kingdoms of the earth began to emerge.

Herod felt threatened. And you know the story how in

Matthew chapter two, there it says wise men came to

Herod and they said, where's he? This is born king

of the Jews. And he was extremely interested in this

new king, this king of the Jews. And this triggered

a man hunt by Herod to find this king. Not

for the same reasons we heard about in seeking Jesus,

like we heard about in the devotional this morning, but

he wanted to seek Jesus in order to do away

with him, to kill him. Jesus not only survived this

encounter with Herod, but he grew, he flourished, He lived

his life in an unparalleled example of good goodness. He

taught them, he fed them, he healed them, he raised

from the from the dead. But at the beginning of

his ministry, it starts out with him being tempted by Satan.

And one of those temptations was this that if you

fall down and worship me, I will I will give

you all the nations of the earth. So this is

a very powerful temptation that you and I still face today.

I'm not going to go into the meaning of all

those temptations. I'm not sure I understand all the meanings,

but I've there are meanings behind them, temptations that apply

to us. But that one was I will give you

the Kingdom of the Earth. And it was a temptation

rooted in this great conflict we opened up with between

the nations of the world, the world system, whether it's

the United States or whether it's Russia, it was it

was the world system that versus the Kingdom of Jesus. Christ.

Jesus spoke and he taught them. He often started by saying,

you know, the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand, or

when he taught parables, he would say, the Kingdom of

Heaven is like And so this was the terminology he

used when he taught many many times. We I think

a lot of sermons have been preached and a lot

of focus in the last couple decades on the Kingdom

of Heaven and what it means is Christians. I think

there are resurgents and awareness of kingdom Christianity, books written

about it, people talking about it. So we know that

there's a lot that could be said about that about

this kingdom of Jesus Christ. But what I want to

focus on is in this thing of how Jesus is

bearing the weight of respond ability for his people, not

only just our upkeep are you know, the things we

worry about, but also our mistakes. Jesus is willing if

we let him to take responsibility, to help with a

solution for sin. And I would like to look at

that a little bit. We have a messiah, We have

one who has taken responsibility for his kingdom, his people.

The government is on his shoulders, and of his peace

there is no end. So the first thing I want

to think about, and we read this, and it was

read this morning Isaiah fifty three. There the verse there,

verse four says surely he hath borne our grief, he

hath borne our grief. Surely he hath born our grief

and carried our sorrows. Yet we just need him stricken,

smitten of God, and afflicted. That's the first. That's point

number one. This king upon his shoulders. We live in

a world that is ransacked by tragedy. We have a

king that has offered to take this upon his shoulders,

to take responsibility for the grief we as a human

race are experiencing upon his shoulders. Grissa Mole in the

book I read recently from It's called Beyond the Darkness,

she says this, if every grieving person wore black when

they came to church, every single person in the sanctuary

would be wearing black. Grief has been described as a

as a blanket, as a garment that has put upon

us and is worn It's It's been described as a

companion that people get to know, we get to know

and then we live with for the duration of our life,

and it is it's an immense thing to carry. This week,

I just finished reading the book The Memoirs of Brother

Jason there On a life shattered over and over by grief.

The death of loved ones is the is the form

in which his his grief, his experience and his family,

many of them. That's how that grief came about. It was,

it was. It was very very interesting for me to

read it was. It was harder for me to read

than I first expected part of it because I was there,

I lived through a lot of it. I remembered so

many of the details. But I think there's another side

that was a little bit for me it was a

little bit hard, is that I was right there, I

lived some of those memories. And yet somehow it feels

like I missed the depth of what was happening, Like

I I wasn't able to enter in to the depth.

I somehow somehow missed it being right here to some

to some extent. And and I think it's easy to

miss it's it's maybe impossible to enter in. It is

impossible to enter into the depth of how how people

are experiencing those things. But and I think people get

better at seeing it as time goes on. But there's

another side to this that I think is also very

very important, and that is too could it be possible

that we actually miss the grief that is happening in

our own life. Now, I know, when your wife dies,

your mothers dies. You're not going to miss that per se,

But are there other things that you're grieving in your

life that you're in denial about that you're not recognizing,

you know, as as men, maybe it's it's something that

makes us grieve, but we pretend it does. It doesn't

really bother us, you know, we're it's it's not a

big deal. We brush it off. We're men, you know.

The things we say, the way we react, though, in

the meantime, could show that there's a kind of grief

inside of us, that we have something we're caring that

we're not really dealing with. Just a couple of days

ago or not that long, guys, I was talking to

a man just out of the blue. He called me

He's about my and ended up being a long conversation.

Successful man, good life in many many ways. But he

talked about some of his life's experiences and this wasn't

about death and the families, but life growing up and

some of the things that he said. You know, he said,

I feel like for the last summer, I've for the

first time in my life, been grieving those things. And

he said, I lost something back there and it's just

now that I'm beginning to recognize and grieve it well.

I think one of the things that is a real

danger is that if we don't recognize grief for what

it is, it can very easily turn to bitterness and anger.

And that's one of the things. You just think about

Esau for a minute there. He sold his birthright. It

was something he did, he did at the Zoneo's cord,

but it was also something his brother had done to him.

And there came a time when Esau grieved that. He's

the Bible says that he wept bitter tears. He sawt

it carefully with tears. I can just imagine as he

looked back on that time. But but there came a

time in his life when he became so angry and

so bitter about that grief. He said, one day, I'm

going to kill my brother. It was and I believe

it was a man that was not willing to see

the grief in his life, or if he did, he

was dealing with it in the wrong in the wrong way.

It's it's a load that's impossible for one one man

to carry. And I've thought about this before. You know,

what what is my role? How should I how should

I relate with people that are grieving for all kinds

of different things, and it's it's a load that you know,

we do the best we can, but there's there's no pastor,

there's no there's no deacon, there's no dad or mom

that can cover the pain and bear the pain and

the grief and the sorrow that is represented in the

people that we meet. We can help. We should be

that representative Jesus. But the Bible says here in Isaiah

fifty three that he has borne our grief. He also promises,

and there's different places in the Bible where it says

that he also promises to turn sorrow into joy. And

I believe that brokenness is actually can be a gateway

to the Gospel loneliness. If you've ever felt loneliness or brokenness,

you think about that feeling or that pain, there's different

ways to react to it, but if you actually engage

it and press into it in the right way, it's

actually a gateway or a door to a closer walk

with Jesus Christ. And in some ways, these things that

come into our life, these lonelinesses, and these these experiences

are actually a gateway to the Gospel it can be

an opportunity that draws us closer to God. One of

the questions that have been asked many, many times is

if Jesus was God, why was he on the cross?

And that was asked, I think Jaden, is that your name?

Brother Jaden talked about that a little bit, the pain

on the cross. I think he said it said it

well that another place that says that if I be

lifted up, I will draw all men to me. And

I think that includes the pain that Jesus experience, that

includes his being able to relate to us, were drawn

to a man that not only can relate to us,

but also can can bear our burdens. One of the

things about Jesus that I really, I think more and

more I really find attractive is that Jesus not only

showed us from the Sermon on the Mountain, like you're

studying in different places in the Gospels, he not only

showed us how to live practical life. I'm not sure

what Jesus would say about drones and all that. I

don't claim to have the answers, but Jesus did try

to show us practical life. But he also showed us

how to how to die. And I think this is

very very important for humans, for those of us that

are going to die. You know, we think about terminal

illness and that really brings it into a sharp view

focus kind of kind of shortens life. But old age

is terminal and all of us will die. So how

do we die? How do what Jesus showed us how

to die? And through the through the renewal of the

resurrection that comes out of this death or this grief,

comes this joy or this this re re re rejuvenation

of life. That's what the resurrection was about. So that

was the first point. Jesus carries our grief the government

on his shoulders for his people. Sometimes, and I've watched

some videos or heard people where maybe there's a tragedy

and a loved one has been taken, killed, drowned, and

the rescuers find them and the comfort they have Oftentimes

as well, he died, he died quick, or he died

doing what he loved, or it was an accident. You know,

he didn't take his own life as an accident. And

these words are meant to bring relief to a grieving

widow or mom or dad. And yet don't we have

a much higher calling than just dying, a much greater

hope than just dying doing what we loved, or at

least it was an accident or it happened really fast.

We have a much higher hope than that. That is

in Jesus Christ. The second thing I'd like to think

about here, the way he bears are takes the responsibility

for us and for life upon his shoulders in his

kingdom is this thing of anxieties and worries. Psalm's fifty six,

verse three says, what time I'm afraid I will trust

in thee Time after time we're told Jesus taught in

the sermon amount not to take thought, not to be anxious,

to be anxious for nothing. These are these are phrases that,

as time goes on, I find almost ridiculous, ludicrous, like

how do you? How do you? He taught us to

not take thought, to be anxious for nothing, for to

rely on God for our daily needs that are provisions

will be provided. And maybe one of the hardest ones

to do is to take no thought for tomorrow, because

tomorrow will take care of the things of itself. We

always want to know as human beings, most of us

that are cognizant of our life and aware of what's

happening around us. We almost always want to know what's

going to happen tomorrow. We already know what happened yesterday,

we already know, But what's going to happen tomorrow, what's

going to happen in the future, is what we're really saying.

We don't know the future. We have no way of

understanding what's going to happen in the future. So most

often it's the future we worry about. It's a future

that haunts us and worries us. Concerns us. Businessmen that

get out their calculators, that get out their projections, the ledgers,

the estimates, all projections into the future, how it's just

going to work out. As men, we worry about church

of direction making, We worry about our jobs, worry about

our health. Suicide. I mentioned suicide. It's a huge problem

in the world. Why because people well I don't know

why exactly, but people don't know what's going to happen tomorrow.

Their future looks terrible. A lot of it is because

men have lost hope in tomorrow. Anxiety, depression, hopelessness, worry.

They take they take it upon themselves. We take it

upon ourselves, upon our own shoulders, and it builds up,

and we carry it too far for too long. It's

a man by the name of George mccauss, mcculson, mccolslan.

He was a director of a YMCA a number of

years ago back in Pennsylvania and somewhere around Pittsburgh, if

I remember the story right, But he was. He was

director there of this little branch of YMCA, and his

responsibilities to take care of it, I guess, to keep

it going financially fluid, and all these things. And it

was not going well. It was a tremendous job. He

worked hard, He put in long hours, seventy five eighty

five hours a day. He was desperate to make this work.

And in the meantime his health was going down. He

was not able to cope with it. And finally he

went to a doctor, a therapist, and the therapist said,

you know, if you don't do something about this, you

are going to have a nervous breakdown. Your health is deteriorating,

and you need to change something here. And one day

he was walking, he went for a walk out into

the out into the forest there not far from where

he lived, And as he walked into that forest to

begin to think, and he sat down, and he had

his pen and his tablet and begin to write. And

he found himself writing a letter to God. In that letter,

he simply wrote, Dear God, today I hereby resign as

a general manager of the universe. And Jesus is teaching

on the sermon of the mount. He asked us, as

logical human beings struggling to comprehend a simple logical truth,

consider the wildflowers. Consider the lilies of the field. They toil,

not they spin. Jesus asked us, considered, like, who's taking

responsibility for the lilies? Who's taking responsibility for their survival.

I've farmed long enough and hard enough to know that

plants don't just raise themselves. You've got to be on it.

You've got to water them, care for them, fertilize them.

Things need to be who takes care of the fl lillies?

Who takes care of the wildflowers and daffodils you have them.

So I was studying as I thought about those daffodils

that come up in the spring, up and down the

highway there. As I understand somebody planted those, But who's

taking care of them? They just grow up in your

guards and your lawns and your rye grass fields. My

wife and I have a year or so ago forget

now we have the opportunity. We were clear down in

southern California. We went out there to those those poppy fields,

those vast rolling hills of the wild poppies, the California poppies.

A lot of it's been taken out by solar panels

and development now, but there's still these these reserves and

these rolling hills of where these wildflowers, these poppies grow,

and they've been there for hundreds and thousands of years.

And it said when the Spaniards first came into southern

California there and they walked down into those hills and

just those glowing orange hillsides carpeted with poppies, and they

called this the land of Fire as they saw these

poppies out across there. And for hundreds of years they've

been growing. Who's been taking care of them? Who planted them,

who wanted them? We go through all these droughts and

these wildfires and all the things that happened. Who took

care of them? Before the Spaniards came who took care

of these exploding fields of poppies and of fire out there,

the breathtaking beauty God does. That's the short answer, the

short answer to that, the sovereign God, that the providential God,

and Jesus is asking us to take that in mind,

to think about that. And there's many different Bible verses

and songs that reflect this principle of God's sovereignty as providence.

In the Bible, Proverbs twenty one says, the heart of

the king is in the hand of the Lord, as

rivers of water. He turneth it whithersoever he will. And

I think of that sometimes in these discussions of war

and Ukraine and so on. I've thought of the heart

of Putin, if he's presumably the problem here. But the

heart of Putin being in the hand of God. You

believe that Putin atheist, doesn't give any recognition of God.

But you know, neither did Nebeka Ezzar, neither did Pharaoh,

neither did Herod, neither did all those those kings and kingdoms.

But God held their heart right there, just right in

his hand, turned it like a river of water wherever

he wanted it to go. The sovereignty of God. And

first I think about that one Peter five or seven,

casting all your care upon him, for he cares for

you songs that we sing. He holds the whole world.

He's got the whole world in his hands. He's got

you and me brother in his hands, you and me

sister in his hands, got the whole wide world in

his hands. And maybe more seasonal appropriate, we sang this

morning joy to the world to save your reins. Let

men their songs employ. He rules the world with truth

and grace and makes the nations prove the glories of

his righteousness. This is a gift, this being able to

resign the weight of the world in the hands of

his sovereign God, and it's something that we should never

take for granted. The third one I like to think

about here is the fact that he bore our sins.

The Bible says on a tree, and one Peter two,

verse twenty four, who his own self bear our sins

in his own body on the tree, that we, being

dead to sin, should live under righteousness by whose stripes

he were healed. Now, I would just say, the weight

of sin that we carry far exceeds I believe any

other burden that we may have, whether it's a burden

of grief, whether it's a burden of anxieties and worries,

it's this burden of sin that is the heaviest. It's

the weight of sin. The Bible says, it so easily

besets us. It's so easily, we're so are so naturally.

It's so easy to sin, and yet impossible to carry.

If you want to, if you want a scripture to read,

sometimes reinforce that in your mind. Read Psalms thirty eight,

and the it vividly describes the overwhelming weight of sin

as this crushing burden up on a man that has

has is trying to carry it. Just some of the

phrases there. My iniquities have gone over my head. They

are a burden too heavy to bear. He says, I

am bowed down and brought low. I am feeble and

utterly crushed. And then he talks about this, He says,

his friends have withdrawn and strength fails. My wounds fester

and are loathsome. My back is filled with searing pain.

In the Bible, in the Old Testament, sin and in

the New Testament, sin was often likened to a disease,

and so that's the content here. The Psalmist would have

been writing, he says, my friends have withdrawn from my

evil disease, and and in the Bible, leprosy was often

described with that as a evil disease and the issue

of blood. And he's saying, my friends have withdrawn from me.

My back is, my wounds are festering and loathsome I

was just reading. I've been trying to read through the Bible.

So I got to Leviticus, and there's pages and pages

and pages of instructions on how to deal with someone

with leprosy. And this type of this type, it's the

type of sin who're uncleanest and be separated. They were

not to interact with general society. But then in Matthew

chapter eight, we have a man, a fellow man, his

name is Jesus, walks up and lays his hands on

a leper. And how how pure does a man have

to be to reverse the process? How righteous, how holy,

how sinless does a man have to be to walk

up and undefile a leper? In Leviticus chapter fifteen, it

is something I just noticed too. This chapter is all

about how to deal with a woman who has an

issue of blood. What happens if you touch her? What

happens if she touches you? And yet in the Gospels

we have a story of a woman that walks up

to Jesus and touches him on purpose, and she's immediately healed.

He cleans her. And you know, this thing of the

atonement is something. I don't know how much you know

about the atonement or how much you've studied the theories

of the atonement. You know, the substitution, whether it was

a punishment like penal substitution or sacrifice for our sins.

I have pondered it. I've studied it. I've somewhat argued

about it with people just to try to understand it.

I've listened to podcasts and sermons by the hour. I've

read books on it. I've re listened to podcasts. I've

tried to understand the different theories, the implications of believing

one way or another about certain Atonement ideas. I still

don't know that I understand it all. All I know

is it seems to me the best explanation might still

be Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures.

How is it possible that one man could die for

sins could be resurrected, and through that we have relief

of the burden of sins. I don't know. I can.

How can we have a clean conscience after it's been

so defiled by confessing our sins and going to Christ?

Why doesn't that work with any other idol, with Buddha,

with any other religion. How could Jesus, by just saying

the words your sins are forgiven, have them forgiven? How

could he say it? Neither do I condemn thee go

and sind no more? A simple truth? I don't know.

But again I can. I can share in the sentiments

of of of the Psalmist and thirty, where he says,

if thou Lord shouldst mark iniquities, who can stand? But

but there's forgiveness with THEE that thou mayst be feared.

And so this is this is the three things I'd

really like us to think about when we consider Christ

and his coming to earth. That he bore the government

the responsibility for your life upon his shoulders. He bore

our grief, he bore our anxieties, he bore our sins.

And for me, these are the these are the three

things that I deal with the most in my life.

But there is there's one last point that I think

is maybe the most important point. It's the thing that

we really need to consider, and maybe especially this Christmas season,

you know, this season of joy, the season of mirth

and gift giving and festivities of Black Friday shopping and

all the things that go with it that some of

us like more than others. But while we are thankful

for all these things that Christ has born for us,

we must remember that there are things that we need

to bear for him. If we're going to be recipients

of this, of this benefits of Christ bearing these things

for us, if we're going to give benefits of the

of the of the government of Jesus, the benefits of

His bearing the government upon his shoulders, there's some things

that we need to bear upon our shoulders, and that

is the yoke and the cross. Jesus said, take my

yoke upon you and learn a me. You know, learning

of God. You think about learning of God. Sometimes we

say or sing or tell each other, maybe remind ourselves

that God's way is best. God's way is best. You

know that that's true. I have tried a lot of

different ways, but God's way is best, whatever area in

life it is. I had a message the other Sunday

on marriage. Well, it was kind of about marriage. It

was that gives you the idea. But one of the

things that we talked about is the physical union of

a man and a woman. How beautiful that can be,

and yet how hijacket's become, and how the world has

said so many things into that. Do you know that

in that area, God's way is best. That's what I

told the people in maddress. Anyway, God's way is best,

and that applies for so many areas in life. Young men.

I know what it's like to be young and say, well,

I believe what you're saying. I just have no idea

what God's telling me right now, young ladies. But with

prayer and patience, it can emerge what God's way is,

and it's always the best. And the reason I'm bringing

that up is in order to learn what God's way is,

you need to take God's yoke upon you and learn

of him. And that takes if any of you have

tried to do the discipline of learning something like you know,

maybe you got du lingo or whatever and quit after

six hundred and eighty nine days and wherever you got to.

But the discipline of learning is But if you want

to be a recipient of all those things you're going

to face in life, your sin, your grief, you're going

to have to take up your yoke and learn of you.

It's the discipleship weighs. It's the way of discipleship is

taking up up the yoke of Jesus Christ. And in

different place in the Bible, Luke chapter nine I have

here says if any man will come after me, let

him deny himself and take up his cross daily and

follow me. So you got the yoke in the cross.

And Jesus told them he was going to suffer many things.

And this was right after he told them that he

was going to suffer and die. He told them, but

you need to take up your cross and follow me.

And so what does the cross mean as I take

up the cross, Well, the cross represents in part death

to our sin, where we die over and over if

we have to, but we die to sin, we keep,

we deny ourselves when we die on denihile of self.

It also means the complete surrender to the lordship of

Jesus Christ. It can meet the embracing the hardships of

life that come to us, letting go of our own self, reliance,

of our own answers to life, and wisdom to follow

the path, even if that path leads to death. We

are going to follow that path. And I believe as

we drop our anxieties and our sins at the foot

of Christ, and he teaches us to take up the

cross and the yoke. The Bible teaches that we need

to follow him outside the camp, bearing his reproach. And

Hebrews thirteen says that he says, wherefore Jesus also that

he might sanctify the people with his own blood suffered

without the gait. Let us therefore go therefore under him,

without the camp, bearing his reproach. So this is all

rooted in the Old Testament, how they would take an

animal outside the gate and they would sacrifice it out

there for the sacrifice for sins. But I want to

bring our minds back here all the way to the

New Testament, to the story of the altar to the

Unknown God. Do any of you know that story? Paul

and Mars Hill alter the Unknown God? How does that

fit in with this? I think that this is probably

my latest and favorite Bible story. And I want to

tell you why here In closing, Paula's in Athens. He's

in this big city. It's society under the bondage of

control of many idols. It is said that in Athens

there was more gods than men, so it was just

overrun with gods. He sees this altar to the unknown

God and he has this moment, this Eureka moment in

his mind where something and clicks, and he says, I

will tell you who this God is, this creator God,

this god that you're ignorant words. He's the one that

made the earth, the stars, He's the one that he's

a creator god. He's the one that you're you're seeking

after him. He's close to you. You're almost there. If

you just diligently look for him, you're going to find him.

He's not very far from you. And then there's this

part of the story that I just find so it

just blew me away. It's so intriguing. He quotes one

of their own poets, a person that they are very

very familiar with, probably a famous man of celebrity in

their time, and this poet, this little part of the

poem he says, for in him we live and move

and have our being. I love that phrase for him,

so he quotes that part of the poem. Now, this

quote was from a poem written by a philosopher from Ephesus.

There his name was Epiminitis Upamnidas. The backstory was six

hundred years prior to this, in this region of Athens,

they had had a terrible plague come through their country,

had just wiped up people, and there was nothing they

could do. They had all their gods. Nothing they did worked,

and so they came to Emmipinidas and they said, look,

you're a wise man, you're a philosopher. What can we do.

What do you recommend that we do to stop this plague?

And he says, what I want you to do is

you get a lamb. You get a take a lamb

outside the gates, outside the city. You turn it loose

into the wilderness, and then you follow that lamb, and

wherever that lamb lies down, you make a sacrifice, and

that will stop the plague. And so they did this,

this heathen group of people. They went out in their

different little villages and towns and they turned a lamb

loose out into the wilderness, and they followed this lamb,

and whoever that lamb lay down, they made a sacrifice,

and slowly that whole epidemic was wiped out in their

country around Athens there, and they remembered this, and they

went around to all the spots where those lambs were sacrificed,

and they put up an altar that said to the

unknown God. And what Paul is saying, is this lamb

that you're looking for, This unknows God. He was just sacrificed.

They just took him. It was Jesus. They took him

outside the gate and crucified him. He is the one

that you're looking for. And I just find that story

to me so beautiful. It serves as a reminder to

you and I on this Christmas season that not only

did it go looking for the baby in the cradle,

we look for the baby the Christ on the cross.

And when you feel the weight of the world coming down,

crushing you and all these things, you go outside the

gate and watch for the lamb, follow the lamb. And

when you get to where the cross is and you

lay down your burdens, your burden of sin, of grief,

of anxiety, you take up your cross, and you take

up your yoke, and you follow him, and there you

will find rest for your souls. Lord bless you to

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