Treadmill

Welcome to the Awakening Church podcast.

We pray this message encourages you and provides the hope and light of Jesus Christ.

Thanks for tuning in.

So that's one of my favorite songs from Radio Head's 1997 groundbreaking album, OK Computer.

Another reason why I should never be in charge of selecting worship songs for our services, because if unless you wanted to be confused and depressed as you walked out of here, I'm your guy.

But many of you know Radiohead's my favorite band.

I actually named one of our uh kids after the lead singer.

And as the entire album of OK Computer was this social commentary on the technologically driven dystopia that our world was becoming, there were prophets because we're here.

This song is a particular, in particular, is a picture of a programmed and exhausting pace that we all have in seeking to conform to the unattainable standards and to the perfections that are placed upon us by society.

The song actually starts with happier, fitter, more productive, it drones on, and then it ends with these sort of like jarring words, like a pig in a cage on antibiotics.

And yet it's Christ who says to us on this never-ending treadmill, he says these words.

He says, Come to me, all who are weary and burden, and I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble and heart, and you will find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy, my burden is light.

These words, as you just saw in metaphor, they move us from a pace of exhaustive running to a restful walk.

Words from Jesus 2,000 years ago that were so profound, so countercultural, and downright baffling to most.

You see, during the time of Jesus, when he said these words, there were these Jewish Pharisees.

They were experts in having people keep up a relentless pace of religious activity.

You see, in neglecting the key foundations of the law, like justice and mercy and faithfulness, many rabbis of this time and before had buried God's life-giving principles under a mountain of life-sucking rules, and the truth could no longer be found.

The weight was more than anyone could bear, and soon the pace was faster and faster than anyone could keep up with.

Just for the command of not to commit adultery, they buried God's revelation with rules of not even being able to talk to another woman or look at another woman that wasn't your wife.

In honoring the Sabbath, they added all these extra restrictions.

You couldn't spit on the ground, you couldn't be more than a three-fifths of a mile from your home, you couldn't look in the mirror, you couldn't gargle anything that you were drinking, and if your house was on fire, you couldn't take anything as you fled.

Which is still a good fire safety practice, I would recommend.

The rabbinical teachings had become so massive and so demanding that it began to become impossible to learn all the traditions, and I guarantee you it was impossible to keep them all.

Those that chose to follow a rabbi's certain interpretation of the law, it was actually known as taking up a teacher's yoke.

Now, a yoke referred not only to the device used on large animals for pulling heavy loads, but in metaphor, it meant that you were going to follow a certain rabbi and you were going to come under their teaching.

Like Skywalker with Yoda or Potter with Dumbledore, whatever your jam is, okay?

And then you would just submissively begin pulling their heavy load of teachings and in this case, legalistic rules.

However, their attempt to uphold the law and earn salvation, it just exhausted them.

But then comes the Christ.

Following 30 years of humbly remaining behind the scenes, Jesus enters into three years of transformational public ministry prior to his world-changing sacrificial death and resurrection.

And following countless rejections by the rabbinic schools of his native land and the so-called wise of his time, Jesus turns to those that are weighed down by these burden, this burden of legalisms.

This new lawgiver, this man of divine wisdom, he walks up to them with a soft and gentle invitation.

He just says, Come to me, all who are weary and burdened.

And I will give you rest.

These are not words spoken a long time ago by a religious leader or some mystic fortune teller.

These are words spoken by God in the flesh.

This God is alive today, even right now, in this very moment, Jesus is saying to you these words, come to me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you, learn from me.

I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy, my burden is light.

Now, the word rest that is used here by Jesus, it doesn't refer to the realities of life, like some sort of promise of earthly prosperity or that life is going to be void of crisis or illness, but it does refer to one's spiritual condition, and at one level, it is directed towards the rest and the peace that we will experience in eternity.

You see, just like many of the Jewish people of the Old Testament tradition, they were seeking to achieve eternal rest through human effort.

Many people today, we still seek to earn our salvation that can't be achieved through human effort and resources.

And so we think that maybe if we try giving back some more, if we try loving my neighbor better, if I try going to church more, if I try forgiving more, I try volunteering more, I try this religious duty or even that religion, that somehow maybe I'll get to the point of meeting the standards of this all-powerful, perfect, and personal divine being we call God.

In the pace of trying, it just speeds up faster and faster.

And in the midst of all this worrisome and burdensome trying, Jesus redefines everything.

He says it's not about trying, it's about trusting in me.

So come to me.

Later on in the early church, as it was forming, the Apostle Paul was explaining this concept, this concept of salvation as a gift to be received, not a reward to be earned.

And he writes this well-known reminder that we say a lot.

It's Ephesians 2, 8.9, it says, For it is by grace you have been saved through faith.

And this not from yourselves, it is a gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast.

Sitting with my friend Larry.

He felt there was nothing that he could do to make up for the horrible things that he had done throughout his life.

And so for him, God wasn't even an option.

Now, scripture is clear that no one is too broken for God.

And yet, in one sense, Larry was right.

I mean, there's nothing that he could do to make up for his sin, as there's nothing any of us can do.

It comes down to trusting in what Jesus has already done.

And I do want to call out real quick, if you're someone here like Larry that was exploring who Jesus is, he was seeking, hadn't crossed that line of faith yet.

If that's you here, we hope we hope this is a place where you safely can do that.

That you can investigate these claims of Christianity, but hear me on this.

When a person embraces Jesus and his work on the cross for their brokenness, it's called conversion.

It's when you become a Christ follower.

And you can know all the facts you want about Jesus and the cross.

Guys, you may even agree with them.

But conversion doesn't happen until you personally trust in Jesus to save you, recognizing that you can't save yourself from your own sin penalty, and only Jesus can.

So I encourage you to just keep exploring who Jesus is and what this faith is about.

Maybe today is the day that you'll take that step of faith and you'll just trust in Jesus as your ultimate leader and rescuer.

Because for the Jewish people of this time, many of them did just that and they put their trust in Christ.

After Jesus' sacrificial death and atoning work on the cross and his victorious resurrection, they began to take on this new yoke of Jesus as followers of him.

But hear me on this.

We all know old habits are hard to break.

And oh, how they love their activity and their legalisms, unable to accept that this yoke of Jesus was so easy and so light.

And so the new followers of the Christian faith began to pour in.

And some of these believers were outside of the Jewish culture, they were called Gentiles.

And soon these Jewish Christians, they were called Judaizers.

They began to impose on these Gentiles a second yoke, stemming from good intention, but it simply just weighed them down.

And so these Judaizers started telling these Gentiles, you know what, if you really want to be a believer and a follower of Jesus, you ought to do this and not do this on the Sabbath.

You ought to follow this ritual, you ought to take on this Jewish tradition.

You ought to do this, you ought to do that, you ought, you ought.

And then you'll have favor with God.

And this added burden of this yoke, it just created a barrier to the salvation that Jesus offered.

It began to hijack the gospel.

One of the church leaders of that day, Peter, he saw what was going on, and there was a very important council that took place.

And he stepped on the scene and he shouted these words.

Now then, why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of these disciples a yoke that neither we nor our fathers have been able to bear?

No.

Believe it is through believer we believe it is through grace of the Lord Jesus that we are saved just as they are.

Peter is essentially saying, it's Jesus plus nothing.

So enough.

And with their minds plagued of these past traditions, of you ought, you ought, you ought, you can just see them beginning to remember those soft words of Jesus when he said, Come to me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you, learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart.

You will find rest for your souls.

For my yoke is easy.

My burden is light.

My pace is slow.

When I was attending a church summer camp my freshman year in high school, I was immediately confused as to why there were two separate pool times, one for the girls and one for the guys, especially since I was there to meet girls.

And however, my confusion only heightened when they mandated the girls wear dark-colored t-shirts in the pool, so us guys were then looking on through the fence like a bunch of weirdos.

I asked, why the t-shirts?

Why the separate pool times?

And I was told that this was a way of keeping us guys pure and removing any kind of sexual temptation.

Therefore, removing any blame or responsibility from us guys, from their brothers in Christ.

Looking back, I didn't realize I was experiencing the height of what they now call the purity culture found in churches, seeking to build its own moral code outside the confines of Scripture.

You see, this subtle misuse of God's word unknowingly weaponized Scripture, not only placing the sole responsibility of purity upon women, but it manifested shame and fear for a woman's own body and sexuality.

We now see that this imbalanced and controlling pursuit of modesty, it has since harmed the mutual leadership between spiritual brothers and sisters within the church.

You see, this insidious narrative was essentially saying that women are a temptation to be avoided rather than an essential asset and ministry colleague to be equally partnered with.

And so growing up in these seasons, in this season of the church, many girls were burdened by actually thinking that if they wanted to grow up and be a good Christian woman of God, they needed to follow this extra yoke.

Guys, do you hear?

If you listen hard enough, you can still hear the voices of the Judaizers today.

Because we all have that heart within us.

Legalism is a deep moral disorder that plagues all of humankind.

And our intentions are good.

But scripture says that the results are evil.

When a person trusts in Christ, we immediately want to add a yoke to what Jesus had already given them.

And we say, you know what, you ought to say this and not this.

You ought to wear this and not that, and especially not that crop top.

You ought to only look at this kind of art and never get body art.

You ought to give, and it better be 10%.

You ought to volunteer only within the church.

You ought to forgive fast, no matter the offense.

You ought to not to drink this, don't smoke that.

You should only hang out with these people.

You should worship with this kind of posture.

You should only vote for this political party.

You ought, you ought, you ought.

Hear me on this.

Don't get confused.

Personal convictions, wisdom, personal guidelines that go beyond the explicit commands of Scripture are fine.

They're actually good.

You should have them.

But when we impose them on others within the community and treat them as if they are God's ultimate truth, Scripture says it's evil.

Giving the outside world the impression that Christ simply suppresses life instead of fulfilling it.

They say that you can know if you're a part of a cult, if you're a part of a rules-based system where you can't say no.

Some of you right now are thinking, I think my manager's a cult leader.

Today we still have communities of faith that suppress life.

And they sell a legalistic, exhausting version of Christianity that empowers controlling leaders to have dominance over their flock.

They insinuate that they have uniquely been given a divine position that requires uniformity.

They enforce top-down discipline through shame and fear.

They foster a high-demand culture that prides itself in being the best church in town, doing the real ministry, making it all about them and their rules.

Do you see?

Do you see how this added yoke can actually be a distraction to the gospel?

Some of you right now have been distracted this entire teach.

Why?

This, okay?

This up here.

And let it be a reminder to you that when we exhaust people with legalistic chores, it begins to divert our attention from Christ and the true yoke that he provides.

Some of you are like, okay, you made your point, you can stop.

I like this up here, all of this.

It's like my security blanket, okay?

It's like, we're gonna take over the service dog industry, okay?

We're gonna do it.

Hey, can we give it up for Julietta?

I mean, is it Julietta actually has a D1 running scholarship, and she's been plagued by the question, what am I ever gonna do with that after I graduate?

Answer right here, okay?

Guys, catch this.

By attaching human standards to God's standards and treating them both as if they have equal authority, we create a false ladder of salvation.

And there's this new and heavy yoke that is placed upon Jesus' yoke, and just like the rabbis of old, we bury the foundations of the gospel under burdensome rules and restrictions.

Jesus actually addressed this very evil to the Pharisees in Matthew 25.

He says this woe to you teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites, you shut the kingdom of heaven in men's faces, you distract them.

You distract them with your exhausting pace.

And with the problem continuing on in the early church, then the Apostle Paul he addresses this wickedness.

In the Galatians 5, he says, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free.

Stand firm.

Then and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.

Today, many singles within our church.

You guys are burdened with an exhausting pace.

Feeling like you're incomplete.

And there is this unbiblical yoke that I believe is even heaviest for our single women.

You see, ever since the beginning of the Protestant Reformation, women have been coerced through the mishandling of Scripture, hearing that the family was to be the center of their lives.

And this meant that their primary identity and purpose, and actually the pinnacle of all holiness for a woman, was to be found in either the role of wife or mother.

Hear me on this?

Obviously, these roles aren't bad.

We just came out of a marriage series.

We just celebrated Mother's Day.

And they should be celebrated.

But the role of wife and mother should never be elevated over one's ultimate authority and identity.

Scripture's clear that we are all complete in Christ.

Hear me?

We're all complete in Christ, no matter your marital status.

Right?

Especially knowing that Jesus wasn't married.

And we're not going to be married in heaven.

Spoiler alert, sorry, okay?

However, this subtle imbalance of the family has placed a heavy yoke of high pressure on many of our single women, believing that marriage is something that completes them.

Yes, marriage is good.

To be a wife and a mother in our culture is normal.

To choose a path of being a support to one's husband and focus on the household is honorable, as it is for men to choose those supportive paths.

But the assumption that womanhood makes sense only within the context of marriage and motherhood is wrong.

You see, similar to the early church, we still have these subtle yet harmful additions to the yoke of Jesus, thinking there needs to be more.

And so to the single men and the single women in our midst that feel the pressure that they're incomplete, or that they have to get married to reach their full potential, Jesus says these words to you.

Take my yoke upon you.

Learn from me.

For I am gentle and humble and hard, and you will find rest in your souls.

That was a long one.

Are you okay?

Guys, you see the evil of adding yoke to another person, it's easy for us.

It's in our DNA because we add a yoke upon ourselves.

Many of us refuse to believe that this yoke, this Jesus, alone is sufficient.

We refuse to believe that the favor of God is upon us simply by trusting and not trying.

We simply refuse to believe that the favor of God is upon us simply by being and not doing.

It was uh 20 years ago as a youth pastor.

I was meeting with a high school girl named Amanda.

Her parents asked me to meet with her, and she just started uh harming herself.

And back then the vice of self-harming was new.

I was unqualified to be in this conversation, I still am.

And I was asking her what the triggers of this behavior were, and with each turn of the conversation, it always went back to her saying, I just can't measure up.

I feel like I deserve this pain.

I let my friends down, I let my parents down.

I'm feeling like I let God down.

Guys, when achieving the favor of God is based on trying and doing, it can become so dangerous.

We always think.

There's more we should be doing to earn his favor.

We always think there's more we should be doing to live this Christian life right.

And though we understand that trying is something detrimental to becoming a Christian, somehow we think it's essential to living the Christian life.

And so we begin our own versions of self-harm, a marathon pace of external performance, of religious activity, volunteering in the nursery, rededicating our lives, reading the Bible every morning, performing community service and praying before bed and giving every week and coming to church every Sunday and blindly following the demands of our pastor and our inner critic feeds us lies that if we just do it a little bit harder, if we just do a little bit more over there, God will be pleased with me.

Yeah, I know the Bible says he loves me, but you know what?

If I just do this one thing, I know he's gonna like me just a little bit more, and do I need to make up for how I disappointed him last night at that party?

And the pace becomes too much, and we eventually hit a point of exhaustion in our Christian life.

But the spiritual rest that Jesus promises refers to not only a new future world, but also a present world here today that we can experience it.

He says again, he says, For my yoke is easy, my burden is light.

And so we stop.

We turn to Jesus.

And we say, Are you for real?

Jesus, how can you say that your yoke is easy and light and provides rest?

Because I just read that Sermon of the Mount Pitch right before this easy yoke pitch, and there you're calling us to an even greater righteousness, demanding more than the Old Testament demands of us.

You're now telling us that we shouldn't commit adultery, but you're saying I can't even lust after a person.

You're saying I can't commit murder upon my neighbor, but now I can't even hate them.

Do you see how they park in front of my driveway every day?

I mean, didn't you just say that we're supposed to enter in through the narrow gate, not the wide and easy gate?

Don't you call us to nothing less than life commitment?

Don't you desire complete surrender of ourselves?

Yeah.

All of that's true.

And though Jesus is not offering us the burdensome yoke of the law, he also isn't offering us something that is free from all loving constraints to ensure we experience abundant life here and now.

Jesus does demand a greater righteousness than the rabbis of old.

But this teacher who is gentle and humble in heart supplies us with an even greater empowerment.

That empowerment is his divine nature within us.

It's Peter who says these words.

Hear me on this.

This yoke isn't about Jesus, it is Jesus.

And so when you take this yoke, at the center of your being is Christ.

He becomes your life.

As the Apostle Paul reminds us in 1 Corinthians 6, 17, but he who unites himself with the Lord is one with him in spirit.

Guys, Jesus now lives within you.

He doesn't desire for you to start trying to live like him, which is tied to production, it's tied to performance.

He simply just wants you to rest.

Just rest in the fact that he lives in you.

Rest in the fact that he desires to express his life through you, recognizing that only Christ can live this Christian life.

And he is willing to live it through you anytime you rest and you surrender and you allow him to do so.

Paul says that when we rest, the Holy Spirit is then able to bring forth love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and faithfulness and gentleness and self-control.

These virtues do result in spiritual services.

Like gathering for worship, even on time, as Robbie would like to say.

Reading scripture, praying, giving generously, serving in the church and community, but it is not fueled out of trying to do something for Jesus, but by allowing Christ to do something through us.

We mustn't forget that when Paul says those famous words in Ephesians 2, 8 and 9, for it is by grace you've been saved through faith, this not from yourselves, it is a gift from God, not by works, so that no one can boast.

We have to read on to the next verse.

He concludes his thought by saying, For we are God's handiwork created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us.

And so therefore the master teacher says, Learn from me.

Essentially what he's saying is, know me.

And when we rest in this gentle, humble heart, we engage God's word not for education, but for revelation.

We seek to pray not for stipulation, but for conversation.

And with each time we learn from him, his love is revealed.

And then Paul says is that for Christ's love then compels us, it compels us towards a greater rest, towards greater submission, abiding in him, allowing him to reveal his active and tangible expressions of love through us into a world that so desperately needs to see it, to experience it.

Guys, this yoke of Christ, it is radical.

This yoke goes against all of the religious thinkers of Jesus' day, it goes against all the religions of our day, and it goes against all that's within our hearts, our human nature.

There are parts of this yoke here beyond this that we'll never comprehend here on earth.

But we have a lifetime under this yoke, learning from Him, resting in the confidence that His love, His salvation, His acceptance of us lasts forever, no matter what you do, no matter what you don't do.

And so are you willing to place yourself under the easy and light yoke of Jesus?

A few considerations.

First, to those that are burdened and weary and just trying to appease a holy God through your own human effort.

Stop.

Jesus says, Come to me, all who are weary and burdened.

I'm gonna give you rest.

So if you're someone here that hasn't crossed that line of faith, to trust in Jesus as your leader and rescuer, I encourage you, right after the service, head to the prayer station.

We have a team that would love to pray for you, help you make that decision, and then talk about next steps in your new journey with Jesus.

Next, to those that are burdened by the yoke of legalism.

You're trying to fulfill the unwritten non-biblical rules of what a good Christian looks like.

Jesus says to you, take my yoke upon you.

Nothing else.

Learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

And so I encourage you to consider any personal standards that you're asking those within the church to abide by that go beyond the clear commands of Scripture and just ask God to work through you and cleanse you of any such pattern and just to rest in his easy yoke and allow others to do that.

If you're someone here today that's been scarred by the church, you've taken on a heavy yoke of legalism.

I'm so sorry.

As a pastor, I know I've contributed to that over the years and probably still will as I continue to grow.

But guys, may God heal you.

May he help you embrace the true rest that only comes from his easy yoke.

And finally, to those that have chosen to take this yoke, but now you're drowning in the exhaustion of trying to live with him, trying to earn a favor that you already have, Jesus reminds you that it's only through him that we live this life.

And he says to you, for my yoke is easy, my burden is light.

And so would you just consider moving from trying to trusting?

Would you move from doing to being?

May you just get off the treadmill of works.

And may you just come to that place of rest, of surrender at the foot of the cross, allowing Him to work through you.

This is the amazing yoke of Jesus.

Let us pray.

And so, God, we come to you now, and we recognize that through struggles within this fallen world, there's battles within our own flesh, we're not going to be ignorant that there is an evil one with schemes, and we acknowledge in the midst of all of that, you give us victory and rest and freedom.

Only you can bring us true liberation from the heavy yokes around us.

And from within our hearts.

Father, we don't ask to you, we don't ask that you would help us try harder in taking up your yoke, but that we would just simply rest and abide in you and you and us express your life through us as you see fit today and tomorrow and for each day that passes on this earth.

May we just be compelled by your love.

In the name of Jesus, we ask these things.

Amen.

We hope you are blessed by this message.

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