Well, if you could use two words to describe who Jesus is, what would you use? Forget that I mentioned it already to the kids in the kids talk. What would you have used? Maybe you would call Jesus high and holy or strong and mighty or wise and intelligent. What two words would you have used to describe Jesus?
Well, we're starting a three week series today called the heart of Christ. We're gonna be spending three weeks just meditating on the heart of Jesus, on who He is, and letting His heart refresh ours. And I just want to say upfront and acknowledge that two authors have really blessed me and helped me in this series. Dane Ortlund, he's a contemporary pastor in America. He wrote a book called Gentle and Lowly, which took the Christian world by storm a couple of years ago, and he's also written a more accessible book called The Heart of Jesus, and we're actually going to be posting that to Facebook soon, so you've got a link to that.
If you want to buy your own copy, it's well worth a read. Gentle and Lowly is a bit more dense, and if you've got a bit of a biblical understanding, you might benefit from that. Or if you're new to faith, then The Heart of Jesus might be an easier read for you. And then another book by a guy called Thomas Goodwin, who was a Puritan who lived a few hundred years ago, and he wrote a book called The Heart of Christ, and that's also a wonderful read, but a lot of Old English in it, so if you decide to read it, just be warned about that. Now why should we spend three weeks meditating on the heart of Jesus?
Well, even as Christians, we still have a sinful nature, and sin in us constantly tries to deceive us about who God is, constantly tries to turn us away from God and inwards towards ourselves. And that can happen in subtle ways. It might not be that sin is trying to say God doesn't exist and Jesus is evil or something like that. It might just be that God's saying to you, well sorry, sin tries to convince you and say, well, God is so holy and righteous and good, which is true, so therefore, He mustn't want anything to do with you. Look at your life, which is not true.
There are all sorts of ways which sin tries to convince us to believe dark thoughts about God, and so again and again, we need to come to the Bible, we need to read it, we need to hear God describe who He is for us, we need to let Him tell us who He is. And so these next three weeks, we're just gonna be meditating on who Jesus says He is and on who He is to sinners and sufferers in this world. Now if you're here this morning and you're a seeker, you're you're interested in Jesus, but you wouldn't call yourself a Christian yet, or maybe you're joining us online and you're interested in Jesus, we're so glad that you're here and that you're joining us. And maybe you've been put off by God in the past for certain ideas about who He is, and this is an opportunity for you in this series to let Him tell you who He is Himself, to let Jesus describe who He really is, because you don't wanna reject God based on a wrong idea of God. We want to know what He's really like.
So if you're seeking and you're interested, welcome. We're glad that you're here. Please ask questions. We would love to interact with you about Jesus. Now I ask you what two things you think lie at the core of Jesus' heart at the beginning.
Well, Jesus tells us exactly what is in His heart in Matthew 11:29. In fact, it's the only place in the New Testament where Jesus explicitly tells us what is in His heart. So we're going to camp out there today. And just to help you track with me, I'm gonna break things down under three headings, and the first is this, a surprising claim. A surprising claim.
So Jesus makes this surprising claim about His heart in Matthew 11:29, where he says, take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. So we're just going to break down this verse and and wring it dry for everything it's worth. And first of all, I wanna ask the question, what is a yoke? It's not a word we use often these days, but you can see the yoke on these oxen here. This is an instrument that they use to control working animals, to use them to plow fields and so on.
But in the New Testament, the word yoke is used a few times, but it's always used metaphorically. It's always an image for something. So it pops up in Galatians as well. It says Paul says, do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. Well, Jesus is actually drawing on a Jewish understanding of what the yoke was.
A few hundred years before Jesus, the yoke was used already as a metaphor to describe a teacher's authority. So to come under the yoke meant to come under a teacher's authority, meant to come and learn from them. And that's exactly what Jesus is saying in this verse, isn't He? He says, take my yoke upon you and learn from me. Come under my authority.
Come under my teaching. Let me show you the way of wisdom. And the Greek word for learn is the one that's associated with the word disciple. So that's essentially what Jesus is inviting us to do in this verse. He's saying, take my yoke upon you and become my disciple.
It's a bit of a big bowl word. It means to become His apprentice, to come under Him, to learn from Him, to let Him show us what it is to follow Him, to let Him teach us His word, and to show us the good news, what He did for us. That's what Jesus is inviting people to do in this verse. Now in this gospel that we're in, Matthew's gospel, he intentionally contrasts Jesus with the Pharisees and the scribes, the Bible experts. The Pharisees would make disciples as well and teach people about God, but Jesus criticised how they discipled people.
So we see, for example, in Matthew 23, Jesus said this about the Pharisees, they tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger. You see, Jesus wasn't upset with the Pharisees so much because they were teaching God's word in the Old Testament. He was upset with them because these religious leaders were so lacking in mercy. They didn't care if you were floundering under the burden of the law, if you were struggling to obey the law. They wouldn't try to understand what was wrong.
They would just point the finger if you stepped out of line. Now just like the Pharisees, Jesus wants people to become his disciples, but His authority, His way of teaching, His yoke is very different. And He explains this in the next part of Matthew 11:29. He says, take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart. So first, Jesus says He is gentle.
In my Greek dictionary, when I look this word up, it means not being overly impressed by a sense of one's self importance. I love that phrase. Not being overly impressed by a sense of one's self importance. This is the first surprising claim that Jesus makes about His heart. He is the Son of God.
He's the eternal second person of the Trinity, and yet He claims not to be overly impressed with His own self-importance. If anyone could be, it would be Him. But He's not focused on self-service. Instead, He tells us that He is gentle. It means that He's considerate of us, puny us, these creatures that He's made.
He's considerate of us. He knows our frame. He knows that we are dust. He knows that sin afflicts us, that we struggle to keep His word. He isn't going to jump on us as soon as we've tripped up or gone astray.
He's not going to brush us aside because we aren't prime ministers or CEOs. He's gentle. He's considerate of all of us and our own unique situations. He's considered how people have hurt you. He's considered how you were brought up in a particular household, a particular family that may have trained you in good things, but also in sinful habits that are hard to break.
He's considered your mental health. He's considered your own quirks. He's considered your handicaps. He's considered them all. And He will be gentle with you in all these things.
He is the best teacher, a kind master, a person whose authority is safe to come under. That's the first surprising claim that Jesus gives us, that He's gentle in heart, but He also says that He's lowly in heart. He's saying when He says He's lowly, He's saying that He's unpretentious, that He's humble. He associates with the lowly. He's accessible.
As the Son of God, He could not be more worthy or exalted in status, and yet Jesus doesn't spend all of His time in exclusive religious clubs. Jesus associates with humble, meek, lowly people. If you wrote a movie about God becoming a human being, I wonder what would be His defining characteristics. Maybe you would, you know, really show how miraculously powerful He is or how wise and insightful He is. And Jesus was all of those things.
He is powerful. He is wise. But His surprising claim is that at His very core, He is gentle and lowly. Gentle. Not trampling over you, but considerate of your needs.
And lowly, unpretentious, humble. He associates with the down and outers of the human race. Those who know they've come to the end of themselves and actually need a saviour. All you need to do to get Jesus' attention is to have need. All you need is need.
Now when you come to church on a Sunday, you might feel like you need to scrub up a bit. Put on your Sunday best. Give your best to God. But God isn't attracted to your best. Even your best is like filthy rags compared to His holy righteousness.
And He doesn't despise you for that, but He's drawn to you in your need. Sometimes we feel as though our neediness, our flaws are not welcome in church, but Jesus associates with the lowly. You don't need to hide from Him. He is drawn to those who admit their needs and reveal their flaws to Him. He wants to move towards you, to heal you, and teach you how to live.
I love how Dane Ortlund says in his book Gentle and Lowly. He says, meek, humble, gentle. Jesus is not trigger happy. Not harsh, reactionary, easily exasperated. He is the most understanding person in the universe.
The posture most natural to Him is not a pointed finger, but open arms. And Jesus doesn't say that He's gentle and lowly sometimes, or that this is a secondary characteristic to Him. Now Jesus says He's gentle and lowly in heart. Now in the modern day West that we live in, when we talk about the heart, we often talk about it as the place of our feelings, of our emotions. But when the Bible talks about the heart, it's far more than your feelings and emotions.
The heart is the driving centre of your life. It is the animating centre of your life. It is not just the place where you feel, but it's also the place where you do your thinking in the Bible. So in Genesis 6, when God was talking about Noah's wicked generation, He said that the thoughts of their hearts were continually evil. So your hearts think according to the Bible.
I think it's Proverbs that says, guard your heart above all else, for from it flow the springs of life. It's from your heart that you live. It is your animating centre. It's what gets you out of bed in the morning. So when Jesus says He's gentle and lowly in heart, He is peeling back every layer and saying, at the very core of who I am, I am gentle, I am lowly.
This isn't a secondary thing about Jesus. This is fundamental to who He is and His ministry. Heart, Leon Morris, a Bible commentator, in heart, locates these qualities at the centre of His being. It was not that He pretended to be humble and made a show of being lowly. He really was lowly and that at the very centre of all that He was.
So what a beautiful surprising claim. King Jesus is gentle and lowly. Now one of the other surprises in the verse is that Jesus says His authority is good for us. He claims that coming under His authority, He's not saying you'll find refreshment because I'm going to pay for a massage. He's saying, come on to my yoke, learn from me, obey me, come on to my authority, and that's gonna be refreshing.
That's kind of surprising because we tend to think that our own authority is where we'll find life and refreshment. Maybe after a long day at work or maybe this is just me, you feel entitled to Netflix and ice cream. And you think, oh, that's you you know, your heart sort of that's where I'm gonna just find some rest, and I'm entitled to this. And after watching the episode or the movie, like, I feel just as irritable as I was before, and you didn't find rest. Or maybe you think that you'll find rest when you just get to the next rung of the ladder in your career, or if you just get good enough grades at school, or if you just get that that home or that retirement village or whatever it might be.
We tend to think that under our own authority and wisdom, that's how we'll find rest. But Jesus says, actually, you find it under my authority, following me, obeying me, letting me teach you the way to live. You're not gonna find it in this world. There are good gifts in this world, but ultimate rest is found in Christ. We must repent of believing that we're wiser than Jesus.
In fact, repentance, which again, it's another big Bible word, just means to turn around from the way that you were going to come to the Lord. So instead of going your own way, repentance means to turn around and to follow God instead and to submit to Him. And repentance is actually a background idea to what Jesus is saying to us here in this beautiful gentle verse. Most scholars actually believe that Jesus is alluding to Jeremiah 6 when He promises rest for our souls. Let me read it to you.
It says, thus says the Lord, stand by the roads and look, and ask for the ancient paths where the good way is, and walk in it, and find rest for your souls. But they said, we will not walk in it. See, in this passage, through Jeremiah, God is speaking to His rebellious people, the people of Judah at that time. They were behaving wickedly. Their cities were full of injustice and greed, and He's warning them in Jeremiah 6 about their impending judgement.
He's warning them that from the north, ultimately, these Babylonians are going to come and destroy Jerusalem and take you into exile. And that's what eventually happens in the Old Testament. And in verse 16 here, I just read, God is telling them to ask for the ancient paths, to seek out the good way, the right way. The ancient paths are an image for the law of Moses, the ways of God in the Torah, the first five books of the Bible. Sometimes in Christian circles, call them the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible.
God is telling them in Jeremiah 6 to stop behaving wickedly and to come under His authority, and that if they submit to His laws and if they walk in His ways, they will find rest for their souls. But they said, we will not walk in it. See, what God is doing is really telling the people to repent, to stop walking their own path, to turn around and to seek His path, to come under His word and find rest. Fast forward to Jesus' day, He's doing exactly the same thing. If you've got your Bible open and you wanna just look at the previous passage to the one that we're in in Matthew 11, in the previous passage, He's actually, it doesn't sound so gentle.
He's throwing out judgements against these cities like Chorazin and Bethsaida. That's exactly what God was doing in Jeremiah 6. He was warning God's rebellious people of impending judgement. The passage before Jesus, the verse we're looking at today, God was warning these rebellious cities of impending judgement. And then, God in Jeremiah 6 called them to repent and to find rest for their souls in Him.
And that's what Jesus does. Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Learn from me and take my yoke upon you. Jesus' warning of judgement and inviting people to repent, to come under His authority and to find rest in Him. And this clarifies who Jesus is speaking to when He is saying He is gentle and lowly.
His gentleness will be experienced by everyone who comes to Him with need, by the ashamed, the downtrodden, the repentant, the contrite. But those who keep rejecting Jesus, like the unrepentant towns of His day, will never get to experience the rest that His gentle authority offers us. In fact, they will eventually experience His holy anger against sin and evil. So Jesus is gentle and lowly in heart, but those who reject Him, who remain rebellious against Him, who do not want to submit to Him, will not experience the beauty of His gentle authority. Now Jesus doesn't lick his lips when he pronounces judgement on these unrepentant towns in Matthew 11.
Now Jesus doesn't lick His lips when He pronounces judgement on these unrepentant towns in Matthew 11. He'd much rather lead them into rest and refreshment. But neither is Jesus weak or spineless. He is the King of heaven. And if we reject His offer of rest, if we do not repent of going our own way and come under His yoke, then we will eventually experience His judgement. But the question is, why would we reject Jesus' offer anyway?
He's offering us what we truly need. I love this illustration that Dane Ortlund uses in his book. He says, we're like people in the ocean who are drowning in need. And Jesus comes to us, and He offers us a burden, a yoke, and in this illustration, it's a life jacket. And we're like these people who are drowning in the ocean and Jesus comes to offer us a life jacket.
We're like, no. No. No. I can't take any more weight. Please don't give me the life jacket.
And Jesus is literally offering us a burden that will free us. A burden that will give us rest from constantly swooning and drowning. Why would we reject Jesus' offer here? Jesus is offering us what we truly deep down desire if we are willing to hand over control to Him and trust Him. Jesus says, take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.
This verse opens wide in Jesus' heart for us. He is gentle with sinners. He associates with down and outers. He is the most accessible person in the world. But you might say at this point, I'm not sure I'm totally convinced.
I mean, Ben, just cherry picked one verse. Have you read the Old Testament? There's some pretty scary stuff in there. I don't know if this really represents who God is, that He is gentle and lowly. Are you sure I can trust this?
Well, I want to take you to some Old Testament passages to show that this is God across the Bible now. We're gonna look at that under the second heading. An unfamiliar God? That's a question. Is this an unfamiliar God that Jesus is revealing to us?
He's God in the flesh. He's the exact imprint of God's nature. He's the perfect image of God. Is He revealing to us something unfamiliar about God? Well, let's take a look at two passages in Isaiah.
And the first one comes from Isaiah 40:11, which says, this is of God. He will tend His flock like a shepherd. He will gather the lambs in His arms. He will carry them in His bosom, that's His chest, and gently lead those that are with young. Now in this passage, Isaiah was prophesying and speaking to God's exiled people, and he's prophesying that God is coming to rescue His people from exile.
He's going to make a path through the wilderness to come and rescue them. And when He gets them, He's taken them back home. He's not like me with my kids when I'm in a rush. Hurry up. Come on.
Get you know, keep up with me. He's gentle. He will gather the lambs in His arms, the little ones who were struggling to keep up. He will carry them in His bosom. That's a picture of carrying them to His chest, right next to His beating heart.
And He will gently lead those that are with young. He'll be considerate and gentle of those pregnant mothers and nursing mothers and the little ones among the group that are heading back. This is a very tender and intimate picture of who God is. We see the gentleness of God in the Old Testament. But what about lowly?
That's a bit of an odd word to apply to God. How can we say the all exalted high and holy God is lowly? Well, let's take a look at Isaiah 57:15, which says, for thus says the one who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is holy, I dwell in the high and holy place and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite. See, God is present way up high, but also way down low in the dust with the one who is contrite and repentant and broken over their sin. If you come to God and you take the risk of I've done this.
I'm cut up over my sin. He's not gonna trample over you and fly off the handle in a rage. He dwells with those who are contrite, who are lowly in heart, who are broken over their sin. He doesn't sit way up high frowning at you when you come to Him in repentance. He's right there with you in the dust, dwelling with you, wanting to revive your spirit and refresh your heart.
You never need to fear bringing your sinfulness and shame to God. He will never brush you aside like some difficult to please religious leader. He loves to be with the lowly, the ashamed, the poor in spirit. And yet I don't think the word lowly is very helpful when talking about God. Because saying God is lowly can make it sound like we're saying God is lowly in status, which is wrong.
God could not be more exalted or high or holy. He says it in that verse. I am the high and holy one who's in the heavens. Maybe the word humble is a bit better. That's what when Jesus says He's lowly, that's another word we could use, humble.
God is not lowly in status, but He is lowly in the sense that He is humble, in the sense that He is not ashamed to associate with the lowly. He dwells in the high and holy place, but also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit. Isn't it amazing that God Himself, who considers kings and queens and prime ministers as nothing but dust on the scales, is willing to condescend and dwell with the lowest among us, the humble, those who are the losers in the eyes of the world and ready to put all their trust in God. God is gentle and humble. This is who He is.
This is why Jesus, God incarnate, lived a gentle and lowly life. Jesus doesn't show us a picture of an unfamiliar God. He is the exact imprint of God's nature. He is the perfect image of God. In fact, the gentleness of Christ was also predicted in the book of Isaiah.
In Isaiah 42, it says this of the servant, who eventually was Jesus. It says, a bruised reed He will not break, and a faintly burning wick He will not quench. He will faithfully bring forth justice. Picture a candle with a wick that is just faintly flickering. If Jesus walks into the room and sees a faintly flickering candle among us, He doesn't just quench and say, oh, they're almost finished.
Just finish them off. Just quench the candle. When Jesus sees those who are faintly flickering among us, we're just hanging on by a thread, we're just in need of His grace. He comes to help the candle come to flame again. He is gentle with us.
A faintly burning wick He will not quench. That is a picture of who Jesus is as the Messiah, as our saviour. Jesus is gentle and lowly in heart. He will not run over the top of you, hurrying onto more important people and responsibilities. You can bring your pain, your sins, your neediness to Him, and He will not be repulsed by it.
In fact, He's actually attracted to it. He wants to heal us from our sins and refresh our souls. And the way that Jesus offers to do that for you and for me is by inviting us to submit to His authority. Let's just meditate on that for a moment as we finish. A restful submission.
It's the third and final section. A restful submission. Now submission is not a positive word in our culture. Won't it make you an easy target if you're submissive? Won't people ride roughshod over you?
Submissiveness is seen as weakness. Our culture also doesn't tend to view authority very positively either. Maybe it's because of some of our Australian heritage. You know, mother England wasn't very kind to those petty thieves that were trying to just feed their families to survive. And made them convicts and sent them off to a penal colony.
Maybe we don't trust authority. Maybe it's some of the scandals we've had royal commissions in Australia into banks that are abusing money into even to churches and institutions that are doing horrible things. Maybe these are some of the reasons why our culture doesn't tend to like authority. And we have this saying as well, absolute power corrupts absolutely. I think that's probably generally true with human beings like us who are a mixture of God's Spirit and grace, and also we have sin still in us.
We need accountability. But that saying doesn't apply to Jesus. See, He had absolute power. He has absolute power. He has authority.
And with all of that authority in heaven, He didn't choose to enslave us and use us. He chose to become our servant, to take on a human nature, to humble Himself to the point of even dying on a Roman cross, which is the most shameful form of death in that culture and in that time. He did that for our sins and for our salvation. That was how Jesus used His authority and His power. Jesus said in John's gospel, I lay down my life that I may take it up again.
No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. See, the gentle and lowly Christ was so concerned for poor sinners like us that He even used His authority to submit to the lowest and most shameful death known in that time. This is what He did to secure our ultimate rest, the refreshment of our souls, because He died to justify us before God. We can rest from our endless quest for self justification.
He died for our sins. He's gifted us His righteousness so we can stop trying to be good enough, so that we can stop trying to hide our flaws or stop trying to measure up. Jesus has justified His people before God. It is finished. You can rest because Jesus uses authority to secure your rest.
You can submit yourself to Jesus because Jesus submitted Himself to God's holy anger against your sin. There's nothing you couldn't trust Him with. His authority is obviously good. It's for our good. You're not going to find relief and rest by casting off other authorities, trusting in yourself.
True rest is found in submission to the gentle heart of Christ. That's where true rest is found. That's really the main point of this verse. So let me ask you. Maybe you're online.
Maybe you're here and you're exploring. And I wanna ask you, have you come under the gentle authority of Jesus? Have you surrendered your life to Him? Have you put your trust in Him? What are you waiting for if you haven't?
He is good. He gave His life for you. What more could He give? Many of us here, we're already disciples and followers of Jesus. But let me ask you, is there some small corner of your life that you're keeping out of His authority?
Is there some area of your life which you're afraid to trust Him with? Maybe it's a secret sin you're ashamed of. Maybe it's your money. Maybe it's your relationships. Maybe it's the way you use your time.
Why would we ever hold back from the Jesus who is gentle and lowly in heart, who gave His life to save us? True rest is found in submission to the gentle heart of Christ. You know, I became a Christian in year 11, in high school, and I was passionate about Jesus. I couldn't believe that Jesus would actually die for me to take care of my sins and shame. I couldn't believe it.
I was amazed. I started following God. I started going to church. But I still had a lot of my old friends that didn't follow Jesus, and we had been planning to go to schoolies. And at the end of year 12, schoolies was coming out and we booked ourselves in.
And as we approached, I kind of just kept it out of Jesus' you know, kept it out of His authority. I just didn't really acknowledge that I was still going to this place which didn't really promote godliness. And I ended up backsliding for a week. I went to schoolies. I drank.
And to be honest, I thought that it would be fun. I thought that I would enjoy it. I thought that my own will and way would be better for me than submitting to Jesus' way. But it wasn't good. And you put teenagers and alcohol together, there's fights, there's breakups, it's just terrible.
It wasn't a good week. And I remember at the end of the week, driving home and just saying to Jesus, I'm so sorry. Like, I'm just really sick of this life. I wanna come unto You. I repent of the way I behaved.
And I just wanted to come under the gentle authority of Jesus again, and I just started to experience His rest again. I didn't find rest and enjoyment by going my own way. See, true rest is only found by submitting to the gentle heart of Christ. Let me pray for us. Father, we thank You for Your precious word and Your wonderful Son.
We thank You, Jesus, that You have told us that You are gentle and lowly. You are better than we've imagined. You are exactly the kind of saviour that we need. Jesus, please convince our hearts deep down of these truths about who You are. And, Lord, would You draw us out to trust You all the more.
Thank You that we can trust You with our brokenness, our sins, our flaws. Thank You that You've died to pay our debt before God, to cleanse us, to set us free. So Lord, help us as Your people to come under Your gentle, loving authority. We trust You, and we ask that You would lead us in Your ways. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.