As a young boy growing up in a large, mostly musical family, we had great Christmas Eve traditions. For many years, we had our own little Christmas musicals. Two of my sisters played violin, my little sister played viola and I played the cello. My brother wisely chose not to play an instrument and was exempt from our often low budget shows. We would dress up nice, play a few simple Christmas songs, my father would read the Christmas story and then we would dig into our presents. For many years, this tradition was carried out in the basement recreation room my father and brother had remodeled from trailer factory scrap paneling and carpet strips. It was our favorite room. But one year, as we were bringing our instruments down the steep, carpeted stairway to the basement, I slipped and fell down the stairs, bouncing my expensive, rented cello across the concrete basement floor and stair landing. While my sweet grandmother Gilma was worried about the health of her dear, little bespectacled boy, my parents showed virtually no concern for my health. They knew I was a durable kid! They knew I bounced well. They were furious with me for two reasons. First of all, I’m sure they were concerned about having to pay for repairs to the cello, which could have been financially devastating for them. But secondly, they were angry with me because they knew exactly why I had fallen down the stairs. I was wearing the shiny, slippery, patent leather shoes I had been told repeatedly not to wear anymore. While those shoes looked incredibly cool with my white bell bottom pants and bright red shirt, the fact was those shoes didn’t fit me. I don’t remember if they were too big or too small, but my mother told me repeatedly not to wear them.
But I didn’t listen and so I bounced down some stairs and broke a cello…
I think about that clumsy moment as I study our Scripture passage for today. We have been talking for the past couple of weeks about what it means to be oasis. While we can all give our own oasis definitions, I’ve argued that being oasis simply means this is a place where we find rest, refreshment and release. We find rest as we come humbly and exclusively to Jesus, expecting Him to give us the rest we need. We find refreshment as we take the yoke of Jesus upon ourselves and learn from Him how we are to live our lives. And now this morning, we come to the issue of release. Let’s return to our Matthew 11:25-30 passage once again.
At that time Jesus said, "I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things [oasis truths of the Gospel] from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure. All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. Come to me [and only to me!], all you who are weary and burdened [humble enough to admit it], and I will give you rest!. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
A popular Twin Cities morning radio host was joking about his constant weight struggles and his co-host asked him what size pants he now wore. The radio host laughed, saying, “Well, I can still wear my 32 inch pants, but I’m much more comfortable in a 38!” Amen, my brother!
Is your life truly comfortable? Do your shoes truly fit? Or are you just trying to wedge yourself into a life that isn’t right for you; a life that leaves you bouncing down the basement stairs, angering people and breaking stuff? Our Lord doesn’t want us to settle for occasional moments of salvation rest or even a genuinely sanctified experience of refreshment. Those steps are good but our LORD ultimately longs to release each one of us into perfectly tailored, perfectly fit places of service. Being an oasis people means we understand this wonderful life we share together means much more than just our own rest and refreshment, salvation and sanctification. Being oasis means we’re released into service; into lives that truly fit us.
Jesus isn’t asking us to take up His yoke just so we can stand around with it displayed on our shoulders. Isn’t that just obvious? We take up His yoke because there is a field to be plowed. There are goods to be taken to market. There are stumps to be torn out and heavy things to be lifted. There is work to be done. Jesus wants to release us into service.
And in order to understand how this releasing life step happens, we need to understand something important about the word picture Jesus uses in verse 30. Last week I began our Bible conversation by saying I thought a yoke was a lousy metaphor for rest and refreshment; yet because Jesus is offering us His yoke, it is actually the perfect picture of refreshing life. But in our Scripture text today, Jesus uses an even more confusing, contradictory phrase. “My yoke is easy.” Easy? How in the world, even under the most hyper-spiritualized circumstances, could any Jesus yoke ever be easy? Even placing this yoke in the refreshing, Jesus context we discussed last week, how can we use the word “easy?” What does Jesus mean here? Newer Scripture translations present the biblical phrase slightly differently; they say, “My yoke is easy to bear.” This helps a little, but I believe we need a better understanding of the phrase.
If we do careful word and commentary studies, we learn that the word translated “easy” in our Bibles is the Greek word, “chrestos.” My zygos [ox yoke] is chrestos. This is a familiar phrase that might very commonly be found on the lips or public advertising of a first century carpenter. As a matter of fact, several commentators cited an ancient legend which said Jesus was well known throughout the Galilean region as the best area carpenter of ox-yokes. It has been suggested that the sign above His shop door may well have read: “My yokes fit well.” Cool, huh? It may well be Jesus was using a common, well-known phrase to make a point.
Do you see the point?
This Carpenter knows the shape of your shoulders. This Carpenter knows the strength of your legs. This Carpenter understands the size of your heart and the capacity of your brain. This Carpenter, more than any other, knows how to make proper and perfect use of you. This Carpenter knows what fits you. My yokes fit well! This Carpenter, who has given you the rest and refreshment you need, knows exactly how and when to properly release you into service.
Sinfulness and selfishness are shiny shoes and tight pants that just don’t fit anymore. Isn’t it just obvious we weren’t born to live trapped in some sort of tedious, sinful, legalistic, dutiful, religious bondage? All the burdensome yokes the world offers just aren’t comfortable; they don’t fit right. They chafe our shoulders and bruise our backs. They are too heavy to bear and wear us out. They are designed to cause suffering, not progress. Pinching, not pleasure. We might be able to wedge ourselves uncomfortably into other yokes for a while, but eventually we all have to admit the devil just doesn’t know our shape like the Carpenter does. We don’t know ourselves like the Carpenter does. Only the Carpenter can make a yoke that fits well.
My yoke fits well!
We aren’t following Jesus here at Elim Church simply for our own rest and refreshment. We don’t exist as a place of oasis fellowship simply to provide moments of rest and lives of refreshment, as important as those things are. We follow this Carpenter because we long to be released into meaningful places of service and purpose. We long to become an oasis place where we are all helping each other find good service and purpose. And we understand only the Carpenter can perfectly release us into that sort of meaningful service place or position in life. Only the Carpenter knows how to make perfect use out of whatever we offer Him.
We enjoy this glorious, oasis release into service only when we faithfully and obediently give Jesus whatever we have to give Him. In John 6, do you remember the inspirational story of that unnamed boy with just five loaves and two fish? In the prayerful, powerful hands of the Carpenter, those five loaves and fish became a delicious, satisfying meal plus leftovers for well over five thousand people. The Carpenter took the humble stuff a boy had to give and used it gloriously. And that is all Jesus wants to do with you and I. He alone knows what to do with whatever we have to give Him. He alone knows how to use us. His yoke fits well.
In Warren Wiersbe’s autobiography, he said, “If life is to have meaning, and if God's will is to be done, all of us have to accept who we are and what we are, give it back to God, and thank Him for the way He made us. What I am is God's gift to me; what I do with what I am is my gift to Him.” As I happily learn to accept and take up the well-fitted, well-shaped yoke of Jesus, only then can I properly, purposefully give back to God and others. Only the Carpenter properly releases me to become all I was born to become. Only the Carpenter’s yoke fits well.
And yet many of us fight this idea.
We allow the devil and his minions to convince us we have nothing to give, that our LORD Jesus has no use or place for us, that the challenges around us are too big for us or any one of a hundred other foolish, sinful or selfish ideas. We waste our lives dreaming and wishing instead of enjoying a life of doing. As the ancient Teresa of Avila used to say, “Many people completely neglect the task that lies at hand and content themselves with having wished to do the impossible.” We’re not supposed to sit around wishing we could do the impossible. We mustn’t waste our lives wishing things were different in the world, wishing this great church were different or wishing we ourselves were different. We can do something! For our own sense of health and well-being, we must find purpose and places of service. We have big and little tasks to accomplish! We have been released from the dreaming, sinful, selfish yokes of this world. We have been released from the idea that anything is impossible for us! We bear the Carpenter’s yoke; we are powerful! We have been released from our own worthlessness!
And because we bear the perfectly shaped yoke of Jesus, we no longer waste our time comparing ourselves to the shallow or exalted standards of this world. Our value, purpose and usefulness are not determined by the world, but by our LORD. We have been released from the burdens of popularity and people-pleasing. We are rested and refreshed daily and we are constantly and joyously released into meaningful, purposeful service. We are set free to enjoy what we are and not whine about what we are not. The feisty evangelist D.L. Moody reportedly said, “I know perfectly well that, wherever I go and preach, there are many better known and better heard preachers than I am; all that I can say about it is that the Lord uses me.” Moody was not interested in being the best preacher ever heard. He wasn’t motivated by selfish, sinful desires to impress. He was released from all that worldly garbage and shallow thinking. Moody simply wore the perfectly tailored yoke the Carpenter made for him. He liked the yoke he wore!
And a properly yoked, properly released person also doesn’t care what job is assigned. We are released from the tyranny of job status. All service becomes meaningful. All service can be purposeful and rewarding. As the preacher Henry Ward Beecher said years ago, “The world must be cleaned by somebody; you are not called of God if you are ashamed to scrub.” A properly yoked person is released to serve whole-heartedly however called upon to do so. As I was writing these very words, Bonnie Johnson came into the church office to tell us rainwater was leaking into a preschool classroom downstairs. It seems a downspout fell off outside and rainwater was draining down the wall and leaking into the building. And so I spent the next few minutes climbing up to the roof and stuffing plastic into the drain pipe until we could come up with a more permanent, more intelligent solution. Beecher’s blunt words came immediately to mind – you are not called of God if you are ashamed to stuff rags, mop heads and plastic bags into drain pipes at a moment’s notice! Can I get a witness, my brother?
A properly yoked and released person understands the importance of all service. A released and yoked person isn’t going to let anyone say his or her service isn’t important. That very same, sometimes controversial and frequently very human preacher Henry Ward Beecher, when challenged about his emotional, demonstrative preaching style, said that as a young man, he made the decision “to speak as if I was the only the arrow in the bow the Almighty draws.” No; I’m not going to worry whether people consider my service important or not. I have been released from the tyranny of that sort of yoke. As we speak or do whatever we do in His name, we wear the perfectly fit yoke given us as though everything depended on how we wear it. We serve as though we are the only soldiers in the army of the Almighty! Whatever we do, in word or deed, we do all to the glory of God! We have been released from the tyranny of timidity! We understand the importance of the tailor-made yoke we have accepted. All service matters!
Being oasis is not just about finding our own personal rest and refreshment, salvation and sanctification in Jesus. Being oasis means this must be a glorious and gracious place where people are released into meaningful lives of service and purposeful sacrifice.
During the search process last year and several times since, I’ve told a crazy Army story about the absolutely pivotal day in my life twenty-three years ago when I got four haircuts in one day. My unit had a commanding general’s inspection the next day and my company First Sergeant was a military monster. He failed me for my first perfectly good haircut that day and failed me for my second and third haircuts as well. And when I finally passed his ridiculously picky inspection after my fourth and final haircut, after almost a full day walking back and forth wasting money at the barber shop, I was so steaming, screaming angry with the situation, I could no longer control myself. I balled up my sweaty fists and, through gritted teeth, stood at attention at his desk and blurted out, “First Sergeant, with all due respect; my very first haircut today was well within the Army regulation!” (Good idea, Kevin! Teach Army regulations to SGT Killer! Good plan!) I thought for a moment he might just murder me on the spot, but instead he surprised me. He looked up at me for a moment, slowly shook his head and then sadly and quietly said, “That’s the problem with mediocre soldiers like you, Hanson; you kids just haven’t figured out yet that this Army stuff is no fun at all if you’re only here to do the minimum.”
He was completely correct about me! I closed my mouth, went out to the cab of my pickup truck where no one could see me, and I bawled like a baby. That man laid my soul bare! That nasty, pagan, completely unfair and ridiculous First Sergeant and his four, stupid Army haircuts had just surgically described the deadly disease afflicting my soul. That man helped me to see the heavy, ugly and clumsy yoke of mediocrity I’d spent my life settling for…
How many of us are having no fun at all with this following Jesus stuff, this being oasis stuff, simply because we’re only here to do the minimum?
Don’t do that! Don’t accept that sort of ill-fitting, uncomfortable, second best yoke…
Finding rest and refreshment in Jesus is wildly important; it is truly two thirds of our conversation. But it is only the very bare minimum of what Jesus longs to give us. Our LORD Jesus has a perfect place of service, a yoke tailor made for each one of us; a purposeful yoke of service and sacrifice that perfectly and uniquely fits. Our LORD Jesus longs to see each and every one of us released to serve; to wildly and wonderfully do much more than the minimum.
May this place continue to be oasis! May we find all the rest, refreshment and release into the significance and service we were created to enjoy!
Amen.
