Truth For Life

Voiceover Host: Welcome to Truth For Life where today we begin a new series examining God's purpose for making us like his son. Would you describe yourself as being in Christ?

Alistair Begg introduces today's study by considering what that means and how it happens.

Alistair Begg: I invite you to take your Bibles and turn with me to the closing verses of the 11th chapter of Matthew. Matthew chapter 11 where I'm going to read from verse 29 to the end, actually from verse 25 to the end.

Verse 25, Matthew 11, “At that time Jesus said, I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things 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, all you who are weary and burdened, 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.”

And our prayer together.

Father, what we know not, teach us. What we have not, give us. What we are not, make us. For the sake of your son in whose name we pray. Amen.

Well, in our studies this week, we're going to look together at what the Bible says concerning the purpose of God the Father to make those who are His children like His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

So if you need to know where we're heading, we're heading in that direction. We're going to think throughout the week of the process that is involved, at least part of it, in becoming like Christ.

But it seems only logical, sensible, profitable, to pause before we turn there to consider what it means to be in Christ. For the Bible makes it very plain that it is only those who have become God's children by grace through faith, who have been placed into Christ, that the Father by the Holy Spirit is in the process of making like Christ.

And so I wonder this morning in the time that we have to think concerning what it means to be in Christ and most importantly, to ask ourselves the question, does that phrase describe me?

I may be a boy, a girl. I may be here with my mom and dad. They may be very good Christian people and I love them for it. And I've paid attention to much of what they've told me throughout my life. But here I am this morning in here for the foreseeable future, and I need to ask myself this question. Can I have my name, John, George, Louise, Alice, whatever my last name is, and then just put a dash against it, and against my name say, "in Christ"? Of all the things that would describe me, of all the things that would mark me. Here I am as a husband this morning. I've joined my wife. She said there would be lovely events up here. The only difficult part would be, she said, the Sunday morning, when you'll have to listen to somebody preaching.

Well, I'm glad you're here. I hope you will be too. And I want to ask you, sir, how about your name and then just a dash and the phrase, "in Christ"?

The Apostle Paul really made the phrase "in Christ" his own. When he told his own story, he told of how it was before he came to understand who Jesus was and why he came. Up to that point, his life disregarded Jesus in a pretty remarkable way, as you will discover if you read the story.

But it was when he came to discover the wonder of Jesus' work that he was placed in Christ. And he said quite memorably, writing to some people who were living in Corinth at the time, "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old is gone, the new has come." In other words, something has happened to change the status of that individual.

If you like, their lives written out would be two volumes. Volume one, pre-Christ, disregarding Him, knowing of Him, but yet not knowing Him. And then coming to know Him and then volume two, in Christ.

Now, it was with this in mind that I've turned to, I think, what is arguably one of the loveliest invitations in the whole of the New Testament. It comes in the final three verses of the passage that we read. The source of the invitation is Jesus Christ Himself. It is Jesus that is speaking, as you will note from verse 25. Jesus speaks first to His Father in prayer. He then makes observations concerning the nature of the Father's revealing of the Son, and then He issues this invitation.

The scope of the invitation you will notice is comprehensive. "Come to me, all." All you who are weary and burdened. That is not actually to sequester a certain group amongst a larger group, but is really a description of the totality of humanity, as I'm going to show you.

The source of the invitation is Jesus, the scope of the invitation is universal, and the significance of the invitation concerns the fact that Jesus is inviting these people to find rest for their souls. Not to have a vacation, not to just simply find that which would make life a little more bearable for them, but he's speaking in eternal terms. He's speaking in a way that encompasses the totality of human existence. He's speaking in a way that addresses the big questions of life. Who am I? Where did I come from? Why am I here? Where am I going? And does it even matter? All of those questions that any sensible man or woman will find themselves asking from time to time is somehow or another wrapped up in this loveliest of invitations.

I want to suggest to you therefore that it is not an invitation to be set aside. Rather, it must be given a top priority. It demands our attention, and it calls for immediate action. And if we want to know the action for which it calls, we need only pay attention to the action words, which means we're not going to adjectives or prepositions or pronouns or nouns, but we're going to verbs.

And the verbs are clear, and we're going to go through them. There are four of them. I will spend longer on the first than I do on the remaining three. I say that as an encouragement to the young people who after I finish the first one are saying, goodness gracious, there will be no lunch today at all. No, I've found over time that I do spend too long on the first, but I've learned also to warn my listeners.

Well, let me point out the verbs first: come in verse 28, take verse 29, learn verse 29, find verse 29. Okay? So we'll just work through them as we go. First of all, this invitation is to come, and to come to Me. This is Jesus. "Come to me," He says.

In other words, it is a person-to-person invitation. Only those of you who are a certain vintage will even pay any attention to the phrase, person-to-person. If you remember in the old days, before we all had cell phones and interstellar communication that was instantaneous with one another, we would make telephone calls sometimes across an ocean. And in making the call as a Scotsman, it seemed to me only sensible to ask for it to be person-to-person. That way, if the operator was unable to get the other person on the other end of the phone, I didn't have to pay for the telephone call. And as a Scot, that was and remains a significant issue.

Well, you see this invitation is both generic and specific. It is an invitation that is made by a person to persons. It may be personalized by all who hear it and all who listen to it. It is an invitation not to a program, nor is it an invitation to a philosophy, but it is an invitation to and by Jesus Himself.

And He, who by virtue of His identity, may command a response, introduces Himself as being gentle and humble in heart, and instead of commanding our response, He intreats our response. "Come to me," He says. "I want you to come to me."

Now we need to be clear about the one who issues the invitation. And as a sidebar, I'm turning to Luke chapter 4. For those of you who'd like to follow along, you can turn for a moment to the account of Jesus returning to Galilee and going to Nazareth where He'd been brought up. And on the Sabbath day going into the synagogue, as was His custom, Luke tells us. And in the course of the synagogue worship, He stood up to read from the Scriptures.

And Luke tells us in verse 17 of Luke 4 that the scroll of the Prophet Isaiah was handed to Him. Unrolling it, He found the place where it is written: "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."

Now, these would be words with which the synagogue attendees were familiar. He was reading the familiar prophetic words that have come out of the scroll of Isaiah. Customary, after the reading, for someone to sit down in the place of the teacher. Luke tells us that once the scroll had been removed from Him and placed in its position, He sat down in the position of the rabbi.

And the eyes of all in the synagogue, Luke tells us, were fastened on Him. Now think of this. He's in His own town. He's returned as a homeboy to Nazareth. He's back amongst the people who would know Him. The folks who went shopping with His mother. The folks who had children who were the same age as Jesus, who'd grown up together in Nazareth. Those who knew Him as the boy from the carpenter shop, He has returned. He's in His hometown synagogue. He has known the privilege of reading from the Scriptures in this way and everyone was fastened on Him, to hear what He would have to say, and from His mouth came words that none of them would ever, ever have anticipated.

He said, "Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing." And all spoke well of Him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from His lips. "Isn't this Joseph's son?" they said. "Isn't this the boy from the carpenter shop?"

Do I understand exactly what has happened here? He has just read the prophetic scriptures anticipating the coming of the Messiah, who will establish the kingdom of God, give sight to the blind and healing to the lame and so on, and establish the day of the Lord's favor. He's just read all of that and did I hear correctly? Did He say, "Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing?" Is He suggesting that He is none other than the Messiah? Yes.

Now, we haven't said this morning, we have an option to give to the nations. That we have a possibility to be included along with Islam, and along with Buddhism, and along with Confucianism, and along with New Ageism, and along with selfism, that we've all gathered here in order to say that we just want Jesus to be included in the pantheon of 21st century deities. We haven't said that. We have affirmed the identity of the one who issues this invitation. It is the identity of the one who issues the invitation that gives significance to the invitation. Hence, I say to you, it is not to be set aside. It is a priority to be attended to.

Well, from this Christ to all who are weary and burdened. All who are weary and burdened. Oh, well says somebody, that lets me off the hook because I am neither. I'm neither weary nor burdened. Now I can push the button and ignore the rest of this. Because you're saying to yourself, I am strong and I'm carefree. Oh, are you really?

Do come and introduce yourself to me at the end. I'd love to meet someone strong and completely carefree. But I haven't met a single person who isn't pushing a wheelbarrow. And in that wheelbarrow he has all the cares and responsibilities and fears and failures that make up his or her life, and you're no different this morning.

Have you had the experience of going to the doctor for a routine checkup? Did you go early as they told you at 8:00 to desk A12 where the well-meaning person wrapped that rubber band around whichever arm could produce the best vein? And they did the preparatory routine blood work? And have you ever had the experience of later in the day, sitting there, apparently fit as a fiddle, and being told by the doctor that despite all appearances to the contrary, you are significantly unwell?

Oh, when you walked in, you had no notion of it. Frankly, none of your friends would even have considered it. They'd seen you running that morning or riding your bike the previous week, but now everything is different. In fact, it is the circumstances as they had been. They have only now been revealed. The result of blood work, the result of an MRI, a scan that has been done, revealing the true circumstances that are unapparent from the outside. That's what the Bible does.

The Bible provides for us an MRI. It investigates at the very core of our being. And it points out to those of us who believe we have the world by the tail, who are strong and carefree, that in actual fact, things are not the way we assume. That when it comes to the issues of our souls, the Bible says we are suffering from a terminal illness.

The terminal illness is described in the Bible as sin. And most people think the issue is about our sins, plural, the things we do or we haven't done. And so if we haven't done a lot lately, or we haven't really done as many as someone else we've known, we say to ourselves, well, you know, sins are not really that big of an issue for me. Well, in actual fact, sins are not really that big of an issue for you. The issue for you is sin.

Because it is our sin that has separated us from God. And the Bible says that all have sinned and are separated from God. All of us have fallen short of the standard that God has established. That is perfection, and none of us have ever lived to perfection. In the words of Isaiah, from which we've already quoted, at least the same book, all we like sheep have gone astray. Each of us, no exceptions, has turned to his own way.

In other words, we've got a real dilemma. And the dilemma is simply this: that we're unfit for heaven and we're unable to rectify our circumstances.

Now that would be a burden if it once dawned upon us, wouldn't it? Suddenly into the resume of our lives, into our CV, we have to write, if we're honest, according to the Bible, "I am by nature unfit for heaven and unable to rectify my circumstances." That's a bit of a burden.

You say, well, we're a very nice group here up at camp. I mean, we wouldn't be up at camp if we weren't a very nice group. Well, I know you're a very nice group and that's why I like coming. It's nice to come and be with nice people.

I've discovered over time that there are two ways that people reject Jesus as Savior. There are two ways that they endeavor not to come to Him, not to respond to His invitation. And here they are. Number one, by being as bad as possible and breaking all the rules. Or by being as good as possible and keeping all the rules. Those are the two ways that will find you saying no to the invitation of Jesus.

If you've been so bad and broken them all, you say to yourself, there's no hope for me, and you're wrong. If you've been so good and done it all right, you say to yourself, well, there's no need for me. And you'd be wrong.

The invitation is clear. The source is articulated, and the significance is undeniable.

Second verb, take. "Take my yoke upon you." Now, the yoke as some of you from a farming background will know, was a wooden frame placed across the back of oxen usually, yoking them together. They used the yoke in order that the weight might be distributed evenly on both sides and make it possible for them to walk along the road. It's a lovely picture, it's a clear picture. It's the picture that Jesus is using. He says, "I want you to take my yoke upon you." My yoke upon you. Incidentally, and I don't pay much attention to this kind of thing, but it is a fascinating little concept. Some have even suggested through time that it may well have been that Joseph, that is the carpenter in Nazareth, had as his sort of advertising slogan outside his carpenter's workshop, he had as his slogan, "My yokes are easy." Huh? I don't give much credence to that.

But I do give absolute credence to what Jesus says when He says, "My yoke is easy and my burden is light." Do you know what He was doing there? He was distinguishing Himself and His message from the story that had been given to these people by the religionists of His day, particularly, peculiarly, by the Pharisees. These were individuals who were meticulous in their desire to do what was right. In fact, they were so consumed by it that when they had finished with all the things that God had said they ought to do, they added a good dose of their own. And so they made it virtually impossible for anybody to be able to do anything. "Come on now, you can do this. Come on now, try a little harder. Come on now, this is just there for you to achieve." That will wear the neck of any thinking person quickly. But that's not what Jesus says. He says, "Take my yoke upon you."

Voiceover Host: You're listening to Truth For Life with Alistair Begg. We want everyone to know about Jesus' invitation to new life in Him. In fact, recently I spoke with Alistair about how Truth For Life is making the Gospel known. Here's a portion of our conversation.

One opportunity that's presented itself at Truth For Life over the last year has been a way to reach men and women who are incarcerated through a platform called Edovo, and Truth For Life is now a part of this platform. There's discipleship ministry happening with people who are in prisons, thanks to Truth For Life.

Alistair Begg: Yes. Yes, wholeheartedly, yes. It's quite staggering the extent to which the voice, not just my voice, but the voice of biblical orthodoxy and evangelistic zeal is penetrating the bars and the walls of those places. And a large part of our correspondence comes from those who are incarcerated. And I read their letters, and it's one thing for somebody to say, you know, I'm in here until the 12th of November or something like that. But it's it's terrible to read those who are in there for life without the possibility of parole, that they and yet their testimony to the liberating power of the Gospel and the fact that they now find themselves being enriched in such a way that they can be an outreach to their cellmates and everybody else. I mean, none of us will ever know the impact of all of that hidden work until in the new heaven and in the new earth.

Voiceover Host: It is by God's amazing grace that access to Bible teaching is now available to more than one million men and women in prisons all across the US through Edovo. And it's the financial support we receive from listeners like you, listeners who are called Truth Partners, that cares for the cost of Alistair's teaching being made available on this platform. Very few of us can make prison ministry our own personal outreach, but when you become a Truth Partner, you'll be helping to bring the Gospel to this often-forgotten audience in a very real way. We'd love for you to join the Truth Partner team. You can visit truthforlife.org/truthpartner or call us at 888-588-7884.

Thanks for listening. Tomorrow we'll learn why the yoke of Jesus isn't a burden but a delight. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth For Life, where the learning is for living.