A Message for the Broken-Hearted #2

Welcome to The Truth Pulpit with Don Green, Founding Pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Hello again, I'm Bill Wright. It is our joy to continue our commitment to teaching God's people God's Word. Today Don is continuing with the second part of a message we started last time.

So let's get right to it. Open your Bible as we join Don now in The Truth Pulpit. Don's compared himself to a physician who receives sick patients.

In Luke chapter 5 verses 31 and 32, Jesus said, It is not those who are well who need a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. This is so precious. I wish there was some way that I could open your hearts and just put it in there. So that it would stay there forever in your thinking and in your spiritual understanding.

And that it would be the cornerstone of everything that you think about Christ. We are so prone to think, even as believers, that if we stumble along the way that God is suddenly putting His arms around His chest and saying, What do you have to say for yourself? Beloved, when you go to Christ conscious of your sins, He receives you like a doctor receives sick patients. And listen, if you are physically ill, if you've got a brain in your head anyway, which I'm happy to affirm that all of you do, if you are physically ill, you don't wait until you're better to go see the doctor. Say, boy, I'd be embarrassed to go to the doctor with this sickness. I just couldn't show up to him when I'm sick and feverish and chilling like this. I've got to wait until I get better and then I'll go see him. So he'll think better of me.

That'd be ridiculous. Beloved, it is equally ridiculous to approach Jesus any differently than that. The very point of being a doctor is that by His training, He has the skill to make you well. In the same way, beloved, on the authority of Jesus Himself, Jesus' role is to receive sinners and save them. Jesus' role is to bring sinners to repentance. You don't have to clean your act up and then go to Jesus.

That is the flip side of how it works. Beloved, go to Jesus now, even in your sin. And plead with Him to save you. Plead with Him to be merciful to you.

Plead with Him to help you. Do you understand that He does not do that reluctantly? He is not a reluctant Savior. He is a saving Savior. He is gentle and humble in heart.

That is why He came. For God so loved the world that He sent His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. Beloved, in our desire to hold up a high view of God, which is right and good and necessary in this debauched age in which we live in, don't you ever forget that God is love and Jesus is a gentle and humble Savior. And He receives sinners who have no other means of helping themselves.

And so are you here today with a heavy laden heart? Beloved, Jesus is a great Savior. Go to Him, my friend.

Go to Him. Let Him prove to you that what He said here is true. He is God. He has authority. He has power over every sin and difficulty that troubles your heart. And because He is gentle, beloved, He will welcome you and He will deal with you kindly. Because He died and rose again, He can put your sin away forever so that you never need to fear the judgment of God again.

I say to you again, my friends, go to Him. Yes, your helplessness is great, but Jesus is a great Savior. Now, to appropriate these promises that He makes, I will give you rest. To appropriate those promises, you need to understand something.

Maybe I can set it up this way. In some of the trials that have troubled me over my life, going back to my earlier days of my Christian life, I had the mistaken idea that the comfort that Jesus provides just kind of happened automatically. Kind of like a thermostat operates to control the temperature of the room.

As the trials get hotter, you know, the comfort just automatically rises to meet the level of the trial. That's not the way it works, beloved. You have a responsibility to play in this. You have to understand that there is a seeking that you need to do.

And this ties in with point number three here. Jesus makes a great call. Jesus makes a great call. In order to appropriate His promises, you have to do what He says here. Look at verse 28. Verse 28. Jesus says, come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Verse 29, He says, take my yoke upon you and learn from me. Jesus says, come to me, take my yoke upon you, learn from me. Beloved, you have a personal responsibility if you would receive this help from this great Savior.

These great blessings that Jesus bestows on those whom He loves. He doesn't just throw this blessing on someone regardless of the state of their own heart. You can't be arrogant.

You can't consider yourself self-sufficient. As we saw earlier, God is opposed to the proud, and He hides His salvation from those who are wise in their own eyes. You have to see your own helplessness, but you have to go further. You have to put your own personal trust in Christ in order to be saved from your sins. You have to put your own personal trust in Him in order to receive the rest and blessing that He promises as you deal with the struggles of Christian life.

You have to stir your heart up toward these things. And I'm just particularly moved today to speak to those of you that are not Christians. You cannot be saved because your parents were Christians. You cannot be saved by a minister or a priest or a church. You can't be saved by your own efforts. You, my non-Christian friend, you have to go to Christ Himself for salvation. Don't let anyone tell you that you should go to Mary and see if Mary can get her son to help you out. Jesus says, come to me. Jesus invites you as a sinner to come directly to Him and apply your case to His consideration and care. And beloved, what I want you to see in this, all too briefly, is what Jesus is talking about when He says, come to me, take my yoke upon you.

This is no superficial response. When He speaks about the yoke, the yoke was a wooden bar that would be placed over the necks of farm animals that were used in the plowing of fields and would be attached to a harness. An owner used that yoke to control the animals in the field and to direct them to where he wanted them to go. Jesus here is using yoke as a symbol of His control and ownership over you. What He is saying is, put your faith in Me in such a way and to such a level that you consciously submit to My authority in every area of your life. Now, you say, boy, I don't know if I want to do that or not.

I want to leave, I want to have some control here. Well, this is why Jesus says, and as an encouragement to do that, He says, I am gentle and humble in heart. He is no harsh task master. He says, My yoke is easy and My burden is light. It is not a toilsome thing to come to Christ and live for Him. It is not a toilsome thing to submit your trials of this life as a Christian to Him. No, He gives ongoing rest to your soul out of the gentleness and humility of His own heart to live for the purposes for which He created you. Take My yoke upon you.

It's easy. It's light, He says. A skilled farmer would shape that yoke for his cattle so that it rested comfortably on the animal's shoulders and actually helped him pull the weight rather than pressing on the neck. Beloved, when Jesus talks about the yoke that He has, understand that He fashions you for the trials and circumstances that you will go through in this life. And gives you the grace necessary to live them out.

That's part of having a good and easy yoke. Jesus says, just embrace Me and do it My way and you'll find you have the grace that you need. The spirit of the response is this. It comes from the heart that says, Jesus, I know I am a sinner who needs to be saved. I believe You're the only Savior and that You died for me. I turn from my sins.

I put myself entirely in Your hands and I will follow You wherever You lead me. That's the spirit of a saving response to Jesus' call here. And what I want you to see, beloved, is that this great call goes to everyone in this room and everyone that will hear this on any other form of media. This great call goes to everyone in this room who is weary and heavy laden. Here is the door out of your heavy and broken heart. Here is the place where you open the door and you enter in and you find rest. It's through recognizing the greatness of your helplessness, recognizing the greatness of the Savior, and humbly responding to His great call, and says, I'll trust you and I'll follow you. You direct me wherever you want me to go. Beloved, if you're weary and heavy laden, God brought you here today to hear just that.

This is how you respond. Why would you turn away from it? Why would you hear such gracious words from God the Son and say, that's not what I want? If you're not feeling the weight of life or the weight of sin, hey, Jesus isn't talking to you anyway.

So you don't have to trouble yourself with this, because He's talking to the weary and heavy laden. Now today, beloved, I'm speaking to the broken heart. I'm speaking to the heavy heart that looks at the circumstances of life and says, there is nothing, there is no way out of this.

And it grieves me. Beloved, if that's you, you're the one I'm talking to. And I want you to see a gentle and humble Savior reaching out to you and offering His rest and His peace to you today, right now. This is a call that goes to the young adult who is confused and does not know where to turn. This is the call that goes to the woman who grieves and cannot find comfort. This is the call that goes to the man who has wasted his life and has very little time to redeem it.

This is the call that goes to people like you and a thousand others like you. And Jesus says, come to me and I will give you rest. Now, while Jesus claims sovereign authority over who comes to God the Father, understand that He brings people to the Father, He brings sinners to the Father through an open invitation to anyone that will hear. Come to me, He says.

This isn't restricted by race or class or anything else. If you want someone who can really unite people, Jesus is the one. Without condition, He says, come to me. Anyone who will hear, that promise is for you. If you're weary from sin, afraid of death, Jesus says, come. I'll transform that situation.

It's a great call. Now you've heard the phrase, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink. At least we said that in southern Indiana.

I don't know about around here. It's not enough for you to know that you're a sinner and that Jesus is the Son of God. The Bible says the demons believe and tremble. No, beloved, you have to put your own faith in Christ. You have to take the step of coming to Him and putting your own faith in Him.

What's the result of that? What happens when you see your great helplessness and you respond to the great call of a great Savior? Final point, point number four. Jesus gives great rest. Jesus gives great rest. Look at verse 28 with me again.

I've been weaving this in through everything I've said already. Anyhow, come to me all who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest. Verse 29, you will find rest for your souls. Verse 30, my yoke is easy. Verse 30, my burden is light. Oh, heavy-hearted friend, don't those words echo in your mind? Don't those words just call you to Christ and woo you to Him?

And say, yes, that is what I want and that is what I need? Listen, this is the promise of Christ Himself whose word can never fail. Throughout the history of the Christian church, throughout the 2,000 years of people coming to Christ in the way that He describes here, not once has He ever broken this promise. Not once has anyone come to Him and found Him an insufficient Savior. Not once has anyone ever truly come to Christ and found Him to be a harsh taskmaster who didn't deal with them in compassion.

Doesn't mean they didn't have the trials, but the sweet sucker of Christ was in their midst. When you come to Christ, you find rest for your souls. He's talking here about spiritual rest. The rest that comes from a clear conscience, peace with God, and joy that transcends your circumstances. The rest of knowing that heaven, not judgment, awaits you when you die.

Jesus says to every broken heart, come to Me in exactly that condition and I will give you rest that you can find nowhere else. In this passage, He doesn't say how He will give it. Elsewhere in the Bible, we learn that He purchased that rest by shedding His own blood on the cross. He stood as the substitute for sinners, taking the wrath of God in His own body so that their sins could be forgiven. And when you receive Him, beloved, He wraps you in His perfect righteousness so that you can stand accepted before a holy God and have full and unhindered access to Him for the rest of eternity. Jesus bought your relationship with God through His death and resurrection, and that is why He says, come to Me. He's a great Savior who gives a great rest. My friends, are you living in the midst of that rest?

If not, come to Him. My friends, I ask you, won't you seek this treasure from Him? Let's pray. Lord Jesus, we love you.

How could we respond any other way than to say we love you? God of all the universe, reaching down to our broken hearts and saying, come to Me and I will give you rest. Oh Lord, today we come and we seek that rest. We take your yoke and pledge our loyalty to you and ask you to teach us and to direct us for the sake of your glory. In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen. Thanks for listening, my friend. Before we go, I just want to let you know of a wonderful companion resource to the series that you've been listening to. It's my book titled, Trusting God in Trying Times. Again, that's Trusting God in Trying Times and it's available on our website, thetruthpulpit.com.

Just look for the menu tab titled, Books, and you can scroll down and you'll find my book, Trusting God in Trying Times. Thank you for being with us. Join us next time as we continue teaching God's people God's word right here on The Truth Pulpit. That's Don Green, founding pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. Thank you so much for listening to The Truth Pulpit. Join us next time for more as we continue teaching God's people God's word.