How precious and encouraging it is that we can come to the Lord with our toils and burdens and He will give us rest, and we can take the Lord’s yoke upon us and learn from Him to find rest for our souls! Amen!
This week in our morning revival we come to the matter of, Taking the Lord’s Yoke (the Father’s Will) upon Us and Learning from Him to Find Rest for Our Souls.
The matter of rest is great in the Bible; in Gen. 2:2-3 we see that on the seventh day, when God finished His work which He had done, He rested, blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, for in it He rested from all the work which He had created and made.
Why did God rest on the seventh day? It is because He obtained what He desired, which is man in His image and according to His likeness to express Him and represent Him.
God created man in His image for His expression, and He gave man His dominion for His representation; He wants man to be filled with Him to fully express Him, and He also wants man to live Him out to reign with Him as a co-king.
God wants man to express Him and reign with Him and by Him over Satan, sin, death, the self, the flesh, and every negative thing.
When there’s a situation on earth in which man expresses God and represents Him, that situation is a Sabbath rest to God. And this is a corporate matter.
For the corporate expression of Christ and for the representation and reigning with Christ, we all need to have a personal experience of expressing Christ and representing Him.
Each one of us as a member of the Body of Christ need to have an aspiration to express Christ every day; we don’t want to express ourselves but do everything for His glory, for God to be expressed!
We want to be those who reign in life by receiving the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness.
In Heb. 4:9 Paul mentions the Sabbath rest, which relates to Deut. 12:9 – this Sabbath rest is the good land.
We can enter into the Sabbath rest by enjoying the all-inclusive Christ as the all-inclusive Spirit typified by the good land.
When we enter into the enjoyment and experience of the all-inclusive Christ as the good land, we enter into rest; every day we need to enjoy Him as the riches of the good land.
And as we enjoy His riches, we build up the church as the temple of God for His expression and as the city of God for His representation.
We could say that Christ as rest to the saints is in three stages: in the church age, in the millennial kingdom, and in the new heaven and new earth.
In the church age, Christ as the heavenly One who rests from His work and sits on the right hand of God int he heavens, He is rest to us in our spirit (Matt. 11:28-30).
In the millennial kingdom, after Satan is removed from this earth (Rev. 20:1-3), Christ with the kingdom will be the rest in a fuller way to the overcoming saints, who will be His co-kings (Rev. 20:4, 6), sharing and enjoying His rest.
And in the new heaven and new earth, after all the enemies, including death, the last enemy, have been made subject to Him (1 Cor. 15:24-27), Christ, as the all-conquering One, will be the rest in the fullest way to all God’s redeemed for eternity.
Amen, may we enjoy and experience Christ as our rest today, in the church age, and may we cooperate with Him to enter into His rest today so that we may be the overcomers who enter into the 1000 years rest in the next age!
Coming to the Lord with our Toils and Burdens to Receive Rest from Him
In Matt. 11:28-30 the Lord tells all who toil and are burdened to come to Him, and He will give them rest; we should take His yoke upon us and learn from Him, for He is meek and lowly in heart, and we will find rest for our souls.
The toil here refers not only to the toil of striving to keep the commandments of the law and religious regulations, but also to the toil of struggling to be successful in any work.
Whoever toils is heavily burdened, so the Lord calls all those who toil and are burdened to come to Him and find rest for their souls.
Even in working for the Lord, He commissions us with a certain function and portion in the Body, and He perfects us unto the work of the ministry; yet we maybe struggling to be successful according to our own concept, and we may be heavily burdened.
May we not serve God in such a way! God in Christ as the Spirit wants us to enjoy Him, so we need to consecrate ourselves to enjoy the Lord each day, and our service to the Lord will flow out of that enjoyment!
In Matt. 11 the Lord Jesus was rejected in a few leading cities in Israel, and He answered, I extol You, Father… – He was in a constant communication with the Father, having fellowship with Him, and even when others rejected Him, He extolled the Father.
May we be like little children in the sense of not being occupied by old thoughts and concepts but being wide open to receive from the Lord what He wants to speak to us!
After the Lord extolled the Father, acknowledging the Father’s way and declaring the divine economy (vv. 25-27), He called all those who toil and are burdened to come to Him for rest.
Rest here refers not only to being set free from the toil under the the law or religion or under any work or responsibility, but also to perfect peace and full satisfaction.
The Lord doesn’t just want us to lie down and rest from our toils and burdens; He wants to be our perfect peace and full satisfaction!
He as the peace of God wants to guard our heart, mounting patrol over our hearts, to guard our thoughts and heart in Christ Jesus, protecting us from all outward disturbances which can become inward disturbances.
Christ is the peace in our spirit being dispensed into our heart.
Who on this earth is not toiling or is not burdened? This world is a toiling world, full of burdens, so the Lord calls us to come to Him for rest, so that we may enjoy perfect peace and full satisfaction.
May we come to the Lord with all our burdens and all our toiling, and may we receive Him as our rest, enjoy Him as our rest, and enter into perfect peace and full satisfaction!
Lord Jesus, we come to You with all our toils and burdens, for in You and with You we find rest. Save us from our struggling and striving to keep the commandments or being successful in any work; may we come to You and find rest in You. Amen, Lord, be our perfect peace and our full satisfaction. We come to You as we are: mount patrol over our hearts, guard our heart and thoughts in Christ Jesus, and protect us from all outward disturbances becoming inward disturbances! Dispense Yourself as peace into our heart and give us rest!
Learning from the Lord who Submitted Himself to the Will of the Father and Taking His Yoke upon us
On one hand the Lord calls all those who are toiling and have burdens to come to Him and He will give them rest, and on the other hand, He tells them to take His yoke upon them.
To take the Lord’s yoke is to take the will of the Father; it is not to be regulated or controlled by any obligation of the law or religion or to be enslaved by any work, but to be constrained by the will of the Father.
This is the kind of life that the Lord lived; He cared for nothing but the will of His Father (John 4:34; 5:30; 6:38), and He submitted Himself fully to the Father’s will, even when the will of the Father was for Him to die on the cross (Matt. 26:39-46).
Such a One asks us to learn from Him and take up His yoke upon us.
Because the Lord took the will of the Father, He could extol the Father even when the cities rejected Him; He didn’t care for His success but for the Father’s will.
His spiritual food was to do the will of the Father; one of the ways for us to eat the Lord Jesus as our spiritual food is to be one with Him to carry out the will of our Father.
Even in the garden of Gethsemane, when the Lord was agonising in prayer before the Father, He chose the will of the Father and not His own will, even though He knew that the Father’s will was His going to the cross to die.
The cup that the Father gave Him to drink was God’s will, and God’s will here is the cross; this is the cup that we need to drink every day, the cross.
We shouldn’t think that the cross is something negative – the cross is the crucified Christ, and as we enjoy this One, we spontaneously enjoy the resurrected Christ.
As the crucified Christ, He kills all the negative things in our being; as the resurrected Christ who is the life-giving Spirit, He dispenses all His riches into us.
We as believers need to “copy the Lord” in our spirit by taking His yoke – God’s will – and toiling for God’s economy according to His model (Matt. 11:29; 1 Pet. 2:21).
We shouldn’t toil and be burdened for things apart from God’s will; we shouldn’t even toil and be burdened with serving, but copy the Lord in our spirit, not in an outward way by asking “What would Jesus do” but inwardly by being in spirit.
Christ left us a model so that we may follow in His steps.
We can see His pattern in the gospels, and we can become a reproduction of the original; God in Christ as the Spirit wants to reproduce Himself in us, and He does this by our experiencing Him as grace in the midst of sufferings.
The Lord Jesus was meek – He was gentle, not resisting opposition; He was lowly, not having self-esteem.
Throughout all the opposition that He received, the Lord was meek, and throughout all the rejection, He was lowly in heart.
Christ submitted fully to the will of the Father, not wanting to do anything for Himself or expecting to gain something for Himself.
Regardless of the situation, the Lord had rest in His heart, and He was fully satisfied with the Father’s will.
As we go on with the Lord, His shining becomes brighter and brighter in us, and in this bright shining we realize that we do so many things for ourselves, and we expect to gain something for ourselves.
But the Lord was not like that; He didn’t expect to gain anything for Himself but He had rest in His heart by doing the will of the Father.
We need to learn from Him and take His yoke upon us, realizing that Christ has given us His life of submission and obedience. In ourselves we cannot bear the burden or the yoke, but His life in us can.
We need to come to Him, learn from Him, copy Him by living in spirit, and live His life of submission, for He in us can live the same kind of life.
Lord Jesus, we want to learn from You and take Your yoke by taking the will of the Father. May we not be regulated or controlled by any obligation of the law or religion, and may we not be enslaved by any work, but may we be constrained by the will of the Father. Amen, Lord, we want to copy You in our spirit by taking Your yoke – the will of God – and toiling for God’s economy according to Your model. Thank You for leaving us a model for we to follow and copy by living in the spirit. Thank You for giving us Your life of submission; we want to learn from You, find inward rest, and live by the divine life today!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Sources of inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by Ed Marks for this week, and portions from, Life-study of Galatians, msgs. 30, 34-40, 42-43, 46 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The Will of God (2020 spring ITERO), week 7, Taking the Lord’s Yoke (the Father’s Will) upon Us and Learning from Him to Find Rest for Our Souls.
- Hymns on this topic:
– Come to Me all who toil and are burdened, / And I will give you rest. / Come to Me all who toil and are burdened, / And I will give you rest. / Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, / For I’m meek and lowly in heart, / And you’ll find rest for your souls. / My yoke is easy and My burden is light. (Scripture song)
– Oh, lightest burden, sweetest yoke; / It lifts, it bears my happy soul, / It giveth wings to this poor heart; / My freedom is Thy grand control. (Hymns #617)
– God hath not promised we shall not know / Toil and temptation, trouble and woe; / He hath not told us we shall not bear / Many a burden, many a care. / But God hath promised strength for the day, / Rest for the labor, light for the way, / Grace for the trials, help from above, / Unfailing sympathy, undying love. (Hymns #720)
