The Yoke of Christ

There is nothing more important for a man to understand before he decides to become a Christian than what the conditions for taking on the name of Christ entail. I mean it would be foolish for me to get married without first being committed to merging my life with my wife’s. The new responsibilities of married life should be weighed before the wedding vows are taken and the married privileges are enjoyed

Yet what is obvious in married life many have failed to understand in the Christian life. The privileges of the Christian life are emphasized while the responsibilities are marginalized or altogether ignored. How many times have you heard a preacher or author emphasize the message found in Matthew 11:28

"Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.”

However they fail to make known to the listener the condition of the rest that is promised found in the next two verses,

“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. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”

According to the text, what is that condition?

You see it is the yoke of Christ that makes one a disciple, not the coming to Him. Multitudes thronged the Savior while he was on the earth, many came to him to learn the way of salvation, others came to him to be healed, may came near to him, but few would take his yoke upon themselves.

An example of this can be found in John chapter 6.

Jesus had just worked one of his greatest miracles by feeding the five thousand with a few loaves and fishes. Many who were weary and heavy laden had come to him and found a temporal blessing. Based on that miracle alone the people wanted to take him and make him King immediately. But Jesus didn’t just want to give the people a temporal blessing, he wanted to give them something much more important, so he snuck away.

"The next day they went looking for him. And when they found Him on the other side of the sea, they said to Him, “Rabbi, when did You come here?” Jesus answered them and said, “Most assuredly, I say to you, you seek Me, not because you saw the signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled.” (John 6:25-26 NKJV)

“Then Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him.” (John 6:53-56 NKJV)

“Therefore many of His disciples, when they heard this, said, “This is a hard saying; who can understand it?” When Jesus knew in Himself that His disciples complained about this, He said to them, “Does this offend you? What then if you should see the Son of Man ascend where He was before? It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life. But there are some of you who do not believe.” For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were who did not believe, and who would betray Him. And He said, “Therefore I have said to you that no one can come to Me unless it has been granted to him by My Father.”From that time many of His disciples went back and walked with Him no more." (John 6:60-66 NKJV)

You see when Jesus says “come” it is always a call to discipleship. And discipleship is symbolized by abiding in Christ though the eating of his flesh and the drinking of his blood or more simply by the yoke.

So what is the yoke?

In simple terms, discipleship (wearing the yoke) is a process of becoming like Christ. It is a process because we don’t become like Christ over night.

However the yoke symbolizes what kind of relationship this is going to be. We do not begin to become more and more like Christ until we are broken. An animal wearing a yoke is completely broken and surrendered to the will of its master. The same must be true for us.

Many initially willingly place the yoke of Christ upon themselves after their coming to Jesus. However when they get to the point where they realize that Jesus is asking them to surrender everything in there life to Him, they begin to get cold feet.

Jesus, you don’t really want me to stop watching this do you?
Jesus you don’t really want me to stop eating that do you?
Jesus you don’t really want me to give that away do you?
Jesus you can’t possibly expect me to love that person do you?

It is at this point that many choose to take off the yoke. They want the benefits of being connected to Christ, but they do not want the restraints that a close connection to him entails. So they choose to be near to Christ, but not so near that they are connected to and controlled by Him. This is a more comfortable situation they decide. In this way they can enjoy the benefits without the sacrifice: The benefits being the rest (assurance of salvation), and the sacrifice being under the yoke (absolute surrender).

However what these people are looking for is not what God offers them. They want, as Bonhoeffer so eloquently said,

“Grace which amounts to justification of sin, without the justification of the repentant sinner who departs from sin and from whom sin departs.”

Bonhoeffer called this cheap grace. In other words grace that allows me to live as I please and still retain my salvation.

These people are what Ellen White would call Almost Christians. Christians who are continually seeking a connection to Christ, but who are not willing so surrender their lives completely to His control.

“Almost Christians, yet not fully Christians, they seem near the kingdom of heaven, but they cannot enter there. Almost but not wholly saved, means to be not almost but wholly lost.”

Therefore unless the sinner is wearing the yoke of Christ there can be no rest or assurance. For the Bible clearly states,

“For if we willfully persist in sin after having received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful prospect of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries.” (Hebrews 10:26)

Therefore another way to describe discipleship is simply obedience to Christ who is “the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”

The “Way” is through the cross. The “Truth” is what we must obey, and the “Life” is the result: forgiveness of sin, transformation of character into the likeness of Christ, and the gift of eternal life. There is no other way but through the cross of Christ and the crucifixion of self. Jesus said,

“Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.” (Matthew 16:24 NKJV)

Why did Jesus make this statement? What had just happened previous to this?

Jesus had been explaining to his disciples that his journey on earth was leading to suffering by the hands of men and finally death on a cross.

Do you remember how Peter responded?

“Then Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him, saying, “Far be it from You, Lord; this shall not happen to You!” But He turned and said to Peter, “Get behind Me, Satan! You are an offense to Me, for you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men.” (Matthew 16:22-23 NKJV)

What was Peter doing? He was tempting Jesus to take off the yoke of his father. He was tempting him to let go of the cross he was carrying for humanity. Thus Peter gets one of the strongest rebukes that Jesus ever gave to anyone.

You see my friends sometimes it will be your closest friends and family who will be the ones tempting you to put down the cross of Christ and to take off his yoke. Every day we must surrender ourselves completely to Christ and choose to put on His yoke. This is how Jesus called all his disciples. They were to forsake all and follow Him. Nothing in this world could hinder them. In fact in Matthew 10:38 Jesus went as far to say,

“He who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me.”

Being connected to Christ is of such value that anyone who would neglect the humility and discipline it involves is simply not worthy of Jesus.

Christ is the Pearl of great price or the Treasure found in a field that if one were to find would sell everything he owns to acquire. Anything that draws our affections away from Christ must be given up. Whether it be pleasure seeking, worldly ambition, wealth, fashion, appetite or entertainment it all must be laid aside so that we can pick up the cross and put on the yoke of Christ.

“Oh but this is too high of a price to pay,” you say. Is it? What do you give up? “A sin-polluted heart, for Jesus to purify, to cleanse by His own blood, and to save by His matchless love. And yet men think it hard to give up all!” (EGW SC)

And what do you get in return? Everything!

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.” (Ephesians 1:3 NKJV)

In Christ we receive a new abundant life where we are constantly receiving power from on high.

Whereas before we were burdened with worry, guilt, and the consequences of our sin, in Christ now we have rest for our souls. We have peace, and fellowship with God, and the blood of Christ cleanses us from all our sin.

So how do we wear the yoke of Christ? Again the issue comes back to surrender.

As Andrew Murray said,

“A full surrender is to obey as well as to trust, to trust as well as to obey.”

Or to put it another way Bonhoeffer said,

“Only he who believes is obedient, and only he who is obedient believes.”

Therefore in order to wear the yoke of Christ we must not only believe that Jesus is Lord, for even the devils believe that and tremble, but we must follow that belief with humble submission to the will of God. Thus as we submit and obey God’s will in our lives our trust in him grows more and more, and as our trust grows our obedience deepens until self is completely lost sight of.

This process of course involves a denial of self, which is a willful choice we need to make everyday. Just as Joshua commanded the people, “Choose you this day who you will serve”, we must make a choice whether we will serve Christ, and put on His yoke, or to serve ourselves.
We always have a choice. That is why we should be so diligent to shun everything in our lives and anyone who would tempt us to lay down the cross.

People may think you are weird when you walk out of a room because of something on the TV; they may misunderstand you when you try to explain why you can’t go to their party; they may get offended when you share with them your convictions and hope in Jesus soon coming. But we can’t have it both ways. Jesus said in Luke 16:13,

“No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Mammon."

In fact we cannot serve both God and you fill-in-the-blank! When we do this the Bible terms us as double-minded and unstable in all our ways.

Yet there is hope. The Bible says in James 4:8-10,

“Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.”

Here we have three simple steps to discipleship.

The first is simply to come to Jesus. We as sinners must feel an overwhelming sense of our unworthiness and at the same time have a deep yearning to be changed. There needs to be desperation for freedom.

This needs to be followed by the second step, a deep contrition of soul and hatred for the sin we are leaving behind. There must be a real sense of understanding what our sin has cost our Savior along with a determination to rid our lives of all the idols that have held our attention over the years.

If we are serious about our repentance we will radically amputate those idols from our lives. For instance if an immoral relationship is my idol I will end it, if the television is my idol I will cut my cable, if fashion is my idol I will burn all my immodest clothes, or if money is my idol I will practice giving it away. This is true repentance.

“But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill its lusts.”
(Romans 13:14 NKJV)

Finally, now that we are free from the yokes of this world we can take the third step and humbly put on the yoke of Christ. This is done daily through early morning consecration, Bible reading and meditation, prayer, journaling and periodic fasting.

Soon this time with God becomes our favorite time of the day, and now we understand what Christ meant when he said “you shall have rest for your soul.” An inner peace comes into our life, and God begins to work miracles on our behalf, lifting us up from the depths to reflect his glory. Our life now bears witness to the wonderful power of the grace of God and as we stay connected to Him we finally understand the meaning of “my yoke is easy, my burden is light,” for it is Christ now who is working in us both to will and to do his good pleasure.

Thoughts on Fasting

I recently went on a thirty-six hour fast. I have fasted in the past but I don’t think I have ever really taken the discipline seriously. I either have done it for the specific purpose of receiving an important answer to prayer or I somehow tied it in to part of my repentance ritual after I had fallen in sin. But I have never really studied the benefits of disciplined fasting on a regular basis. However in my recent quest to explore and experiment with the spiritual disciplines this one stood out as glaringly neglected above all the other ones in my life.

So why don’t we fast more often? What is this obsession we have with food? I mean most of us would be hard pressed to miss a meal, let alone miss a whole day. Of course some do fast but for the wrong reasons, such as vanity. But that would described more as starving yourself than fasting. Fasting is always spiritually motivated. It’s saying to God, look I am not really in charge of my life you are. Food does not really sustain me, you do Jesus.

Back to Monday when I was fasting…I can remember around lunch-time feeling a very strong pain in my stomach start developing. It was screaming out to me to “feed me.” It was like commanding me, but at that moment I remember distinctly speaking back to it and saying, “You are not Lord of my life! You are not in control here!” And than I knelt down and prayed and thanked God for all the blessings He has bestowed on me. I remember giving myself completely to God in that moment, kind of like I was falling, and than He just caught me.

The rest of the day was amazing. Yes my stomach continued putting out a gnawing steady pain, but after a while the pain was almost pleasant (I know it sounds weird) because I knew I was in control of it, and not it of me. At the same time I somehow felt like I was being “caught up” with Christ and could feel a definite sensitivity to the spirit of God throughout the day that I normally only get when I am doing my morning devotions. That evening I began reading a book called “Fasting” by Jentezen Franklin. Wow, to be in a fast and than to read about the Biblical principles for fasting at the same time really drove them deep into my psyche. This book by the way is very Biblical, simple, and yet very profound and challenging. He and his church fast for 21 days at the beginning of every year. What if Adventists in North America took on a similar challenge? What would God do through the church?

I know fasting in the early church developed into what God never intended for us. We are not called to emaciate ourselves so that God will somehow love us or forgive us more, but rather to clear our minds and cleanse our bodies so that our Spiritual sensibilities are heightened. The humility and self-denial it involves somehow, I don’t know how, but somehow allows God to more for us than he would have otherwise been able to. Very similarly to the mystery of prayer.

The Biblical examples are just astounding. Jesus put fasting on par with both prayer and charity in Matthew chapter 6 in His Sermon on the Mount. How many hundreds of sermons have we heard about stewardship and prayer? But what about fasting? Strangely fasting has been neglected for some reason and relegated to the super-spiritual or just written off as a side-bar activity, or worse, pointless. I know that I have never preached on the subject, YET. But I plan to now. I plan on starting my first 72 hour fast sometime next week. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Purity Group Covenant

This post is connected to the proceeding post concerning sexual addiction. The following is a group covenant that I put together for the accountability group that I am currently involved in. If you have any criticisms or suggestions please chime in. I'm all ears.

Sin is a serious thing. As men who have been called by God “out of darkness into His marvelous light” (1 Pet 2:9) we want to be men of God, men of purity, and men of integrity. To facilitate this transformation process that has been initiated by the Holy Spirit, we recognize the need of our fellow brothers in Christ to pray for us, to encourage us, and most importantly keep us accountable for the decision we have made to “walk by faith not by sight” (2 Cor 5:7) and through the power of the Spirit to “put to death the “deeds of the body” (Rom 8:13) which include all activities that draw us away from Christ, but most specifically “sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry (Col 3:5).”

Thus by joining this accountability group we make the following commitments:

Commitment #1: I commit to daily spending at least a half-hour in devotional habits such as prayer, Bible reading, contemplation, and journaling.

Commitment #2: I commit to attend the weekly meetings and to read the chapter(s) or verses the group leader has assigned for the week.

Commitment #3: I commit to refuse to watch movies or TV shows that promote or joke about immorality.

Commitment #4: I commit to confess each time I masturbate, view pornography or have any sexual contact with someone other than my spouse to a trusted friend (or group) who has embraced this covenant.

Commitment #5: I commit to register all my personal computers with the accountability or web filtering software of choice that promotes purity, integrity, and safety. (i.e. Safe Eyes; Covenant Eyes; etc)

Commitment #6: I commit to hold any confession of my friend’s failure in strict confidentiality.

Commitment #7: If I “repeatedly” stumble in immorality, I will show the fruit of repentance by going before my trusted friend (or the group) and allow them to direct the changes that I need to make in order to remove all “provisions of the flesh” (Rom 13:14) from my life that are causing me to fall.

Diversity and the Church

The Bible is the word of God. In it we discover the answers to all the “big” questions of life: who we are; where we come from; why we’re so messed up; who God is; what He’s done for us; what happens after death; etc. Yet instead of giving us the this revelation through one prophet such as Buddha, Mohammad, or Joseph Smith, God chose to use approximately forty different writers, each with their unique perspectives, temperaments, culture, experiences, education, and writing style to give us the revelation of our true history and His divine will. And yet they all together form a harmonious whole that is the Bible. Different writers teach the same truth in different ways that appeal to different people’s mind and experience.

Yet when it comes to the church, we have taken the approach more or less of one size fits all. For some reason we have believed that one church is capable of meeting all the diverse needs of the people living in its community simply because it is teaching the truth. But the truth is only taught in that church in one particular way and with one particular style. It appeals to one particular age group and to one particular level of education and economic status level.

I am convinced that the reason that the Adventist Church is struggling so much in North America is because we have a one-size-fits-all mentality, generally speaking. Idealistic authors and professors insist that we can transform our local churches into evangelism mega-centers which will reach out to the whole community with our message. Just follow steps A, B, and C they tell us and voila - instant success. This is a pipe dream my friends. One church can never, and should not be expected to, appeal to and meet the needs of the whole community in which it belongs.

Our churches have been lulled to sleep in no small part because of the big money that is thrown towards evangelism each year by our conferences. Millions of dollars are spent, handbills and advertising go out, tremendous results are promised, hired guns come in who can never be questioned, and all the members have to do is come. But when everything else is done for them it is not surprise that most can’t even do that. And the result: nine times out ten these meetings end in relative disappointment. People blame the evangelist, the evangelist blames the people, and the cycle goes on and on.

Instead of conferences spending in upwards of $5,000.00 or more per convert (not including all those who afterward leave through the back door of the church), they should be investing this money into planting new churches. The more churches we have the more diversity we have, and the better chance that the people we are trying to reach with our unique message will find a home. We have sacrificed Christ's method of evangelism at the altar of convenience. We have sacrificed diversity at the altar of conformity. We have sacrificed creativity at the altar of tradition. We have sacrificed mission on the altar of maintenance.

The church understands that it needs churches that speak another language to reach the immigrants and other diverse groups that pour into this country. Is it a little wonder that those churches are primarily the only ones growing? We need churches the will speak the language of the emerging generations in this country. The Bible gives us the blueprint: revelation through diversity. This should be the blueprint for our church organization as well.

Can We Coexist?

Hey everyone. I have been invited to post regularly over at Reinventing the Adventist Wheel. I just contributed my inaugural post entitled "Can We Coexist". You can read it here.

The Mighty Power of God in Us

“I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms,”
(Ephesians 1:17-20 NIV)

This is one of the most powerful and insightful prayers in the Bible concerning the reality of the New Life. First of all Paul prays that the believers in Ephesus may have a deeper experience with God. That they will receive the spirit of wisdom and revelation from the Father. This of course is referring to the reception of the Holy Spirit. The rest of Paul's prayer is meaningless unless this first condition is granted him. For it is only by the Spirit that we can be brought into a knowledge of God. The Spirit not only reveals God to us but he also brings wisdom so that we can understand God and comprehend what he has done for us. Thus an experiential knowledge of God, a knowledge that is never static but is continually growing and deepening needs to be fulfilled in our lives before the second part of Paul's prayer can begin to be answered in our lives.

When this is fulfilled Paul prays that our eyes and hearts will be enlightened so that we may know three things:

The blessed hope in which he has called us - our redemption and ultimately our deliverance from this world through the 2nd coming of Christ

The riches and glorious inheritance that we are heirs to - this of course refers to our adoption right as sons and daughters of God including our reign in heaven and the new earth

The incomparably great power for us who believe - this is explained in the next verse as the mighty power of the resurrection that raised Christ from the dead; that same power is the power of the new life in us that transforms our entire being and raises us up from the deadness of our sinful nature.

O what a great change would take place in our individual lives and the church if this prayer was answered in us today! I read this and fall on my knees in humble repentance for the pride and the lukewarmness of my Christian experience. O that as a people we would cry out to God for the outpouring of his Spirit in our lives so that our eyes would be open to the revelation of His will as revealed to us in the Word of God and especially that of the book of Revelation. Where is that blessed hope in you? How is it it manifesting itself in how you relate to the world around you? Do you really believe that you are a redeemed child watching and waiting for your the second coming of Christ while at the same time not idly wasting your time in the trivialness of this world? Jesus is coming soon! We must wake up to the fact that we are children of the most high King and that his power is freely offered to us. This mighty power, this incomparably great power is for us! Yet o how I have neglected it, denied it, or out right despised it so that I could live in my own strength, so that I could follow my own ways, and what has that left me with? Vanity, for it was all a grasping of the wind of this world and in the end there is nothing left. O that nothing would be more important in my life than knowing God better everyday, for it is only as I seek Him that I am truly filled with the joy of what he has done for me.

O god reveal yourself to me and send your Holy Spirit to fill me up just as you did to your might apostles on the day on Pentecost. May I experience your incomparably great and might power in my life today. May your will be accomplished in my life and in your church so that we can see you soon. This is my prayer in Jesus name, Amen.

Everything is Spiritual

“Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship.”
(Romans 12:1 NIV)

Paul has just finished giving his tour de force presentation of the Gospel to the church at Rome and now with chapter 12 he begins his exhortation of the believers response to it. In light of everything God has done for us, what are we to do? Many today argue that don't have to do anything. That the gospel response is purely one of belief and acceptance. But Paul would argue the contrary. He would say that if your believing and accepting the gospel does not fill you up with a longing to completely give yourself over to God, then you have not truly believed to begin with. The message of the gospel must move from our head into our hearts if it is to be of any value to us. Salvation is not just a legal transaction, rather it is the giving of life. Yes the legal action is the foundation and must precede the new life, but the legal action is not valid unless it effects transformation in the heart. Thus Paul tells us that in view of God's mercy in forgiving and redeeming us from the penalty and power of sin we should commit our whole lives to him. Thus our worship will not limited to the pew in the church but in all the mundane activities of the our lives. Everything we do, we do to the glory of God.

So how does this work out practically in the daily life? Rob Bell has recently released a DVD presentation titled “Everything is Spiritual.” Although I haven't seen it (can't justify spending $20 right now), Just the idea transmitted by the title is a sermon in itself. We must stop compartmentalizing our lives. In Biblical thought there is no separation between the secular and the spiritual. every moment of your life you are either living in the spirit or the flesh. thus we must reevaluate the activities of our lives as to what spirit we are in when we practice them. We must seek to train ourselves to live in the spirit on a day to day basis. Thus presenting our bodies as a living sacrifice is a conscience focus on living the life of Christ rather than doing the works of Christ. Forcing works is like pulling teeth. I hate feeling obligated to do something I don't feel like doing. However when we make a consistent effort to live the life of Christ then doing the works of Christ will no longer feel like an obligation but a delight. Christ lived his life in total submission to his father. However he did not just do this naturally. The Bible says that “Although he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered”(Hebrews 5:8 NIV). Thus if Christ had to learn obedience, how much more do we! Learning obedience then is like training for a marathon. It requires you to enter into a disciplined lifestyle. Thus we have the responsibility to practice spiritual disciplines that will put us in a position were we can learn submission and humility to the will of God.

“O God, I thank you for your divine patience and loving-kindness you pour out to your erring servants. I confess that I have been rebellious and self-sufficient in my relationship with you. Help me to see that my whole life is spiritual. Help me to see how each daily decision I make will effect my relationship with you! Lord I give you my will, please give it back to me with the stamp of your character so that I can be a child of strong faith and integrity throughout today. Please cover me with the shadow of your wings and deliver me from my fleshly cultivated habits and tendencies. Give me the abundant life today I pray. In Jesus name, Amen.