Many ask themselves when problems arise – "WWJD" – or "What would Jesus do?" Yet, sometimes that could be too late to be asking that question. As Christians, we figure that if we knew what Jesus would do—then we would know how to respond to a given situation. But there is a flaw in this line of reasoning and it can be a deadly flaw for us. What we are trying to do here is to determine how Jesus would respond to a specific situation as if Je-sus lived only moment to moment. WWJD encourages us to live moment by moment.
But Jesus didn’t live from moment to moment but He lived a life that was rooted in the kind of overall lifestyle that helped Him maintain an inner bal-ance and a strong connection with His Father. And the great news is that He wants to teach us that way of life.
Dallas Willard writes, "So the idea conveyed is an absolutely fatal one—that to follow him simply means to try to behave as he did when he was ’on the spot,’ under pressure or persecution or in the spotlight. There is no realiza-tion that what he did in such cases was, in a large and essential measure, the natural outflow of the life he lived when not on the spot.
"Asking ourselves ’What Would Jesus Do?’ when suddenly in the face of an important situation simply is not an adequate discipline o preparation to en-able one to live as he lived. It no doubt will do some good and is certainly better than nothing at all, but that act alone is not sufficient to see us boldly and confidently through a crisis, and we could easily find ourselves driven to despair over the powerless tension it will put us through.
Example of wanting to do something but lack the disciplines to achieve that desire.
In 1 Corinthians 11:1, Paul tells us to "imitate me, just as I also imitate Christ." We are to follow the example set by Jesus in our lives. A synonym for the Greek word to imitate is "mathetes"—disciple, a learner. (In the Am-plified Bible this verse reads—"Pattern yourselves after me [follow my ex-ample], as I imitate and follow Christ [the Messiah].")
What we need to do is to be prepared for whatever might occur before it happens. And how we can be prepared is the reason for this series of ser-mons on the Christian disciplines. There are twelve to sixteen Christian dis-ciplines depending on how you want to list them and over the next several sermons, we will look at each one of them and learn to apply and live them out in our lives. Jesus Christ Himself modeled them for us and showed us how to use them in our lives and He is more than willing to teach them to us today. Today, let us lay the foundation for learning the Christian disciplines:
What is the yoke that Jesus is talking about here?
A yoke was a carved piece of wood that was fitted to the neck and shoulders of a particular animal that was to wear it to prevent chafing. It was part of the harness used as a means of controlling and guiding the animal, whether it was oxen, donkeys, or mules in useful work. In many instances it was a pair of animals that was yoked together to perform work—pulling wagons or plows or a mill beam.
It was also a symbol of submission. It was used also of a student being in submission to his teacher and learning from him. Ancient Jewish writing states: "Put your neck under the yoke and let your soul receive instruction." And this seems to be what Jesus had in mind here when He states to take His yoke and learn from Him. A yoke symbolizes obedience and Christian obe-dience includes learning from Christ.
The yoke we wear is heavy with all the dos and don’ts of living, all the legal-isms that is placed upon us, all the rules that man has devised so that he may a upright life—our life becomes oppressed by the burden placed on us by man like the ancient Israelites were oppressed by Pharaoh or like the Jews of Jesus’ day were oppressed or burdened by the grievous legalism placed on them by the scribes and Pharisees.
We become weary and heavy-laden from that type of yoke. The weariness that Jesus talking of here refers to our utter exhaustion from trying to do eve-rything ourselves; it is working ourselves to total exhaustion, to the point were we cannot do one more thing. It is being utterly bone tired. It is to the point where we are mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually worn out, there is nothing left in us to do anything.
We are wearied in trying on our own to find and please God by our own re-sources; we are exhausted in trying to find divine truth through human rea-soning and human wisdom; we have exhausted ourselves in trying to earn salvation by our own power; and we have come to despair of ever being able to achieving God’s standard of righteousness by our own efforts.
Being weary is internal exhaustion, but being heavy-laden is external ex-haustion. Being heavy-laden is having a great load being dumped on the al-ready wearied person. Heavy-laden is carrying the heavy burdens of a works-righteous lifestyle. It is the futile efforts of man to live a righteous life by keeping a set of dos and don’ts—it is a legalistic lifestyle.
John MacArthur in his commentary on the gospel of Matthew writes, "In Je-sus’ day, the rabbinical teachings had become so massive, demanding, and all-encompassing that they prescribed standards and formulas for virtually every human activity. It was all but impossible even to learn all the tradi-tions, and was completely impossible to keep them all. Jesus spoke of the heavy loads of religious tradition that the scribes and Pharisees laid on the people’s shoulders (Matthew 23:4); and at the Jerusalem Council, Peter noted that the Judaizers were trying to saddle Christianity with the same man-made ’yoke which neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear’ (Acts 15:10).
Jesus calls all who are weary and heavy-laden to Himself and tells them that He will give them rest. And then we are to take up His yoke and to learn from Him. This is where the difference comes in between the two yokes—one is the heavy yoke of man who does not give the help or strength to bear up under that yoke and the yoke that Jesus tells us to take from Him. Re-member earlier I said that usually two animals are yoked together to do the work—when we take the yoke from Jesus we do not bear that yoke alone but we are yoked together with Jesus and He actually carries us. It is He that gives us the strength and the power to live a godly life.
G.K. Chesterton wrote this very insightful thought: "Christianity has not so much been tried and found wanting, as it has been found difficult and left untried." Why do you think he was moved to make this very serious state-ment about Christianity?
It seems that there is almost a universal belief that it is almost impossible to be a Christian, a real follower of Christ. Could this misunderstanding come from not understanding what Jesus meant when He said in Matthew 5:48 this "you therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Eng-lish Standard Version). Taking this literally it would seem to be saying that we must be perfect just like the Father is perfect. The "be" in this verse is in the Greek future middle tense. What this shows is that the subject is acting in some way upon himself or concerning himself and that this action will take place sometime in the future; in otherwords, this perfection will happen to us in the future—we will be perfect as our Father is perfect. How is this to come to pass? We will see.
Or is this so because we think that the cost of discipleship is too high and we are told to count the cost (Luke 14:25-35). We constantly hear the grim, high cost of being a disciple and of discipleship and we fear it or are not willing to pay the cost. We at times feel that what we have to give up is too high a price to pay to be a disciple. Some feel that the lost of family, or the lost of position of power or of prestige, or sometimes we loss good health to be a disciple to be too much to give up. Some cannot bear the cost as described by Jesus in Matthew 19:29a. We also need to read and understand the rest of the verse and we see that we might have to give up something for the time being but in the long run, we will gain more than what we gave up.
The cost is high if we feel that we have to bear it all by ourselves, we be-come weary and heavy-laden as we saw in Matthew 11. But the higher cost is the cost non-discipleship. Søren Kierkegaard reminds us, "It costs a man just as much or even more to go to hell than to come to heaven. Narrow, ex-ceeding narrow is the way to perdition!" (For Self-Examination: Recom-mended for the Times). In Proverbs we observe this saying, "…but the way of the unfaithful is hard" (13:15). Dallas Willard observes in his book, The Spirit of the Disciplines, this: "To depart from righteousness is to choose a life of crushing burdens, failures, and disappointments, a life caught in the toils of endless problems that are never resolved. Here is the source of that unending soap opera, that sometimes horror show known as normal human life. The ’cost of discipleship,’ though it may take all we have, is small when compared to the lot of those who don’t accept Christ’s invitation to be apart of his company in The Way of life" (page 2).
Because we have ignored the words of Jesus in Matthew 11:28-30, we do not have the strength that we should have. Also, we have refused to believe what John wrote in his epistle—"And His commands are not burdensome" (1 John 5:3b). Many of us believe that the commandments of Jesus are overwhelmingly burdensome to us. As Dallas Willard wrote, "In fact many Christians cannot even believe He actually intended for us to carry them out. So what is the result? His teachings are treated as a mere ideal, one that we may better ourselves by aiming for but know we are bound to fall glaringly short of" (Spirit of the Disciplines, 2).
Because of this belief that it is to hard to do what it takes to be a Christian and afraid of really giving it a try many have responded as I have at times, my response has been that I am only human, what do you expect of me? Isn’t it human to err? Anyway, aren’t we under grace—aren’t we saved by grace and not by anything I can do? It is so hard to obey Jesus. And isn’t all this commandment keeping legalism anyway?
"The secret of the easy yoke, then, is to learn from Christ how to live our to-tal lives, how to invest all our time and our energies of mind and body as he did. We must learn how to follow his preparations, the disciplines for life in God’s rule that enable him to receive his Father’s constant and effective sup-port while doing his will. We have to discover how to enter into his disci-plines from where we stand today—and no doubt, how to extend and am-plify them to suit our needy cases" (Spirit, 9).
Why are Christian disciplines important?
Because they help us to live a Christ-centered life all the time, when we re-spond to the crises of life that response comes from deep within us, this re-sponse will be natural because it is who we are.
Look at the example of Jesus in Luke 2:40-52, especially verses 40 and 52
2 Corinthians 5:17—new creation
Ephesians 4:12-16—becoming mature in Christ
Ephesians 4:22-24—made new in attitude
Colossians 1:9-12—live a life worthy
Colossians 3:9-10—new self
1 Peter 2:1-3—newborn babies
2 Peter 1:3-9—participate in the divine nature
2 Peter 3:18—grow in grace and knowledge
1 Peter 2:21—Jesus set the example
Philippians 2:1-11—Jesus lifestyle
Matthew 5:1-12—a changed lifestyle
Matthew 5, 6, 7—Sermon on the Mount—the lifestyle of a Christian
This attitude, this action is our necessary preparation for taking the yoke of Christ and is the subject of the rest of this sermon series. We shall be dis-cussing actually how to follow Christ—to live as he lived. This sermon se-ries is intended for those who would be a disciple of Jesus in DEED.
What are the spiritual disciplines—refer to the handout
Matthew 11:28-30—"Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to Me. Get away with Me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with Me and work with Me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with Me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly."
