Things Revealed

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.

Matthew 11:29-30

How can Jesus lovingly assure us that he is “humble in heart” when he is the same God of the Universe who created the heavens and the earth, who for six days spoke creation into existence and who later thundered so intensely from the cloud over Mt. Sinai that the people of God trembled in fear for their lives.

And how can he tell us he is “gentle” when he is the God who drowned the entire Egyptian army in the Red Sea, who opened the earth to swallow the rebellious Moses opposers, Kora, Dathan and Abiram, and also appeared as the hand that wrote on the walls of Belshazzar’s banquet that the king had been “weighed in the balance and found wanting” just hours before he was slain?

Maybe “Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom."

We do not want to be foolish or cavalier when it comes to God. We have the freedom to choose him as our savior, our deliverer, our father and friend. Or to reject him. Worse, we can actually oppose him, denounce him and make him our enemy. But being God’s enemy comes with a cost. As the Lord proclaimed to the people of Israel, “he will not be slow to repay to their face those who hate him.” Jesus put it this way: “He who is not with me is against me.”

That is why scripture warns that “It is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the living God,” and asks, Who can stand in the day of his wrath?

It is not so terrible, however, to be embraced by him. To be drawn and even courted by him. In fact it is a wondrous thing. “The Lord, whose name is Jealous,” is patient and longsuffering as he waits for us to make up our minds or to return. He wants us to come to him, not run from him. He wants us to choose him above all else. He loves us so much he is willing to wait for us as we squander our affections elsewhere or are led astray, and to forgive us for the sins we commit along the way. His unconditional love captures our heart. Or as the Apostle John observed, “we love because he first loved us.”

But here’s the amazing thing: The all-powerful God of the Universe and God of Vengeance, who comes as fire, as thunder, as the earth-swallowing God who is not slow to oppose to their face those who hate him, comes to his friends—to those whose hearts are toward him—in gentleness and humility. To Moses, he came as a burning bush. To Abraham, as a man walking, someone who broke bread with him, a friend. To Jacob, in a dream and then as a man willing to wrestle with him about the things that matter most. And to Elijah, as “a gentle whisper.”

To the rest of us, he came as helpless and humble as is humanly possible: As a baby. He grew up among us. He taught. He shared. He suffered. He submitted to earthly authority. He willingly gave himself over to the Romans, was beaten and refused to defend himself or move in the power that was rightfully his, and ultimately, he took on our sins as a man forsaken and cursed.

Isaiah described him this way:

He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by men,
a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.
Like one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

Surely he took up our infirmities
and carried our sorrows,
yet we considered him stricken by God,
smitten by him, and afflicted.

But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
and by his wounds we are healed.

We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to his own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.

He was oppressed and afflicted,
yet he did not open his mouth;
he was led like a lamb to the slaughter,
and as a sheep before her shearers is silent,
so he did not open his mouth.

It doesn’t get more gentle and humble than this.

Jesus said, “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.”

We are the friends he died for. Jesus volunteered for the difficult part and told us "it is finished." Our part is simple: “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me…” With unmatched gentleness and humility, Jesus extends his hand of forgiveness to us instead of the hand that writes you have been found wanting. It’s still not too late to receive it.

Even if it's not the first time.

All it takes is that we also be gentle and humble in heart.

And that we surrender.

To choose otherwise would be a terrible thing.