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.

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

James 1:27

Jesus was not a great fan of religion. Nor was he a fan of what Israel's teachers and the Pharisees had done by turning the law of Moses into a system of rewards, punishments and procedures—a religious system that left the heart unchanged and the Lord unpleased. So Jesus addressed the crowds to show them what they had unknowingly become a part of.

Because the teachers and Pharisees claimed authority in Moses’ name, they were thought to have the word of the Lord and worthy to be followed. Jesus didn’t see it that way and he warned the people about their leaders: “do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach. They tie up heavy loads and put them on men’s shoulders…” “Everything they do is done for men to see” and for recognition. He rebuked them directly, saying, “You shut the kingdom of heaven in men’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to.” And he left no room for debate, calling such leaders “hypocrites,” “blind guides” and “whitewashed tombs” full of wickedness within. So unspiritual was the religious system that “the people of Jerusalem and their rulers did not recognize Jesus.” The leaders knew the rules but their hearts were blind to the Ruler of all creation and his heart for them.

In the beginning, God's heart was to have relationship with man. It's still his heart. He prepared a place for him so they could live together in the Garden. In the beginning, there was no law (except one: don’t eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil). There was intimacy and fellowship—God, man and woman in Eden living in perfect harmony. But we know how that ended. And ever since then, mankind has been creating ways to make things right with God to win back his love, not fully understanding that God never stopped loving us. Ever.

Those ways are the stuff of religion. Religion creates ways to earn God’s love and his promised redemption. Religion puts all sorts of heavy loads on men’s shoulders by saying God will love you, IF…if you don’t drink; if you don’t smoke; if you dress appropriately, if you pray every day; if you clean up your language; if you give money; if, if, if…

Jesus says this: I love you, NO ifs, ands or buts.

Jesus has never stopped loving us. He gave his life for us. Anyone or any system that says we must do something to earn God’s love rather than receive it, is not biblical. And anyone or any system that says that we must do more than receive his sacrifice on the cross to be restored, has traded redemption for religion.

That’s why James says that pure religion is this: “to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” Pure religion is about abiding in Christ. It’s about the overflow of a transformed heart causing us to love not as the world loves—with conditions and expectations of reward—but selflessly, “with actions and in truth.” Pure religion is not about a duty to serve. It's about the desire to obey.

God calls us to meet together, to pray, to worship him, to be in his word, to be teachable and to teach and to make disciples of all nations. More importantly, however, he calls us friends if we do what he commands. And his command is this: “Love each other as I have loved you.” Sometimes that calls for small sacrifices. Sometimes it calls for more. And still other times it calls for the ultimate sacrifce. As Jesus said, “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.”

Are we prepared to lay down our lives for our friends? How about just our pride? Or our rights? Or even our guard?

Doing so would be choosing obedience to Christ. It would also be choosing to lay down our lives, at least a little. And it would be choosing religion that God accepts as pure and faultless.

One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: 'Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?'

Jesus replied, 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment.

And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'

All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.

Matthew 22:35-40

Not only do all the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments, so too does the true nature of our relationship with God. Once we grasp the magnitude of what Jesus did on the cross, we begin to appreciate who he is. The more we understand, the more we respond. And the more we pursue God, the more likely we are to love him. But it is not enough to simply profess our love for Jesus, however wonderful that may be, because the idea of loving Jesus is both alluring and deceiving.

It’s easy to proclaim love for God, to read and attend meetings in pursuit of the object of our affections and to be genuinely enamored with the Him. And who would dare to question the depth of our relationship with the Almighty, for who really knows it? Certainly a changed life can be proof of a changed heart. But not always. Sometimes the outward changes are just that, the first and last fruits of our encounter with the Eternal One. Which is why John identifies a more reliable standard by which to measure a life transformed by God:

If anyone says, 'I love God,' yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.

And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother.

1 John 4:20-21

To this he adds the following: "This is love for God: To obey his commands." 1 John 5:3. And this: “Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth." 1 John 3:18.

Professing love for God is the easy part. The true measure of your love for him comes down to obedience and to this: If you do not love your brother, you cannot love God.

But we do love you Lord, we protest. Can't you see how our hearts are toward you? Yet his command to love the brethren exposes our own unwillingness to yield and reveals a heart steeped in worldly ways. After all, there are so many people who have done us wrong. Unthinking people. Selfish people. Dishonest people. Manipulative and unfaithful people. And not just people we read about. But people we know! People with names and with common history. People who were once part of our lives. Surely there’s room for us to claim an exemption from the requirement of loving those people, or at least room for us to merely tolerate them from a distance. The Lord must know our feelings are justified—he's seen what they've done. Yet Jesus, who suffered fools and evil men, who hated their arrogance, rebelliousness and religion, loves them still and said even of those who nailed him to the cross, “forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing."

There's no getting around it. God loves the brethren. So too must we.

Brotherly love is one thing. But loving your brothers—real people in your life who push only your blood pressure heavenward—is the measure of your love for God and your willingness to obey his commands. Because loving someone is way harder than loving everyone.

Dean Koontz describes the difference in Odd Hours:

To love all the world at once is pretense or dangerous self-delusion. Loving the world is like loving the idea of love, which is perilous because, feeling virtuous about this grand affection, you are freed from the struggles and the duties that come with loving people as individuals...

Loving actual people is a never-ending struggle. It is the place where flesh bows to Spirit. Where anger and resentment yield to obedience. Where we choose to love and forgive rather than respond in kind. That’s what loving with actions and in truth is about.

Love with actions is an effort. To love those who hurt us is incredibly difficult. To forgive those who persecute and defame us doesn’t seem fair. To hold one’s tongue when there’s so much to say and defend and set right feels like injustice. And to love those who mock and hate Jesus is painful. Nevertheless, lovers of God are called to love them anyway—to love them supernaturally. Because supernatural love is the lifeblood of the Body of Christ. We are told that “God is love.” And on this side of Heaven, we who are transformed by the Spirit of God must translate that love into action. Such love takes care of the poor and the widows. It encourages both the lowly and those in high position. It is selfless. It is forgiving. It seeks no recognition. No reward. And most of all, it seeks no vengeance or retribution. Instead, it grows and multiplies through obedience to God and through the struggle to love those who hate or hurt us.

Love with actions and in truth is a spectacle to behold. Praying for those who see us as enemies, forgiving them, releasing them—not to God’s judgment or Satan’s plans—but from the icy grip of our own heart’s bitterness toward them, is a supernatural act without equal.

Don’t underestimate how profoundly freeing and life changing supernatural love is. And don’t be surprised when what you do in obedience to God’s commands gets more attention and has more impact than the words of love you share with those around you. Love with actions and in truth does that. For many, it’s the only evidence they can see that the transforming power of Jesus Christ is more than mere words and wishful thinking.

It's proof that the Kingdom of God is real.