A Yoke That Fits
When you give your will to God Almighty through faith in Jesus Christ, you find out that His yoke fits you.
Transcript
Alright thank you very much, and hello again dear radio friends. How in the world are you? Doing Alright today? Well, this is your good friend Dr. Cook and I’m glad to be back with you.
We’re winding up our thought around the concept of goodness as found in Psalm 23, “Goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life”. And the windup verse so far as our study of it is concerned is Romans 12:2, “That ye may prove what is good and acceptable and perfect namely the will of God”. God’s will is good in essence, that means what it really is- it’s good in intent. God says, “I know the thoughts that I think toward you, thoughts of good, not of evil, to give you a desired end” and it’s good in its results, the desired end. “Afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of repentance”, God’s afterwards are always blessed. The world’s afterwards are always bitter. God’s afterwards are always blessed.
When you obey God, you can expect good results over the long pull-will you remember that and put it in the book of your mind? When you obey God you can always expect good results over the long pull, and looking back maybe 10, 15,20, 40,50 years after the event, you’ll be able to say, “Well, I obeyed God, I’m so glad I did”.
Now, some to whom I’m speaking are nodding their heads right now in agreement and saying, “Yea Bob Cook, that’s true, you know what I did, I did it as unto the Lord, and I’m glad I did it”. Of course. No regrets where you follow His lead. Hallelujah. He leadeth me, He leadeth me, old blessed thought, old word with heavenly comfort fraught, whatever I do, wherever I be, still tis God’s hand that leadeth me. So, that was the thoughts we had the last time we got together.
Now, he says you want to prove the transformed life, prove something about God. Your job and mine is to disprove the devil’s ancient lie that God is out to cheat you, that He doesn’t want your best, that He’s repressive, that He’s not a good God. The devil’s lie told in the Garden of Eden is still being told today in humanistic classrooms around the world, where professors who ought to know better, some indeed do-they turned their backs on God and there’s nobody so bitter as a person who’s turned his back on God, but people. Teachers around the world are saying, you can do better for yourself without this outmoded concept of God. You don’t need God, you can make it on your own.
I ought to do a small detour here, it occurs to me. I spoke for the annual meeting of the radio station here in the area, not long ago, and afterwards I was greeting the people and a man and his wife came up and they said, “We’re school teachers”, he said, “A lot of what you said about schools is true. I had been talking about the fact that secular godless humanism is the religion of public education”.
He said, “A lot of what is your said was true”, but he said, “say a good word for Christian school teachers would you? Don’t be too hard on us because we are doing our best and we are trying to be a testimony where we are”.
Yes beloved brother, you’re absolutely correct and I want to say, now that all of us ought to be profoundly thankful for the born-again faithful Christ-honoring teachers in the public school systems, who live their life before God every day in the presence of those students, whose testimonies are clean and clear, and whose faith is shining and who, when they ask what you know, there is no law against your answering a question.
You can’t intrude your religion into a public school setting, but there is no law against your answering a question, and when someone asks you a question as to why you have a Bible on your desk, you are perfectly legally right in answering that question. Yes, you are, teacher. Oh, God help you to shine and bless you in your place.
No, I don’t mean to be down on each and every school teacher because there’s thousands of them and I’m talking to some of them right now. I know, who are living their life for the Lord Jesus Christ in the public school systems. I hate to think of what our school system would be were it not for the thousands of dedicated professionals who are doing a good job in a difficult situation. Alright, maybe I cleared that one up.
Now he says, “That you may prove”- it’s the shining, transformed life that proves that God is a good God”. The spinoff of that idea is in the rest of this verse, “That you may prove what is good and acceptable and perfect, namely the will of God”. Acceptable means easy to take.
Can you remember in childhood days, when you had to take some bitter medicine and they said, “Swallow it, it’s good for ya!” I remember that. (laugh) There was a bitter liquid medicine that was prescribed and I was a little boy, I still remember the color and the taste of it- I think it had quinine in it, and it also had some other kinds of drugs or whatever, and you took a teaspoonful of it and then washed it down with water. When you had the grip, or you had the flu, or you had a stomachache, or whatever it was, this was the cure-all. But oh it was bitter! Do any of you remember that? That green medicine? Well, I remember the admonition, “Well, you better take it, it’s good for ya. It doesn’t taste good, but it’s good for ya! Bitter.
Now, you see, the devil’s lie is that God’s will is bitter, that He takes all the joy out of life. Many a teenager or a person in his salad days, his college years, has fallen for that lie and said, “I’m going to have fun, I’m going to find out what’s so wrong about all of these things in the world and I’m not going to let my concept of God stand in the way of having a little fun”. Well buddy, you had your fun, but you ended up with your fuses blown, if mercifully you didn’t get AIDS or herpes or something worse, and you came to marriage jaded, didn’t you?
Now, you can’t undo those years, but God can give you in His mercy, a rebirth of innocence and love and tenderness and faith and purity, as you yield your life to Him. No, God’s will isn’t bitter, sin is bitter.
“There’s a way that seems right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death”, said Solomon. Oh, yes, “At the last it biteth like a serpent, stingeth like an adder”, that’s what Solomon said about the results, the end result of trying somehow to find enjoyment apart from God. God’s will is acceptable, easy to take, once you say yes to God, it’s easy.
There is something in our stubborn, human will that refuses to yield to God. Have you found it that way? In times when I have found myself fighting against what I knew to be the will of God for me, and yet I refused to accept it. In those times it was not that I was so much against the concept of what was involved, as it was the difficulty of finally saying yes, and submitting my will to God.
See, God has built us with our own free will and we do have the dreadful, tragic, capacity of saying no to the Almighty. Oftentimes we do, sinners that we are. And so the battle is the battle for the will. Satan knows that and he works hard to keep your will bent in your own selfish direction, and incidentally in his own, but you bow your will to God and saying, “Lord not my will but Thine be done”.
And if as some have said, you’re not willing to do God’s will, you can pray the prayer that Percy Crawford used to urge upon young people. He used to say, “Well, if you aren’t willing to do God’s will, pray Lord make be willing to be willing and God will answer that prayer in His wonderful grace”.
Yes, God’s will is acceptable, it’s easy to take, once you’ve crossed that great divide, that point at which you say, “Lord, you win. I want your will, at that point He says, “My yoke is easy”. What is a yoke? Well, that’s a harness that’s put upon oxen to enable the plowman to get them plowing in a straight line. The yoke is something that causes the ox to go in the way you want it to go and to pull the burden in the way you want it to pull. A yoke impinges upon the freedom of the animal, doesn’t it? Oh, yea. Jesus said, “My yoke is easy”.
You see when you give your will to God Almighty through faith in Jesus Christ, you find out that His yoke fits you. There aren’t any rough spots that cause a blister or a bruise- it’s easy, it fits. God’s yoke just exactly fits you. Aren’t you glad that’s so?
Those of you who’ve walked with the Lord for a little while, a few years, look back and see how this truth has worked out in your own life. Every time you’ve said yes to God’s will, didn’t you end up feeling very comfortable with God’s will? Yes, you did, “My yoke”, Jesus said, “is easy”. Now, a yoke curtails the free movement of the animal, but an easy yoke enables that beast of burden to pull the load without pain, “My yolk is easy”, and He says, “My burden is light”. My burden is light -what does that mean? You thought it was going to be a heavy load, didn’t you? You found out that the Lord Jesus was carrying you AND the load. “Cast thy burden upon the Lord and He shall sustain thee”.
I often use that illustration of when I was a very small boy. They would send me to the grocery store for some groceries. We lived in Cleveland there, my sister who made a home for my widowed father and her little baby brother, was the one who would dispatch me to the store with some very carefully guarded nickels and dimes. We were very poor, and so you came back with three eggs and a half a pound of hamburger, you know and six potatoes, that sort of the thing. But to me as I came up the hill-you went downhill to Beer and Baum’s grocery, at 18th and I think it was Sinclair, St. Clair, or one of those streets in Cleveland- you went down that hill, but coming back it seemed such a the long hill to climb, I remember.
Then my father oftentimes, watching for me, come striding toward me with that big outdoorsman stride of his and pick me up, groceries at all, oh that was great! “Cast thy burden on the Lord and He shall sustain Thee”. God picks you up beloved, groceries and all, and carries you next to His heart.
Oh, God’s will is acceptable, say yes to God’s will. Some of you are fighting the will of God in some matter, even now as I speak. You know what it is, God knows that you know. Oh, say yes to His will for you, even now and find out how acceptable, easy to take, it really is.
Dear Father today, help us to yield to that good, acceptable, wonderful will of God, I ask in the name of the Lord Jesus, Amen.
Till I meet you once again by way of radio, walk with the King today and be a blessing!
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