The Burden of our Lives.…  Psalm 23:2
 

Sermon by Pastor Dennis Gleason -- August 1, 2004

“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside the still waters…”

When we were considering the first verse of Psalm 23, the suggestion was made that the verses that followed were all an exposition or explanation of how those for whom the Lord was their shepherd would not want for anything.

Bruce Larson, in Believe and Belong, tells how he helped people struggling to surrender their lives to Christ:
For many years I worked in New York City and counseled at my office any number of people who were wrestling with this yes-or-no decision. Often I would suggest they walk with me from my office down to the RCA Building on Fifth Avenue. In the entrance of that building is a gigantic statue of Atlas, a beautifully proportioned man who, with all his muscles straining, is holding the world upon his shoulders. There he is, the most powerfully built man in the world, and he can barely stand up under this burden. ‘Now that’s one way to live,’ I would point out to my companion, ‘trying to carry the world on your shoulders. But now come across the street with me.’
On the other side of Fifth Avenue is Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, and there behind the high altar is a little shrine of the boy Jesus, perhaps eight or nine years old, and with no effort he is holding the world in one hand. My point was illustrated graphically.
We have a choice. We can carry the world on our shoulders, or we can say, ‘I give up, Lord; here’s my life. I give you my world, the whole world.’”

Our text for today is found in Psalm 231-2  “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside the still waters…”

Phillip Keller in his book A Shepherd Looks At The 23rd Psalm says “the strange thing about sheep is that because of their very make-up it is almost impossible for them to be made to lie down unless four requirements are met.
1. Because sheep are so timid, they must be free from all fear.
2. Because of the social behavior within the flock, they must be free from friction with others of their kind.
3. Sheep will lie down only when they are free of insects and parasites.
4. Sheep will lie down only when they are free from hunger.

We can put it this way: for sheep to be at rest they must be free from fear, tension, aggravations and hunger.

The image given us in this psalm is that it is only the shepherd of the sheep himself who can provide freedom from these anxieties for his sheep.

Time does not permit us to read it together this morning, but John 10 gives us six marks of Christ’s sheep: 
1. They know their Shepherd
2. They know his voice.
3. They hear him calling them each by name.
4. They love him.
5. They trust him.
6. They follow him.

The Psalmist makes it clear in our text for today that one of the reasons they follow him is that he makes them lie down in green pastures, and he leads them to restful places.

The force of the word “lead” here is that of gentleness, comfortably guiding the flock and not a forceful pushing or driving the sheep.

Sheep can rest when the shepherd is near by.

One of the images we are to gain from this passage is that of the rest that is available to God’s flock.

That reminds me of what Jesus had to say in Matthew 11:27-30:

“All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. ‘Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of 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.”

What rest is in view here?
It is the rest of the revelation of the Father, the one and only rest that a man needs, the rest that comes to the soul when God comes to the soul and the soul comes to God.

Jesus has essentially said here: All your restlessness is Godlessness. All of life’s intensity and fever pitch is the result of the exiling of God from our lives. All the tempest tossed experiences of men are due to the fact that they do not know the Father. The Lord is not their shepherd. Jesus, looking at the multitudes, sorrowing and suffering, tempest tossed and driven, restless and tired, weary and heavy-laden, essentially told these people, If you could know God, your restlessness would cease. But you cannot know Him except through me. But if you will come to Me I will reveal Him to you, and you will find your rest.

Get things right at the foundation of your life and the surface things will be right.  He offers the power to live your life in victory. Get right with God! And he says, the only way to get right with God is to come to Me.

His appeal here is that of accepting his Lordship. He appeals to some thing that is necessary and common to all of us. He separates humanity into two groups and he invites all mankind into a life giving relationship with God Himself.

Jesus separates people into two different camps when he says “Come to me, all you that labor and are heavy laden." That is the description of one class of people. They labor and are heavy laden. The other group of  people is comprised of those who are yoked with Jesus. His yoke is easy and his burden is light. Now, we need to understand something important here about this yoking. Jesus does not mean by this expression here the yoke he was going to give us and the burden he was going to impose upon us. While that is part of what takes place when we submit our lives to Christ, he was primarily speaking out of his own experience. The yoke I wear, Jesus said,  is easy, the burden I bear is light.

The commonality between both groups of people – those with Christ and those who have never submitted to him – is the burden. Those without Christ are burdened and heavy laden. They are carrying a burden. He is carrying a burden. But His burden is light.

The Apostle Paul speaks to this when he writes to the Galatians and says, “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ,” and then “Each man shall bear his own burden.” There is no contradiction here. The first word for burden is baros and it means a burden of sorrow, of pain, of difficulty or trial. We are to bear one another’s burdens of that sort. But the second word is phortion which refers to the burden of responsibility. Every man must bear his own burden of responsibility. No one can carry the burden of responsibility for another. We cannot live or work under the impulse that drives our brother.

What is this burden of responsibility? It is the master passion of your life. It is that conception of life that dominates your life and drives it. It is the aim or goal that a man has in life, the thing that has taken hold of him and is molding him; It is that which lies behind his will and creates the reason for the decisions of your will. Simply put it is the motive power in your life and mine.

Everyone has some master passion. For Sammy Sosa it is baseball. For Tiger Woods it is golf. It may well be that behind the baseball and the golf is the master passion of making money, of finding security or whatever.

The point of all this is that Jesus is telling us that if you can only get the right passion in life you will find rest. If you can only find the right master passion, the right motive, the right aim, the right reason for living then the friction will cease in your life and you can find peace.

What was the master passion of the life of Jesus? What was his aim, his motive, his reason for everything he did? There was one master passion that drove him…it was his delight to do his Father’s will. “In the roll of the book it is written of me; I delight to do Thy will O my God.”

Remember those words of Jesus as a young man in Jerusalem? “I must be about my Father’s business…” One day he was able to say to his Father, “I…have accomplished the work which You have given me to do.” “It is finished,” he can say.

He tells us “My burden is light.” Pleasing God is easy. It is easier to please God than it is to please men. Jesus says that it has been easy to please God. “My burden is light.”

“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters. There is a picture of God’s people at rest.

We need to ask ourselves, “What is the master passion of my life?” 

Some people live with a master passion of their life that is money. They think, plan, work and toil for money. For another it is fame. They must be known by other people. For someone else it is pleasure. For another it is just to be left alone. They just want peace and quiet and to be left alone. 

None of these things constitute the burden men toil under. Why do they want what they want? They want them for themselves. It is what I want for my self.

There are only two burdens that men can carry:  One is the will of God and the other is self.

Our lives either revolve around God or self. Self is very insidious, very subtle, self hides itself in all sorts of masks, but if God is not at the center of our life, we have put self on the throne. There are only two burdens men can carry, but there are thousands of yokes.

The good shepherd cares for his sheep. He leads them to places of rest. The sheep following the good shepherd need not be burdened by the cares of the sheep with a poor shepherd. The pastures are luxuriant and the still waters beckon them to a place of rest.

- Dennis Gleason