No, your podcast feed isn't broken. We didn't have any new episodes for the past week or so due to an unusually busy start to 2019 for Pastor John, but we're back in the studio today. And hopefully we can avoid those gaps in the future with the schedule. If it does happen again, like last time, I'll let you know in the outros of the episodes again.

Today's question comes from a podcast listener named Lynette. "Hello, Pastor John. Thank you for this podcast. It has been so helpful over the last couple of years. Over and over in the Bible, God tells us to rest in Him. When I'm going through trials of various sorts or even in good times, I don't exactly know what it means to rest in Jesus.

I'm a naturally anxious person, so I need to learn it." Pastor John, what would you say to Lynette? Probably the best thing we can do here is let the precious Word of God speak rest to Lynette and to all of us, our souls. So let me just speak the first precious Word that came to my mind when I heard this question, Matthew 11, 28.

"Come to me," this is Jesus talking, "come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I'll give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." Those are amazing words from the Lord of the universe.

So the first thing we see that's so obvious is He really does want Lynette and you and me to rest. He wants us to enjoy rest of soul. He wouldn't be saying this if it weren't His happy desire for our souls. He wants His followers to have deep, sweet restfulness of soul, not anxiousness.

And the second thing that's obvious here is that the restfulness is not inactive, but a way of active living and doing and serving with deep restfulness of soul, and I think sweet restfulness of body when the day's doing is over. And the reason I say that is because here's what He says, "Come to me, I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you and learn from me." So a yoke is an instrument of labor. When you've got a yoke on, you're plowing or pulling a wagon or something like that. And He makes clear this yoke is His teaching. Like the Jews thought of the law as a yoke.

Jesus said, "No, I've got a yoke for you. It's my teaching. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me." Just like Jeremiah 6, 16, "Ask for the ancient paths where the good way is. Walk in it and find rest for your souls." So it's rest in a walking, not rest from a walking, but rest in a walking.

But what keeps the yoke, this is what we should ask, I think, is what keeps the yoke, this restfulness from being heavy and burdensome. Because He says, "My yoke is easy." If it's a yoke and it's a burden, those are His words, how can it be easy and how can it be light?

What's the difference between His burden, His yoke, and the Pharisees who heaped up legal burdens upon people? And here's what He said, Matthew 23, 4, "They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger." That's Jesus' diagnosis of the difference between His burden and their burden.

They don't lift a finger to lighten the load of the law on the backs of people. And Jesus not only lifted His finger, He lifted the cross, He lifted His whole life. The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve. I mean, it's amazing, just stop and think of it.

The Lord of the universe, the Creator of all things, did not come to be served. How amazing can it be? But to serve and give His life as a ransom, that's the main way He served, He gave His life as a ransom. So when He says in this beautiful passage about rest, "I'm gentle, I'm lowly, and that's the reason my burden is light and my yoke is easy, because I'm gentle and lowly." What He meant was, "I'm not a hard slave master.

I don't stand over you with a whip, crack, crack. Do my word, crack, crack. I get down low underneath you, and I lift you up." Philippians 2, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. So here's my question. How do we talk about this easy yoke where our souls are restful?

And I think Paul would say, "Talk about it like this," Philippians 2, 12, "Work out your salvation." So there's your yoke, right? Work. "Work out your salvation with fear and trembling." And then here's the opposite of the Pharisees. "For it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure." In other words, Jesus has lifted the heaviest load of guilt and sin by dying for us, and He has also lifted and goes on lifting the daily load of working out our salvation by being the decisive worker in our lives by the Spirit, the Spirit of Christ within us.

So let me close with just a story that I think captures it. I might have quoted this before in an episode. I can't remember. I just love it so much. This is John Patton, the missionary to the New Hebrides in the South Pacific in the 19th century, and it illustrates how the yoke of Jesus, the Word of Jesus, the promise of Jesus, once you put it on, leads you to do some pretty crazy things like go be a missionary among cannibals, but in the midst of crisis becomes the sweetest soul-supporting thing imaginable.

So here He is, having served on the Island of Ten. The natives have been mobilized against Him. Hundreds of them, even with muskets and with knives, are trying to find Him and kill Him. He needs to get on a boat and escape quickly, and He has one man that He can barely trust who says, "Climb up in that tree and stay there while they go underneath, and I will lead them down this path.

You go on that path when they're gone." He had no idea whether he could trust this man, so he climbs up in the tree, and years later here's what he describes. "The hours I spent there live all before me as if it were yesterday. I heard the frequent discharging of muskets and the yells of savages, yet I sat there among the branches as safe in the arms of Jesus.

Never in all my sorrows did my Lord draw nearer to me and speak more soothingly in my soul than when the moonlight flickered among those chestnut leaves and the night air played on my throbbing brow as I told all my heart to Jesus. Alone yet not alone, if it be to the glory of God, I will not grudge to spend many nights alone in such a tree to feel again my Savior's spiritual presence, to enjoy His consoling fellowship." And then he closes by looking us in the eye and saying, "If thus thrown back upon your own soul alone, all alone in the midnight, in the bush, in the very embrace of death itself, do you have a friend that will not fail you then?" I'll tell you, when I first read that, I said, "Oh, Jesus, I want that kind of friendship like nothing else." That's our question.

Do we have a friend that will not fail us at every moment when we feel restless and anxious? And the answer is, He's right here saying, "Come to me. I will give you rest." Amen. Thank you, Pastor John. Greater love has no one than this, than someone lay down his life for his friends.

Indeed, Christ is our very best friend. Thank you, Pastor John. Well, as we talk, Pastor John is preparing to embark on an international trip to South America this month. I'll ask him about it next time and give you some of the details. That's on Friday. I'm your host, Tony Reinke, and we'll see you then.

Amen. Amen. Amen.