Christ’s School of Learning - Mat:28-30; John 14:23-26; I Cor 3:1-3; Heb 5:11-14

Christ’s School of Learning

Matthew 11:28-30; John 14:23-26; I Corinthians 3:1-3; Hebrews 5:11-14

I John 2:12-13 “I am writing to you, little children, because your sins have been forgiven you for His name's sake.  I am writing to you, fathers, because you know Him who has been from the beginning. I am writing to you, young men, because you have overcome the evil one. I have written to you, children, because you know the Father.”

I.            Enrolling in School with Jesus, Mat 11:28-30

A.       Come To Me Ye Burdened, vs. 28

"Come to me, all you who are exhausted and weighted down beneath your burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of 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.”

1.      Jesus spoke to men desperately trying to find God and desperately trying to be good, who were finding the tasks impossible and who had been driven to weariness and despair.

a.      He says, "Come unto me all you who are exhausted." His invitation is to those who are exhausted with the search for the truth.

b.      The Greeks had said, "It is very difficult to find God, and, when you have found him, it is impossible to tell anyone else about him."

c.      Zophar demanded of Job: "Can you find out the deep things of God?" (Job 11:7). It is Jesus' claim that the weary search for God ends in himself.

d.      W. B. Yeats, the great Irish poet, wrote, "Can one reach God by toil? He gives himself to the pure in heart. He asks nothing but our attention."

e.      The way to know God is not by mental search, but by giving attention to Jesus Christ, for in Him, we see what God is like.

2.      He says, "Come unto me all you who are weighted down beneath your burdens." For the orthodox Jew religion was a thing of burdens.

3.      Jesus said of the Scribes and Pharisees: "They bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on men's shoulders" (Matt 23:4).

4.      To the Jew religion was a thing of endless rules. A man lived his life in a forest of regulations, which dictated every action of his life. He must listen forever to a voice, which said, "Thou shalt not."

5.      Even the Rabbis saw this. There is a kind of rueful parable put into the mouth of Korah (one of the great grandson’s of Levi), which shows just how binding and constricting and burdensome and impossible the demands of the Law could be.

a.      "There was a poor widow in my neighborhood that had two daughters and a field. When she began to plough, Moses (i.e. the Law of Moses) said, 'you must not plough with an ox and an ass together (Deut 22:10).'

b.      When she began to sow, he said, 'you must not sow your field with mingled seed (Lev 19:19).' When she began to reap and to make stacks of corn, he said, 'When you reap your harvest in your field, and have forgotten a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to get it' (Deut 24:19), and 'you shall not reap your field to its very border' (Lev 19:9).

c.      She began to thresh, and he said, 'Give me the heave-offering, and the first and second tithe.' She accepted the ordinance and gave them all to him.

d.      What did the poor woman then do? She sold her field, and bought two sheep, to clothe her from their fleece, and to have profit from their young. When they bore their young, Aaron (i.e. the demands of the priesthood) came and said, 'Give me the first-born.' So she accepted the decision, and gave them to him.

e.      When the shearing time came, and she sheared them, Aaron came and said, 'Give me the first of the fleece of the sheep' (Deut 18:4). Then she thought 'I cannot stand up against this man. I will slaughter the sheep and eat them.'

f.       Then Aaron came and said, 'Give me the shoulder and the two cheeks and the stomach' (Deut 18:3). Then she said, 'Even when I have killed them I am not safe from you. Behold they shall be devoted.'

g.      Then Aaron said, 'In that case they belong entirely to me' (Num 18:14). He took them and went away and left her weeping with her two daughters."

6.      The story is a parable of the continuous demands that the Law made upon men in every action and activity of life. These demands were indeed a burden.

B.       Take My Yoke

1.      Jesus invites us to take his yoke upon our shoulders.

a.      It was common in Judaism to speak of the “yoke of the Law,” a phrase which implied intense study of the Torah and obedience to it as a means of gaining acceptance with God.

b.      The rabbis used yoke for school as many pupils find it now a yoke. To take upon the yoke would be to take upon oneself the task of learning.

c.      The Jews used the phrase the yoke for entering into submission to.

d.      They spoke of the yoke of the Law, the yoke of the commandments, the yoke of the Kingdom, the yoke of God.

e.      But it may well be that Jesus took the words of his invitation from something much nearer home than that.

2.      He says, "My yoke is easy."

a.      The word "easy" is in Greek chrestos, which literally means “well-fitting”.

1)     In Palestine, ox-yokes were made of wood; the ox was brought in and the measurements were taken.

2)     The yoke was then roughed out, and the ox wigs brought back to have the yoke tried on. The yoke was carefully adjusted, so that it would fit well, and not gall the neck of the patient beast. The yoke was tailor-made to fit the ox.

b.      There is a wonderful legend about Jesus during the silent years, i.e., before his public ministry, that Jesus made the best ox-yokes in all Galilee, and that from all over the country, men came to him to buy the best yokes that skill could make.

1)     In those days, as now, shops had their signs above the door; and it has been suggested, that the sign above the door of the carpenter's shop in Nazareth may well have been: "My yokes fit well."

2)     It may well be that Jesus is here using a picture from the carpenter's shop in Nazareth where he had worked throughout the silent years.

3)     Jesus says, "My yoke fits well." What he means is, "The life I give you is not a burden to gall you; your task is made to measure to fit you."

c.      The yoke Jesus invites us to take, the yoke that brings rest to weary souls, is one that which is made exactly to our lives and hearts.

d.      The yoke he invites us to wear fits us well, does not rub us nor cause us to develop sore spirits and is designed for two. His yokes were always designed for two. In addition, our yoke-partner is none other than Christ himself.

3.      Jesus says, "My burden is light."

a.      As a Rabbi had it: "My burden is become my song." It is not that the burden is easy to carry; but is laid on us in love; it is meant to be carried in love and love makes even the heaviest burden light.

b.      When we remember the love of God, when we know that our burden is to love God and to love men, then the burden becomes a song.

II.         Meeting the Teacher, John 14: 23-26

“Jesus answered and said to him, "If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him.  ²⁴He who does not love Me does not keep My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine, but the Father's who sent Me.  ²⁵These things I have spoken to you while abiding with you.  ²⁶But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.”

A.       Love Means Obedience, vs. 25-26

1.      In this passage, John is playing on certain ideas, which are never far from his mind.

2.      First, and foremost there is love. For John love is the basis of everything. God loves Jesus; Jesus loves God; God loves men; Jesus loves men; men love God through Jesus; men love each other; the bond of love binds all heaven and earth, man and God, man and man together.

3.      Once again, John stresses the necessity of obedience, the only proof of love. It was to those who loved him that Jesus appeared when he rose from the dead, not to the scribes, the Pharisees, and the hostile Jews.

4.      This obedient, trusting love leads to two things.

a.      First, it leads to ultimate safety. On the day of Christ's triumph those who have been his obedient lovers will be safe in a crashing world.

b.      Second, it leads to a fuller and fuller revelation.

1)     The revelation of God is a costly thing. There is always a moral basis for it; it is to the man who keeps his commandments that Christ reveals himself.

2)     No evil man can ever receive the revelation of God. God can use him, but he can have no fellowship with him.

3)     It is only to the man who is looking for him that God reveals himself, and it is only to the man who, in spite of failure, is reaching up that God reaches down. Fellowship with God and the revelation of God are dependent on love; and love is dependent on obedience. The more we obey God, the more we understand him; and the man who walks in his way inevitably walks with him.

B.       The Teaching Ministry of the Holy Spirit, vs. 27-28

1.      In this passage, Jesus speaks of his ally, the Holy Spirit, and says two basic things about him.

a.      The Holy Spirit will teach us all things.

1)     To the end of the day, the Christian must be a learner, for to the end of the day the Holy Spirit will be leading him deeper and deeper into the truth of God.

2)     There is never any excuse in the Christian faith for the shut mind.

3)     The Christian who feels that he has nothing more to learn is the Christian who has not even begun to understand what the doctrine of the Holy Spirit means.

b.      The Holy Spirit will remind us of what Jesus has said.

1)     This means two things.

(i)       In matters of belief, the Holy Spirit is constantly bringing back to us the things Jesus said. We have an obligation to think, but all our conclusions must be tested against the words of Jesus. It is not so much the truth that we have to discover; he told us the truth. What we have to discover is the meaning of that truth. The Holy Spirit saves us from arrogance and error of thought.

(ii)      The Holy Spirit will keep us right in matters of conduct. Nearly all of us have this sort of experience in life. We are tempted to do something wrong and are on the very brink of doing it, when back into our mind comes a saying of Jesus, the verse of a psalm, the picture of Jesus, words of someone we love and admire, teaching we received when very young. In the moment of danger, these things flash unbidden into our minds. That is the work of the Holy Spirit.

2.      He speaks of his gift, and his gift is peace. In the Bible the word for peace, shalom, never means simply the absence of trouble.

a.      It means everything, which makes for our highest good. The peace, which the world offers us, is the peace of escape, the peace that comes from the avoidance of trouble and from refusing to face things.

b.      The peace, which Jesus offers us, is the peace of conquest. No experience of life can ever take it from us and no sorrow, no danger; no suffering can ever make it less. It is independent of outward circumstances.

III.      Failing to Make the Grade, 1 Cor. 3:1-3

“Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly--mere infants in Christ.  I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready.  You are still worldly. For since, there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere men?”

IV.       Stuck in Kindergarten, Heb 5:11-14  

“Concerning him we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing.  ¹²For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food.  ¹³For not everyone who partakes only of milk is accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is an infant.  ¹⁴But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil.”

A.       Being Sluggish Students of God’s Word, vs. 11-12

1.      In verse 11, the writer describes the spiritual condition of his readers, as having “become dull of hearing”.

2.      The word “dull” means to be “lazy or slothful”. The original word is actually a combination of two Greek words that literally mean, “No thrust or push.”

3.      The readers had no self-motivation or drive, to become learned students of God’s word.

4.      They had very little comprehension of divine truth. One of the commonest answers I have heard by people who do not read their Bible is, “I just don’t understand it.”

5.      One solution people try to help them to understand the word better is buying easier and easier Bible translations to read. Which in my estimation is simply laziness; they want someone else to tell them what a passage means.

6.      The readers of Hebrews are still spiritual infants after being a Christian for a long period, of time. They had to be, fed milk and not solid food all over again.

7.      Spiritual growth is the same as physical growth, if we fail to nourish ourselves regularly on God’s word, we will become spiritually mal-nourished and experience stunted growth.

B.       Being Unable to Teach Others, vs. 12

1.      Another mark of their immaturity is that they could not teach other the basic principles from the Word of God, but instead, still needed to be taught to them.

2.      One of the main characteristics of an infant is that they are “dependent”. They have to depend on others to meet all their needs. The writer says you should have passed this dependency stage and should be meeting other’s needs.

3.      Listen to what Paul told Timothy:

II Tim 2:1-2 “You therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.  The things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.”

4.      Teaching is not just the duty of a select few, but of every Christian. This is the key to discipleship.

5.      Look closely at what the Great Commission says, of which we interpret to apply to all Christians:

Mat 28:19-20 "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age."