Let God Do the Heavy Lifting

Summary

Summary prepared by Acts 2:38 Life from the transcript below — the preacher’s words follow in full.

Preaching a Sunday-morning service at First Jesus Name Church of Benndale, Jacob Phillips takes his text from Matthew 11:28-30 — Christ's invitation to the labouring and heavy laden, the easy yoke and the light burden — and preaches the simple thought his title states: let God do the heavy lifting. He first walks the whole chapter as context. John's disciples come with their question; Jesus answers by pointing to what He does, the way God in the Old Testament identified Himself by His works. Jesus rebukes Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum for miracles without repentance, thanks the Father for hiding these things from the prudent and revealing them to babes — and then, to the very people under rebuke, issues the invitation. The call is to everyone carrying weight they cannot manage: the sinner, the dysfunctional marriage, the self-righteous church member, and the saint bitter over something twenty-five years old. Nobody, Phillips insists, is strong, rich, connected, or holy enough to carry life alone; Paul died daily, and so must we.

The sermon's engine is the difference between handing a burden to God and trying to manage how God handles it. Believers keep hold of their hurt, he argues, because they do not want to lose control of it — forgiveness becomes a way of hiring God to punish the offender on our terms. Against that stands the contrast of Mary and Martha in the Lazarus story. Martha meets Jesus face to face and confronts Him with the plan He failed to follow; Mary falls at His feet with the same words — Lord, if thou hadst been here — and it is Mary's approach that moves Jesus to weep. One way tells God how to do His job; the other trusts Him as God, whatever He does. David receives the same treatment: the king who carried the weight of adultery and murder testifies in Psalm 40 that he could not lift himself, but God brought him up out of the horrible pit and the miry clay and set his feet on a rock. And what is too heavy for us is not heavy for God — Isaiah 59:1 says His hand is not shortened and His ear is not heavy.

The close identifies the promised rest. From Isaiah 28, rest comes with stammering lips and another tongue: a person repents, is baptized in Jesus' name, and is filled with the Holy Ghost, and the Spirit Himself begins to pray through the believer who does not know how to pray. The yoke, Phillips notes, is built for two pulling together — Christ takes the believer's burden to the cross and gives His light burden, helping carry it besides. Luke's Samaritan, lifting the broken man the religious passed by, says the same thing in a story. Phillips closes with the hymn "Love Lifted Me" and an altar invitation to surrender every carried weight: let God be God, and let the saint simply be His saint.

Scripture index: Matthew 11:28-30; Luke 10; John 11:32; Psalm 40:1-3; Isaiah 59:1; Isaiah 28.