Matt 11:28 ...AT HIS WORD

" Come to me, all ye who are heavy-laden..."
Matt 11:28

MEN'S BREAKFAST
August 2007

I’ve said before that I love mornings like this. I love a morning where men encourage men, where men give courage to each other. I love the encouragement and challenges that James regularly gives us. And I’ve loved the opportunity to be able to occasionally do the same.

Let me share a little secret. It’s hugely daunting when you prepare something like this… and it just doesn’t come together. The Lord has led me down some brilliant paths that actually never make it this far – He teaches me so much in these preparations. But sometimes everything in the world throws itself in the way, any distraction that can knock me off my train of thought has come my way.

Generally I write backwards – decide what I’d really like to walk away with, then reverse-build around the conclusion. It didn’t happen this time. I thought that in a fortnight in which a certain Bishop Spong was swanning around the country, I thought it would be too easy.

Wrong.

It’s been a very hard fortnight, and every single time that I’ve tried to collate some thoughts for this Breakfast, I’ve been knocked off track. Whether by strangely interrupting kids or by just getting distracted by nearly anything in the house, I’ve been knocked off track. So I’m going to share a bit of my fortnight with you.

We’ve just opened up a shop in Dapto; I’m driving straight back there after this. Normally if we hire a new person it takes about three months – I’ve had three weeks to get two people ready to run it. One of them is the most corrosive gentlemen I’ve ever encountered. He’s profoundly profane, arrogant and selfish. He has an acid tongue – and just to endear him even more to me, he’s quite loudly atheist. Nevertheless, both as his trainer and a fellow human, I have tried to deal well with him. He was interested to know about my mother’s website, picked up and played with a church bulletin… but something happened through the week that really burned me.

I honestly have no idea what happened. This man said something, and it was pretty funny. I laughed – and he turned to me with a sneer.
“Your mother might be a Christian, but you’re not – not really.” I stared at him for a second and said “what?”
“There’s no way that a Christian would laugh at that. You’re not one of them. Not really.” I was about to reply, and he just put up a hand. “Don’t – don’t say anything.” And with a quiet little snicker he walked off.

Pretty hard to find me lost for words – not this time. I was speechless. I dropped it for a time, basically because we needed to get back into training. But this was like a really violent carpet-burn. It stung some when this flew out of his mouth, but that night it kept coming back and back and back to me. Somehow or other in this man’s eyes I’ve denied my Lord. By the time I got to bed I began to understand some of the shame that Peter felt. I felt like I was waiting for a cock to crow.

I’ve said it before – Satan fights dirty. I don’t think that I’ve felt that much pain as a Christian. As an ambassador of the Lord Jesus I’d failed. As someone who could possibly influence this man positively for the Kingdom of God, I’d utterly got it wrong – who knows? Possibly to the cost of this man’s soul.

But the worst of it was this – I felt too ashamed to bring it to God in prayer in any form at all. And it continued to burn. It worked like a cheese-grater on my soul.

Guys, it’s the worst thing I could have done. By not taking this to God,
by carrying around this awful mess in my heart I’ve let it grow and grow. Like John Bunyan’s character Christian in Pilgrim’s Progress, the burden on my back just got bigger and bigger. I was too ashamed to pick up my Bible, and so I missed the words of Jesus that Matthew recorded:

“Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29“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. 30“For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”
Matt 11:28-30

I was too ashamed to phone a friend or get word to my Blood Brother and ask them to pray over me. It eventually took Spurgeon’s pages to make me wake up to myself and go to God’s Word, and read it once more as God’s Word and to take God at His Word.

Because that is what the Bible is. The Lord is a God of words, and he is a God of His Word. Reg touched a little on this on Sunday morning (and I did note the subtle digs about knowing my Bible better – reading, marking, learning, inwardly digesting – you wouldn’t believe how close to the bone you can get!).
In Old Testament times and as the Gospel spread beyond Palestine, God’s people were surrounded by fake gods represented by the most impressive statuary, sculpture and architecture that man could devise. In ludicrous contrast, God has no interest in being represented by a statue – His word and His Name is sufficient. God is a God of words, and because of this, I must rely on my Bible. Not just to read, but to trust that what I read is His Own words. And when I read about grace, about God’s loving kindness, about forgiveness, I must put my unquestioning trust in it.

I think that is what makes me so mad at people like Bishop John Shelby Spong. Once upon a time I would have very little concern about a man like Spong. What he preaches will ultimately count for very little, and it will not stand any test of time. Next year, people will remember very little about James Cameron’s documentary about the bones of Jesus. This year, very few people talk about Dan Brown’s The da Vinci Code. I doubt that the teachings of Bishop Spong will carry any weight in the future, but if his preaching puts the seed of doubt into one Christian… If one Christian has a fortnight like I’ve had and feels he can’t go to his Bible and the Lord on account of this man… James was right to pray for Bishop Spong the other day.
But enough about this man. Back to truth. Before James comes up and prays for us this morning, I want to share with you what I found in Spurgeon’s Morning And Evening devotional. He focuses on Mark’s story of Jesus healing a leper – and that’s on your note for the fortnight.


In reading the narrative in which our morning’s text occurs, it is worthy of devout notice that Jesus touched the leper. This unclean person had broken through the regulations of the ceremonial law and pressed into the house, but Jesus so far from chiding him broke through the law himself in order to meet him. He made an interchange with the leper, for while he cleansed him, he contracted by that touch a Levitical defilement. Even so Jesus Christ was made sin for us, although in himself he knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. O that poor sinners would go to Jesus, believing in the power of his blessed substitutionary work, and they would soon learn the power of his gracious touch. That hand which multiplied the loaves, which saved sinking Peter, which upholds afflicted saints, which crowns believers, that same hand will touch every seeking sinner, and in a moment make him clean. The love of Jesus is the source of salvation. He loves, he looks, he touches us, we live.