Author: pshappard

“The Real Burden of the Lost Man”

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

September 16, 1956

Matthew 11:28-30. Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.  For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

Now, I had this text for this morning and for tonight. And this morning, I tried to show what our human burden is not. And I said then that our human burden is not the one that the scientists and the philosophers and the sociologists imagine it to be. The burden man carries is not a political burden. It’s a burden, but it’s not the burden. It is not toil that can become a burden, but it’s not the burden. It is not illness. That is a burden, but not the burden. It’s not intolerance, that can be a burden, but it’s not the burden. And then I showed that, in essence, the burden man carries is a spiritual burden. And because it is a spiritual burden, there is no possibility of its being relieved by social methods nor political methods nor scientific methods.

Now, I said that tonight I would break this down and try to show what the human burden is in particular. What is that galling, corrosive burden that eats, that abrasive burden that wears away, that destroying burden that is carried by the human race?

Well, it is first of all the burden of alienation. In Ephesians 2, we learn that mankind, all of us together, every human being except those who have heard the call and come, that we are alienated from the life of God; that we are without hope and without God in the world; that we’re under the wrath of God controlled by the evil spirits of the world and are by nature, the children of wrath, even as others. And there is the burden of alienation.

Now, the human heart knows more than the learned man would do know. It knows that there is a Friend; that there is a Friend spelled with a capital letter or capital letters. There is a Friend. And he knows also that he has fallen out with that Friend. And he knows that the Friend is right and he is wrong. He knows it and in spite of all his brave talk, it’s a secret burden that he carries. And he carries it through time he’s old enough to know right and wrong until the time he lies down to die. It is the burden of alienation from God. It is the burden that the bough carries when it has been wrenched loose from the tree and broken off from its native trunk. It is the burden the star carries when it whirls away from its central sun and is lost in the far darkness, as Jude tells us.

And this is the burden. This is the burden. It is one burden and all of the burdens of which I shall speak tonight on one burden. It is the burden of alienation and it is the burden of sin, Romans 7:14-18. Maybe we’d better read that because it is very important. It says, for we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin. For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I. If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that it is good. Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. 

And that is said by some people to be the normal place for a Christian to live, and I don’t believe it for a minute. That is the burden of sin. And when our Lord says, come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest, He means that I will give you rest from this very abomination that we have had described in Romans 7. Sin came as a serpent to the Garden of Eden, a heinous, hated, and offensive thing. And man has never quite learned to live with the serpent.

Not even the boy in the far country sleeping among the hogs ever quite got used to the smell of the swine. He said, I’ll arise and go unto my father and I will say: father, I have sinned. And he carried with him there the burden of sin and had it with him even when he was sold out to the far country. He still carried with him the burden of sin. And man has never quite learned to live with a serpent. His many religions prove that.

The fact that all over the world there are religions, and they all prove that there is an inner revulsion, an inner repulsion and you can’t cure it by educating the man and you can’t take the burden of sin off by any kind of culture. He can study art in all of the great galleries of the world. He can listen to the opera until he can hum all the arias. He can gain wealth and live in the Gold Coast and now have servants. But still, it cannot be taken away from him because it’s the inner burden that boils up from within. Its silt lies like a great load upon his spirit.

And thirdly, it is the burden of fear. I John 4:18 says simply in three words, fear hath torment. Fear hath torment. And it is fear that is riding the heart of the world to death like some vicious man who takes a beast and rides it and lashes it and rolls it and sinks the spurs into it. And when it is ready to drop and it’s tongue is hanging out and besides bulging, still sinks in the spurs and lays on the whip and rides it till it falls exhausted and can’t get up. So, fear is riding the human race.

Fear is riding it not only in the jungle, not only in the valley where Ed Maxey is tonight, but in Chicago and out on the Gold Coast and up toward Evanston and down in Beverly Hills. Fear is riding the human race like a man rides a beast. And the human race is staggering and its nostrils are distended and its tongue is swollen and its eyes are bulging out. And fear lies upon the heart of the world as a great burden. Fear of the unknown, fear of the known, yes, fear of war, yes. The speech will cause the stock market to go tumbling down the stairs. Sickness and fear of bereavement, all these are fears, but they’re not the fear.

The fear is fear of the unknown. Fear that constitutes the burden of the world. Fear that’s where we must go and don’t know how we’re going to make it when we get there. It is the fear of the unknown that brings the man and woman to the nervous collapse.

And then fear, an end the burden of pride also. It’s one burden, but these are the ingredients of the burden. And the text tells us that it is the burden of pride. For the text tells us to come unto me ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest and how? I am meek and lowly in heart and you shall find rest unto your soul. The burden of pride is the burden that the Lord would deliver us from.

Now, what is pride after all? Pride is misplaced honor; that is all. We are created to honor Almighty God and we turn that honor around upon ourselves. We are created to place our crowns at His holy feet but we put them on our own empty heads in place of that. And that burden of the misplaced honor is a burden that rides this all the time. Because of the deep-seated accusation that lies unknown in our hearts. The psychologists tell us of the subconscious. I believe that it is at the subconscious level that all this burden lies. It’s not conscious and it has to be called to our attention before we even know about it, but it lies there.

The great burden of human pride and human pride’s burden is twofold. I say it’s the deep-seated accusation that our conscience brings against us for robbing God of the crown that belongs on His own thrice Holy Head. But it is also the anxiety and distress less we who are kings, less we, you, are the crowned kings of our own lives, shall lose some of the glory. We shall lose face or shall be less than we want ourselves to be, until this burden rides us and rides us. We’re ready to flare up in a moment if a word is spoken against us.

If a word uncomplimentary to our children is spoken in our hearing, men are ready to flash up and talk back. If a singer, someone says you are flat, instantly, the heart flies up and the face flushes and they’re ready to defend it. If the organist, the pianist, the board member or the prayer band leader or the teacher or the pastor or the associate pastor or the assistant, unless the grace of God delivers us from it all. We shall put ourselves on the throne where only God belongs and wear a crown on our head that belongs on the head of God, and then defended it with anxiety and bitterness and tears and resentfulness. Come unto me all you that labor and are heavy laden and I will deliver you from that burden of pride.

And then there’s the burden of self; Roman 7:24. He cries out, O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death, this burden? And that means the wrong one is on the throne. That’s what self means. It means the wrong one is on the throne. Pride means the crown is on the wrong head. And self means that the wrong one is on the throne.

Now, in each heart there is a throne. And on that throne there sits God or the human ego, one or the other. In your heart, there is a throne, a golden throne, a throne that God gave you when He said, let us make man in our image and let him have dominion. There is the throne. And on that throne there sits God or there sits your human ego, one or the other; there is no third. It is either God or your ego, yourself, sitting on that throne, and the war and the tumult and the mutiny and the uneasiness and the troubles and the tumults of the world, all come because the usurper sits upon the throne.

You crawled up onto the throne that belongs to Jesus Christ, the Crucified One. And you sit on that throne. You say, but I have been born again. I don’t doubt it. But if you’re born again and you still sit on your throne, you’re a carnal and unsanctified Christian and the curse and the woe of your life is that you insist upon crawling up and sitting on a throne where Jesus Christ belongs. And though He’s so tender that He could weep over Jerusalem; though He’s so gentle that He could take babies in His arms; though He is so kind that He could forgive the cringing harlot at His feet. Still, our Savior is so bold and so strong, that He will not sit on a throne with anybody else. It’s either His throne or it’s yours, one or the other.

And some of you wonder why you can never get victory in your lives. You’ll wonder why you can never get delivered from yourself. You take a course from Moodys, and then you get a book in New York. And then you write to London for one. And then you follow an evangelist from one town to another and then you turn the radio on. And you rush about trying to find deliverance, and seeking to find the deliverance from the burden of self that rides you and wears you and eats at you and curses you.

I tell you, you’ll never, never find peace and there isn’t a book ever written that will give it to you. And there isn’t a preacher that ever existed that will give it to you. You’re a wrong man on a right throne when you sit on a throne that belongs to Jesus Christ alone. He’s earned it by every right and virtue in high heaven above and deep hell below. He’s earned the right to sit on the throne of your heart and boss your life and you won’t let him do it. And that’s what’s the matter with you. And wherever I go, I find two classes of people. Thank God I find the one. I find the heart-hungry people. They may be Calvinists. They may be Arminians. They may be Methodists. They may be what have you, but they’ve broken through all that to a hunger after God.

One man told me up at the lakes in Canada last week, called me into his room and sat and said, Mr. Tozer, I was brought up among the Plymouth Brethren and I knew the Truth from the time I can remember. But he said in recent times, and he told me what it was, what kind of ministries they were that led him to this conclusion. He said, I want God so bad that I have nothing to live for unless God will come into my life and fill me and be filled with God.

You don’t have to worry about a man like that. The man you have to worry about is the fellow that comes in self-assured, crosses his hands and sits through the sermon without a conscious twinge of longing after God. And he may be on your board and he may be high in official circles and he may have degrees, but he lacks one degree. He lacks the degree of longing after God. He sits on his own heart’s throne and is proud of his orthodoxy and proud of his theology and proud of the fact that he’s a spiritual man. But he’s a selfish man and he’s an unsanctified man and he carries the burden of self and it wears him out and wears him down and eats at him like acid, deep, deep within him.

And then there’s the burden of mortality. Hebrews 2:15, who all our lifetimes. How does it word it? It’s Hebrews 2:15. And it’s a particular verse it’s always difficult for me to remember verbatim. I delivered them who through fear of death, for all their lifetimes, subject to bondage. There’s the bondage of mortality, the bondage of mortality. God has created us for life, and death is an enemy. God has created us for life, and death has invaded our territory and taken over. And we have been invaded and we are an occupied country, the human race is, occupied by the foe.

And He has set eternity in our hearts, and time is dissolving our bodies away. Here we are living on two plains at once, the eternal and the temporal; the spiritual and the material. Here we are living on two plains at once, akin to the angels in our spirit and akin to the beasts in our bodies. And in the part of us that came from God, God has placed eternity and taken and thrown away all the clocks and all the whistles and placed eternity there. Time is wearing our bodies down and dissolving them and the burden of mortality that we carry it upon our hearts. We think it’s only older people that carry upon them the burden of mortality.

On the my sons, Wendell, when he was a little lad, maybe he was 12. He was to write an essay for school. And he wrote it and showed it to me. And I had never dreamed this could be true of a boy of that age. And of course, it was only a sample of how youngsters think. But it was a self-revelation, a disclosure, a confession of fear. Fear, less Daddy died, fear less Mama die, fear lest his brothers should die, fear the future, fear of death. And a 12-year-old normal boy, for he is that. He’s 30 now, but still a normal man. But the burden of mortality rested upon the heart of a 12-year-old boy. And that burden of mortality lies upon the human race and rests there, but not rest, no, not rest; eats, wears, destroys.

And now, my brethren, I want you to turn out all the lights of the world. And I want you to plunge all the world in darkness so you can focus your attention. And then I want you to spotlight and let just one little light flash down into a valley, the dark valley of sorrow. And there you will see a frustrated, frightened, hurting, scurrying, busy, weary, little man struggling on between the rocks and the crust, the thorny ways, bowed under a weight that is destroying him, falling under the load. Getting up again, struggling on, throwing his shoulders back and bowing them again. Always, always the load, always the burden. Always the galling yoke, always, always. And I want that spotlight to rest on that little man as he struggles on through the valley we call this world in mortality, struggling on.

And look closely now, look closely for all the lights of the world are out, and we’re looking only at the one little man there. And do you recognize that man? Why, you say he looks like me. He’s you. That’s you struggling there. That’s you there, out of Christ. That’s you, sinner man. That’s you staggering under the load, the burden. It’s too great for you, the burden of nature, the burden of mortality, the burden of fear, the burden of alienation, the burden of sin and of pride and of self, cursing you and writing you and wearing you. That’s you there in the dark valley of sorrow.

And now I want you to shift the spotlight while all the lights of the world are out. And I want you to turn it on another man. This other man, a great tall man on a winding hillside also bowed under a weight that was destroying Him. Look closely now and see who that was. That other Man was there on the hill because you’re there in the valley. That other Man carried the load that destroyed Him because you’re in the valley carrying a load that destroys you. And look closely now. Who is that man on the hill, that Man on the winding rocky way carrying a load that was destroying Him and did within six hours, crushed and squeezed the life out of His body? And that Man who was He? That man was Jesus. That man was Jesus because you were in the valley struggling there, scurrying, falling, stumbling, with the load on your heart. He was on the Hill stumbling, falling, being crushed under a load on His back.

And up in the darkness of that hill with all the spotlights off and all the stars dim amd the sun refusing to shine. He died there for the man on valley. He died there, the Just for the unjust that He might say, come unto Me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me for I am meek and lowly in heart and ye shall find rest unto your souls. Come unto Me and what? Come unto Me and off goes the crushing burden of alienation and you know you belong to God.

Am I talking to some people tonight that are the children of God and know it? Am I talking to some people tonight that know you’re children of the Father, that you belong to God? Are you here tonight? Say, amen. Am I talking to people that the burden of alienation is gone. Do you know that the Friend isn’t angry anymore. And you know that the fallout you had with Him by sin is all over now. And you can say to God, I’m reconciled, His pardoning voice I hear. He owns me for His child I need no longer fear. With confidence I now draw nigh and Abba Father, Abba Father cry, the burden of alienation is gone. You can look up to the stars above and know nobody’s angry up there. You can lay your head on your pillow at night and know that nobody in the darkness is angry. And you could get up in the morning and know that the God that brought up the sun isn’t angry with you anymore. Nobody’s mad at you in the heavenly home up yonder. The blood of the lamb has taken away the alienation. And you’re no longer an alien and a pilgrim and a stranger, but you are now a member of the household of God. And you can say, Abba Father, Abba Father.

You know what Abba Father means? It’s just, Abba is in Arabic, and I think maybe a Hebrew, but at least it’s a Middle East word for father, Papa. It’s the word they tell us you can say before you get your teeth. And I take it it’s a word you can say after you lose them too, brother. Thank God. It’s a word you can say because it doesn’t take any teeth and it doesn’t take very much to say, Abba Father.

It’s all right now to walk out under the stars at night and know that there may be enemies lurking in the bushes, but there’s no enemy beyond the stars. Come unto me and the burden of alienation will fall away. Come unto me and off rolls the burden of sin. God hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all. And God doesn’t lay on the same burden on two men. And the burden He laid on Jesus was the burden you were bearing, the burden of your sin. And because He bore it, you don’t have to anymore. And because He climbed a steep hill amid the rocks and thorns to die in the darkness, you can now shake your shoulders and the burden will roll off by faith and the burden of sin will go.

Come unto me and off comes the terror and the nightmare. He who once died for us now lives for us. That’s simple Christianity. What more could it be? That’s Christianity. Christianity, He who once died for me, now lives for me. And the nightmare is gone. And there’s no fear anymore and the terror. And off rolls the burden of pride; to God goes the glory. To God goes the glory, not I but Christ.

And you know, I think I’d better stop and talk a little more about that here. Because that’s something that doesn’t go off with first contact. That’s something the new birth doesn’t take always. That’s something that it may take a second grace, a second touch, a second encounter with God Almighty to deliver you from. But it’s the great curse my brethren. It’s the curse of self. Not I but Christ, not Christ but I, we say. We sing our songs about Him. And in our testimonies, it’s all about Jesus. But in our private lives, it’s all about I and me and mine. And I told them up yonder last week in Canada that the unknown anonymous writer of the Theologia Germanica had said, all that burns in hell is I and me and mine.

If you want to know the fuel that keeps that gloomy furnace burning, I’ll tell you what it is. It’s I and me and mine. It’s the stove wood, it’s the kindling wood, it’s the fuel of hell. I and me and mine. And it burns and burns my brethren, and until you’re free from I and me and mine, until you get to a place where you’ve got no ambitions anymore, no ambitions. I think I only have one. I think, thank God, I’ve only got one. I want to be a better man and glorify God more. And I think that’s an ambition that’s legitimate and right.

But do I want to be known no more? Do I want to be celebrated no more? I thank God I think it’s over. You know, it’s painful to give up self. It’s painful. You’ve got to attend your own funeral and see yourself die. And it’s not easy. It’s easy if you do it technically. Somebody said to Moody, Mr. Moody, don’t you know that judicially the old man is dead? Moody said judicially he is, but actually he ain’t. And there’s a problem with the world, my brother. Judicially, that fundamentalism is rotten with judicial Christianity. Judicially, we’re crucified with Christ. Judicially, we’ve risen again, Judiciously, the old man was crucified. Judicially, we’re seated with Christ at the right hand of God. Judicially, all that’s true, but we carry around the cancer in our soul called self.

And then defend ourselves. I said a while ago that there were two kinds of people I meet wherever I go. And the one man I said was the man who said, if God doesn’t meet me, I don’t want to live. And the other man who will take you aside and talk to you for an hour defending his carnality. He said, what did you mean in that book when you said, thus and thus and thus? Defending his carnality. If the children of God were as concerned with being holy as they are concerned to prove you can’t be holy, we’d have some saints instead of children in the kingdom of God.

But because we defend our sins and our self and our carnality, and will not be washed and cleansed and will not ask and trust and believe that the fire of God can make us clean, we’ll always find a text to hide behind somewhere. If nothing else, it will be a marginal rendering. But we’ll always find a text to hide behind. Paul said, they use the grace of God as a cloak to hide their sins. And we find it in this day in which we live my brethren, but not I but Christ.

The day you cease to have any worldly ambitions except to glorify God and enjoy Him forever will be the day the burden will roll from your heart. Come unto Me and what? Come unto me and we lay down the burden of self and off goes the weight of mortality. Eternal life is the word. In Christ is the word.

Oh, that noble, that golden, that beautiful phrase in the 15th of Corinthians, but now is Christ risen from the dead and has become the first fruits of them that slept, said the old, sanctified logician. If the dead rise not, then Christ is not risen. And if Christ is not risen, you have believed in vain. And if you believed in vain, my gospel has been a lie. And if my gospel is a lie, I’ve convicted myself of being a sinner before my God. And if the dead rise not, and if not Christ is risen, you’re still in your sin. But now is Christ risen from the dead and become the first fruits of them that slept. Do you remember in the Messiah where they read that verse out as though it would fill the world with the glory of it, but now is Christ risen from the dead.

My brethren, whether I live 20 more years, and I may in spite of everything. And whether I die tonight at midnight, I want to leave this testimony with you. I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, who was crucified and buried, and rose the third day according to the Scriptures. And I believe the burden of mortality has gone. The old carcass can wear away, and the winds of heaven can blow the shingles off the roof, and the birds can roost on the eaves, but that which is immortal within us which can’t die is safe in the arms of Jesus, safe on His gentle breast.

And off goes the burden of fear of death and mortality. Off goes the abrasive, corrosive, eating, wearing, cursing, biting sense that I am made for eternity and must die like a man. Jesus said, ye are gods but you must die like men. Jesus said that, I didn’t. Ye are gods, and he quoted the Old Testament. And He said, if God called His people gods, that is, you’re sons of God, you’re sons of God. And being sons of God, how can you die like men.

And brethren, we lay down and sleep like men. Now I don’t think it’s a bad idea. I think old mother nature, I think God has worked it out all right. You get tired after a while. You get weary of it all. You get weary. You’ve seen everything or else your your imagination has pictured and you’ve heard everything. I’ve heard everything. And I have been everywhere I want to go. I get invited everywhere. I don’t want to go. I’ve seen everything. I’ve seen a city. I don’t want to see cities. I’ve seen a river I don’t want to see a river. I’ve seen mountains. I don’t want to see one mountain. I’ve heard people talk other languages. I have no desire to visit. They want me to go to Europe. They want me to go to Asia. But I don’t want to go anyplace unless God sends me. All you have to do is use your little imagination and you’ve seen the world. People spend $5,000 going around the world. A man with a good imagination can sit sit home and know everything he sees and know everything and describe it for him. But, oh, brethren, He lives, He lives and we have eternal life and the burden of the fear of mortality is gone. Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden.

A good many years ago now a 17-year-old boy sat in a Methodist Church on Market Street in the city of Akron, Ohio. And here stood up a man, a Methodist preacher, of course. He took for his text, come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me for I am meek and lowly in heart and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. And the Methodist preacher said, some people may wonder why He said, take my yoke upon you. And they may withdraw from the yoke and say I don’t want a yoke. And said the preacher, but my friends you already bear one. The difference is the one you now bear is killing you. And the one He offers you is a light and easy yoke. Here I was, a 17-year-old boy and I heard that message by a Methodist preacher. I wasn’t converted that night. But a few days later I heard another man, not such a good preacher on the street and that clenched it and I went home, and in light of this truth, come unto me and in the light of the one that tells us, God have mercy on me a sinner, I found the Savior. The way has been a little rugged and it’s been a little crooked. And all my fault where it’s been crooked and all His glory where it’s been straight. But by the grace of God, I wear the yoke no more. Only the light, light yoke of His love.

And I invite you tonight. He invites you. I invite you. Come unto Him. Come unto Him all ye that labor and are heavy laden. You don’t have to carry a burden out of this room. You don’t have to carry a yoke out of this room except the gentle light yoke, with you on one end and Jesus on the other. And as the song says, He always takes the heavy end and gives the light to me. The Lord doesn’t deal in single collars. He only deals in doubles. The Lord never lays a light single yoke on any man’s neck. He lays a double yoke and He takes the other end.

So, if you are sick, now if you’re not, if you still love yourself, I worked up a sweat for nothing. If you still love yourself and you still won’t call sin sin, and you’re still satisfied with your car and your television and your radio and your good clothes and your job and your future, I haven’t said a word to you. You’ve been asleep. If you’re still satisfied, I might as well have stayed home. But if the Holy Ghost has heard our prayers, and there’s somebody whose heart He’s uncovered, and you’re sick of the burden and sick of the weariness and sick of it all, then I invite you to come unto Him and He will give you a rest.

Let us stand please. Thou in our midst, unseen, but present. We cannot touch Thee with our fingers, but we can touch Thee with our hearts. We cannot see Thee with our physical eyes, but the eyes of our faith look upon Thee. O Christ Jesus, Thou knowest. Thou knowest how we struggle, how the world is weary and tired and sick; running to doctors and brain specialists and nerve specialists and psychiatrists, and buying tranquilizing drugs and seeking to get rid of a load. Still, the load is there, wearing and eating and killing? O Lord Jesus, we would think that Methodist preacher back there never knew that a boy present who heard the sermon went home to be converted. He never knew it. So maybe we will not know tonight. But O Christ hast Thou somewhere, here, one or two or three or four, who will quietly slip out under the hush of Thy presence. And before the lights are out tonight and before retiring, will settle it forever and no more carry the load of alienation, the load of sin, the load of fear, the load of mortality, but roll it over on the back of Him who carried it up to the hill. And go free and begin to praise and thank and testify and tell and witness to everyone who will listen, how good the Savior is and how wonderful Jesus is. Bless these friends here tonight. We pray that we may not follow the world. We pray we may hate it and turn from it. We may pray, we may separate from it with violence if we need to. It may bring the fury of the world down on us and may bring the scorn of the religious world down on us. We don’t care. Only we want no more to carry the load. We want to go free in Christ Jesus the Lord and bear the sweet light yoke of Thy love. Bless us graciously while we wait. Amen

“The Real Human Burden”

Pastor and author A.W. Tozer

September 16, 1956

In the book of Matthew, the eleventh chapter, beginning with verse 25. At that time, Jesus answered and said, I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent and hath revealed them unto babes. Even so Father, for so it seemed good in Thy sight. All things are delivered unto Me of my Father and no man knoweth the Son but the Father. Neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him. Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn of me. For I am meek and lowly in heart. And ye shall find rest unto your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.

Now, those three verses beginning, come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, will be the text for this morning’s message and for tonight’s. The sermons will be complete in themselves, but they will both be on this text. So, I want you to hear, and we’ll hear together today and tonight, the Savior, calling men to Himself. If you only hear a sermon, then you’ve wasted your time. If you only hear a man’s voice, then you have fallen short of the possibilities here. And let us together hear the Savior calling men to Himself. Calling them from a burden that is too great for them to bear and calling them to rest. Calling them from a galling and exhausting yoke to a light, golden freedom and calling them to the ease-ful yoke and the burden that is light.

Now to hear our Lord profitably it is necessary to know what is the lost man’s burden? And of course, what it is not. It is necessary for us to know what is the human yoke that we bear. This morning, I’m going to talk chiefly about the burden, the human burden and what it is thought to be by many, but what it actually is not. And then I’ll talk a little about the verses themselves to close and then we’ll sing, his yoke is easy and His burden is light.

We all know that we are under a load. The human race is under a load, that it’s bearing a burden, a galling corrosive, wearing burden. But there is no unanimity of agreement about what the burden is. And the scientists and the social philosophers have, I think, quite agreed that there are five burdens which man bears from which if he could be delivered, he would be free. They are poverty, war, sickness, toil and intolerance. And if we could get free from these; if by some shift in the social scheme, if by the introduction of something. Communism, of course claims that they will free us from these and therefore will have a social order and the burden will be gone.

That is why so many people have taken up with new schemes, because they feel a load on their hearts and their backs are sore from generations of carrying it and they want to be free from their burden. Only they don’t know what their burdens are. Particularly, they do not know what the burden is. For our Lord, while He didn’t name it, He talked about it here. Come unto me all ye that labor, labor and are heavy-laden. That was the laboring under a yoke or the bearing of a burden on the back that was too heavy and the yoke that was too hard.

Now let’s look at what the philosophers say. First, there is poverty. And they say that human poverty is a burden. And so, plenty will relieve that burden. And if we could get free from physical needs and everybody had enough, we could introduce a social order or economic order and social order which would guarantee that everyone should have at least enough of all the world’s goods, we would then be free from the greatest burden in all the world. Of course, as you know, communism is built upon this. It is built upon the idea that economic determinism decides all man’s acts. That is, it determines economy, the economy, and the need for money and food and goods. It determines all of man’s acts. It brings them all wars, all divisions, all troubles, all burdens, all heartaches to the world. And if we could only free man from this burden, he would be free.

Now, let me say to you, my friends, that I grieve for those who suffer wants. And all my life long I think I have grieved for those who don’t have enough. For the little child that knows not where his breakfast is coming from or the little blue-eyed girl that must go to bed without sufficient to eat. And I agree when I hear them say that there are millions in Asiatic countries that never know from one year to another, perhaps from birth to death what it is to have a real, full stomach, and to have enough. And I could wish and God knows that I could wish that it were possible that it could be that the wealth that is ours, so richly here in our land, could be distributed all around the world so everybody would have enough and nobody would have too much. I know of no scheme, Democratic, Republican, socialistic, communistic, that could ever do this. Some of them claim they can, but they’re lying in their own teeth and they know it can’t be done while the hearts of men carry this other burden.

For I have noticed this that while poverty is a burden, increase of goods never makes people happy. If you have ever taken a little look around, you will know that increase of goods only shifts the burden to the other shoulder. And it’s a common testimony for older men and women to say after they have risen to all the ranks and now are making their 20-30-40-$50,000 a year; and after they own their estates and can afford to go to Florida for the winter and Canada in the summer and all the rest, they sit and in their weak moment when they are not trying to hide, they say to their friends, we have everything now. But Mum and I were happiest when we lived in two rooms and had to budget carefully our expenses.

You will find it often is the case that people are happy when they have least, and increase of goods never makes them happy, but only shifts the galling burden from one shoulder to another and creates desire for more, so that the man who has more wants more and when he gets that more he wants more. Like Lincoln told sarcastically of the man who said he was not covetous at all; it wasn’t true that he was a covetous man. He didn’t want anything. He only wanted the land adjoining his. And so that desire for more and still more, always wanting the land adjoining mine.

Wealth, I suppose, and the distribution of it, the proper distribution of it would cure certain physical ones, but it introduces a new set of anxieties and burdens still. If so, if there could come to the world an economic utopia, men would still carry their galling burden. They would get up with it in the morning and carry it around all day, even though they work to five-hour day and had plenty. They would still carry around their galling burden and would lie down with it at night. And when that summons came to take them to that dark, born from which no man returns, they would carry their burden down to the grave with them.

So, when our Lord said, come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest, He was not talking about the burden that poverty brings, though He promised in the Scripture that we read, that our Father would supply our needs. So, He doesn’t want us to be poverty-ridden, but He was not talking about it. He who spoke was a man who knew not where to lay His head. And the very Man who offered rest from toil and burden, was a man who knew not where His next meal would come from. And He said, foxes have holes and the birds of the air have their nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay His head.

Then the second burden the world tells us is the burden of war. And if we could have a war-less society, man’s burden would roll away down over the cliff into the gully below and break up on the rocks and man would walk free and upright and happy for the rest of the millenniums to come. Now, no one could have bore the insane business of war more than I. No man could possibly hate it more than I could hate it. And I grieve for every drop of young blood that ever was shed. And if they have their way over there in that little ugly ditch in Egypt, they will plunge us into a war that will cost us the blood of millions of young fellows and some of them who’ve never yet put a razor to their cheeks. I hate this vast, insane, devil-inspired, heinous thing we call war.

But I asked you to note, my listening friends, that a world at peace would not be a race at peace. A world at peace would never mean a race at peace, because man’s troubles churn up from inside of him and they do not come from war. Neither do they come from poverty. Man’s burden churns up from within him and it is not laid on from the outside.

And though we were to achieve a society where no soldier ever stood at attention and where no gun was ever oiled and where no war ship ever lay ominously at anchor and where no bomb was ever made, still, if we had such a society and it were ours today, still, many wives would pack and leave home tonight and go away from a home where hate dwells. And though we had a war-less society, still, many children would sob themselves to sleep tonight and cry their little eyes out because of the fight they’d heard in their home between father and mother at bedtime. And many men would walk the streets alone and grind their teeth and curse the day they were born and the day they’d met the woman they felt had brought nothing but grief to their lives.

And how many, even though there were no war around the whole world, still how many would seek oblivion in liquor and would try to hide their griefs and lift their burden by liquor. And how many would seek amusement and how many would seek the draught that the old Greeks called linky, the drink that made them forget in wild music? And how many of them would tonight blow their own brains out because they couldn’t stand the burden?

Though not a warship floated at anchor and though not a bomb was made in the world and not a man was threatening another man or a nation, another nation, still, a man would carry his burden because it’s not the burden of war. It’s a burden that comes from within him. It’s a burden he was born with and a burden he carries and a burden he’ll die with. Some say it’s the burden of sickness and when we have licked polio and cancer and heart disease, and when we have fixed it so all over the world there is not a sick man.

And when we have learned the human mind and psychiatrists have worked out a way to rest everybody mentally and we’ve had peace with our nerves, then the world will not have a burden anymore. Again, I say I rejoice in every anidyn of grief and pity every sufferer that lies today in any hospital in the world. But we must be realistic and face up to this that man’s heartbreaking burden is not a disease. Burden is a disease. It’s a burden, but it’s not the burden. And when Jesus said, come unto me all ye that labor, He didn’t mean all you that labor under sickness. He was healing sicknesses right and left. He recognized sickness as being a burden. He recognized it as being a hateful thing and a painful thing, but he’s not talking about it here.

Millions of healthy persons are completely miserable. You know that. Millions of people are going to psychiatrists or doctors, and they’re examined and sent to clinics and turned loose with a clean bill of health. And yet they go out in gloom and despondency completely miserable because sickness is a burden, but it is not the burden. It is a yoke but it is not the yoke. It is a labor but it’s not the labor. It’s not that crook that Christ would free us from only. I think he will free us. I think if we had more faith and trusted God more, we’d have less sickness in our own bodies. But that’s another matter for the morning. But this is not what our Lord was talking about.

And then there is toil. The labor philosophies have told us about the same thing no matter where they came from. And they have said that misery is in proportion to our toil. And I know excessive toil is a burden. And I have read with great grief the stories of the child laborers, child labor of early times. And I thank God that Charles Dickens wrote his terrible revolutionizing books that helped stir the English Parliament to abolish child labor. And I’m glad for every man whether he was a Christian or not who has helped lift the burden of excessive toil from the shoulders of mankind.

And I cannot get over Hood’s poem written about the woman who sewed to keep her family together. Work, stitch, stitch, stitch, I think it is in poverty, hunger and dirt, sewing at once with a double thread, shroud as well as a shirt. And I remember the artist, French artists Malay who went out into the wheat fields of France. And there he saw the peasants at work and saw the light had gone out of their eyes and the vivacity out of their faces. And saw them with great heavy hoes working from one end of the field to the other, waiting for the call when the bell would call them in at even and at night darkness to their meal. And out of it he painted his now famous piece called, The Man with a Hoe. And our own American, Markham, saw that and wrote about it. And said, bowed by the weight of centuries he leans upon his hoe and gazes on the ground, the emptiness of ages in his face and on his back, the burden of the world.

And I know how much toil lays upon us. But brethren, idleness would not lift man’s killing burden. Who are the miserable ones today? Who are they who are the most miserable of all? Who are going from divorce court to divorce court? Who are going from psychiatrists to psychiatrists? Who are they that are running from doctors to doctors–Idle wives and rich play boys. The idle wives and the boys that play, they’re the most miserable of all. They’re the ones that are fighting in the nightclubs and trying to drown their burdens in liquor. They are the ones. No, no.

Scofield has a note in his Bible, when God said, let men work the garden and keep it. He says it’s better for a man to struggle to make his living than to be idle in a world like ours, and he’s perfectly right. So, though they are to shorten our hours some three hours a day and a four- or five-hour week will be enough, it will never take the burden from the hearts of men. The man who works eight hours now wants to work five and the man who works five wants to work three. But when he’s working three, he has 21 hours to carry a load that work helps him to forget. For it’s the toil, it’s the burden of a sinful man and not toil. So, the labor philosophers have nothing to offer us except rest from excessive toil and I’m glad for them. And I’m glad for anything they’ve done. And I’m sorry that unions have in a measure have gotten into the hands of the wrong leaders in the last few decades. But still, if we didn’t have to work at all, we would be as miserable as a race as we are now.

And then there are those who say political misrule, that it’s political miserable and it’s the State. The anarchist and the socialists and the communists and various others have said, it’s the State that’s the trouble. And if we can get a right rule politically, we will be a free race. I want to ask you, where is there a freer land than America? Where is it freer than it is in this country? In spite of all they’ve tried to do with it in the last years. Still, it’s a free, free, wonderful land. Where is there more prosperity than there is in America? I doubt not, but that there are little nations in Europe that could live on what we throw out and is hauled away on Wednesday or Thursday or Tuesday morning by the garbage man? I doubt not. I doubt not that there are families that could subsist on what you throw away. Where is there a freer nation than America? Where is there a more prosperous land than America? Where is there a land in all the wide world where politics talks louder and does less, and we’re freer, freer to stand up and make a speech against the President? Free to stand up and condemn the Supreme Court. Free to call a mayor a name your conscience will allow you. We’re still free in this land in spite of all they tell us.

But in this free land of America, where, where, what land in the world has more crime than we have? What land has more divorces than we have per capita? Where is there more child desertion and need for more children homes? Where are there more insane asylums, and where are they building them bigger than they are here? Where is there more sheer boredom than here in the land of the free and the home of the brave? Where is there more excess in irrational drinking than in this land of America? Where are there more psychiatrists in this land? And where are there more sleeping pills taken than are taken here? And where is there more violence than here? And where is there more robbery and murder in general unhappiness than in this very land of the free, this very land of prosperity and political freedom?

Where the worst party, the worst party that could get in office, still rules with a hand so light. You can live 10 years and apart from your attacks and never feel them at all. And yet we’re one of the most miserable nations in the world. Indicating that when Jesus said, come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, He had not political rule at all in mind. Christ never entered politics. Christ never said a word. He even said pay your taxes to Caesar. That was about it. He knew that politics could never cure what was wrong with the human race.

Well, one more thing they tell us. They tell us the trouble with the world is intolerance and race-hatred and lack of integration. And that if the doctrine of brotherhood could come and every man would be every other man’s brother or for all that, that would cure everything. Now I don’t deny that race hate has caused much misery in the world.

I don’t want to deny that many a little Jewish boy has sculpt off to school in the morning looking down at the sidewalk because he knew when he reached the playground at school, they would yell, here comes that Jewish boy. I know that many in Italian boy has gone off sick at heart to the school knowing that when he got there, they’d yell, look at that Italian boy. I know that. I know that many a black man has lived his intelligent, but grief-stricken life filled with burdens from his birth to his death because the white-skinned people felt he was beneath them. I know it. And I would look forward to the hour when we all like brothers be and loving harmony could be enjoyed round the whole earth. Not integration as they’re trying to press upon us now but loving fellowship.

I came back from Canada Friday morning. And up there we had delegates from 14 or 15 countries of the world, Japanese, Chinese, Jamaicans, Mexicans, French, Swiss, German, Australian, Canadian, United States, and I think there were some others. And we worshipped God together. And nobody even thought to inquire except out of good-natured curiosity where anybody was from. And in the church of Christ, there’s no color line. But brethren, let me put you straight on something. If by some miracle of God or man this morning, all race-hatred and nationalistic hostilities could be destroyed around the world, and Jordan didn’t hate Israel and Israel didn’t hate Jordan and Egypt didn’t hate America and Russia didn’t hate England. If all of that could be swept away by a gracious wave of an angel’s hand, man would still carry to the grave his galling, withering, damning, soul-destroying burden.

For it is not human hostility that breaks the human heart. It is not man’s inhumanity to man on the playground or in the shop that breaks the human heart. It’s something worse than that. Man’s wearing, corrosive burden is within him. He’s born with it. Whether he’s born black or yellow or white, he’s born with it in his heart. Man’s corrosive burden is primarily a spiritual thing because man is primarily a spiritual being. You cannot cure spiritual troubles with economic panaceas. You cannot cure spiritual troubles with social panaceas. You cannot cure spiritual diseases with political panaceas. And that’s why Christianity stands boldly to denounce all that as being, peace, peace where there is no peace. Peace, peace when there is no peace.

And not all of these philosophers, good as they may be, and as much God blessing as we may wish upon them in the natural world, man’s problems don’t come from the natural world. They don’t come from how much he has to eat or where. They don’t come from war, ghastly and horrible as it is. They don’t come from sickness nor from toil or from intolerance nor from politics. They churn up from within him, for man is a spiritual being and the burden is a spiritual burden. Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. But if somebody wants to challenge me here and say, Mr. Tozer, He didn’t mean economics. He did mean freedom from political misrule. He did mean it.

And I say to you, how is it that for the first 200 years, when the church was the happiest and the freest and the most powerful, when her songs were the most radiant and her testimony the brightest, and her joy, the flowing up like a fountain, why was she always poor and stripped and ragged? Why did her people have to go to the caves and mountains? Why were they slain and thrown into prison? And why were they standing for 200 years under the black shadow of the Roman law? And why were there ten emperors who rose in the period of 200 years to try to stamp Christianity out with the sword and with fire? And yet all of these knew what it was to have their burden lifted. They had their burden lifted, and because their burden was lifted, they’d go out singing to die. It wasn’t a political misrule. It wasn’t economic pressure.

It wasn’t they didn’t have two chickens in the pot. It was a spiritual burden, a load from within, a sinful thing. And Jesus delivered them from it. And that’s why the architect could build a great colosseum, or at least, we would call it a coliseum, an arena. He built a great building there as a Roman. And then one day after years had gone by and Christianity had come. This celebrated architect, the Frank Lloyd Wright, maybe of his day, celebrated, and the emperor let him in and said, this is a monument to your genius. And I want you to come as my guest and we’re going to have something today you I’m sure you will enjoy. He said we’re going to kill Christians today. We’ve starved lions and tigers until they’re ravenous. And these Christian stubborn fellows following some criminal named Jesus. Stubborn fellow as they are. And we’re going to turn them loose and let the lions have them.

The architect sat beside the emperor. And finally, that movement came on the schedule, the program. When they raised the gates and let the lions through. And there stood the Christians were their faces raised to God, and was only a matter of moments until long, powerful claws and grinding teeth had taken the life from these Christians. And the architect leaped to his feet and turn to the emperor and said, Sire, I don’t belong here. I am a Christian too! Goodbye and leaped into the arena.

And they tried to stop him but there was no stopping him. Assume the greatest of the Roman architects was lying, torn and shredded. His burden had been lifted and he could die because he died without a load, without a yoke that was killing him.

Now, my brethren, they’re fooling us. They’re fooling us. Your newspapers are fooling you. Time Magazine is fooling you. Life magazine is fooling you. The politicians are fooling you. The big speech orators are fooling you. They’re all fooling you. They’re telling you that America is a great land for political, economic or some other reasons. America is great because she has a lot of Christians in her and she’s great for no other reason. And they haven’t got a cure for any disease, except, as I’ve said, these shallow, lesser diseases, such as overwork, and illness, and so on.

We can help cure up them some, but it’s like scrubbing the deck of a sinking vessel. It’s like giving a man dying of cancer a careful shave and haircut. It helps a little bit it doesn’t cure the cancer. And so, all the help we get from philosophers and sociologists and scientists and politicians, it’s good and we’re not going to be so ungrateful as to be thankless. We’re only going to say, thank you for the haircut. But you haven’t cured my disease. I know where there’s Somebody that can. Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me for I am meek and lowly in heart. Ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

There He tells us and I’ve hinted that a real burden, and I’m going to preach about it tonight and tell you how to get free from it. I trust you’ll come back. In the meantime, I just want you to hear Him say, come unto Me all ye that labor and are heavy laden. And whether you understand it or not, if you got a sick heart, you’ve got an invitation, not to come to this church. Come unto me, not to this church, to me. Come to this church if you want. We welcome you, but not to this church. We can’t cure it. Come unto Me all ye that labor and are heavy laden. God bless you