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[0:00] All right, great music this morning and the songs just fit so well with this morning's text and the topic that we are going to be looking at this morning.

[0:13] That is good news for those who are burdened, those who are followers of Jesus Christ, those who have yoked themselves as disciples and who are submitting themselves.

[0:26] He is promising that he will provide his peace, he will provide his rest. And we are still in Psalm 55 where we began last week.

[0:37] We are in verse number 22 this morning and just a little bit of background and history on Psalm 55. This is a psalm of David, a contemplation of David, where he has he is really down.

[0:53] He is hurt to his very soul because he has been let down by a friend. Different scholars are not quite sure what the event that precipitated this psalm and this lament in this psalm.

[1:07] But many believe it is when he was let down by his friend Ahithophel. And so he is he is hurt. We looked last week at how he was so burdened and he prayed continually morning, noon and not noon and night.

[1:26] He was praying about this issue and about what was going on. And he will he'll call upon the Lord. He prayed continually and we saw that it was a contagious prayer.

[1:37] He was willing to pray it out loud and that others would hear. He wasn't afraid of someone making fun of him because he was pouring out his heart to God out loud. And we also know that this was a prayer that God will hear.

[1:52] He knows his voice would be heard by God. And then we see in verse 22 that he's talking about casting his burden, casting our burden upon the Lord.

[2:04] That's something we're all familiar with, I believe. We all have burdens. We all have burdens of some sort, financial burdens. We may have fearful burdens.

[2:14] We may have physical burdens, different types of things that you and I deal with that cause anxiety or cause different things in our life. And from time to time or from the time of the fall, we've all been plagued with burdens.

[2:32] Think about it. Think about it. God created us to be burdenless. Let me say that again. God created us to be burdenless. He gave us work because he gave the garden to Adam and he told him to till it.

[2:49] He told him to to work it and to tend it. So man was not mankind was not created just to sit idly and be a couch potato.

[3:01] So God created man to work. But since the fall, what happened? Work became work. Work became toil. Work became you have to do it by the sweat of your brow.

[3:14] You have to work hard and you have to fight the weeds and you have to fight decay and you have to you have to fight all of these things that man was never meant to have to deal with because man was created to live in a perfect world.

[3:29] And one day we're going to live in that perfect world if we know Jesus Christ as our Savior, because we are going to be in the very presence of God. And what Jesus has done in the New Testament, Jesus invited the burdened to come to him.

[3:46] Let's look at that in Matthew 11, 28 through 30. He says, come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

[3:58] 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.

[4:09] For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Now those who are carrying heavy burdens were invited by Jesus to come to him.

[4:21] Those weary from carrying their burdens actually did come to him. The word that we see here in verse 28, 29, and 30 where he says, in verse 30, where my yoke is easy, this word yoke.

[4:42] In that day where Jesus said this, it was meant to take a disciple or to go and to be a disciple. And so if you would go to a master teacher and you would say, I'm willing to take the yoke upon me.

[4:55] I'm willing to take your yoke. And what that meant was, I'm willing to join with you, partner with you. If you will teach me, I will learn from you. I will sit at your feet.

[5:06] I will follow you wherever you go. And I will become your apprentice. I will allow you to be my mentor. And I will be your mentee.

[5:17] And I will learn. I know it was an agricultural term where you would yoke oxen. But in Jesus's day, it also came to be placing yourself under someone as a disciple.

[5:30] And so what Jesus was offering was to be yoked together with him. Because it was not uncommon for someone to go to a Pharisee or go to an attorney or a lawyer, one who knew the law, and to become their disciple.

[5:45] But what the religious leader did was they placed a heavy yoke upon those who followed them. And a yoke that was so heavy and so burdensome and so full of rules and regulations that not even the religious leaders themselves were able to carry the yoke or even wanted to.

[6:06] So there was like two sets of standards. One for the follower and one for the leader. They didn't even follow very often their own rules and regulation. What Jesus did was Jesus offered rest.

[6:21] He offers relationship rather than a rule-keeping religion. And so when we submit to Christ, we are yoked to him.

[6:32] And he says, my yoke is what? It's easy. Now that word easy means well-fitting. Any ever, let's say, Jason and I were talking about who's the same.

[6:44] We actually have the same pair of shoes. Although his are somewhat larger than mine. The exact model. Well, he's had his for a year. My second pair like this, I love them.

[6:54] They are so comfortable. Almost got a pair that was cheap. Sears were out of business, but they were half too big. And you know what? They would not have been well-fitting. Now a brand new pair of shoes takes some breaking in.

[7:08] But when we yoke ourselves with Jesus, it's like taking a comfortable pair of shoes. Or it's like taking a comfortable sweater. Because it just fits so well.

[7:22] It is so well-fitting. And so Jesus is saying, take my yoke. Be my follower. And I'm not going to put upon you some burden, some religion that you've got to always feel like you're in fear.

[7:39] But he says, no, take my yoke. Be my follower. And our relationship is going to fit like a glove. It is going to be so comfortable for you. It will provide you rest.

[7:51] I will give you the power to obey me. I will give you joy. And all of these things that Jesus was offering. So the burden that Jesus offers to us, and a burden is not necessarily a bad thing.

[8:06] It's just something that we have to carry. And the life that we live as we follow Jesus as his disciple is not a heavy one. So Jesus offers rest from other burdens as well.

[8:18] Not only from the religious burdens, but Jesus Christ offers rest from our burden of fear, rest from our burden of anxiety, rest from our burden of poor relationships, all of these other things.

[8:32] So this is good news for burdened believers. So the question is, this morning, what can you do with your burden? Maybe it's a physical burden. Maybe it's an emotional burden.

[8:42] Maybe it's whatever it is. There is something that we can do with that. What we can do, go back to our text this morning in Psalm 55 and verse 22.

[8:56] Here's what we do. Cast your burden on the Lord, and he shall sustain you. He shall never permit the righteous to be moved.

[9:10] So what do we do with our burden? David says this is a horrible thing to have to go through. He says it's so much so that he was physically affected by this hit from a friend or someone who thought he was his friend.

[9:33] And this friend betrays him. And there were others that were trying to do him harm. And he says, God will hear me. So here's what we do. He says, cast your burden.

[9:44] Cast your care. Cast your anxiety upon the Lord. So that's what we do. Cast our burden on the Lord. So what's weighing heavy on you this morning?

[9:57] We can simply take that heavy burden and just like a heavy ruck or heavy backpack, something that we're carrying, we can take it and roll it off of us and on to him, providing us the rest and allowing him to carry what he has offered to carry.

[10:16] He says, take my yoke upon you. My yoke is easy and my burden is light. It's not heavy. So stop trying to carry a burden. Even followers of Jesus, even those who supposedly have peace and rest, choose to take up and carry our heavy burdens.

[10:35] We worry about them and we fret over them and we lose sleep over them. And we're concerned, overly concerned about them. And so what happens is the world sees anxious believers.

[10:52] When others look at us, they shouldn't see anxiety. They should see peace. They should see joy. Doesn't mean we're going to not have the burdens. It means when something crops up and weighs heavy upon us, we simply, through prayer, through our relationship with Jesus, saying, Lord, this is too heavy for me.

[11:12] I can't carry it. You've offered to take it. So here it is. You take care of it. You're in control. I don't know what you're going to do. I don't know how you're going to fix it. You may choose not to fix it.

[11:22] You may choose that to be simply a bad thing I have to bear, but you will give me the grace, just like he gave the Apostle Paul with that physical illness he had. He said, no, I'm not going to heal you, Paul.

[11:33] This is something that you're going to have to deal with, but don't worry, because I'm going to give you the grace. I'm going to give you the power to go through it, because when you realize how weak you are, that's when I show my strength.

[11:45] That's when I can come through into your life with power. So who is the burden carrier? It's Jesus. Think about it. He carried the burden of our sin to the cross.

[11:56] He carried everything that was laid upon us as a result of sin, of being a sinner, because our relationship with God was severed in the Garden of Eden.

[12:10] And so Jesus Christ took our burden of sin for us. So it's Jesus who cares for you and me. Let's look at 1 Peter 5, 7.

[12:20] And I think what we're going to see, starting from the Old Testament, into Matthew, where Jesus says, cast all your care on me, or my yoke is easy, my burden is light, so we take up his yoke.

[12:35] And now he's saying, casting all your care upon him. This is what we ought to be doing. Why? He cares for us. Because he cares for us so much. He wants to carry life's heavy burdens.

[12:49] Matthew Henry, the commentator, said this, To cast our burden on God is to rest upon his providence and promise. To cast our burden on God is simply to rest upon his providence, his ability to provide, and his promise to take our burden upon himself.

[13:10] Now the word here, casting all your care, this word translated care means anxiety. Those anxious moments in our life.

[13:22] To cast those things. See, we care about a lot of things in life. There's nothing wrong with that. But when that care becomes, turns into anxiety, when that care goes out of control, or when that care goes out of the boundaries of proper care, it becomes anxiety.

[13:42] So the word translated care that Peter used, saying, so take all your anxieties and cast them, roll them upon Jesus.

[13:54] Anxiety, the state of being pulled apart. That's what that word means. The state of being pulled apart. And it's amazing how emotional burdens can pull us apart.

[14:06] Can almost feel like we're being stretched beyond the point of our ability to be resilient. And it almost threatens to break us and to overwhelm us.

[14:18] So Peter said, cast all your anxiety, when you feel like you're being pulled apart, he says, cast that upon him. When circumstances are difficult, it's easy to be anxious.

[14:30] Is it not? It's easy to be worried when our circumstances don't make sense or they're difficult or they're tough. But we will miss the blessings of God and we will be poor witnesses to the lost if we choose to keep our anxieties.

[14:47] If we choose to keep those things that cause us anxiety or cause us those anxious moments, when we become anxious, we simply positively say, Lord, you can have it.

[15:05] I give up. I simply give that up to you. Now, we say, well, that sounds simple.

[15:18] It's not that easy. Well, it's that simple. But you're right. It's not that easy. It's not easy to cast all our care upon the Lord because we want to keep thinking about it.

[15:31] We want to keep worrying about it. And very often what happens, our mind goes to the worst case scenario. I mean, our mind always goes to the worst place. That's why we have the anxiety.

[15:44] But I think we're going to miss a blessing if we're not able to just simply surrender. And, you know, it sounds a little flippant to say it is what it is.

[15:56] Or it sounds a little bit easy to say, you know what? Whatever happens, happens. And I'm okay with it. But, in effect, because God is God, God knows best, God knows what needs to happen in order for us to be the most fulfilled and to be the best person we can be, what if we don't let God control?

[16:26] Then I think we miss out on that blessing. So really, it's a matter of surrendering and saying, God, you can have it. You take it.

[16:37] God is his choice. We need his inward peace in the fiery trial. We need his inner peace in order to go through the fiery trial and to come out victorious and be able to be a witness to the lost and to bring glory to his name.

[16:59] God does not make his children carefree in order that they be careless. See, God wants to take our burden. He wants to take our anxiety upon himself so then we can, in turn, carry out his will and his plan in life.

[17:15] So it doesn't mean we'll be carefree. It just means that, it doesn't mean we'll be careless. It just means that we don't have to have cares that burden us down.

[17:27] So casting all of our care upon him. So then what will God do with our burdens? So he said, cast your care on him for he cares for us. Cast your burden on the Lord.

[17:40] So what will he do? We go back to Psalm 55. He says, cast your burden on the Lord and he shall sustain you.

[17:53] God takes our burdens and then through his love, through his mercy, through his grace, he keeps us up. He holds us up. He sustains us. So how does he do that?

[18:05] Well, first of all, 2 Corinthians 5, 21, he takes our burden of sin. 2 Corinthians 5, 21 says, for he made him, that's Jesus Christ, who knew no sin.

[18:18] Jesus was not a sinner. He knew no sin. He made Jesus to be sin for us on the cross of Calvary. Our sin was placed, the burden of our sin was placed upon Jesus that we might become the righteousness of God in him.

[18:35] So that's how it all starts out. We become a follower of Christ. We become a part of God's family when we trust Jesus as our Savior because he took our burden.

[18:47] He took care of our sin. He took care of the burden of our sin on the cross of Calvary. Also what Jesus does is he takes upon himself the burden of our sorrow.

[18:58] We see that in Isaiah 53, verse number 4. For surely he has borne our griefs and he has carried our sorrows.

[19:09] Any of you sad? Any of you sorrowing over something? Well, he's taken that. He has carried our sorrows, yet we esteem him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.

[19:22] He's taken our cares. He has taken our sin upon him on the cross of Calvary. He's borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. He knows. He is well acquainted with sorrow.

[19:33] He's a man of sorrows. Because Jesus knows what it's like. And he takes that upon himself. He also takes our burden of grief.

[19:45] Imagine what it was like for the sisters of Lazarus when Jesus wept. He felt their pain.

[19:57] He felt their sorrow. He knew what it was like to lose a loved one. Someone that he cherished. Someone that was dear to him.

[20:09] And so Jesus is able to carry our grief. His grief is a burden along with all of his other anxieties and cares. What does God do with our burdens? He takes them and he sustains us.

[20:21] He carries us through life. Then, what does God do? God takes our burdens and he exchanges them for blessings.

[20:32] God takes our burdens and gives us blessings. God sustains those, verse 22, he sustains those without strength.

[20:43] Let's look at Romans 5, 6. For when we were still without strength, we were not able, we did not have the power to save ourselves.

[20:55] For when we were still without strength, in due time, Christ died for the ungodly. And you say, well, I'm not ungodly. Well, it doesn't matter how much sin you commit.

[21:08] Being separated from God makes us ungodly. So it's not a matter of how much we sin. Before Christ, the most innocent child who comes to that point where they know the difference between right and wrong are ungodly.

[21:26] Wow. For some people, that's a surprise. That's a shock. Well, how can an innocent child be ungodly? Well, it doesn't mean doing wickedness. It just means simply the state that we're in.

[21:38] We are without God. What does ungodly mean? Without God. So when we were without God, when we were powerless to do anything to save ourselves, to be good enough, Christ Jesus died for us on the cross of Calvary.

[21:55] Remember we said he took our sin upon us. And that is why Psalm 55, 22, we're told to cast our burden, cast our cares, our anxieties on the Lord and he will sustain you.

[22:17] He will uphold you. He will keep you up. It's like a life preserver on the sea. It provides buoyancy.

[22:28] It keeps us up. It sustains us. It keeps us afloat. And sometimes we feel like we're treading water in life. So when we trade our anxieties, our burdens, our cares, and we roll them over to him and say, God, you take care of it.

[22:47] And what we're doing is we're asking him to keep us afloat. And here is what he continues to say. He will never permit the righteous to be moved.

[22:58] He will hold us. He will help us to stay firm and strong. Ever feel, ever been walking on muddy or slippery or soft ground and you can't keep your footing, you feel unstable, you have difficulty walking or standing and sometimes you might fall and get back up.

[23:19] When we have burdens, when we are overburdened as believers, cast our care upon him because he will be able to take care of us and he won't permit you to be moved. He will keep you firm and steadfast in our life.

[23:35] Here is certain security. Matthew Henry, again, said, He who bore the burden of our sorrows desires us to leave to him the burden of our cares.

[23:47] He who bore the burden of our sorrows desires us to leave to him the burden of our cares. Now this is demonstrated in the cross and as demonstrated in the resurrection, Jesus cared for us, took our burden of sin and on the third day rose again showing that he was powerful to take our burden upon himself and to lift it.

[24:12] And the dying thief on the cross, he traded his doubts for faith. He traded hell for heaven. We may not be guilty of criminal act like the thief on the cross was, but apart from Jesus Christ, we're all guilty of being ungodly without him.

[24:36] The cross proves God's all-sufficient love because why would he do it? Why would he have to do it? He didn't, but he chose to because God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten, his unique son that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.

[24:59] So the resurrection proves God's all-sufficient love, the resurrection proves God's all-sufficient power and those who rest their full faith in the immovable one will never be moved.

[25:12] So what's your burden this morning? What are you carrying this morning? It's causing you unease. And here's the thing.

[25:24] It has been shown and proven clinically that when we continue to carry unease, it can turn into dis-ease. So, turn it over to him before it gets to the point where just like David, he was feeling the effects in his body.

[25:42] Let God have it. Turn it over to him. Those who rest their full faith in the immovable one will never be moved. So, what's the conclusion?

[25:54] Cast your burden on the Lord today. Cast all your care upon him. You'll find sufficient grace for all of your needs, whatever they are.

[26:05] He will forgive you of your sin, he will assure you of heaven, and he will carry your burdens and he will exchange it with peace. Take my yoke upon you.

[26:17] He says, my yoke is easy and my burden is light. In Jesus we find rest. And what happens when we carry our anxiety?

[26:29] We don't get rest. Cast your care upon him and trade it for rest. Does that sound inviting? It's what Jesus offers.

[26:41] And it's based on his promise. So take him up on his promise. Cast your burden on him. Good news for burdened believers.

[26:52] Let us pray. Lord, this morning we're so thankful for your goodness, your grace, your power, your ability to take our burdens upon yourself and to keep us afloat, to sustain us, to carry our anxieties and our fears and our troubles and our difficulties, those things which threaten to pull us apart.

[27:17] So Father, this morning I pray for each one here that you would provide peace and rest in exchange for our burdens. Lord, we thank you, we pray in Jesus' name.

[27:30]  Amen.