Christ's Person - Mike Berry - Session 1 - Introduction, 1. His Very Heart

All right, so this is what we've come to call our adult equipment school, and we initially established our equipping school to be a supplement to the pulpit ministry, just realizing that as we're moving mostly verse by verse through the Bible, there are other items and things that we want to get to in doctrine and in body life and discipleship that the. But can't bear the full weight of that. So you can think of the equipping school as is a way for us to get out the deposit of truth, the full deposit of truth that we'd like to get to our people here at Cornerstone so that we can all grow in our walk with Christ, grow in our marriages, grow in singleness, grow in body life, discipleship, and in doctrine.

And so the particular this class is more of our doctrine track.

And the, the theme for all of our equipping school this year is Christ in your weakness, which comes from 2 Corinthians 12:9. It says this, and he has said to me, My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness. Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. And here, Jesus says to Paul, that His grace.

is powerful and His grace is attracted to the weakness in Paul. We tend to think that it's our strength that invites God's power, but it's really our weakness that attracts God's grace that then gives us power. So throughout Scripture, it's really upside down from the way that we tend to think about it in the world. We think that, I need to grow and be super strong and And, as a younger Christian, I can remember just thinking, I'm just gonna keep marching upward and onward and getting better and better.

And here I am 52 and I feel worse in some ways. but actually, that's part of God's design to be strong on our behalf. And so in this class this year, we're going to be looking at the person and work of Christ in view of this theme of Christ in our weakness in this what we're calling season from now until December 12th, our focus is on the person of Christ. And we've selected this book, Gentle and Lowly, The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers by Dane Ortland, for a number of different reasons.

First of which, and maybe most importantly, is I like the book. It's ministered to me personally, and I tend to gravitate towards resources that minister to me and then I brought it to our staff and the staff said, yes, let's, let's do this. We want to focus on this, this topic. But I've noticed that this book is really ministered to others.

in fact, it was, it was somebody else who reminded me about this book. I actually had it on my bookshelf and never read it, and I heard somebody talking about it, and so I took it down and started reading it, was very blessed by it. I've noticed that this is actually a, a book, it's, it's one of the top sellers of Christian books in the last year or two. And so it seems to be scratching an itch in the church today.

And I think there's a reason why it's scratching an itch, which I hope you'll see as we move through this, this course. And I think one of the reasons is, is what we get in a meditation upon Christ's love, is we get what Paul talks about in 2 Corinthians 5, and it's the love of Christ that compels us or constrains us. There's something about an apprehension of Christ's love for us, that gives us energy that we do, we would not get anywhere else. It's what Thomas Chalmers calls the expulsive power of a new affection.

And, and so meditating on Christ's love in his heart for sinners and sufferers, I think is going to help compel us in our walk with Christ. And so that's part of, of why we are reading this book. But let me ask, is this class or this book for you? maybe you're just checking us out to see if this is, this is for you, and, and maybe you might check out another class, which is totally fine.

But I want to read just a paragraph from the, the first page as to who this book is for. This is from Dane Ortland. He says, this book is written for the discouraged, the frustrated, the weary, the disenchanted, the cynical, the empty, those running on fumes, those whose Christian lives feel like constantly running up a descending escalator. Those of us who find ourselves thinking, how could I mess this up this bad again?

It is for the increasing suspicious that God's patience with us is wearing thin. For those of us who know God loves us, but suspect that we have deeply disappointed Him. people who are convinced that we've permanently diminished our usefulness to the Lord or shipwrecked our lives, who are dealing with perplexing pain, and are wondering how we can, keep living under such numbing darkness. who look at our lives and know how to interpret the data only by concluding that God is fundamentally parsimonious, or he's strongly willing, unwilling to spend his riches on us, that God is just holding back his riches and kindness.

In other words, this book is for normal Christians. In short, it is for sinners and sufferers. How does Jesus feel about them? I don't know about you, but if you fit in any of those categories, are you ever discouraged?

Are you ever depressed? Do you ever feel like I've blown it too badly? I think this book in this class is for you. Part of what we're going to be talking about, as the, the title of the book indicates, is we're going to be talking about Christ's heart.

We'll define that more fully here in a second. We're gonna be talking about partially his feelings. How does Christ feel about his bride? How does he feel about you?

And is, are his feelings or his thoughts different from the Father and the Son? Or are they unified in the way that they think about us? what about God's wrath? How does Christ's gentle and lowly heart towards us, how does that coordinate with God's wrath?

when you look at the Bible, it seems like you got people falling dead. All over the place. Well, how can we talk about Christ being gentle and lowly when you've got people getting whacked, Nadab and Abayou, and then you've got Herod, and you've got different people falling dead all over the, the Bible. so, and is there a difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament?

Does Christ feel about us a certain way now that he didn't feel about us in the Old Testament? well, I like what Dean Ortland says is, is the safest path for us in these kinds of discussions about the person of Christ is to stick very closely with the scriptures. Jesus says in John 5:39, these are which testify of me. If we're reading the Bible rightly, all of Scripture points us to Christ.

And so that's part of what we're going to be looking at is we're going to be looking at a lot of scriptures that point us to Christ. But we also need to remember that we're not the first or the smartest people to talk about Christology or the person of Christ. There's other people that have come long before us. And our author's gonna point us to some of those folks, like Thomas Goodwin, we're gonna talk about Spurgeon, we're gonna talk about Luther, Jonathan Edwards, just to name a few.

And, so we're gonna be looking at texts of scripture in, in just about every, every chapter, and then we'll also be talking about normally, a Puritan writer or someone along those lines. to get an idea of what they say about the person of Christ in his heart. So the big question is, who is Christ? And how does he think about and feel about you?

It's one thing to talk about knowing a person and facts about a person. It's another thing to talk about knowing them intimately or how you feel about them. I could tell you that my wife is 5'4. She has brown hair, brown eyes, nice voice, right?

But once I start talking about the way that she touches me when we're ministering together or the way that she'll hug me and not let go when I'm on my way to work, or the way that she'll look at me in a certain way, or the way that I remember looking for her when I came out of the airport when I was on a Mexico missions trip and I was hoping she was going to pick me up at the airport, but instead of her, it was Carlos Limtiaco and how disappointed I was. Those are things that let a, a, a little more about how I know my wife intimately.

Those of you who have been a cornerstone for a long time, you may remember, a saint who's gone on to be with the Lord, Esther Moore, and the way that she would talk about Fred. The way that she would speak about Fred, you didn't just get the idea of what he looked like, you knew his heart for her, how she felt about him, Esther.

She tells a story of how Fred, he'd come home on the train and if he got home too early for dinner, knowing that dinner was probably not. Ready, yet he would sit outside and wait because he didn't want Esther to be all in a flurry trying to get dinner ready, and then he would come in at just the right time when he figured that she was ready for dinner. That's the heart of a husband for a wife. What is Christ's heart towards his bride?

How does he feel about his body? And since you and I are part of that bride and part of that body, how does he feel about you and how does he feel about me? That's what we're going to be talking about in this class. So let's, let's talk about his very heart and then your outline, this is down, the main topic for today.

By the way, there is a schedule on the back page that we'll talk about a little bit later that gives you an idea of the flow of the class. But let's read our main text for today. It comes from Matthew chapter 11. Our main text, starting in verse 28, Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you. Learn from 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. Let's pray one more time. Lord, we do ask that you would, your Spirit would open up this text to us, to help us understand that we can bring, our weariness and our, sense of being weighed down to you, and that you promised to give us rest, for you are gentle and lowly in heart.

Help us to understand that in Christ's name. Amen. Well, let's divide up this text in our chapter into 5 different sections. Let's first talk about his heart or Christ's heart.

It says right in the middle of our text, I am gentle and lowly in heart. What exactly does that mean? When I think of Christ's heart, there's something about me that wants to repel from that idea because the heart, I just Think of I Love Lucy, right? When I think of a heart, or I think of Valentine's Day, or I think of cartoons and cherubs and things like that.

That's what immediately comes to mind and associate those things with Christ, it just doesn't seem to fit. and part of that is our cultural definition of the heart, which we'll talk about the biblical definition. But also, I think part of that is, is we're uncomfortable with this idea of the romance that Christ has for his bride, even as it is displayed in the Song of Solomon, which we would argue is literal, but also points to a greater reality. And so we need to ask, are we, is it right for us to be uncomfortable talking about Christ's heart for his bride?

in the Old Testament, New Testament, the heart is not merely the emotions, but as our author says, it's the animated center or our motivation headquarters. It's what gets us out of bed in the morning. I like that. So when you think of the heart, both Old and New Testament, it's kinda like what motivates us, what gets us going?

What do we daydream about? In Proverbs 4:23, it says, Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flows the springs of life. So the heart has something to do with what flows out of us. We're supposed to protect it because if you don't protect it, what will come out implication will not be all that great, but if you do protect it, there will be good springs that come out of it.

But springs come out of our hearts, come out of our person regardless. In Proverbs again, 23:7, speaking of a miser or a stingy person, it says, for as he has thought in his soul, so he is. Eat and drink, he says to you, and his heart is not with you. In the parallelism of this proverb, soul is equated with heart, and this miser is saying, yes, with his words, go ahead and eat and drink.

But in his soul, in his heart, he really doesn't want you to do that. He says he's generous, but really, he's not in his heart, in his person. And so in Proverbs, you get this idea that whatever the heart is, it tells you the true intent or motivation or the true thoughts of a person, right? Let's ask, is Christ like this?

Is Christ like the miser? Is he unwilling to spend his riches on sinners like me and you? Dane Ortland says on page 19, when Jesus tells us what animates him most deeply, what is most true of him when he exposes the innermostmost recesses of his being, what we find there is gentle and lowly. In fact, Spurgeon says that this is the only place in the four Gospels where Jesus actually speaks of his heart.

And so that, that's part of what leads not just our author, but many Puritans. to focus in on this, this topic. Notice Jesus says, I am gentle and lowly in heart. We're going to talk about gentle here in a moment.

But notice he says, I am. A lot of times we pick up on these I am statements in the Gospels where Jesus says, I am the good shepherd or I am the door as a pointer to His likeness with the great I am, Yahweh, and then it shows us attributes about Christ and the great I am. Well, here Jesus is saying, I am gentle. And so it seems like this is an attribute that we want to give special attention to.

So let's talk about that word gentle. That occurs in the New Testament, three other times. In Matthew 5:5, you guys are probably familiar with this. It says, blessed are the meek.

It's the same Greek word there, blessed are the meek or the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth. In Matthew 21:5, a quotation from Zechariah 9:9, it says the king is coming to you lowly or gentle and mounted on a donkey, which is these both of these verses are actually contrasts. You have Blessed are the meek, for they're going to inherit something, the kingdom, right, or they're going to inherit the earth. And Jesus is coming to you as a king lowly.

OK, that's this gentle concept mounted on a donkey. In our mindset, we think, well, that's lowly, but in the Jewish mindset, mounted on a donkey means kingly. Mounted on a donkey is a donkey is what somebody did when they were coming to take the throne. So we need to get that our Western mindset of being on a donkey is some pauper.

It's actually a king. And so there's a contrast between lowliness and his heights. And same idea here with in 1 Peter 3:4, speaking of a wife, the imperial beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit. The word gentle is our word.

A wife who is gentle, that's to be something that's admired. but she has imperishable beauty, that's her power, that beauty is power. And so throughout these verses, there's this contrast between gentleness and power, that they are not mutually exclusive. So part of what we get in Christ describing himself in his very being, his very heart, as gentle, is we get this idea, as our author argues, and I agree that Jesus is not trigger happy.

He's not harsh or reactionary. He doesn't get easily exasperated. In other words, he is not like us. Well, maybe just so I can just say me.

I am not like that. That is not my default setting. But Jesus is not harsh. He's not easily exasperated.

And one of the sentences that stood out to me in this section. He is the most understanding person in the universe. Jesus, there's nobody that understands us and is as gentle with us as Jesus. That's a way that we should think about Christ because he says, I am gentle, in my very being, in the very core in the motivation centers of my person, I'm gentle.

But he also says he's lowly. If you look, turn to the Actually, my page imagination is different from your guys', but number 3, lowly. lowly overlaps the idea or the definition of lowly, somewhat overlaps with gentle, but we get, there are some distinctions, like in Romans 12:6, we see the same word, do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. The exhortation is we should walk around like we're all that.

But we should be willing to associate with people that quote unquote, might be others might view as cringy, or like people that you wouldn't want to be associated with. Jesus associates with us. We're cringy. And so he's lowly, he's willing to come down and lower himself, as it says in Philippians chapter 2.

there's not a friend like the lowly Jesus, no, not one. He was high and exalted, second person of the Trinity at the right hand of the Father, but he lowered himself down and brought himself down to a low estate to associate with us cringy people. Martin Luther, I love this quote from Martin Luther as he talks about God and talks about the triune God and Christ himself. He says this, God can only look down.

There is no one above him, there is no one beside him. He can only look down. And the further down he looks, the more clearly he sees us. And Luther's point is, that God delights to look down, and he sees us very low.

In fact, he comes down to us through Jesus Christ. And so that brings us to another summary statement on this concept of lowlys Jesus is accessible. He comes down to us, so he's accessible. No one in human history has ever been more approachable.

than Jesus Christ. So when Jesus says, I am gentle and lowly in heart, part of what that means is he is not harsh. he is, understanding, and he is approachable in his very being. So just think about Christ as being very understanding of you and me, and very approachable and accessible in his very core.

He knows, as the Psalms tells us that we are but dust, right? As a father pities his children, so does the Lord pity us. But to whom is Christ gentle number 4? To whom is Christ gentle and lowly?

Or what is required to be enfolded into his embrace? Well, our text tells us, come to me, take my yoke upon me, upon you. So what is required is merely for us to open ourselves up to Him and to come to Him. We don't need to unburden ourselves first.

He doesn't say drop your burdens. He just says, come and then take my yoke. We're going to talk about what that means, my yoke. And so ask yourself, as, as, as our text says, come to me all you who are labored and heavy laden.

I will give you rest. Are you weary? Are you burdened? Will you come to him and learn from him?

If you feel weary, if you feel burdened, if you're willing to come to him and learn from Him, He will give rest for your souls. It's a promise. It's a promise for people that come to Christ for the first time in conversion. And it's a promise for us every day as children of God, is we can come to Him.

And notice he says, I will give you rest. This is not a transaction. You give me this, I give you that. This is non-transactional.

his rest is a gift, not a transaction. But is this who he is to everyone indiscriminately? Is he behave this way towards everyone without exception, where the context would say no, because we see, like, for instance, the verse 21, Jesus says, woe to you, Khorasan, war to you, woe to you, Betheda. Look at verse 24 of the same chapter, but I say to you that it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment than for you.

so there are those who do not get this treatment, but that are the, those are the people who are unrepentant, who are unwilling to come to Christ with their burdens. the whole tone and tenor of the previous section are people who are unwilling to, to repent and come to Christ, acknowledge their sins, acknowledge their weariness, and, and come and learn of Christ. Dane Ortland says this, but for the penitent, his heart of gentle embrace is never outmatched by our sins, foibles, our insecurities, doubts, anxieties, and failures.

Moreover, this is not who he occasionally is.

This is who he is in his very heart, quote, He can't ungentle himself toward his own any more than you or I can change our eye color. God does not suddenly become ungentle, because you or I sin. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. And he didn't just die for your past sins.

He knew all of your sins from the time that you were born to the time that you die. And once you become part of his body, once you become part of his bride, he says, I am gentle and lowly in heart. Come to me, all you are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. And so we've looked at Christ's heart, we've looked at gentle lowly.

I think we've tried to answer the question, is he like this to everybody indiscriminately? No, it's to the penitent. It's to the people that come to Him. And once you come to Him, He will know why he's cast you out.

But fifthly, and lastly, what do we mean? What does he mean by my yoke or my burden? Notice the text again, he says, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Dane Ortland says this, my yoke is easy, needs to be carefully understood.

Jesus is not saying life is free of pain or hardship. This is the same word elsewhere translated as kind, as in, for example, Ephesians 4:32, be kind to one another, tenderhearted. We, we use easy in the same way in English, like if, if I might say, hey, I'm gonna go easy on him this time, right? Let's say, your child, we'll say a child, I'll just pick a random name.

Let's say Sam. And, had been disobedient to his mother during the day and I get home and I'm talking to, to Katie and she says, go easy on them. That's the idea, right? My, my yoke is easy.

My burden is light. but we need to be careful that the Christian life is inescapably one of toil and labor. In fact, there's a lot of verses we could look at, but look at Colossians. It's just one example.

Colossians 1:29. Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians, go eat popcorn, the way you memorize that order. 1:29 to this end, I also labor, Paul says, striving. So there's a labor and there's a striving in the Christian life, but notice this and I labor striving according to His working which works in me mightily.

So we're not denying the fact that there's labor in the Christian life. And when, when Christ talks about his yoke being easy and his burden light, I don't think we're talking about the fact that there's no work, there's no toil. but notice what Dane Ortland says, and I love this quote. it comes from page 22, but all Christian toil flows from fellowship with a living Christ who's transcending, defining reality is gentle.

And lowly we fellowship with a Christ who loves to show Himself powerful in our weakness and to give us grace. And this is my favorite quote of the whole chapter in page 22. Only as we drink down the kindness of the heart of Christ will we leave in our wake everywhere we go the aroma of heaven and die one day having startled the world with glimpses of a divine kindness too great to be boxed in by what we deserve. That's awesome, too great to be boxed in by what we deserve.

If Christ gave us what we deserve. Bad news, but his grace is too great to be boxed in by what we deserve. And, and so that's what we're talking about when we talk about this labor, him coming in, and, and, and, and easing our, our labor. By the way, the word labor has the idea of, of weary.

It's actually a The word is active. So when he says, come to me, all you who are laboring or wearied, it's like you're wearied by your own work. You're trying to work hard, you're trying to do things, but you're, you're labored by it. Heavy laden or weighed down is in the passive voice.

The idea is, is circumstances or things that have come upon you. So we get, we get labored by our own work. We're trying to, as our author says, try to crowbar our life into, into order, and it just keeps getting out of order, and then things keep happening to us from other people's sins and circumstances, and we get weighed down. On both ends, it's my sin compounded with other people's sins against me, and it just creates this sense of both being wearied and weighed down is the idea.

And Jesus says, Come to me, come to me, I want to, I want to help you with that. And as it were, he says, my yoke is easy, my burden is light. I'm gonna throw you a, a life preserver. And, and, Dane Ortland uses the analogy, it's almost as if a man were drowning, and he says, oh, I can't put that life preserver on.

It's such a burden. Oh, that would be such a burden. It's just, I can't add one more thing. Jesus says, wait a second, my yoke.

It is easy. Come to me. Take my yoke upon you. Or he says, my burden is light.

It's like helium in a balloon. So he's using Christ. This is actually ironic. It's a, it's a form of irony when he says my yoke is easy.

He's really saying it's a non-yoke. My yoke is easy and kind, and it's light. It's a non-burden. And by the way, it's his yoke, not ours.

It's his yoke. It's his burden. and he is gentle and stoops down, and he's made a promise to give you rest. This is an, an incredible savior.

This is a wonderful verse. and, and by the way, it's not just a rest that you have to wait for, it's a rest that you enjoy now. it's a rest that we enjoy in our fellowship and connection, to Christ. But we tend by nature, we tend not to think this way about Christ.

And there's a reason for it before we like land this plane here. There's probably nothing that we've said up to this point that you don't know in your head. Most of us know these things in our head. what the Bible says that Christ is gentle and lowly, come to Him, all you who are weary and heavy laden, I will give you rest.

Why is it then that we so often, don't enjoy the rest? Why is it that we feel like there is no rest? And I want to suggest to you that The reason that we feel like there is no rest is by default, we think Christ is all together like us. We think he's like me.

I think Christ is like me. The fact is, is when people come to me, I can handle so much as a pastor, I minister to people. I try to give out what I'm learning from Christ. My kids come to me, things like that, and after a while I get tired.

And I'm not always gentle and lowly. And then I project that up onto Christ, and we by default in our old man, we think that he must be like us. He must get tired of us. He's probably tired of our sin.

He's probably wearied and burdened by us continually coming to Him. Our author Dane Ortland says this, this is not how we intuitively think of Jesus Christ. Reflecting on this passage, English pastor Thomas Goodwin helps us, and here's the quote from Thomas Goodwin. Men are apt to have contrary conceits of Christ.

But he tells them his disposition there in this text by preventing such hard thoughts of him to allure them unto him the more. We are apt to think that he, being so holy, is therefore of a severe and sour disposition against sinners and not able to bear them. No, says he, I am meek. Gentleness is in my nature and temper.

We are prone to think that Christ has a severe and sour disposition towards us. Because that's the way we are by nature towards others. And we project that onto Christ, onto the heart of Christ. Ortland says, we project onto Jesus our skewed instincts about how the world works.

And I'll go on, I'm going to read a couple of paragraphs at length when he says, we naturally think of Jesus touching us the way a little boy reacts, out, reaches out to touch a slug for the first time, his face all screwed up and cautiously extending an arm. We picture the risen Christ approaching us with a severe and sour disposition, but that's the way he's coming to us. Our natural intuition can only give us a God like us. The God revealed in Scripture deconstructs our intuitive predilections.

In other words, we have, we have a weak partiality towards our thoughts of Christ, where we think that he is not who he is. And it's the Word of God that deconstructs our thoughts about Christ. And one of the reasons why a class like this is valuable is because there's a reason we, we have certain things that we know. But then we don't always see it work out in what we do, and what's missing is what we think about.

We know certain things about Christ, but we don't always think about it. When I wake up in the morning, the first thing I start doing when my alarm goes off is I start to worry about things. I start to worry about my day. I start to worry about meetings.

I start to worry about kids. I start to worry about finances, and I, if I just let my mind do whatever it's going to do, I will just run down that train, and then I get the George Constanza view of God. I don't know if anybody knows who George Costanza is from Seinfeld, but there's an episode where he thinks he's gotten cancer, he didn't. But he's like, I knew God would do this to me.

I just knew he would do this to me. And someone says, Well, George, I didn't think you believed in God. He says, I do for the bad stuff. And that's just, we just think that if by default, that God's out to get us, Christ is out to get us, the other shoe is going to drop.

And if I'm not thinking and understanding Christ's love for me, I have this default setting where I just, I just know. Sooner or later, God's gonna come and get me for my past sins or today's sins and the other shoe's gonna fall and there you go. I knew this day was coming. And that's just not the heart of Christ.

And so what is the antidote to that? The antidote is we know certain things, but we don't always do certain things. And it's about what we're thinking about. What are we meditating on?

And so coming to God's word, coming to passages like this, and other passages we're going to look at in this class. will help bridge the gap between what we know and then the rest that is offered to us. It's largely about resting in Him and bringing our thoughts to Him. I've used this phrase before in other classes, but, we all go to bed.

Many of us go to bed gospel believing Protestants, and then we wake up Roman Catholics again. We get out of bed thinking it's all on me. It's all, I better get it done or sure enough, I'm gonna end up in purgatory or worse. Oh, it's finished in Christ.

And so here's the big idea. The big idea of what we've looked at in this class is, is Jesus is Jesus is not harsh or unaccessible, even when we are wearied by our own sins or burdened by circumstances or the sins of others. And I want to encourage you to meditate upon that this week. Don't just walk out of here and just forget about it.

Go to this passage of scripture and meditate on it. Pray through it. Ask God. Ask the Holy Spirit to help you understand these things, because our hearts just don't want to believe it.

He is not harsh. He is not unaccessible. He does not get worried by your sins, and, and he is not burdened by your circumstances. In fact, he says, bring all of that on.

And so there's some questions here for meditation. I wanna encourage you to, to look through and consider for yourself, this week. If you took, look to the last page, you'll see. Our schedule.

We're gonna cover approximately 2 chapters a week. It's not a lot of reading. I'm not a fast reader. I can read a chapter in about 15 minutes.

And so 2 chapters is about 30 minutes of reading. We're not asking for a ton of homework from this class because you guys are already probably doing a lot of Galatians homework and we don't wanna build that on top of what some of you guys are already doing. And so it's a, it's a very simple, simple assignment. And in fact, it's, if you, if you like Audible, it's on Audible.

I listened to it, the chapters multiple times and stuff. It's very good for family devotions because the little ones can endure a chapter. It's very short and, and so next week we'll be reading chapter 2 and 3, and I have suggested. Any questions, these are just suggested.

I'm not trying to put burdens or, make you weary or heavy laden, but there's some thoughts that might help you with this week's material. I do have, maybe just a few minutes for questions. If you guys have questions about anything that we've talked about up to this point. If you don't have questions, I'm gonna raise a couple of my own.

Yes, Melissa, not really a question, but can you go over the fill-ins on 4? Oh yeah, the fill-ins on number 4. you don't need to unburden yourself is the first one. You don't need to unburden yourself.

And then down below that, I will give you rest. His rest is a gift, not transaction, not transaction. It is not transactional. It is not transactional.

Any other fill-ins that you guys missed? The very first one? OK, let me see what that is. Our motivation headquarters, is that right?

Is that what you're looking for? Yeah, our motivation headquarters is, is the heart. And the second one, he is the most understanding person in the universe, under gentle, right? Yeah, so he is the most understanding person in the universe.

That's what I've been meditating on this week when, when I've been trying to get this passage into my head. I'm just thinking about the fact that Christ is understanding and accessible in his very heart, understanding and accessible. Yeah, Rebecca. I just have a quick question on, Of the, of the book, yeah.

Jesus, you open yourself up to Him. It is all need. Every time I read the word need, there's a God. Uh-huh.

That's what he requires Right. Yeah, I would interpret that as like that's all he wants. so what does he need from us or what does he want from us, I think is the idea or the intent., my wife say, hey, what do you need from me today? she's not asking like, are you a needy person?

She's just asking what, what, what would you like me to get done? And so what does Christ want us to get done? What does he want us to do? All he wants us to do is to come to him.

He doesn't want us to unburden ourselves. He's not asking us to get all the sin out of our lives. I think it's, it's, it's similar to the idea, when we, when he talks about, our anxieties to bring all our cares to him, in one sense, it says be anxious for nothing. In another sense, the Bible says, bring all your anxieties to him, which is it?

Well, it's both. It's, we bring our anxieties to him. And that that's what we're supposed to do with those anxieties. We're not supposed to be anxious alone or worry alone.

We bring that to him. And so, in that sense, he wants our anxieties, yeah. It's good. Yeah, Avi.

Bye. Or. Yeah. But, Yeah, that's a great question.

So the question is, how would you describe his character and love towards someone who is not a believer? Yeah, I would say that we, we stick to particular texts of scripture, like Jesus says, things like, anyone who comes to me, I will know why he's cast out. God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. So his disposition towards the world is, is giving, right?

He gives. We receive. So God's willing to give. The question is, is, are we willing to receive?

And I know this overlaps with some of the sovereignty, human responsibility mystery. And that's where we have to be very, very careful that we don't try to delve too, we don't try to delve too deeply into that mystery and somehow divorce God's heart for sinners from a sinner's unwillingness to repent. If that makes sense. And an example I would give is, is like Nineveh, right?

Jonah, the ultimate anti-prophet, right? God says to Jonah, I want you to go to Nineveh, and I want you to preach to them so that they can repent, and ultimately that, that God would save them. And we find out at the end of the book, one of the reasons why Jonah didn't want to go to them, he's like, I knew you would do this because that's who you are. You're merciful and kind and, and long suffering, and that's why I didn't want to come up here in the first place.

So Jonah knew God's heart towards even wicked Nineveh. He just didn't want to see it happen, right? But fast forward to Nehum 150 years later, and what do you have? Boom, utter destruction and wrath that comes on Nineveh.

So God is very patient and willing to let people to, to, for people to repent, but once they don't repent, He gives them a long leash, and especially when they start attacking his church and his bride, the wrath eventually comes. And so, so I, when I'm talking to unbelievers, I do want to emphasize the fact that, that he is very, very kind, but we also need to beware. In fact, I'll end on this. That reminds me of Acts 13, where we get a nice crisp definition of the gospel.

Acts 13:38. So this is Paul preaching. Therefore, let it be known to you, he's talking to Israel, brethren, that through this man is preached to you the forgiveness of sins. That's the gospel.

And by him, everyone who believes is justified from all things from which he could not be justified by the law of Moses. So he wants to forgive you, and he is going to justify you of everything. But then he says, beware, therefore, lest what he has spoken to you and the prophets come upon you. So he gives us great news of forgiveness of sins, and then he says, beware.

If you decide you're not going to come and you don't want your sins forgiven, then you will get exactly that. You will not have your sins forgiven, and anybody whose sins are not forgiven will get God's just wrath. And so I think that's, the balance and talking, I think an unbeliever is emphasizes kindness, but then give them the beware. And lastly, I'll just say that by the way, that's the way we've been treated, right?

When I think of the things I've done in my lifetime, and I'm 52 years old, I'm still on this planet, and he didn't take me out a long time ago. That's a lot of patience, a lot of patience. Let's pray. I'll be up here if you have other questions.

Lord, thank you so much for this time for us to be together and just to consider your gentle heart towards us and the fact that you're Willing to lower yourself to our lowest state and associate with us cringy people. And yet, you come to take our burdens, and to take the things that we've been weighed down by upon yourself. We help us to learn from you in this class, and bless us as we as we bridge the gap between what we know and what we do with what we think about. We pray this in Christ's name.

Amen.