Over the past few months, I have been praying that God would burden my heart in a few areas. Specifically, that he would continue to burden my heart for souls and for the souls that are in India in particular. A few days ago I read Numbers chapter 4.
In Numbers chapter 4 God calls the three sons of Levi to serve him by moving the tabernacle when they move their camp. this was not going to be an easy job since many of the pieces of the tabernacle would be extremely heavy. Nonetheless God commands them to bare up this burden and at least seven times in this chapter the word burden is used.
As I read this chapter a question came to my mind: Why did God allow this burden to be placed on these people. The answer, I believe is quite profound.
I want to talk about three distinct burdens that we should all experience in our lifetime if we are following God:
- First there is the burden of sin. When we discover that there is a holy and just God that requires us to obey him and that the wage (or payment) for violating his law is an eternal death in a place called Hell we should feel the burden of sin on our lives. We should be driven to our knees and to the Word of God to seek relief like Christian did in Pilgrams progress.
- Second there is the burden of this life. I will call these the cares of life. These are the things that effect our day to day lives. The car breaking down, the bills that need to be payed, the house that needs to be cleaned, the people that are coming against us, and so on.
- Third there is the burden that God wants us to have. I will call this His burden. These are things like being burdened for someone else’s problems that you have no control over, being burdened over someone’s sin or lost state, being burdened about the physical needs of some person or group of people, burdened about a country that needs revival, and so on.
The worst place we could be is ambivalent to the burdens that should be weighing us down. Have you ever met that person that seams to be so laid back that nothing bothers them. They act like they don’t have a problem in the world even though you know they do. They aren’t worried bout the test they are scheduled to take and haven’t studied for, they aren’t worried about the job they are about to loose, or the car that is breaking down. They are completely ambivalent about the things they should care for.
Sometimes this is us. or we worry about those things but we are only provoked to action. We care only enough to try to do something about it. We do not loose sleep over our sins, we do not lay prostrate on the floor begging God to calm the storms that surround us, we don’t rise early in the day seeking God’s favor to change a persons eternal destiny. We are ambivalent to the things that are supposed to push us into the presence of God and beg for his relief.
In the last few verses of Mattew chapter 26 Jesus is praying with Peter, James, and John. Christ goes and prays and pours out the burden that he was carrying to God the Father and begs him to take the cup from him but he ends with a accepting a burden – God’s burden. When Christ returns to the three they were fast asleep and Jesus woke them up. Three times this happened until Christ was taken to the cross.
Jesus was moved by this burden that he had, however it was not his burden he was carrying – it was ours. See Isaiah 53. He was bearing our sins and our burden and he was taking those to the father in prayer and what happened is that God exchanged Christ’s burden for a heavenly burden.
All of this was done while the disciples were asleep. They were not under distress because of their sins. They rocked their conscience to sleep with their ambivalence. At this moment their greatest desire was to close the eye. They also did not feel the heavy load that God was laying on his Son.
It is my prayer that those of you who are reading this, the members of my church, my family, my wife, my children, and (most of all) myself would experience the heavy load of the burden that God has so that we must fall before his throne and beg him to lift our burdens off of us.
The Levites were required to bare these heavy burdens because God wanted them to understand that they could not fulfill the law. The law was a task master to lead them to Christ. The burdens that God allows us to have should also lead us to him.
S.T.
1 Thessalonians 5:24
"Faithfull is he..."
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