Last week, for those of you who were with us or who tuned in last week, we launched our winter sermon series, which is titled Thy Very Heart: My Heart Healed By His. Our desire in the sermon series is very simple. We want to put our hearts before God's heart. We want to put our small, weary, sometimes cold hearts before his great, and tireless, and warm heart and ask that his heart would then renew ours, restore ours, reshape ours, heal ours. So we're looking at the heart of God, and we're putting our heart before that great heart.
I shared an image with you last week that, for me anyway, helps encapsulate or make vivid what we're trying to do over the next several weeks. It was the image of God approaching you and putting his hand out on your chest like a stethoscope and feeling your heart. Beneath all the other things going on in your life and in your mind, he simply asked the question, "How's your heart doing?" Then, he takes your hand, and he pulls it over. He puts it on his chest so you can feel his heart, and he says, "Because this is how I'm doing. This is how I feel."
As Christians, we believe that our faith is far more than a set of ideas. We believe it is a heart connection, that it has this effective center where our hearts come into contact with the eternal and the glorious heart of God. We also believe as people living through this current season that our hearts can grow weary and cold, and it is only under this great heart that they are finally renewed and reshaped. So our heart connected to his, that's what we're after.
We began this quest last week by turning to a key passage about the heart in the Old Testament, Ezekiel 36. In that passage, we saw something about the human heart. We learned that it was wicked and weary, that it was a stone, and that God almighty wanted to come in and give us a heart transplant to replace our heart of stone with a heart of flesh. Not just to give us a new heart, but we also learned from that passage in Ezekiel that God was going to put his own spirit within our heart. So we read in Ezekiel 36 God promising, "I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you. I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh, and I will put my spirit within you."
So this image from Ezekiel, where I hope you can see God reaching down and putting his hand on our hearts, finally drew us into Romans where we landed, where we saw another passage, this time, in the New Testament, that was explaining a very similar image but giving us a window into how this heart connection happened. So in Romans 5, we saw that Paul said, "God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us." So we see a lot of the imagery from Ezekiel, a new heart, God's spirit being put within us. We see Paul saying the same thing.
Now, this is where we get our key idea within which we can move into the sermon series. God, doesn't just want to give you a new heart. God wants to also share with you his heart, and this is therefore the imagery of the spirit coming into the new heart that Ezekiel uses and Paul picks up. So when Paul says God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, God's love for Paul means that which emanates from God's deepest heart, especially in who God is for us and his son, Jesus Christ, and Paul is saying that truth, that love about God's heart is being poured. It's a very vivid verb. It's being poured. Not trickled, not sprinkled, poured. Where? Into our hearts. How? Paul says through the Holy Spirit.
So God just doesn't give us a new heart, but his Holy Spirit is then active to draw our new heart into contact with God's great heart. So our approach to the rest of the sermon series is just to participate with this biblical image. We're going to do all we can to put our hearts before that flowing stream, that Holy Spirit river pouring out of God's hearts. Now, how would you do that? If you were going to position your heart before this stream coming out of God's heart, what might you do?
The best thing you could do is turn to scripture, and searching through scripture, you would look for images or descriptions in the Bible of God's heart, and that would be putting yourself before the spigot, and then you would plead and you would pray that the Holy Spirit would take those truths that you could think about on your own and supernaturally, help your heart feel them, that they would become palpable inside of you. So that's the basic truth in front of us. God, doesn't just want to give us a new heart. He wants to share his heart with us by the Holy Spirit, and we're putting our hearts before that stream by turning to the spirit through scripture. Does that make sense?
Today, when we turn to that stream, we do so by noticing a rarest opportunity. There's only one place in the New Testament where Jesus says something explicitly about his heart. Now, of course, the heart of our Lord is implied in many places, but there's only one instance in all four gospels where Jesus pulls back the curtain if you will, and with his own words, tells us about his heart. It comes in this passage in Matthew, which we just heard/read where Jesus invites people. He says, "Come all who are weary and heavy-laden." He invites them to come to him for rest, and the reason he says we should trust him that he can give rest is a description of his heart. So he says in Matthew 11:29... This is the only place where Jesus tells us about his heart. He says, "I am gentle and lowly in heart."
Charles Spurgeon preaching back in the 1800s said of this verse, "In the New Testament, this is the only passage which speaks of the heart of Jesus Christ explicitly. Therefore, we will weigh it with all the more care." That's exactly what I want to do with you this morning. Understanding how rare this is that our Lord would tell us this, I want to weigh it with all the more care.
Now, when Jesus tells us about his heart, it takes us into a realm of understanding that we don't often go to. We often talk about what Jesus does for us or has done for us, coming to us, dying on the cross, and these are of immeasurable worth. But when we start to talk about his heart, we're not so much asking what he's done for us, but we're asking who he is in his essence, at his most fundamental. We're asking about his very nature.
Dane Ortlund, in his book, which takes this verse as its title, Gentle and Lowly, he says the following about when we ask about Jesus' heart. He says, "We're asking about what is most natural to him. What ignites within him most immediately as he moves towards sinners and suffers? What flows out of him most freely, most instinctively? If his heart had a reflex the way your knee may have a reflex, what would it be? What would its first and purest inclination be? That's what we're after when we ask about our Lord's heart."
Now, to dive into this revelation that Jesus' heart is gentle and lowly, we at first might want to rush up to it. I mean, after all, in this section, as you'll see, Jesus is literally casting it wide open, and he's saying, "All, anyone, anyone Who is weary and burdened, come." It's a very wide invitation. However, it would be a mistake to presume upon it and to run too fast. I want to show you that if we step back and look at the larger context of this passage, Jesus' heart is not flung wide to everyone, nor is it approached in any particular way. But in fact, there is a specific type of person and a specific path that tends towards the grace of this heart revelation.
I want to walk through our passage up to this heart in three stages. I want to show you first the hiddenness of God's heart, and second, the revealer of God's heart, and third, the surprise we see when we look inside. So first and ironically, in a passage about Jesus' heart, we first read about hiddenness. So if we pick up our passage at verse 25, we hear Jesus speaking to his father like this. This is Matthew 11:25. This is the beginning of our passage. "At that time, Jesus declared, 'I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden..." There's the word hidden. "You have hidden these things from the wise and understanding, and revealed them to little children." So before there's this great wide invitation to his heart, he's thanking God for hiding things.
Now, the passage says, "You have hidden these things." Now, what does that refer to? These things that Jesus is talking about God hiding and revealing, they refer to the passions and plans deepest in the heart of God, which are realized through Jesus Christ. We know that because Matthew 11, the chapter we're in, begins with John the Baptist in prison sending a question to Jesus. He sends his disciples to Jesus to ask the following, "Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?" The question that hangs over this chapter in Matthew is, "Who is Jesus?" Jesus is the revelation of the heart of God. So when Jesus says, "Father, I thank you because you have hidden these things," he's saying, "You have hidden who I truly am from some people, while you have revealed it to others."
Let's dig a little bit deeper. This means that God is hiding and revealing. This means that we cannot assume we have access to God's heart, nor should we presume upon it. You wouldn't share your heart with just anybody. You wouldn't want your spouse to share his or her heart with just anybody. Why should it be different with God? I think we have this modern conception of God as this nebulous idea of love for whom's heart is just wide open all the time to any people. That's not what this passage says. I hope you can see that. God hides himself from some people.
Well, now, we should ask, "Well, who do you hide your heart from, and who do you reveal it to?" Thankfully, the passage is quite clear if we press it a little bit. We find that God hides his heart from people who are proud. The passage says, "Jesus says, 'You have hidden these things from the wise and understanding.'" Now that doesn't mean he hides his heart from people who have a big IQ or who liked to read. It means he hides himself from people who are proud, who will never acknowledge that they have a need for him, who find the idea that God's Messiah, rather than being a great philosopher or a great religious elite from Jerusalem, that he would be a poor man from Galilee. They find that abhorrent. It doesn't work with any of the system of reality they've been playing by.
God says, "I hide my heart from people who say they don't need me." But then, Jesus goes on to tell us something about whom God shows his heart to. He goes on, "Father, you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding, and you've revealed them to little children." I mean, do you want to be downstairs in church right now with the little children if you want to see God's heart? Of course, this includes actual children, but it means something more. This speaks to those who will become like a child in admitting their needs, in admitting that they need another bigger grownup, if you will, to help them, to provide for them, to show them the way.
This means that God reveals his heart to those who recognize they are not God and they need his help. Scripture resounds with this theme. I could read you several verses. God resists the proud, and he draws near to the humble. So in approaching the wide-open heart of Jesus in Matthew 11:29, we must pass through Matthew 11:25, where God says, "Do not presume upon my heart. I don't share it with just anyone, but I will open it to all who will say, 'I'm weary, and I need help.'"
Now, as the passage moves on, we learned a little more specifically how exactly God reveals that heart. I mean, how does he do it? Does he say, "Look at scripture right now," or does he say, "You need to look up at the sky or study beauty and mountains?" What does he say specifically? How does God specifically reveal his heart? This is where you need to move to verse 27 in our passage.
In verse 27, we see a very unique, almost unimaginable relationship between God, the Father and Jesus described. Out of which, Jesus gives us the key clue to how God reveals his heart. All right? Here's verse 27. Jesus says, "All things have been handed over to me by my father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him." Notice the second half of the verse. Jesus says, "No one knows the Father except the Son." That's everyone who has ever existed on earth. No one. No one knows the Father except the Son, and he goes on, thankfully, "And anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him." This sounds a lot like what Jesus says in John 14, when he says, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."
Now, at first blush, we find this a little bit offensive or maybe you do. That's the way I read it at first. Doesn't this mean that Jesus isn't very inclusive, that he's saying no one else has access to the father? But we think this way because we begin with a faulty premise, and the faulty premise is the same old idea of the nebulous heart of God that's open to everyone. We begin assuming God's heart is just laying open to anybody no matter how they act, no matter who they are, and that our little human minds and eyes all through their own ingenuity can see it.
We start with that premise, but the Bible says that's a faulty premise. The Bible instead paints a picture where everyone is in a fog. They don't really know the meaning of life. They don't really know where they're headed. They don't really understand all the existential crises in their soul. They do their best with the 40, or 50, or 70, or 80 years they get, but they don't really understand. The Bible says through that fog has come one ray of light, and that ray of light is the manifestation of who God is and therefore, who we are and what this is all about through one person, Jesus Christ. So the ray of light is not to exclude. It's to invite an otherwise blind world to come home.
What God says through that single ray of light through Jesus is, "I do want you to know me. In case you're wondering, I do want you to know me, and I do want to share my love with you. Here I am in the flesh. You can finally see me." That's what Jesus means when he says, "No one, no one has seen or knows the Father unless I reveal him because I am that beam of light. I am that one single window, and I've come for anyone who is weary and heavy-laden."
The Bible says no one has ever seen God, no one, but the only God who is at the Father's side, Jesus, he has made him known. So we've seen a few things so far in this passage. Rather than racing up to Jesus' wide-open heart, we've seen that God hides this heart from those who are proud. But if we will humble ourselves and... All that means is you could be 99% pride and 1% humility, and you're in. That's all you need, 1%. "I'm really proud, God, and I wish I wasn't so proud." "Good. That's perfect. That's all I need." It's that saying, "I wish I wanted to need you more than I feel like I need you." "Great, that works." It's that small admonition where we become like a little child where I don't know everything, and I can't do everything. Please help.
Then, we learned that in that posture of humility, it is only through seeing Jesus that we see the Father. So now, I think we're ready to look at the heart Jesus opens to us in verses 28 through 30. So when we finally peer into it, what do we see? A. W. Tozer said that what comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us. So I wonder what you think about when you think about the heart of God.
In your everyday lives, if you were to get a vista of God's heart, by which you meant, "I'm going to see how God feels towards me right now," what do you think your reflex would be? Not your theology that you eventually get to, but what is your heart's reflex? I think many of us, maybe we assume the worst. We assume God is critical and angry with us, perpetually disappointed, even disgusted with some of our failings. Others of us, maybe our reflex is to imagine God as indifferent and distant, not at all inclined to care about you. Others see God as high, and holy, and proud, far too lofty to suffer weak and feeble creatures.
Our reflex. Again, not what you end up thinking about and saying out loud in Sunday school. The reflex of our heart often assumes God's heart is agitated, disappointed, impatient, indifferent, done with us. This is why Jesus' revelation in Matthew 11 verse 29 is so stunning. He's encouraged people to come to him, and to take his yoke upon him, and to learn from him to find rest. In the middle of all that, he gives us the reason why we should run to him and trust that invitation. He simply says, "I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls, gentle and lowly."
The only place in the whole New Testament where Jesus explicitly describes his heart, he decides to say, "It's gentle, and it's lowly. This is who I am. This is what I'm like way, way deep down beneath everything else." The term "gentle" is also translated as meek, and it carries the sense of one who is humble, not proud, who is mild in his way, not vengeful or harsh.
Now, gentleness or meekness does not mean weak, and it certainly doesn't mean passivity or indifference before evil. As we'll see through this series, Jesus' heart displays an array of affections and movements, including proper expressions of righteous anger. Just prior, just prior to this passage we're looking at, in Matthew 11, picking up at verse 21 through 22, Jesus is denouncing the cities that remain too proud to admit their need for him. "Woe to you, Chorazin. Woe to you, Bethsaida. It would be more bearable on the day of judgment for Tyre and Sidon than for you. I'm gentle and lowly."
It does not mean weak. It does not mean Jesus suffers the proud who will never turn to him and suffers the evil lightly. This heart is open as we saw to those who will humble themselves and who will see by faith that Jesus, you are the revelation of God's heart. It is to these people that Jesus says, "I am gentle and lowly." We will return to the righteous anger that comes out of our Lord's heart in a sermon in a few weeks because it's important, but that is not the essence of who he is. He doesn't say, "I am angry and wrathful. He says, "I am gentle and lowly."
Now, the term "gentle" to keep unpacking this. I mentioned a moment ago it doesn't mean weak. It doesn't mean passive. It is used, the term that we translate gentle or meek, it's used in other Greek literature to describe a tamed horse. So you should picture a powerful stallion, terrifyingly strong that has been tamed. In other words, it's an image of strength under control. In verse 27, remember, Jesus has said, "All things have been handed over to me by my father." That means Jesus has all power. So we're approaching someone who has just said, "All things have been handed over to me. All things."
Then, you're drawn to him, and you think, "What is he going to be like?" He says, "I'm gentle, and I'm lowly." This means that Jesus' power emanates from a sense of total security, not an insecure pride, and then it's guided by a radical passion of love. Beneath the surface of Jesus' strength and majesty lies tenderness and mercy. He is gentle. That's who he is.
Now, what about the term "lowly?" Gentle and lowly. These two terms have some overlap, but there's an important nuance. The term rendered "lowly," it often conveys social standing or physical appearance. So it could be translated as poor or undesirable, unimpressive. This is a word Mary uses in her song after the angel has appeared to her and told her her role in the story of salvation. Mary says to God, she thanks him because he has looked upon the humble estate. That's the word we render lowly, the humble estate of his servant. Mary is saying, "He's shown me favor, even though my position in society is poor, is young, is uneducated." So why would Jesus say this?
Jesus is saying, "I have not appeared on the scene as one who is socially impressive, like a king arrayed in purple. I'm not an elite. I don't have a great education. I'm not polished. I'm not well-dressed. I'm not handsome." Long ago, Isaiah prophesied that the Messiah "would have no form or majesty that we should look at him and no beauty that we should desire him." Jesus says, "I am lowly. My heart is lowly. It's not here so that you would stand at a distance. It's here so that you would know I'm approachable. I am not the person in the lunch room you're scared to sit with. I'm the person who would love to have you join me." Jesus is accessible to everyone. So what are the implications of this for our heart?
Quite simply, run to him. You don't have to be afraid. "But I have sinned greatly," you say. Jesus replies, "But I am kind, not resentful." "But no, I have sinned greatly over and over again." He says, "But I am patient, not short-tempered." "But I am so beat down." "But I am tender," he replies. "I'm not rough." "But I am so full of anger. I am so cold." "But I am warm and peaceful," Jesus says. "I'm not anxious. I'm not dark." "But I'm a nobody to most people." Jesus says, "I am lowly and unimpressive. I'm not like a ruler who stands far away or who has a great office among men." "But I have hated you for how my life has gone." "I understand. I want to help you," Jesus replies. "I've never been indifferent to your prayers or your sorrow."
Our Lord is gentle. He is not like a sharp cliff. He's like a gentle hill. He is not like a scorching wind, but he is like a gentle breeze. He's not rough and mean. He's like a soft or gentle cloth. This is who he is. This is his very nature. It's his first reflex with sinners and sufferers. I like to imagine Saint Paul clinging to a piece of wood, a drift in a cold sea all night long after yet another shipwreck, looking at his external circumstances, thinking this is just about the opposite of gentleness.
Somewhere deep in his heart, he begins to remember Jesus' words. "I will never leave you or forsake you. I am with you always. Paul, I am gentle. Paul, I am peeling your soul off all that will perish so you can cling all the more to me. Paul, I am gentle. I am lowly," and the apostle loved his Lord. That's the first thing we see about who our Lord is. If you've never run to Jesus, and if you've thought ill things about Jesus, judgemental, overly religious, I hope maybe you'll be amazed that of all the things he could say, he says, "I'm gentle, and I'm lowly."
I want to conclude with just a little thought of application. As I've set our sermon up, we want our hearts not just to feel God's heart, but to be healed and changed, and this means our hearts will become like his as they're in contact with his. It's interesting that earlier in Jesus' teaching, he uses this word "gentle" or "meek" when he says, "Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth." "Blessed are the meek." It's the same word we translate as gentle. In other words, he's saying, "I want you to be this way too." This means he wants us to be people who don't return insult for injury, who don't fly off the handle at the slightest insult to our ego. People who know the beauty, and the power, and the strength of power manifest through meekness and humility.
The late Anglican statesman, who in many ways helped shape the DNA of this church, John Stott, said that of Jesus' modeling and teaching of meekness and gentleness, no greater modern-day example has existed outside of Martin Luther King Jr. Here was a man who stood before seemingly intractable evil and racial injustices and had every reason to burn with fury and to act in anger. Somehow, John Stott points out, "He embodied meekness, non-violence, and humility."
This led me on a trail, reading some of King's sermons. So I wanted to close with a sermon he preached in Montgomery, Alabama in a black church because he wasn't allowed to go inside of a white church on Christmas day, 1957. I want you to hear this. This is a man's heart who is under the gentle touch of the Lord, who understands that power manifests through meekness is the key to changing others' hearts, and with this, we close.
King says, "To our most bitter opponents, we say, 'Do to us what you will, and we shall continue to love you. Throw us in jail, and we shall still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children. We shall still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our community at the midnight hour and beat us, and leave us half-dead. We shall still love you, but be assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer. One day, we shall win freedom, but not only for ourselves, and here it is, we shall so appeal to your heart and conscience that we shall win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory."
Power exercised through humility and gentleness is a tremendous thing, and that is the heart of our Lord. King is an example of someone who was shaped by that, and so I pray that we all would feel this invitation to run to our Lord who is gentle and lowly. Let me pray for us.
Lord, thank you for showing us your heart, and please don't leave us to our own devices to get to it. Please, Lord, let this little statement that you're gentle and lowly, make it sway from our minds into our hearts, and make us to be more like you in every way. Amen.