Join us on the InTouch Podcast as we explore God’s Word and the power it has to lift the burdens we carry in life. Charles Stanley delves into the concept of burdens, from prophetic to daily and sinful burdens, and how faith and divine intervention offer us relief. This episode guides listeners through scriptural teachings that promise comfort and redemption, aiming to strengthen our spiritual journey and offer practical steps to cast our cares on the Lord.
Welcome to the InTouch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Friday, March 7th. Sometimes the situations we face seem almost unbearable. The pressure can be crushing at times. Let’s learn about God’s Word as the key to lifting the weight of our burdens.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, all of us are familiar with burdens in our life, and I’m sure that if we took time to have testimony tonight, that everybody in here could stand up and say, here’s the burden of my heart, or here’s the burden of my life, or here’s what has burdened me the most, or here’s what has sort of worn away at me. This is what’s made me discouraged. This is how I’ve become so weary in life. And this is what I don’t understand. And this is what I don’t understand, why God doesn’t do this. And so all of us understand something about burdens. But usually we probably think about burdens just being one particular thing. And so I want to talk about the kind of burdens we bear. And I want you to turn, if you will, to Matthew chapter 11. And here Jesus has been talking, speaking to his heavenly Father, and he comes to a particular verse here that I want us to read. A wonderful invitation that Jesus gives us, and certainly one that those who listened to him and heard this felt awesomely, overwhelmingly, lovingly invited to him when he said in verse 28 of Matthew chapter 11, Come unto me, all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you shall find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my load is light. All of us carry loads in our life at times and for different reasons. So I want us to think for just a moment about this whole idea of a burden. A burden is a heaviness. It’s a weight we feel. That may be motivated by a number of things, but it is a sort of a weight in the heaviness that you and I feel in our heart and our spirit. Now, that burden can either motivate me to do something good, or it can motivate me to frustration and anxiety, or… I can ask myself the question, what is this about? And find out what is the reason, what is the cause of this heaviness in my life? Sometimes people will carry burdens for years and years and years and never deal with them. Oftentimes those burdens are unrecognizable. They can’t quite identify what it is if I just knew what this was. And sometimes it is a burden. that they carry a very weighty, heavy burden. So, I want us to talk about three kinds. And the first one It’s a burden as I look at this particular chapter here. I know this is not what Jesus is speaking of here because he’s talking to people in his day who lived in poverty. They were slaves, all kinds of difficulty and hardship. But I think one of the primary ones that I deal with, and I think probably most pastors ought to have to deal with, and that’s simply a prophetic burden. I don’t mean by that that God gives you some prophecy of things that are going to happen in the future. But there is a burden in the Old Testament, for example, especially in the King James Version, the Bible talks about the burden of the Lord to Isaiah, to Jeremiah, to Ezekiel. What that was, it was a message that God gave to his prophet, And it was a message that he had to deliver to his people. Now, that burden probably oftentimes was a message from God of judgment, a message of God, a warning of future coming condemnation or whatever it might have been. But it was a burden. The burden of the Lord was upon Isaiah. The burden of the Lord was upon Ezekiel or Jeremiah or Daniel or whoever it might be. And what that is, it is a compulsion. It is a heavy, weighty compulsion on the inside that that prophet just has to tell it. Motivated by God. A message of future judgment or a warning of something that was going to happen to the nation of Israel. And so it was a prophetic burden. One that they received from God, given by God, had nothing to do with sin in the life of the prophet, but it had to do with a message that God intended for that prophet to deliver. And so there was a weighty heaviness, a disturbance on the inside. That prophet absolutely could not rest until that burden was delivered. Now, personally, I would like to say that I believe the real key to preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ and making it stick and making it effective and penetrating people’s hearts is that the message of God needs to be a burden from the Lord. And so therefore, I personally think that preaching the gospel. ought to be the deliverance of a God-given burden that man cannot do otherwise than to deliver it no matter what. I believe when that is delivered in the spirit of love, but in the spirit of divine authority, it’s going to stick. It’s going to penetrate. People’s hearts are going to be moved. They’re going to be impacted. They’re going to be influenced. God is going to change people’s lives. So that’s one type of burden. Now, But then there’s a second type of burden that Jesus was referring to primarily here, and that’s those daily burdens, those things that you and I have to deal with every day. For example, you’re a man in business and you have burdens, you have weighty decisions you have to make, and so oftentimes you feel the weight of it. Or a pastor feels the weight of his responsibility. Or you as a mother, you feel the weight oftentimes of how you train your children and how do you get this stubbornness out of them and how do you make them behave and how do you help them grow up and desire the right things in life. And so there are those burdens that all of us face in life. And they may be a financial burden. It may be It may be a burden that has to do with relationships, but we have those personal burdens, those things we carry with us. But likewise, in the same line of burden, there are burdens that God places in our heart for each other. And so we have prayer burdens. For example, when we ask you to pray for a certain person or you, since one of your friends who is going through some difficulty or hardship, And so when you get under the burden and you feel the burden, what do you feel? You feel a little heavy-hearted about it. You feel weighted down about it. You vicariously are suffering something that they’re feeling, and so you want to help them. And sometimes it is a prayer burden. That is a burden that God places upon your heart so that you will intercede for them. So sometimes it is a God-given burden. It is a God-given burden to His prophets. It is a God-given burden to us to pray for the people. But sometimes… Those burdens that you and I bear daily are burdens that we heap upon ourselves. So I want you to look at two or three verses of Scripture, if you will, and look, if you will, in Psalm 55. Because here is a wonderful promise. There are a couple of chapters here. In the 55th Psalm, I want you to notice. What he says about our burdens and those burdens may take on any kind of characteristic. He says in verse 22 of Psalm 55, cast your burden upon the Lord and he will sustain you. He will never allow the righteous to be shaken. Now, if this was the kind of burden I was to bear, he would not say cast it upon him. A burden I’m to bear that’s given to me by the Lord is something he may want to do in my heart or to do in somebody else’s life. And so he’s burdened me to pray for them or to help them in some way. But there are those burdens and heartaches and difficulties and trials that you and I face in life that God does not intend. Listen, He does not intend for us to carry some things. For example, let’s say that you have some financial need and you feel all weighted down and all burdened down. Does God intend for His children to be weighted down and burdened down and carrying the weight of this? No. He intends for us to lay this before Him. He says, “‘Cast your burden upon the Lord.'” So I want you to look, if you will, also in Psalm 68. Here’s a wonderful promise about a burden that you and I may have in life. You remember that Jesus said, come unto me, all you that labor unto heavy laden, and I’ll give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Learn of me. Learn of my ways. And he said, I’ll give you rest in your souls, no matter what you’re having to face. Look what he says in Psalm 68, verse 19. Blessed be the Lord who daily bears our burden. Now, I want you to think about this. He says in the 55th Psalm, cast your burden upon the Lord. He will sustain you. Psalm 68 says, blessed be the Lord who daily bears our burden. Now, let me ask you a question. If he daily bears our burden, what should I do with mine? What he’s saying is, look, he says, cast your burden upon the Lord and he’ll do what? He’ll sustain you. If he’s willing to carry it, what should I do with it? Give it to him. So if I say, oh, let me tell you what’s going on in my life. And we carry heavy burdens and weighty burdens. The reason we do is because somehow we’ve not learned how to get relief from them. He says he daily bears our burdens. He says he will not allow us to be shaken. That is, if you and I are willing to turn them over to him. Now, if I keep holding on to them and taking them upon myself and not understanding that I can lay it at his feet. Now, here’s the problem. The problem is it’s too intangible. Now, if I could say, if you’ll take care of this for me, I’m going to leave it. But see, I’m telling God whom I cannot see. Now, Lord, I’m putting this in your hands. You’ve got to deal with this for me. Can I say to God, God, you said you daily bear a burden and that I can cast my burden upon you. Father, in Jesus’ name, I’m just giving this to you because I can’t handle it. And you said you didn’t intend for me to handle this kind of burden. I’m just giving it to you. Now, let me ask you a question. What is the key to making that work? One word. Faith, absolutely. I must believe that God is who he says he is. I must believe that he’ll do what he says he’ll do. And I must choose to respond and to act accordingly. My God has my burden. I don’t have to worry about it. Why should I carry something that he’s so willing to carry? I don’t have to. I think believers worry and fret about And a concern and a burden down with things we do not have to be burdened down with if we’ll just trust Him to take it. But then there’s a third kind of burden. And I want you to look at two or three scriptures here because that’s the burden of sin. That’s the burden of sin. That’s the burden that is a result of condemnation. That is the burden that is a result of guilt. That’s the burden that is a result of self-condemnation. and guilt that we feel because of sin in our life. So let’s go back, if you will, again to Psalm 32. Now, I think Psalm 32 gives us a pretty good explanation of what sin, when we deal with it, or when we don’t deal with it, and we keep carrying it, here’s what happens. I do believe that a lot of sickness is the result of sin. When I read this passage, I don’t just believe that. I know it’s true. Now, look at this passage. Psalm 32, and let’s just start with verse 1. He says now, how blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven. That is, how happy, how delighted we are when we know that our sin is forgiven. Whose sin is covered. Covered by what? The blood of Jesus. How blessed is the man or the woman to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity. That is, that means he doesn’t put that on my account. That account has been cleansed by the blood of Jesus. Guilt’s not there. He says, does not impute iniquity to our account. Then he says, and in whose spirit there is no deceit. Now watch this. When I kept silent about my sin, what wasted away? My body. Does sin have an effect on the body? Absolutely. Through my groaning all day long. For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me. My vitality was drained away as with the fever heat of summer. Now think about this for a moment. He says in this passage that sin, the heavy weight of sin, he says, what did it do? He says, it wasted away my body. That means there’s some kind of sickness going on the inside. And then he says, it drained my energy. My vitality was drained away. Sin is a destroyer. It not only takes people’s money and destroys relationships and homes and everything else, sin is a destructive element in the human body, draining our energy. Why? Because, listen, it sets up a physiological response in the human body. And that is, a person is going to have to carry the weight. Listen, tell me something any heavier than guilt. I mean, what’s heavier than guilt? And so when I look at the Scriptures, and there are lots of Scriptures concerning this whole idea of burdens and the human body, and God says a lot about the human body. But when I think about all that’s involved, in fact, look in Psalm 38 for a moment. Look in Psalm 38. Let’s start verse one. Oh, Lord, rebuke me not in thy wrath and chasten me not in thy burning anger. For thine arrows have sunk deep into me and thy hand has pressed down on me. There’s no soundness in my flesh because of thine indignation. There is no health in my bones because of my sin. For my iniquities are gone over my head as a heavy burden. They weigh what? Too much for me. You know why God doesn’t want us living in sin? Weighs too much. You know why he doesn’t want to live in sin? Because sin has a physical, physiological, emotional, mental, spiritual effect in a person’s life. God does not want sin in our life because of what it does to our relationship to him. And listen, what it does to us personally. Now, we said, for example, in the burden of God’s servants, how do they get relief from that burden? Delivering the message. In dealing with the daily cares of our life, how do we get rid of those burdens? What do we do? We give them to God. And then we ask the question, how do we get rid of this burden of sin? So I want you to go back, and let’s look at two or three passages, if you will. Go back, if you will, first of all, to Isaiah chapter 53. Isaiah chapter 53, and I want to remind you of something here. Now, let’s look at this for a moment. When God gives his servant a message or a burden, here’s what he can’t do. He can’t give that to somebody else. In other words, nobody else can deliver that for him. When you and I have a burden of the cares of our life, we can get up under that burden of other people and help them through those. We can sort of share that. When it comes to our sin, there’s only one person who can deal with that burden. Who is it? Jesus. Listen to what the Bible says in Isaiah 53. Look in verse 4. Surely our griefs he himself bore and our sorrows he carried. Yet we ourselves esteemed him stricken, smitten. Of God and afflicted. He was pierced through for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The chastening for our well-being fell upon him. And by his scourging, we are healed. All of us like sheep have gone astray. Each of us has turned to his own way. But the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to do what? Fall on him. Who bears the burden of our sin? Either we bear it or what? Or God bears it. And how do we get relief from the burden of sin? We confess it. We repent of it. And we accept as true that when Jesus Christ went to the cross, he bore our sin debt in full on the cross. And therefore, the only way you and I can get relief from the burden of sin is that Jesus took it. There’s not a single verse anywhere in the Bible. There is absolutely not a single avenue anywhere to be found to get relief from the burden of sin other than through the cross of Jesus Christ. And so he says he is the sacrifice for our sins. He bore in his body what? The burden of our sin, the weight of our sin, the condemnation, the guilt, and the judgment of our sin. Think about this. You think about how you and I feel when we feel real guilty about something. Or we look back in our life and we think, oh God. Or we feel guilty about something that’s going on in our life now. Think about the heaviness and the weight and the conviction and the burden and the awesome feeling of sorrow and shame and guilt. Now let’s multiply that by about nine billion times. If my sin causes me to feel drained and heavy and weary and weighted down, and if my sin causes my body to feel like it’s wasting away, what do you think Jesus felt when the Father placed upon him all the guilt, all the condemnation, all the burden of sin for the entire world, past, present, and future? That’s why I say there is absolutely no human way to evaluate what happened to Jesus in those moments when he was on the cross and when he shouted out, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me and suffered in those moments the penalty of the burden of sin upon the whole world in those moments separated from God? Jesus said, I want you to remember that that all your sin, all your burdens, all your guilt, all your condemnation for you, your family, your friends, people you know, the people in the entire world, I want you to remember, Jesus said, I bore that penalty and that weight for you because I love you.
SPEAKER 02 :
Thank you for listening to Lifting the Weight of Our Burdens. If you’d like to know more about Charles Stanley or InTouch Ministries, stop by intouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of InTouch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.
