Zach Reed: Turn your Bibles to Matthew 11. We’re just going to look here. I’m going to look at a couple different passages here.

How many of you went to the Bible study? One.

Okay, most everybody went to that one? Alright. I know the basic gist of what he was covering, but this is…

I just have a burden on my heart. Let’s open a word of prayer real quick. Make sure that everybody got one of the handouts when they’re coming in.

Alright, let’s pray. Lord, I do ask that you would help us as we look at this. I pray that we are wanting these workshops to be practical, and I ask that you would help as we look at Bible application, that you would use this in our lives and going forward in your name.

Amen. Application, definition of it, is an act of putting something to use. So, most of you all looked at Bible study, studying the Word.

But one of the key things, and I don’t know how much you spoke on it, but applying scripture is, okay, so if we’re looking at scripture, what do you do with it? And I don’t know about you, when I was looking at, you know, my teen years and looking at reading the Bible, looking at scripture, sometimes you just didn’t always know what you’re reading, and you just kind of breeze through it, and you never actually applied scripture.

And as I went to Bible college, God called me to go to Bible college, and then he called me to preach, I started looking at preaching and listening, obviously many different preachers. The ones I appreciated the most were the ones that really applied scripture. And I didn’t want to just hear the ones where I just kind of gave this view up here and never actually applied it to my life.

I wanted to hear, like, how does this actually affect me right now? And so I’m not saying that I’m the greatest at this, but there have been times where, you know, when I’ve preached, I really want to apply it to the very heart and root of the issue. Because if you don’t get to the root, if you don’t get to the heart of the matter, what have you done?

I like to give this illustration sometimes when I talk about stuff like this. But being in landscaping, I enjoy being outside. I enjoy working with plants and I enjoy doing hardscapes and things like that.

But I do that part-time. One of the things that I deal with is weeding. I don’t know about you.

How many of you like weeding? We’ve got a few strange ones here. You like weeding.

I don’t mind weeding if I have to, but one of the weeds that is particularly annoying is a dandelion. I’m sure you guys have that in your lawns or try to get them out. But here’s the thing with dandelions.

If you’ve ever had to weed them, most of the time when I’ve been working with people that don’t like weeding, they just go through and they just pop the tops off of everything. I’ve literally gone into a job to get it ready for spring cleanup or whatever and I went to pull a dandelion and I always try to get a tool that has a long head on it where I can get down in there and get that tap root.

Because the dandelions, the tap roots that go down. And if somebody keeps pulling the top off of a dandelion, I’ve literally had it where I’ve had a dandelion tap root that was this big around at the top. They kept pulling the top, and they never got the root.

So the top kept coming back occasionally, but that root just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And you’re never going to get it out. You’re never going to deal with the problem.

You’re always getting the surface things. Until you actually got something in there and got that root out, then you didn’t deal with the problem. And really, when we’re talking about Bible application, we’re talking about Scripture, we can be surfacy with our application.

We can look at Scripture and go, oh, man, God is love. When we move, and that’s all we stay. And we just have this head knowledge, but we never actually put boots on the ground.

And that’s comfortable to do it that way. But God has called us to something greater. And that’s what I want to challenge us all with, is how do you allow the Holy Spirit to apply Scripture to your life?

I’ve been on a personal journey of what is discipleship. And I want us to look at a couple different things. But Jesus says here in Matthew 11, 28 through 30, it’s a well-known passage.

He says, Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart. And ye shall find rest unto your souls, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

I want to just look at this real quick, just as I’m laying some of the groundwork. Jesus’ invitation to each one of us is, come, learn of me. I am the way.

I am the truth and the life. And I want you to learn. He said in John 1, he said, I am the word.

And so he wants us to learn of him. He’s inviting us all. We’ve been talking about it.

But he’s inviting all of us to a relationship with him. I’ll jump to another passage here, John 8, where he says, Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue my word, then are ye my disciples indeed. And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

looking at that phrase mainly, if you continue in my word, if you abide in my word, then you are truly my disciples. And this is where it gets down to. God has been dealing with me about what is discipleship.

But God just called all of us to a life of discipleship. Are you going to be a disciple of Jesus? Are you going to follow him?

Discipleship is that of obeying. There has to be obedience and you’re not a disciple. As Jesus is there, he called those 12 and there was many others that followed him.

there was all different types of people that he called. Fishermen, average, you know, just run-of-the-mill, blue-collar people. He called the ones that were the tax collectors, that everybody hated.

They were despised. They were despicable. He called, you know, he called the right-wing zealot, who was just, they were kind of, you know, probably the most people were kind of nutty.

Like, you know, nowadays the conspiratory theorists, you know, whatever. He was just kind of way over there. He called everybody.

And his call was, he said, follow me. But in order to follow, they had to take a step of obedience. And even today, God is calling each one of us, and he says, follow me.

Have a relationship with me. But that relationship requires obedience. When I first came to Bible college, I started hearing a lot of stuff on obedience.

And I don’t know why I never equated that with Scripture, but I just didn’t think about it on that level. Jesus is calling us to obey Him. And I’m not saying this as that He’s sitting there with a stick and He’s ready to beat you over the head if you better obey me.

But He’s saying, if you want a relationship with me, if you want to know what true life is, follow me, obey me, come after me. And a large part of that really is, as we study Scripture, as you read scripture, as we dig into his word every day, and God speaks to us, there needs to be application from it. How does what we just read, how does that apply to me today?

In James he says, But be ye doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. If we’re not willing to take what God has said and allow the Spirit of God to apply it to our lives, we’re deceiving our own selves. We’re walking around in deception.

We might think we know everything, but if we haven’t applied it and if we’re not obeying it, we’re fools. We’re deceived. So that’s really what I want to challenge us with this morning.

So take your sheets and you look at those sheets here. This is kind of a method. It’s not necessarily new to me.

I’ve taken different concepts from different people. But these are some of the things that I do, especially when I’m preparing for a message and such. But you look at this here.

It says in the top part, write out and find key words. So I’m going to go ahead and why don’t you take the passage there that I had you all turn to. Let’s look at, why don’t you write out verses 28 and 29.

I know this is going to take some time. We’ll have to go kind of quickly. So I want everybody to write it out.

The practice of writing scripture out is actually super helpful for even in meditating with it. It’s another sensory part of it. So does everybody have a pen?

You need a pen? No, you got it. I got one.

It’s OK if you have messy handwriting. Only you’re going to see it. All right, if we’re close to being done, as you’re writing that out, here’s what next thing I want us to do.

Find key words. Paying close attention to what are the verbs there. Find the verbs.

Verbs always denote action. So where are the verbs in there? Underlying them.

Align the keywords there. Alright, when you’re done, just look at me. Do you think you found keywords there?

And I want us to just kind of go through that and talk through some of the keywords, what you think is keywords there. Once I got a majority of people, I was… All right.

Somebody tell me, what do you think is a key word in that passage? Can you just raise your hand? Come.

Come, okay. Come. What else?

Labor. Labor. Okay.

What else? Rest. Rest, okay.

Speaker 3: Give.

Zach Reed: Where is that? Which one you said? Give.

I’ll give you rest. Oh, okay, yep, yep.

Learn. What’d you say? Learn.

Heavy, yep, heavy laden, learn. Okay, take. Learn.

Meek, yes.

Speaker 4: Shall find.

Zach Reed: Shall find, okay. Somebody else said one. Lowly in heart.

Lowly in heart, okay. Anybody else?

Yolk. Yolk? You can say souls, like your souls.

I think we’ve said most of the key words in there. Okay, so I like to go through, underline them. Sometimes I might put a box around a different one, but I want to do it around the verbs.

Then on the other side, I write out those keywords, list them out. We can do a couple of them. Then I want to define them.

We don’t necessarily have time to do all this. I’m sorry. They never told me when I was supposed to be done.

So let me just find out.

Speaker 3: You can go until 12.15.

Zach Reed: Do I have until 12.15? Did they say it ended?

Speaker 3: Pass through session ends.

Zach Reed: So I’m assuming you can end then as well. All right. It was originally 12.15, but I wasn’t sure.

of my brother was long-winded so all right um so then we don’t have to say have time to do this but this is what I like to do I have there’s obviously there’s different different resources out there you have a concordance out there you know with the strong concordance there’s that’s probably the most accessible one I use an app called the blue letter Bible app it’s a free app and you can click on verses

and look at what what is this you know what is it saying in the Greek or the Hebrew, just trying to get what is the original sense of the word. Because sometimes you have words in the English, in our English Bible, that are older English words to get the fuller meaning.

What is this really saying to us? So I like to look at it, define them, look at what is this really meaning. I’m trying to boil it down to the essence of what it’s saying.

Because sometimes you have words, sometimes you have statements, and you think you know it, but if you haven’t actually defined it and are able to define it, then you don’t know it. Like if you can’t explain it to a five-year-old, you don’t know it. Okay?

I’m being honest because if you can’t explain it to a little child, you don’t really know it. Because if you can explain it to a little child, that means you know it enough to break it down and put it in the most simplest form. I have twin five-year-olds.

They ask me questions. Sometimes it’s questions like, “Oh man, I don’t know how to answer that one.” And you realize, “I don’t really know this as well as I thought I did.” And so you’re trying to turn around and looking at Google real quick to figure out what it is. So defining it needs to be—try to get it there where you can define what the words are.

Here’s a couple things. As we’re looking at this, what is a yoke? I think most of us know what a yolk is, but it’s that implement that they would have on their shoulder, oxen, not always oxen, different animals, but usually it’s in pairs where they would have it on either side of it and they would be pulling a farming implement, whether it’s a plow, what it might be.

I was in India back in 2009 and they still plow with a yolk, those were water buffalo, but they’ll plow with a yolk. But the reality is if it’s a double yoke, they have to pull together. They have to be in step together, pulling.

You know, if one’s pulling harder or faster than the other, it puts stress on, it’s not easy to pull. So he’s studying, what is a yoke? So you’re looking at what that is.

He says, “Learn of me.” What do you think that means, defining it there? What do you think it means when he says, “Learn of me?” You have an idea?

Speaker 5: Study his word.

Zach Reed: Okay, study his word. Anybody else? Get to know him.

Okay. So you’re just defining it.

I won’t take as much time on this, but the next part of that is ask questions about passage. As you define from these key words, what are some questions we can ask about this passage? There’s like who questions, what questions, when, how, why.

If you were in the Bible study, I’m sure you talked about what is the context, what’s historically happening in this passage or what’s going on here. That all helps you as you’re sitting. I mean, if you’re just taking one verse, trying to get this whole picture, you’re zeroing in on this.

If you’re just taking in your Bible reading, say this one passage sticks out to you in your Bible reading, how are you applying this one passage? So what are some questions that you can ask about this passage?

Speaker 3: How does taking a yoke in every moment of work give you rest?

Zach Reed: Yoke. Is he talking to believers or unbelievers? Okay.

And what’s the answer to that question? He’s talking to believers.

Okay. Maybe. Possibly.

Maybe. Depends. It depends.

I mean, the truth is the same. It’s because it’s a gospel truth, so it has implications to both sides of it. So, yeah.

You know, a lot of times you preach this to believers, but you could preach this to unbelievers as well. Because as we ask more questions of the passage, I think that some of that can come out. Somebody else had…

Speaker 4: Just why he was saying it. Who was he saying it to, and when was he saying it?

Zach Reed: Okay. You could ask, what does it mean to be meek? What is lowly in heart?

What is this? Define it.

Lowly in heart has the idea of being a bottom shelf. God is not in a place that he is above you and that he is so brainy that you just can’t even be accessible to God. When he teaches, because this is focusing on him, Look at the passage.

He’s saying, come, learn of me. I’ll teach you. I am the easiest person to learn from.

So we’re asking these questions about, what does it mean to be meek? The idea is gentle. What does it mean to be gentle?

What does it mean to be gentle? Soft. Okay, what do you mean by soft?

Someone who is… soft spoken and well worded. Okay.

What does it mean to be gentle? Does it mean to be a wimp? No, it doesn’t mean to be a wimp.

Speaker 5: I’m not going to say about caring for somebody, like not being rough with them. Okay. Not being rough.

Caring for something so much that you don’t want to hurt it. Okay.

Zach Reed: I was doing a landscape project here at the church, and somebody was helping me, and they had a wheelbarrow, and they were moving along with, I can’t remember what it was, they were carrying in the wheelbarrow, and rabbits had built a nest down in the ground. They had literally dug, and he didn’t realize that, and he was running through, and it hit the nest, and it was a little tiny rabbit, unfortunately, got hurt.

But one of my boys was holding it, and what did I say as he’s holding it? Gentle, gentle, be gentle with it. I’m not saying, hey, be a wimp.

I’m saying be gentle, be careful, because he’s strong. Stronger than the rabbit. You know, I have to be, I have little kids.

When my baby was born, my little girl, I have to be gentle. She’s a baby. Crazy story is I actually delivered her in the band on the way to the hospital, so I had to be gentle with her.

What is it, you know, what else? What does it mean? Is it speaking– somebody says soft voice.

Does it mean getting angry, being frustrated, irritated, being harsh and hard? No, gentle is– there’s control there. OK?

What are some other questions we can ask about this?

Speaker 3: How can a burden be light?

Zach Reed: Okay. What he’s giving rest from. All right.

What is he giving rest from? What does it mean to labor?

What does it mean to be heavy laden? We’re looking at this context. What does it mean?

Speaker 5: To work.

Zach Reed: Okay, to work hard. Do you think he’s talking physical or spiritual? And that’s a question.

Is it spiritual? Is it physical?

You know, labor, heavy laden? What is he talking about here? What does it mean to labor?

What does it mean to be heavy laden? If he’s talking spiritually.

Speaker 3: It’s interesting to me that labor is active. Those that you are laboring and are having latent as passive, those that are being put upon spiritually. Labor is working.

It’s stressful with those that are receiving burdens from others or outside sources.

Zach Reed: So building off that, what do we know about context? Who is he primarily speaking? What is his audience?

Here. What do we know as his audience is?

Okay. What?

Speaker 5: His disciples.

Zach Reed: His disciples, okay. I didn’t have you read the whole passage there, but, you know, he’s talking to Jewish people. What had the religious leaders done?

Building off of what Stephen was saying. What had the religious leaders done?

They had been piling stuff on top of them, on top of the people. Jesus says later on, he’s like, you guys have made the people try to do so much stuff and you won’t even do it yourself. So they’re putting all these rules that weren’t necessarily scriptural.

They’re putting all these rules and in order to be a good Jew, they were just laboring. They had all this stuff piled on top of them. They’re feeling this way.

So that’s, again, I’m hoping this helps. I’m challenging you to ask questions about this when you’re reading scripture. When you read scripture and God gives you something, really every day you should be meditating on a passage of scripture.

You’re looking at something. Because God wants to speak to you. He wants to speak to you.

Sometimes we can’t hear him because we haven’t obeyed the very things he’s already told us. So all we hear is that, you know, you can be reading a passage and maybe that’s not there. But all you’re hearing is what he’s already told you because you’re not obeying.

I experienced that when I pushed off something and I’m not obeying what he’s saying. I can’t hear his voice. And so you’re asking these questions about who, what, when, how.

What does this mean? You’re just picking the passage apart. Then, as you’re picking the passage apart, you’re getting a clearer vision picture of what this passage is saying.

Jesus is saying, come. Come to me. all of you that are heavy all of you that have all this stuff on you’ve tried you’ve tried to live life and you can’t you’ve tried and tried and tried to kick an addiction you’ve tried and tried and tried not to be angry you’ve tried not to worry or fret you’ve tried to be good

and you can’t do it he says come to me I’m the answer I’m the solution I am the most there is no teacher in the world that’s greater than Jesus to teach somebody because I’m bottom shelf I’ve been around people that were so brainy and they started explaining stuff to me and I sat there and went okay

that went in way over my head like I don’t understand can you like break it down to like more of a dummy level I kind of need this you know a little lower bottom shelf that’s how Jesus gives it it’s always bottom shelf it’s always practical It’s always so that you can understand. Scripture is not intended for you to be like, what in the world? I don’t understand this.

He wants us to work, but it’s there for us. If you seek after him, the Spirit is going to give you understanding. And so God is giving that there.

He says, I am the type of teacher that anybody wants to learn from. You’re never going to be scared to come and ask me a question. How many of you have been scared to ask a teacher a question?

Have you ever been scared to ask a question? Okay, that’s usually not my fear. I don’t mind asking questions.

I’ve always gotten in trouble because I ask questions. There are times, though, I realize that’s probably a dumb question. I’m hoping somebody else will ask that question.

I don’t have to ask it. But I’ll ask a question. I’m curious.

What is it? But we’ve all been fearful before. I don’t want to ask that person a question because I don’t know how he’s going to respond.

That’s not Jesus. You can ask him anything. That’s the type of teacher he is.

and he’s saying everybody that’s heavy laden everybody that’s laboring everybody that’s trying and striving and just falling flat on their face come to me and learn of me because I’m gentle and I am bottom shelf and I’ll give you rest I’ll give you peace okay so we’re looking at that that’s what he’s talking about in this passage so how do you apply this passage to your own life are you gentle These are some of the questions on the back side there.

If this passage is true, then how should I obey it? It’s focused a lot about who Jesus is, but you’ve got to start asking questions about me. Am I free to come to Jesus?

Do I feel like I can come to him with anything? Am I quick to come to him? Or do I go to something else?

Am I gentle? Am I lowly in heart? Is this who I am?

Am I just laboring? Am I striving? These are all questions you’ve got to ask yourself.

I’ve been in enough teen Bible studies, and I’ve asked, okay, so what was God speaking to you about? And everybody’s like, well, I need to be nicer to my brothers. and it’s so like surface.

I’m like, come on guys. There’s nothing more. There’s got to be more application than just that.

God’s wanting to speak to us. He wants to get to the very deep things of our lives and deal with it. And so let God apply this.

Here’s the question. Are you gentle? Or do you struggle with anger?

Are you bottom shelf? Are you lowly in heart? Or are you about yourself?

You’d rather show off your knowledge than caring about the person. Can anybody come to you? Are you accessible from anybody?

Or do people stay away and say, I don’t really want to talk to that person. I don’t want to ask for help from that person. How many of you guys work a job?

Work a job with people that are lost. How many of you work a job? Can your co-workers, do they feel like they can come to you and ask you questions?

If something’s struggling in their lives, can they even feel like they can approach you and know there’s going to be compassion? That’s the questions from this passage that I’m just asking. That is how we apply scripture.

get it to the base level, the heart of the issue what is the heart of what God’s trying to say here and then how does that apply to my life and then the last part here share slash an action plan it’s easy for us to write a statement out and say okay this is how I need to obey this is how it applies and you leave it there what are you doing with the truth that God gave you Are you obeying it?

Or are you just, like James says, are you beholding your face in a glass and walking away and forgetting how you looked? What are you doing with it? God wants to transform you with his word.

He says if you continue, if you abide in my word, then truly you are my disciples. If you take what I have. Recently, I noticed that my boys had a memory verse for their Sunday school class.

And it just, hey, we should write that down. I take them into school in the mornings. I said, we should write it down.

So I stuck it on my dash and my truck. And as we’re going in, we’re working through the memory verse. Well, I have it sitting there.

And as I’m driving around, I just keep noticing it. And so God was convicting me. Memorize this.

Meditate on this. Take what I’m doing. I’m keeping it.

I’m abiding in this word that he has. It’s like everywhere I went, I had this passage. Are you taking what you have and are you doing what it is?

Sometimes it means whether it’s your parents, maybe there’s another friend at school, I don’t know what context you’re in, but you need to have an action plan of, okay, I want to obey what God just showed me. And so I’m going to take action steps in order to obey this. You need other people.

Let me just say this. Nobody is an island to themselves. You need other people, other Christians, in your walk.

You need other people that are stronger than you in their walk. I have, you know, things in my life. I’ve struggled with anger for a long time.

And God has been dealing with me about it. I didn’t realize that I always called it whatever. I was just irritable.

I was just this. As God’s been dealing with me, I get angry on stuff. And you can learn how to just keep it quiet and maybe not show it.

But it’s a problem in my life. It’s wrong. It’s a sin.

I need to deal with this. So what have I done? I reached out to an older man in our church.

I went and took coffee with him. And I said, okay, this is the thing I’m struggling with. And I’m seeking God for it, but I need help.

And I need somebody else to come alongside me. I’m not talking about it with my wife, but I needed another believer to come alongside me and walk with me in this area. You know what?

Every time I see him, he’s one of the deacons in the church. Every time I see him, he goes, hey, how’s it going? And he asks me, point blank, how are you doing?

And I have purpose to be honest with him. If I blew it, I tell him.

that is what God’s calling us to do you can’t just look at your Bible and read your Bible you need actions that you need to hold your feet to the fire and say I want to obey Jesus because that’s how I experience him I want to hear his voice and I want to obey what he’s doing because as I obey him I step out in faith and I trust him his grace is able to flow

and I’m experiencing every single day I’m experiencing all throughout the day God wants a walk of faith, step by step. As you read his word, as he applies it in your life, then take action steps on how I’m going to do that. So that might be another friend at school or in church.

Might be a parent. Might be a sibling. It might be an older person in the church that you know.

The reason why I reached out to that man in our church, because he had expressed that he had had an anger problem and God had been delivering him. And so I thought, that’s who I want to find. So I went and found him and I said, can you help me?

And as God leads you along, you’re able to reach out to someone else and say, if you are of what this verse says, if you are able, are gentle and easily approachable, somebody’s going to come to you and start opening up and you go, you know what? God’s delivered me and is delivering me from this. And I’m going to help you.

Let’s walk together in this. that’s discipleship that’s the life that God has called us to do that is how he reaches the world and it simply starts with reading God’s word and allowing God to apply it in your life don’t be just surfacing let God get deep in you ask questions about scripture meditate on scripture write it out, take it with you whether it’s put it on your phone or put it on a 3×5 card that’s what I did I put

it on a 3×5 card, put it on the dash of my truck that is what I needed, meditating on it, of letting God apply it. And as we allow that to do that, or what James says, we are a doer of the word and not a hearer.