Burdens

BURDENS
DR. JIM DIXON
PHILIPPIANS 4:4-7
MARCH 20, 1994

Everybody has burdens. Some people have physical burdens. Some people have financial burdens. Some people have relational burdens. Some people have spiritual burdens. “Baros” is the biblical word for burden. The word “baros” literally means weight. It describes a weight that is so heavy that it weighs a person down. Now, what does God want us as Christians to do with our burdens?

I have three teachings this morning, and the first is this: Sometimes God wants us to bear them. Sometimes God wants us simply to bear our burden. Now, perhaps some of you have heard of Billie Burke. Billie Burke years ago was a Hollywood actress. She was a very friendly person, very extroverted, and on one occasion, she was taking a transatlantic voyage on a luxury cruise liner, and she was out on the deck area, and she noticed a man who was sitting in a deck chair. He obviously had a cold, and he was obviously congested. And having compassion, she went up to the man and she said, “How are you feeling?” And he said, “Not very well. I have an absolutely horrible cold.” She said, “I’ll tell you what I want you to do. I want you to go and get as much orange juice as you can. I want you to drink all that orange juice tonight. Want you to take two aspirin. I want you to go to your state room and wrap yourself in blankets and just sweat that cold out of your body. And when you wake up in the morning, you’re going to feel a whole lot better. You may have heard of me. I’m Billie Burke from Hollywood.”

The man smiled graciously, and he said, “Well, you may have heard of me. I’m Dr. Mayo from the Mayo Clinic.” Now doctors know that normally you can’t get rid of a cold overnight. Orange juice, aspirin, blankets—they’re not enough. I mean, normally you can’t get rid of a cold overnight. Normally, you just have to bear a cold at least for a period of time. And some things in life are simply like that. I mean, there are some burdens, some troubles, some problems, some tests in life that God simply expects us to bear.

There is a word in the Bible, the word “hupomeneo,” that is an extremely important word. It describes one of the highest Christian virtues. It describes a quality that the Bible tells us is precious to God. This word “hupomeneo” literally means “to abide under weight.” That’s what it literally means. Oftentimes in the scripture, it is translated by the word patience. Patience. God is looking for people who in the midst of testing, in the midst of trials, in the midst of hard times, will have patience. Steadfastness, faith, forbearances.

Now, on March 9th of this year, the cover story in USA Today was entitled Exodus. And it described a mass exodus from the state of California in the aftermath of the Northridge earthquake. The article claimed that the Northridge earthquake, for many people in California, was simply the final straw.

The people there were tired of overcrowding. They were tired of traffic jams and gridlock, tired of air pollution, tired of mudslides, tired of wildfire, tired of a rotten economy. And so, people have been leaving California in droves. From 1985 to 1990, 2 million people left the state of California and statistics are not yet available for the most recent times. But statistics from the moving and storage companies tell us that for every person moving into California, three people are moving out—a mass exodus from the golden state.

And isn’t that really typical of humanity? I mean, isn’t that human nature that when there are problems, when there are troubles, when things aren’t going so well, we try to just move, to leave the troubles behind by just moving to get away to some place new? You see, God wants us to understand that troubles are simply part of life.

I think most of us do understand this. It doesn’t matter where you live, it doesn’t matter where you move to. There’s going to be problems there. Some of our problems we take with us, Sometimes we move to another place and we just simply have new problems. That’s life in this world. God is looking for a people who love him, who have faith in him, and who in the midst of their burdens are willing to persevere. People who will bear their burdens. Our Lord Jesus Christ himself bore the cross. And you know how the night before Calvary, when he was in Gethsemane, he cried out, the Bible tells us, with loud cries and tears. The Bible tells us that he was in anguish. The Bible tells us that his perspiration was such that it was like great drops of blood. And Jesus said, “Lord Father, if it is possible, removes this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but thy will be done.” The burden of the cross.

And of course, it wasn’t simply the physical pain that he knew he would bear on Calvary, but it was the spiritual pain knowing that he would take the sin of the world upon himself for this. He had been born for this. He had come into the world that he might bear that cross.

He says, “To all who believe in his name, take up your cross and follow me.” And there is, I think, a burden that every Christian has just seeking to live for Christ in this crazy world. And then of course, there are just those everyday troubles and problems that come to all men and women the world over just living in a fallen world. But you see, in the midst of all of this, Christ calls us to bear our burdens with patience and with faith. And the Bible gives us a great promise. The Bible tells us in 1 Corinthians chapter 10, in that great passage, that God knows how much we can bear and that God will not allow our burdens to be greater than we can bear. We’re told in 1 Corinthians chapter 10 that God will not allow us to be tested beyond our power.

God will always provide a means of escape or a means of deliverance that we might be able, the Bible says, to bear it. God wants us to be able to bear the burdens and the troubles of our life, and he knows how much we can bear. And his promise is great, but he won’t allow our problems to be more than we can carry.

I think some of you perhaps have heard of a man named Samuel Plimsoll. Samuel Plimsoll was the British reformer who established the Merchant Shipping Act in 1876. And according to the Merchant Shipping Act of 1876, a mark had to be placed on every ship indicating the maximum load line. And that mark is oftentimes today called the Plimsoll mark. And you can see it on the bow of any ship right above the water line, a Plimsoll mark. If the Plimsoll mark is below the surface of the water, that ship will not be allowed to leave the harbor. If the Plimsoll mark is below the water, that ship will not be allowed to leave port because it has a burden too heavy to bear.

Now you see, God knows your maximum load line. I don’t know what you’re going through right now. I don’t know the burdens in your life. I don’t know the pain that you might be going through, but I do know this: Even though it might seem to you that it’s more than you can bear, if you believe in Jesus Christ, his promise is strong that he knows your maximum load limit. He will not allow it to be more than you can bear. He wants you to be able to bear it.

But there’s a second teaching this morning. It means sometimes, with respect to our burdens, God wants us to share them—to bear them, but also to share them. Now, years ago, about 18 years ago, Barb and I went up to Gillette, Wyoming, where I spoke at a little Baptist church. We flew Frontier Airlines into Casper, Wyoming, and there we were supposed to get on another plane from an airline called Antelope Airlines, which we had never heard of. And so we were told to go to the Frontier Airline ticket counter and ask there about Antelope Airlines. And we did that. And then we waited and I felt a man touch me on the shoulder. I turned around and the man said, “Are you the Dixons?”

And we said, “Yes.” And he said, “I’m your pilot.” And we seem kind of surprised because he was really a very, very old man, and his jacket had holes in it. And he said, “Follow me.” And we didn’t feel real good about that, but we followed him out of the building and he had this little plane out there. It was a twin engine, a Piper Aztec. And he said, “Get in.” And so we got in and he tried to start one of the engines and he couldn’t get it started. And he swore a little bit, and he was kind of ticked off.

Then he tried to start the other engine, and he finally got that started and he eventually got them both started, but he couldn’t get the same RPM on both engines and there was this kind of engine lag. As we took off, you could tell the plane was struggling. And he actually began to talk about whether we would make it on just one engine. And by the time we arrived in Gillette, we were really glad to touch down. And we went to this little Baptist church in Gillette and I spoke there. The next morning, Barb and I got up early and we really just spent a time in prayer saying, “Lord, do you want us to go back on Antelope Airlines?” And we thought maybe we should just rent a car and drive south to Casper. And we had a kind of relative peace about getting back on the plane. So we went out to the airport there at Gillette, which is really just a small little building.

There were seven, seven coal miners (I think it was seven, maybe it was eight coal miners there) and they needed to fly down to Casper also. So that made 10 of us, and the Piper Aztec only holds seven people. And so this pilot was there again, and he said, “No problem. We’ll just jam ’em in there.” I mean, “We’ll just put all 10 in.” Barb and I looked at each other, everybody looked at each other, and fortunately there was this woman there who seemed to kind of be in charge of things. And she said, “No way.” She said, “We’re gonna call Mike and get Mike over here and he’ll get the other plane out.” Apparently, Antelope Airlines had two planes. And so, sure enough, Barb and I said, “Well, we’ll go with Mike.” And so Mike comes over and Mike looks like maybe he’s old enough to have gotten out of high school, but we’re not sure, and he gets the other plane.

Barb and I get in there and we take off. Barb’s kind of anxious (well, so am I, but she’s not even looking because of the prior trip) and so we’re about halfway back to Casper, and she finally gets the nerve to kind of look out, and she starts looking down and making comments about how beautiful it is down there. And some of the plateaus just look fascinating. And immediately Mike said, “Well, how about a closer look?” And he went into kind of a semi dive, which most airlines won’t do for you. But we were just so glad to get back to Casper and to be safe on the ground.

Yet obviously you can’t put more people in an airplane than a plane can bear. I mean, you can’t do that. Sometimes, you have to share the load. You’ve got to bring out another plane. I mean, if you don’t share the load, if you don’t bring out another plane, if you don’t share the load, that plane is going to crash and burn, isn’t it? And that’s true of people too. Sometimes you’ve just have to share the load or you’re going to crash and burn.

Now, one of my favorite passages in the Bible is Numbers chapter 11, where Moses is literally ready to crash and burn. He’s just spent; he’s exhausted. The people of Israel are grumbling and complaining, and he’s their soul counselor, and he’s tired, and he’s kind of had it. But then in Numbers chapter 11, verse 17, God speaks to Moses, and God says to Moses, “What you need are burden sharers.” I mean, isn’t that great? Burden sharers? God says, “Here’s what I want you to do. I want you to pick out 70 mature people, and I want them to be burden sharers with you.” And these are exactly God’s words. God says, “They will bear the burden with you, that you will not have to bear it alone.”

And that’s great. We all need burden sharers. You think of Galatians 6:2, where the Bible says, “Bear one another’s burdens.” And maybe you’re sitting there thinking, “Well, and I don’t have any burden shares in my life.” You might be sitting there this morning thinking, “I have a lot of burdens, but I don’t have a lot of burden sharers.” I thank God that at our church we have Stephen Ministers. Stephen Ministers are men and women who have literally become burden sharers, and they’re willing to share your burden. If you want to talk to one of them. Each of our Stephen Ministers has gone through 20 weeks of training, and each of them has made two year commitments to be paracletes here in our congregation, to come alongside of those who are burdened and to be burden shares. And just two weeks ago, we commissioned 15 additional Stephen Ministers and Carolyn McDonald and Mikel Fitzsimmons, who work with the Stephen Ministry, tell us we need 40 additional Stephen Ministers. I’d like you to pray about that. Maybe God wants you to be a burden sharer in this church, in this congregation.

I thank God for our cell groups. It is so important what Louie and Ginger are doing with respect to this cell group ministry, because we need to come into relationship as a congregation. We need to come into relationship with one another that we might bear one another’s burdens. God wants us not simply to bear them, but to share them. And how critical it is that we learn to do this. And I think God’s message to each of us this morning is that he wants us to be willing to share the burden of others. Sometimes it doesn’t take much.

Now, one of my favorite stories, concerns a guy named John Todd, who was born in 1801 in Vermont and his family moved to Killingsworth, Connecticut when he was just a baby. And when John Todd was six years old, his mom and dad died in a tragic accident. And there John was, all alone, age six. And, and the courts assigned him to a kindhearted aunt who lived 10 miles away in North Killingsworth. And so this aunt became John’s mother and became John’s father. It was this aunt who took care of him and who reared him. It was this aunt who led John to personal faith in Jesus Christ. She was a wonderful Christian woman. And it was this aunt who led John Todd to give his heart to Jesus Christ and, and who saw him through Yale University and ultimately into his chosen profession. And many years later, a few decades later, the aunt was near death. And she wrote John a letter speaking of the burden of death. Though she believed in Jesus Christ and had had followed him through the years, she felt a burden of death, and she had some anxiety.

She wrote and she told John about that, and he wrote this letter back to her, and it’s just a brief letter, but I really love this little letter. He says, “It is now nearly 35 years since I, a little boy of six, was left quite alone in the world. I’ve never forgotten the day when I made the long journey to your house in North Killingsworth. I still recall my disappointment when instead of coming for me yourself, you sent your personal assistant to fetch me. I can still remember my tears and anxiety as, perched on your horse and clinging tightly to your assistant, I started out from my new home. And as we rode along, I became more and more afraid and finally said anxiously to him, ‘Do you think she will go to bed before we get there?’ ‘Oh, no,’ he answered reassuringly,
‘She’ll stay up for you. And when we get out of these woods, you will see her candle shining in the window.’

“Well, presently we did ride out into a clearing, and there sure enough was your candle. And I remember you were waiting at the door. I remember that you put your arms around me. I remember that you lifted me down from the horse. I remember that there was a fire on your hearth and a warm supper in your stove. I remember that after supper you took me up to bed and you heard my prayers, and then you sat beside me until I fell asleep. Now, you undoubtedly realized why I am recalling all these things. Someday soon Christ is going to send for you to take you to a new home. Don’t fear the summons. Don’t fear the journey. Don’t fear even the messenger of death. For at the end of the road, you will find love and a welcome. You’ll be safe there as here in Christ’s love and care. Surely he can be trusted to be as kind to you as you were years ago to me.”

Now, I think that is just a great example of what it means to share somebody else’s burden. I mean, sometimes it only takes a letter, sometimes it just takes a phone call, sometimes a conversation spent with a person. But it’s a willingness in the midst of when they feel a burden in the name of Christ to come and share that burden with them. That’s the call of Christ. I mean, we have this incredible passage, this incredible verse, where the Bible says, “Bear one another’s burdens, and by this fulfill perfectly the law of Christ.”

What an incredible statement. Bear one another’s burdens, and by this fulfill perfectly the law of Christ. And so the law of Christ is the law of love. And how do we love? We love one another when we bear one another’s burden. So bear them and share them.

And then finally, God wants us to spare them. What does God want us to do with our burdens? Sometimes he wants us to spare them. Now, I worked hard to find a word that would rhyme with bear and share, and this is a bit of a reach. But if you look in the dictionary, you will find that one of the meanings of the word spare is simply “to let go or to part with.”

That’s why we had that old expression, “Brother, can you spare a dime?’ The truth is, we all have burdens to spare. We all have burdens we simply need to part with or to let go. Some of our burdens just aren’t worth carrying. And the truth is there’s a sense in which we need to part with or let go of all of our burdens. And that is why in Psalm 55, verse 22, the Bible says, “Cast your burdens on the Lord and he will sustain you.” But the word for burden there is a special Hebrew word which really means worry or anxiety. And you see, it’s in this sense that God always wants us to spare our burdens. He wants us to let go of them because God doesn’t want us to worry or be anxious even when we must bear a burden.

He wants us to bear that burden without worry, without anxiety. Now, that is why in the New Testament we have in Philippians 4 the statement, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and supplication, let your request be made known to God.” That’s why in 1 Peter 5, the Bible says, “Cast all your anxieties on him, for he cares about you.” That’s why our Lord Jesus in Matthew 6 said, “Do not be anxious about your life.” He wants us to let go of those anxieties.

Of course, everybody has anxieties. We all have worries. In fact, zoologists tell us even animals have anxieties. You may have noticed that ornithological study that was reported this week where ornithologists are actually studying bird droppings near construction sites, and they’re examining hormonally and chemically those bird droppings to see the stress level of the birds that live near construction sites.

The idea is that if their stresses increased or if it’s high, perhaps they shouldn’t build near bird communities or something. And it might have occurred to you nobody is that concerned about your anxiety. Nobody’s that concerned about your stress, right? But you see, the Bible tells us God really is concerned about your anxiety. He really is concerned about your stress, and he’s concerned about your worries, and he wants to take them from you. He wants you to cast your anxieties upon him. And how do you do that? The Bible says you do that through prayer. “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”

I’d like to conclude with a little story. I heard it years ago about a pilot. It’s supposed to be true. A pilot was flying his plane, and he’s just flying along and he began to hear a gnawing noise or sound behind the control panel. And it occurred to him that somehow when he’d been on the ground, a rat had made its way up into the plane and worked its way back behind the control panel and was now gnawing on things. And of course, he was concerned because if the rat gnawed through the wrong thing, anything could happen. And so he thought, “What shall I do?” And he realized that a rat is a rodent, and rodents are ground creatures and sometimes even like to live under the ground.

So he thought, maybe I’ll just take the plane higher. He began to climb the plane, and he rose all the way to 20,000 feet. And before he reached 20,000 feet, the noise stopped. And ultimately, he landed safely. And sure enough, he found that there had been a rat there behind the control panel.

God wants us to understand that worry is like a rodent. Anxiety is like a rodent. God wants us to understand that worry and anxiety cannot live in the secret places of the Most High. God wants us to understand that worry and anxiety cannot well exist in the atmosphere of prayer. And he wants us to learn in prayer. He wants us to learn to just bask in prayer every day so that we might not carry the anxiety of our burdens or the worry of our burdens.

So what does God want us to do with the burdens of life? Sometimes he wants us to bear them with faith and with perseverance, knowing that he understands our maximum load line. He will not allow us to be burdened beyond what we can bear. And sometimes he wants us to share those burdens with other people, and he also wants us to become burdened shares. And of course, oftentimes he wants us to spare our burdens always in the sense of anxiety or worry, casting our cares upon him because he cares about us. Let’s close where the word of prayer.