Burden-Bearing
Every man shall bear his own burden.” — Galatians vi. 5. “Bear ye one another’s burdens.” — Galatians vi. 2. “Cast thy burden upon the Lord.” — Psalm Iv. 22.
Here is a threefold cord that is not easily broken. I trust that you will all grasp hold of it and be lifted out of your cares and complainings, out of your doubts and your despondencies. While there is an apparent contradiction between these three texts, there is not really the slightest discordance. They blend beautifully together like the bass, the tenor, and the alto in some sweet melody. God’s truth has no discords. Errors conflict with each other, but all truths run parallel like railway tracks, that might belt the globe and never come in conflict.
With this preliminary fact in mind, let us study these passages. They treat of the bearing of burdens. Can any topic be more thoroughly practical? For every human life — high or humble — has its loads; and much of the comfort, the strength, and the joy of our lives depends upon the way that these loads are dealt with. Which of them ought to be carried, and which of them none of us should attempt to carry, is a question that ought to be examined. How to make our own loads the lighter, and how to relieve other people of their burdens, is another question to be carefully considered. Upon these questions a vast deal of heavenly light streams in through the triple windows now opened before us.
I. The first of the texts to be looked at is this: “Every man shall bear his own burden.” We are too apt to regard burden-bearing as something menial or degrading. But this is a great mistake. God has so ordered it that no station in life is exempt from its inevitable loads. Many years ago, during the days of the “old dispensation,” I was visiting a hospitable planter on the Savannah River. He took me out to see a company of his negro slaves, who were carrying bags of rice on their heads to freight a vessel which was moored at the riverside. They were carrying their burdens, and cheering their task by chanting a wild negro melody. After he returned to his mansion, the planter said to me, “It is a tremendous responsibility to be the owner of a hundred human beings.” There was his burden.
Perhaps some of you merchants envy your book-keepers or your porters who have only to carry on their tale of labor, and to receive their wages. They, in turn, may often say, “What an easy time our employer has! He performs no drudgery; he sits in his countingroom, signs checks, and then rides home to his fine house in his carriage.” Yet on your busy and often overworked brain depends the continuance of their salaries. For so has God wedded capital and labor together, and what God hath joined, let no demagogues tear asunder!
Some burdens are inseparably attached to us, and deliverance from them were as impossible as to exist without eating or sleeping. Every boy at school must task himself with words of one syllable at first, and so on, with advancing years, must advance into more difficult lessons. If he shoulders up the calf he will gain each year increasing strength, until in time he can carry the full-grown bullock. Every lot in life must answer to the roll call of duty. There is no discharge in that war; and behind every horseman sits dark-browed Care. Sorrow also is no respecter of persons. It puts aching heads under royal crowns, and aching hearts on beds of down and couches of rosewood. Perhaps, during your summer outings you may have seen some picturesque mansion reposing on its sunny lawns, and surrounded with its wealth of foliage; and you have said to yourself, “Happy is the owner of that house; I wish it were mine.” Ah, my friend, the owner of that superb residence is only a man; and where man lives sin dwells and sorrow dwells likewise. We pastors find out that none of our flock build walls high enough to shut out disease, disaster, or death; and there is never a house without some “skeleton in a closet.” Every heart knoweth its own bitterness. As no one can take your toothache into his face, so no one can take your heartache into his bosom.
This text has manifold applications. As no one can feel the twinge of my pain — bodily or mental — so no one can do my work but myself You may engage a dozen assistants for a busy pastor, but all combined cannot lift off an ounce of his responsibility; the strain finally falls back upon his nerves and his conscience. The bodily infirmities that we all suffer, to a greater or less degree, are often a heavy clog. My beloved friend Spurgeon often hobbled in intense agony to that pulpit which he flooded with sunshine. Cheerful old Paul had his physical load to carry, and he exclaims,” We that are in this tabernacle
[or tent] do groan, being burdened.” With what? With a sense of guilt or dread of hell? No; that load had been left where we may leave ours, at the foot of Calvary’s cross. But the fleshly hut, in which Paul’s imperial soul was locked up, was scarred with the lash, and full of aches and thorns in the flesh. Yet under this burden of bodily pain, and of the “care of all the churches,” and of crosses that galled the shoulder, the grand old hero marched on to glory, shouting. There is not a blood-bought heir of heaven in this assembly who ought not to shout as loud as he did.
A true Christian grows stronger by his loads. Train up your boy on confectioneries, and never lay fifty pounds weight on him, and the poor, flabby little creature will be all pulp. Give him stiff tasks to do and heavy loads to carry, and he may have some chance of being yet a man. In that way God deals with His children. He knows that burdens will make them strong. So He says to each of them: “Every one shall bear his own burden. There is thy load, carry it; there is thy place, fill it; there is thy work, do it; and’as thy day, so shall thy strength be.” The route to heaven is not over a macadamized road with easy grades. It has many a “hill difficulty,”
where the cHmber goeth from running to walking, and from walking to a tough clambering on his hands and knees. Let us not murmur, nor vainly ask for ‘’ elevators “to hoist us; for one, I have lived long enough in this world to thank God for difficulties. The grapple with them sinews our graces and gives us spiritual force. In God’s school some hard lessons are to be learned; and there are no “elective studies.” It is very pleasant to work out problems in addition and in multipHcation; but when our Master puts us into a painful problem of subtraction — when the income is cut off, or the crib is emptied, or the staff is broken — then we cry out, “O God, let this cup pass from me.” It requires great grace to be able then to say, “Nevertheless, Father; not as I will, but as Thou wilt!” For the hardest lesson of all in this world is — to let God have His way.
The Master’s command to His disciples has evermore been, “Go work in My vineyard.” This is not merely for the crop to be raised there, but for the invigoration of our spiritual sinews and to utilize our powers. A work for every man, and every man to his work, is the law of honest discipleship. There is another like unto it, “Take up thy cross, and follow Me.” Why?
Because we are yet in a sin-cursed world, and the word sin and the word cross are twin brothers. Where sin is there must be an attendant cross — whether it be my own sin to plague me, or that of others to try my patience or to arouse my efforts to save them. There is no house room for crosses in heaven; and simply because sin has never entered those pearly portals. Here, in this world of sharp antagonisms, th-e crucial test is, “Whosoever doth not take up his cross, and follow Me, cannot be My disciple,”
Now, these are ultimate facts, verified by every Christian’s experience. The Captain of our salvation has ordered that each one of us shall endure hardness as good soldiers — that every one must shoulder his own weapons and bear his own brunt in the bivouac and the battle. And all this regimen is indispensable to the growth of the soul in spiritual force, and to the development of the grandest thing this side of heaven, and that is — pure, vigorous and Christlike cJiaractcr. It is not to their credit, nor for the honor of their Master that some Christians seek to hide their own indolence or unbelief under that other injunction, “Cast thy burden upon the Lord.” Every text in this book hath its own place and its own purpose. No truth overlaps or obscures or contradicts another. There are certain burdens that no fellow-creature can carry for us, and that our Lord and Saviour never offers to carry. His imperative command is, “Every man shall bear his own burden “; and the object of this is that he may become strojig in the Lord.
II. After this brief study of the first text, let us now look at the second, which does not contradict, but rather confirms it. “Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” We have just seen how the carrying of certain loads gives us strength. But there are other loads which we can help our fellow-pilgrims to carry, and the object of that service is to teach us sympathy. Happily we have the motive for this brotherly service given in the text itself We are thus to “fulfill the law of Christ.” That law is love. Yes, Jesus Christ Himself is love. He so loved us that He bore our sins in His own body on the tree. He so loved the wandering sheep that He descended from the skies to seek for and to save the silly truant that was entangled in the thickets or foundering in the mire. And when He lays it on His shoulders — the clean bearing the unclean, the Holy bearing the unholy — He brings it back to the fold, “rejoicing.” He is glad for the sake of the restored sheep, but still more for His own sake — love has its own ecstasy of reward. You will remember how our hearts were thrilled when Mr. Sankey first sang for us that exquisite paraphrase of the parable: —
“There were ninety-and-nine that safely lay
In the shelter of the fold,
But one was out on the hills away,
Far off from the gates of gold — Away on the mountains wild and bare,
Away from the tender Shepherd’s care.
But none of the ransomed ever knew
How deep were the waters cross’ d; Nor how dark was the night that the Lord pass’d thro’
Ere He found His sheep that was lost.
Out in the desert He heard its cry —
Sick and helpless, and ready to die.
“But all thro’ the mountains, thunder-riven.
And up from the rocky steep, There arose a glad cry to the gate of heaven,
* Rejoice! I have found My sheep!’ And the angels echoed around the throne,
‘Rejoice, for the Lord brings back His own!’”
Brings back His own! redeemed by His own precious blood for the joy set before Him! If you and I, fellow-sinners, are ever landed safe among the ringing trumpets and the sounding harps in glory, it will be entirely because that loving Shepherd has brought back His own.
As Jesus Christ came to the rescue of the perishing, so He bids us hasten to the reHef of the overloaded and the recovery of the fallen. This is His law of love. Yonder, for example, is a poor wretch who is reeling down to perdition under the weight of his own folly and sin. Sharp-eyed Selfishness says: “Good enough for him; why was he such a fool as to drink?” Jesus says: “Go pull out of the fire that man for whom I have died!” That is sympathy in action. When the Good Samaritan found the bleeding Jew by the wayside, he did not insult the sufferer with the taunt, “You ought to have known better than to travel by this dangerous road alone.” He takes up the burden of the wounded body, and, when he reaches the inn, he slips the shilling into the keeper’s hands, and delicately whispers, “If thou spendest more, when I come back again, I will repay thee.” There spake the prince of gentlemen; for true politeness is kindness of heart kindly expressed.
The law of Christian sympathy works in two directions: either it helps our fellow-creatures to get rid of their burdens entirely, or, if failing in that, it helps them to carry the load more lightly. Yonder is a poor widow with more children than she can feed and clothe. Take one of those lads into your shop or warehouse, and let that widow’s thanks sweeten your cup and soften your pillow. A youth comes to you from the country, friendless and seeking employment. Just as on a railway one inch at the switch determines whether the train shall move on its straight track or be shunted over an embankment, so a single sympathetic act of helpfulness to that youth may decide his whole future for weal or woe. The Lord makes some of His servants rich, or strong, or kind, in order to be His switch-tenders. Here are you, worshiping in a well-manned and affluent church. Yonder is a feeble church struggling for existence. Divide your forces with them, and make both churches the richer; one by what it gives, and the other by what it gets.
As I have said already, there is one sense in which sorrow can be borne only by the sufferer himself; there is another in which that sorrow can be lightened by your tender sympathy. Bear ye one another’s burdens. Sometimes a small lift is very timely. A single kind word, a little oil of sympathy on a sore spot, a message of condolence when crape hangs at the doorbell, a gift in the hour of need, an approving smile, all such things do help a fellow-creature most wonderfully. It is to the reproach of us all that we do not oftener act the Good Samaritan in little things.
Some of you may recall that beautiful incident narrated by our noble American missionary to the Orient, Miss Fidelia Fiske. She tells us that on a warm Sabbath afternoon she was seated on the earthen floor of her mission-chapel and feeling utterly exhausted. “Just then, as God would order it, a Syrian woman came and seated herself right behind me, so that I could lean on her, and she invited me to do so. I declined, but she drew me back and said, ‘If you love me, lean hard.’ Very refreshing was that support. Then came the Master’s own voice, ‘If you love me, lean Jiard’; and I leaned on Him too, for He had preached to me through that poor woman. I was rested before the service was over; then I spent an hour with the woman and, after sunset, rode six miles to my own home. I wondered that I was not weary that night, and I have rested ever since on those sweet words.” They belonged to the choicest vocabulary of love. Many a mother has had the same thought as she pressed her infant to her bosom. More than one true-hearted husband, as he lifted from the couch the precious burden — which he sadly found was growing lighter every day — has whispered into eager ears,
•’ My darling, if you love me, lean hard.” Love likes to feel the weight of trust.
This beautiful “law of Christ “was the germinal principle from which sprang the primitive Christian Church. The power from on high which descended at Pentecost was essentially a love-power. Those unselfish men and women, who went forth from that upper room in Jerusalem, were burden-lifters in the name and in the strength of Him who had just borne the burden of human guilt in His bleeding body on the cross. The only genuine successors of the apostles have been the load-lifters. Their creed and watchword have always been,” Unto Him that loved us and loosed us from our sins by His blood; to Him be the glory and the dominion for ever and ever!” Every stream of Christian sympathy that has gladdened human hearts came from this Divine fount-head in the heart of Jesus. All labors to lighten the overload of human guilt and misery and want — the enlightenment of the ignorant, the rightening of the wronged, the deliverance of the oppressed, the visitation of the sick, and comforting of the bereaved, the gospeling of the heathen and the whole magnificent enterprise of missions; all these are the precious product of this principle, “Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christy The most successful missionaries and ministers are those who come closest to human hearts. The secret of power with General Booth and his “Salvationists” is their personal sympathy with the wretched and the wrecked. When the members of our churches become “sons of consolation” in the broadest sense of the word — bestowing not only their dollars but their time, their presence, and their heart-beats upon the unchristianized masses, we shall have a primitive and pentecostal revival. Pulpits speak only for an hour or two each week, and then only to those who occupy the pews before them; it is only by sermons in shoes that the suffering and the sinning can be reached. The need of the time is not for more geniuses in the pulpit, but for more personal consecration among Christians to this “law of Christ.”
III. Let us push on now to the third and last of this beautiful triplet of texts. The first one taught self-help: “Every man shall bear his own burden.” The object of it is to give us spiritual strength. The second text teaches brotherly help: “Bear ye one another’s burdens.” The object of it is to inspire sympathy. Of these three texts the third is the Kohinoor jewel; for it leads us up to the Divine help: “Cast thy burden upon the Lord.”
This passage has suffered at the hands of some mystics, who have volatiHzed it into a very thin and vaporous meaning. The Hebrew word translated “burden,” really signifies that which is given to us, or that which is appointed to every man to bear. We must, therefore, understand the Psalmist to say — whatever thy God lays upon thee, thou must lay it upon the Lord. He has cast thy lot for thee. Then cast thy lot upon Him.
But can this text be reconciled with the two others? Yes; quite easily. We are commanded to bear our own burdens, and this requires the resolute performance of our own duties. God will not release us from duty; but He will sustain us in the doing of it. The load which is laid upon us will not crush us; for He will give us strength equal to our day. If other people wonder why and how we march along under the load without breaking down, our only answer is: “We put this load upon the strength which God put into us. His grace was sufficient to enable us to bear the burden.” God’s wonderful and gracious offer is to lighten our loads by putting Himself, as it were, into our souls, and underneath the loads. This is a supernatural process; and the whole walk of faith through life is the simple but subHme reliance upon an almighty arm that is never seen but always felt. This accounts for the fact that the word trust “is the key word of Old-Testament theology, and the word “believe” is the key word in the New Testament. They both mean substantially the same thing. And when our heavenly Father saith, “Cast thy burden upon Me,” and our loving Redeemer saith, “Cast the load of thy sins upon Me,” they expect us to take them at their word.
There is a universal and perpetual need for this tonic text.
On every side we meet overloaded people, and each one thinks his burden is the biggest. One is worried about his health, and another about his diminished income, and another about her sick child, and another about her children yet unconverted; and so each man or woman that has a worry of some sort goes staggering along under it. In the meantime a loving and omnipotent Father says to every one of them: “Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and He shall sustain thee.” As if this one offer were not enough, the Holy Spirit repeats it again in the New Testament: “Casting all your anxktics upon Him, for He careth for you.” This is the more accurate rendering in the Revised Version; because the word “care” does not signify here wise forethought for the future, but that soul-harassing thing called “worry.” The reason given for rolling our worries over upon God is very tender and touching. “He careth for you” means that He takes an interest in you — He has you on His heart! Beautiful and wonderful thought! It is the same idea which the Psalmist had in his mind when he declares that the Lord telleth the number of the stars, and yet He healeth the broken in heart and bindeth up their wounds.
He is the one who says, “My child, don’t carry that burden.” The infinite Ruler of the universe, who is wise in counsel and wonderful in working; the God who guarded the infant Moses in his basket of rushes; who sent His messenger birds to Elijah by the brook Cherith; who quieted Daniel among the ravenous beasts and calmed Paul in the raging tempest — He it is who says to us, “Roll your anxieties over on Me, for I have you on My heart.” Yet how many of us there are who hug our troubles and say to God, “No, we will not let anybody carry these troubles but ourselves.” What fools we are! Just imagine a weary, foot-sore traveler tugging along with his pack on a hot July day. A wagon comes up, and the kind-hearted owner calls out: “Friend, you look tired. Toss that pack into my wagon.” But the wayfarer, eyeing him suspiciously, mutters to himself, “Perhaps he wants to steal it,” or else sullenly rephes, “I am obHged to you, sir, but I can carry my own luggage.” The folly of such conduct is equal to that of the man who should check his trunk through to Chicago and then run into the baggage car every hour to see if his trunk is safe. We do not hesitate to trust our own valuable property to railway officials and expressmen, and we laugh at the folly of those who refuse to do it; would it not be well then for us to “check through” all our dearest interests as well as our cares? When we reach the door of our Father’s house we shall find that all our treasures worth keeping are safe, and. that not one of them has been lost by the way.
I cannot close this discourse without reminding you that the mightiest burden that can ever weigh down a human soul is Sin! Everything else seems light by comparison. Poverty, friendlessness, reproach, sickness, bereavement, all can be, and have been, endured cheerfully; and the valley of the death-shade has often rung with songs of triumph. But who can stand up under that weight that has crushed myriads into hell? Who can bear through life, and on up to the judgment seat, an evil conscience and a guilty, unpardoned soul?
Here comes in the sweetest and the sublimest truth in all the realm of Divine revelation. Listen to it, all ye sin-burdened ones! If all the rest of our Bible were torn away from us, we could find enough to inspire our hope and to insure our heaven in this one glorious verse, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” Surely He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, and with His stripes we are healed. Jesus, the Divine Burden-bearer, is the sublime and ineffably lovable figure that I now present before you. All the paths of the gospel lead to Calvary. Does any one of you cry out, “Mine iniquities have gone over my head, and as a heavy burden, they are too heavy for me “? Listen to that matchless voice, “Come unto me, all you who are weary and heavyladen, and I will give you rest.”
Oh, I pray for some practical and lasting fruits from these triple texts. I long to behold all of you lifted by this threefold cord out of your griefs and out of your guilt. Methinks I see some poor burdened heart pass out of yonder door saying: —
“I lay my griefs on Jesus,
My burdens and my cares;
He from the load releases,
He all my sorrows shares.”
There is another whose load is the heaviest of all; for he came hither “condemned already” by his conscious guilt. The Holy Spirit has opened his eyes to behold the Lamb of God who taketh away sin; and he has opened his heart to the Saviour. He will go homeward to-day singing this new song: —
“I’ve laid my sins on Jesus,
The spotless Lamb of God,
He bears them all, and frees us
From the accursed load.
I’ve brought my guilt to Jesus,
To wash my crimson stains
White in His blood most precious
Till not a stain remains!”