The
Burden Cast upon God
by Octavius Winslow
Cast your burden (or cares) upon the Lord, and He shall sustain
you—Psalm 55:22.
Whose eye will light upon this the closing meditation of our volume, and
feel that the character which these remarkable words portray belongs not
to him? Who is not burdened? Who bears not some heavy load, staggers and
faints not under the pressure of some galling, perhaps, crushing weight
of infirmity, trial, or cross, along life’s crowded avenues? There
is no exception clause in the covenant of grace exempting the saints of
God from burdens. Yes, the very provision of that covenant—“a
covenant ordered in all things”— implies their existence, their
varied character, and deep necessity. The covenant of grace is made for
a poor and an afflicted people whom the Lord has left in the midst of
Egypt. To know from experience what the fulness and preciousness of that
covenant is, we must be emptied, tried, burdened. It is only the poor
sinner that lives upon Christ’s wealth, the empty soul that lives
upon Christ’s fulness, the feeble saint that lives upon Christ’s
power, the tried, afflicted, and tempted believer that lives upon Christ’s
grace, sympathy, and love. The extent of our conscious need is the measure
of our life of faith on Jesus. We ally our weakness with His strength,
our demerit with His righteousness, our indigence with His opulence, and
hang our empty vessel upon His unbounded and fathomless sufficiency. Beloved,
entwine as a thread of gold with the ministry of home this precious thought:
“MY EMPTINESS FITS ME FOR CHRIST’S FULNESS; AND CHRIST’S
FULNESS IS DESIGNED FOR MY EMPTINESS.”
But what an exceeding great and precious exhortation and promise is this—“CAST
YOUR BURDEN upon the Lord, and He shall sustain you.” The marginal
reading is, “your gift.” We accept both readings as correct.
All that we receive from the Lord we receive as a gift—the gift of
His most free grace and love. The believer sees and tastes free grace
in every blessing of His Heavenly Father. He traces it in the sun that
cheers him, in the spring that refreshes him, in the breeze that fans
him, in the flowers that delight him. He sees it in the love that comforts
him, in the friendship that strengthens him, in the sympathy that soothes
him, in the outstretched hand that relieves his need.
No, more. The child of God sees free grace—a Father’s gift—in
every cloud that darkens, in every sorrow that embitters, in every disappointment
that wounds, in every burden that crushes.
But infinitely beyond all, he sees and tastes free grace in the blood
that pardons him, in the righteousness that justifies him, in the love
that adopts him, in the voice that calls him, and in the promises that
engage to bring him home to glory! Over the “door of hope” opened
to us down in the dark “valley” of our poverty and nothingness,
the marvellous words are emblazoned—“BY GRACE ARE YOU SAVED.”
All these as gifts, natural and spiritual, are to be cast upon the Lord;
in other words, employed in His service and devoted to His glory. Is it
talent? is it wealth? is it influence? is it time? is it grace?—cast
your gift—whatever the one talent may be—upon the Lord; consecrating
all to, and employing all unreservedly for, HIM.
But we restrict our exposition of the passage to the received text. “Cast
your BURDEN upon the Lord.” The Lord’s people are truly a burdened
people. They of the whole creation are the most burdened. They are conscious
of burdens of which the unregenerate world is totally unconscious. In
the first place, beloved, are you sensible of the burden of sin? This
is an evidence of spiritual life. As a dead body has no sensibility and
feels no pressure, so a soul dead in trespasses and in sins has no consciousness
of the body of sin and of death to which it belongs. A corpse does not
weep, nor groan, nor sigh, nor bewail its humiliated condition; neither
does a spiritually dead soul cry out from its grave of corruption, “O
wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from this body of sin and
of death?” And why not? Because there is no life, and where there
is no life there is no sensibility. If, my beloved, conscious sin is your
burden—if your heaviest sigh, your deepest groan, your bitterest
tear springs from the feeling of indwelling sin, it is one of the strongest
evidences of spiritual life—that you are in truth a living soul.
The Spirit of God has breathed divine life into you, and thus quickened
and vitalized, you cry, “Woe is me! for I am undone, because I a
man of unclean lips.”
Go, you who despairingly have thought that you had no affiliated relation
to the children of God, since you discern so much in your heart contrary
to the Father’s nature, and so much in your spirit contrary to the
image of the brethren, and who in view of this exclaim, “I abhor
myself, and repent in dust and ashes,”—take the comfort to yourself
that, this conscious burden proves your possession of spiritual sensibility,
and this bitter bewailment evidences the life of God in your soul. O yes,
the Lord’s people are a burdened people, and the burden of indwelling
sin is the greatest burden of all.
Such, too, is the burden of the newly awakened soul. Where did great inquiry
come from—“What shall I do to be saved?” Where did the
touching appeal come from—“Lord, help me!” Where did the
agonizing cry come from—“God be merciful to me a sinner!”
O it springs from the awakened conscience, from the guilt-distressed soul,
the sinner just made to feel his sins a burden, convinced that he is poor
and wretched, lost and undone, and without Christ must perish forever.
To WHOM did the Savior address that wondrous invitation, the power and
savor of which will continue until the last awakened sinner shall look
to Christ and live: “Come unto Me, all you who labor and are heavy
laden, and I will give you rest.” O it was to just such as you! Has
the Spirit discovered to you your sinfulness, shown you to yourself as
“poor, and blind, and miserable, and naked”? Does your load
of sin seem too great for you to bear? Come and cast it upon Christ, the
sinner’s great Sin-Bearer! This great, gracious, and free invitation
is addressed, you guilt-burdened soul, to you, and nothing shall dare
forbid your acceptance. Christ speaks it, Christ means it—and who
shall say, No, when Christ says, Yes?
The love that bids you come, will be accompanied with the power that enables
you to come and in simple faith cast that burden of sin and guilt upon
the loving, Almighty Savior, who alone can unclasp it from your soul,
and give you rest. You have nothing to do either with its material or
its dimension. That is Christ’s concern. Yours is simply to believe
that He sorrowed for it in Gethsemane, died for it on the cross, and now
invites you to transfer it to Him, seated in glory upon His throne. You
have nothing to do in the matter but believingly to take Him at His word,
and so find rest for your guilt-oppressed and sin-weary spirit.
“Come unto Me, you weary! Come!
You heavy-laden, cease to roam!
I will refresh the weary breast,
And give the laborings spirit rest.”
“Sweet word! it calms my troubled soul,
It bids my sorrow cease to roll;
Smiles like the rainbow on the deep,
And hushes all my woes to sleep.”
Perhaps a sense of backsliding from the Lord is your burden. You did run
well, walked closely with God, and loved to feed in green pastures with
the flock and beside the Shepherd’s tent; but you did not love the
fold, and went away and walked no more with Jesus. And now the Shepherd
has gone after you, and by the gentle moving of His Spirit on your heart
is drawing you back with weeping, and mourning, and confession. Your departures
are a grievous and a heavy burden, and like Ephraim you smite upon the
thigh, and are ashamed, you are even confounded, and exclaim, “Turn
me and I shall be turned, for You are the Lord my God.”
Come, then, poor backslider, you wanderer from the Shepherd’s side,
you truant from the fold, and listen to the tender, forgiving language
of that God and Father against whom you have sinned. “Is not Ephraim
still my son, my darling child? asks the Lord. I had to punish him, but
I still love him. I long for him and surely will have mercy on him”
(Jeremiah 31:20). Approach, you penitent soul, though a wanderer, still
a son; though a backslider, still a child—and cast the burden of
your back-slidings upon Jesus, whose unchanging love and restoring grace
are now gently and effectually drawing you back to Himself. “I will
arise and go to my Father, and will say unto Him, Father, I have sinned
against heaven and before You.”
“Return, O wanderer! Return,
And seek an injured Father’s face;
Those warm desires that in you burn
Were kindled by recovering grace.”
Perhaps your burden is mental. There is, probably, no pressure so acutely
felt as that in which the mind is more immediately concerned. Any trial—be
it spiritual or temporal—which implicates the mental powers, entails
a burden which nothing short of supernatural power can sustain.
The Lord has seen fit to send this cloud-veil upon your mind, which for
a time shades your Christian evidence, obscures your hope, weakens your
hold upon the Savior, depresses you to despondency and drives you almost
to despair. And now you question the sincerity of your Christian profession,
you doubt the reality of your conversion, and are ready to ignore the
hope of heaven which you once so happily cherished. All this, however,
is the effect only of a mind morbidly, nervously, and for a season, temporally
unhinged; but whose spiritual regeneration, whose hidden life, and whose
eternal safety nothing can touch.
Creation illustrates this idea. The sun is eclipsed, but not annihilated.
The stars are veiled, but not extinguished. Dark clouds may drape Christ
from the believer’s eye, but nothing extinguishes, or can for a moment
lessen His great love to His saints. Mental depression may obscure your
Christian evidences—those stars of the soul which smile upon it so
cheeringly—but the Divine seal of the Spirit nothing can ever efface.
The child of the light may walk in darkness and be a child of the light
still—for once a child, ever a child!
Such is the burden which the Lord invites you to cast upon Him! No saint
or angel can sympathize with it as Jesus can. He passed through mental
distress infinitely darker and more crushing than yours. And will He allow
you to succumb to this temporary eclipse, or permit you to sink beneath
these dark waters? Will He allow the enemy always to take advantage of
your physical infirmities, thus to work upon your mental and spiritual
feelings, producing so much gloom, disquietude, and distress?
O no! In the exercise of His Divine power He will cry—“Thus
far shall you, go and no farther.” The darkness and the light are
both at His command, and both, in the experience of His saints, work together
for good. If ever the sympathy of Him who in the terrible and unparalleled
darkness of His soul exclaimed, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken
Me,” flowed out toward you, it is now. And do you think that this
temporary darkness of the mind through which you are passing, lessens
the love, or shakes the faithfulness, of impairs the power of your covenant
God and Father?
Impossible! Listen to His marvellous language. “The mountains shall
depart, and the hills be removed; but My kindness shall not depart from
you, neither shall the covenant of My peace be removed, says the Lord
who has mercy on you.” Cheer up, then, you sad and desponding one!
Why are you cast down? Hope in God, for this long, dreary night of weeping
shall, before long and forever, merge into a bright morning of joy.
Heavy, too, is the burden of affliction. Who counts not this among the
many which he bears along the weary, dusty road of life? “Many are
the afflictions of the righteous.” And again: “The Lord tries
the righteous.” Yet again: “Whom the Lord loves He chastens,
and scourges every son whom He receives.” Thus if you are an afflicted
saint, a tried believer, a chastened child, burdened with carping cares,
corroding-anxieties, heart-crushing sorrows, and heavy stripes, you wear
but the garments of the spiritual realm to which you belong, and possess
but the seals and evidences of a nobler sonship and closer relationship
to God than angels claim. “If you endure chastening God deals with
you as with sons.” Accept, then, in meekness and love these Divine
evidences—these sacred proofs of adoption—even the many trials,
sore temptations, and painful corrections with which your Heavenly Father,
in love, sees fit to visit you.
But, perhaps, your home-duties, trials, and needs, form your burden. Every
home is an embryo kingdom, an epitomized world, of which the parent constitutes
the sovereign. There are laws to be obeyed, rules to be observed, subjects
to be governed, cares to be sustained, demands to be met, and “who
is sufficient for all this?” is often your anxious inquiry. Who can
tell what crushing burdens, what bitter sorrows, what corroding cares,
what pressing demands, may exist within a single family circle, deeply
veiled from every eye but God’s? You are perhaps a widower—bereaved
and desolate; or you are a widow—lonely and helpless. Your children
are an anxiety, your domestic duties a trial, your necessities are pressing,
your whole position one of embarrassment and depression.
What shall you do? Do even as the Lord who loves you enjoins—“Cast
your burden upon the Lord, and He shall sustain you.” Your Heavenly
Father knows all your home-trials, for He has sent them! Jesus, though
he had no home on earth, yet sympathized with the home-cares and sorrows
of others, and is not a stranger, nor indifferent to yours. Bring all
to Him, tell Him all, confide to Him all, trust Him in all. You have no
family trial too great, and no domestic need too little, and no home-sorrow
too delicate, to take to Christ. Obey the precept, “Cast your burden
upon the Lord;” and He will make good the promise, “and He shall
sustain you.” O costly and blessed home-burden that brings Jesus
beneath our roof!
But who is our Burden-Bearer? “Cast your burden UPON THE LORD.”
JEHOVAH-JESUS is the great Burden-Bearer of His people. No other arm,
and no other heart, in heaven or upon earth, were strong enough, or loving
enough, to bear these burdens but His! He who bore the weight of our sin
and curse and shame in His obedience and death—bore it along all
the avenues of His weary pilgrimage, from Bethlehem to Calvary—is
He who now stretches forth His Divine arm, and makes bare a Brother’s
heart to take your burden of care and of grief, dear saint of God, upon
Himself. Can you for a moment question either His power or His love after
all that He has done for you? This would be cruel unbelief indeed!
But how shall we, how can we, describe the tenderness of Christ towards
His burdened ones, and the gentleness with which He leads them? “He
tends his flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in his arms and
carries them close to his heart; he gently leads those that have young
(those who are burdened)” (Isaiah 40:11). You are wearied. Your deep
afflictions area burden. Your sinful heart is a burden. Your lack of faith,
and love, and fruitfulness isa burden. You are, as it were, “with
young,” passing through much sore and painful travail of soul, a
burden to yourself, cast down and discouraged by reason of the way.
But oh, blessed solace! Jesus leads you, and leads you gently. All others
would drive you—man would drive you, the world would drive you, Satan
would drive you, your own impulsive heart and blind judgment would drive,
and even the saints would drive you—but Jesus leads you, and leads
you tenderly, skillfully, and safely. He is the loving, careful Shepherd
who overdrives not His sheep, especially the weak, the sick, the burdened,
the little ones of His flock.
He knows your burden—“your burden.” The marvellous language
of God is “I know their sorrows.” He knows how your friend that
loved you is gone like a shadow, how your gourd that sheltered you is
smitten in a night, how the voice that was the sweetest music to you is
hushed in the stillness of death, how the strong and beautiful staff that
supported you is broken and lies a ruin in the dust. Jesus knows all—and
He is leading you through all. He is leading you by these very same dark
providences; these events that appear so adverse, this way that seems
so dark, these dealings that seem so mysterious, painful, and crushing.
How precious and soothing is the promise, “I will bring the blind
by a way that they knew not; I will lead them in paths that they have
not known; I will make darkness light before them, and crooked things
straight. These things will I do unto them, and not forsake them.”
As Jesus thus gently leads, so let us meekly, confidingly follow, believing
that His hand is powerful, His heart is loving, His eye is unslumbering,
and that He is leading us by the right way home to be with Him forever.
But the question will arise in your heart, HOW am I to cast my burden
upon Him? The answer is at hand. In faith and by prayer. It is by an act
of simple, prayerful faith we transfer our cares and anxieties, our sorrows
and needs, to the Lord. Only believe that God is able to do all that you
need, and ask Him to do it. Only believe that Christ is willing to grant
all that you request. Only believe that He is most true, most loving,
most faithful when He invites you come and lean upon Him, and to lean
with all your might upon that arm that balances the universe, and upon
that bosom that bled for you upon the soldier’s spear!
Perhaps faith and unbelief are now struggling painfully within your tried
and anxious heart. You believe that God is able to bear your burden, but
you question His willingness to bear it. Or, perhaps, you question not
His readiness, but you doubtingly ask, “Is the Lord able to do this
thing for me?” And thus, while you are debating a matter about which
there is not the shadow of a shade of doubt, the burden is crushing your
gentle spirit to the dust. And all the while Jesus stands at your side
and lovingly says—“Cast your burden upon Me and I will sustain
you. I am God Almighty. I bore the load of your sin and condemnation up
the steep of Calvary, and the same power of omnipotence, and the same
strength of love that bore it all for you then, is prepared to bear your
need, and sorrow now. Roll it all upon Me.”
“Child of My Love! Lean hard! Let Me feel the pressure of your care.
I know your burden, child! I shaped it—I poised it in My own hand
and made no proportion of its weight to your unaided strength. For even
as I laid it on, I said I shall be near, and while she leans on Me, this
burden shall be Mine, not hers. So shall I keep My child within the circling
arms of My own love. Here lay it down! Do not fear to impose it on a shoulder
which upholds the government of worlds! Yet closer come! You are not near
enough! I would embrace your burden, so I might feel My child reposing
on My breast. You love Me! I know it. Doubt not, then. But, loving me,
Lean hard!”
And, how precious and assuring the promise— “He shall SUSTAIN
you.” The terms of the promise are clear. It is not that the Lord
will remove the burden, but that He will sustain us under it. He gives
us what is equivalent, and, perhaps, more than equivalent to its removal—grace
to endure, and strength to carry it—so that we reap more spiritual
blessing, and He receives more Divine glory, than would accrue from its
entire removal. Read the histories of the saints, and learn how they illustrate
and confirm this truth.
Look at Jacob, in danger from the revenge of Esau, casting his burden
of anxiety and fear upon God. God did not remove it, but sustained His
servant, and brought him safely through.
Look at Elijah, fleeing for his life from the threatenings of Jezebel—how
God met him in his weariness and petulance, nourished and sustained him
in the wilderness, so that in the strength of that food he traveled forty
days and forty nights unto Horeb, the mount of God.
Look at Paul, afflicted with the thorn in the flesh, thrice asking, and
thrice denied, its removal—yet so sustained by the all-sufficiency
of Christ’s grace, that he glories in its existence, that the power
of Christ might rest upon him. And what has been, is still the experience
of the Lord’s people—that when He does not immediately remove
a burden, He imparts all-sufficient grace and strength to bear it. And
O how much greater a blessing to be daily upheld by the power of God,
sustained by the grace of Christ, and comforted by the consolation of
the Spirit, than, with the immediate and entire removal of the burden,
to lose all the sweet, sanctifying blessings that directly spring from
it.
A prolonged affliction is often a prolonged mercy. The tedious illness
never alleviated; the couch of weakness never left; the white-hot furnace
never extinguished; the daily cross never lightened. O who can describe
what sweet mercy flows through this channel? what sweet nourishment comes
from this eater? how glorious and precious the Savior becomes? and how
the daily burden proves a daily confirmation of the truth and experience
of the great promise of God. “As your day so shall your strength
be.”
And when we arrive at heaven, and survey in the light of its glory all
the way the Lord our God led us there; when we review every cross and
every bereavement, every need and every correction, we shall then see
the covenant faithfulness of God, the tender love of Christ, and the gentle
grace of the Spirit, in not removing the burden, nor lifting the cross,
nor taking our feet out of the thorny, flinty path, but in giving us instead,
what was a richer, holier blessing: the upholding of His power, the sustaining
of His grace, and the consolation of His love.
Accept then, my beloved—and this shall be my last exhortation—accept
in meekness and faith your burdens as from the Lord. Seek that they may
make you more holy, may endear Jesus to your heart, fit you for heaven,
and bring much praise, and glory, and honor to your covenant triune God.
They then shall be as pinions to your soul, bearing you upon their gold-plumed
wing higher, and yet higher towards heaven, in faith, love, and prayer,
until, delivered from the burden of the flesh, you shall enter into eternal
joy and felicity—Forever with the Lord!
“Look onward still!
However dark the night may be,
The morning breaks joyously;
Wars after wars may come and go,
And billows seem to overflow
Your Father’s hand a bound will set,
His love is deeper—deeper yet.”
“Lean on this love!
Oh, earthly love has little power
To cheer you in your saddest hour;
And with your lonely, bitter lot,
The stranger intermedles not;
But there is One whose sympathy
Can prove enough for thee.
“Are there none left,
None, whom your life may help to show
How vain and empty all below?
To shine as brightest stars is given
To those who point the way to heaven
If such shall be their glorious state,
It is blessed, then, to work and wait.”
“Say not, ‘it is long!’
This sin-stained world is not to be
Your haven for eternity
The aching heart, the heavy trial,
Are only for a ‘little while’
Patient, your upward pathway trace
Unto your Father’s dwelling place.”
“Joy comes then!
For when faith’s less-enduring light
Is changed for perfect, lasting sight,
And hearts that even on earth seemed one
Shall beat in perfect unison,
And, leaning on a Father’s breast,
His weary child shall be at rest.”