THE YOKE IS ON YOU

“Then Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.” – Matthew 11:28-30.

Work, family, school, bills, doctor’s visits, and hurricanes are increasingly the fabric of life. Stress builds, and you feel consumed and trapped by the pressures of life. Fortunately, the Bible has the solution for overcoming stress, anxiety, pressure, and the impossible expectations the world places on us and we place upon ourselves.

In Matthew 11, Jesus commands us: “Take my yoke upon you… For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.” Jesus tells you that finding rest for your soul involves taking His yoke upon yourself. If you think that sounds counterintuitive, He reassures you that His yoke is easy and His burden is light. This passage of scripture seems to contradict what Jesus said about following Him: that following Him was hard, having trials in this world, counting the cost, and the way is narrow.

 If something is easy, it cannot be a yoke—a collar for doing hard labor. But Jesus is doing what He did for His three years of ministry: challenging established paradigms. With Christ, yokes become easy, burdens become light, death becomes life, despair becomes hope, and fear becomes faith. You are not alone in your walk of faith because Jesus walks with you. This makes the burden light because Jesus bears the weight, not you. He is doing the heavy lifting so you can find rest.

Every day we wake up, we choose to grab our burden or His burden. His burden is like grabbing helium balloons, whereas our burden feels like two full-grown oxen.  The key to choosing Jesus’ yoke is about loving and pursuing God in every aspect of your life.

Dallas Willard has this to say in a chapter titled “The Secret of the Easy Yoke.” He writes, “To depart from righteousness is to choose a life of crushing burdens, failures, and disappointments, a life caught in the toils of endless problems that are never resolved. Here is the source of that unending soap opera, that sometimes horror show known as normal human life. The ‘cost of discipleship,’ though it may take all we have, is small when compared to the lot of those who don’t accept Christ’s invitation to be a part of His company.”

Taking Jesus’ yoke allows us to learn from Him, become like Him, and find rest in His easy yoke and light burden. The yoke allows us to pull a burden with less stress and strain, and a good yoke makes the work easier. The most obvious application is that Jesus helps us bear life’s burdens more easily.

Discussion Questions:

1. In Matthew 11, Jesus calls His followers to take His yoke upon them. What does it mean today?
2. How do Jesus’ words “come to me” and “take up my yoke” help us understand the gospel?
3. What kind of yokes do we carry?