The text we were concentrating on was Matthew chapter eleven and the closing verses. They are well known and concern Jesus’ yoke and the rest that comes from taking it as ours. Of course, Jesus never spoke outside of the context of things laid down in the Hebrew Scriptures, (what we know as the Old Testament), so, you can expect that the subject of ‘yokes’ are to found in those. Also, He never spoke outside the context of the current scene in which He found Himself, so, the idea of a ‘yoke’ would have been present in that Jewish religious society. It was not simply a nice picture taken from rural life in Israel, it carried with it meanings of a spiritual and religious kind. So, to simplify, let us consider three yokes.
Firstly, the yoke of bondage under which the Israelites had labored in Egypt. God had delivered them from it when He brought them out by His strong hand. A yoke under which their necks were bowed and they were forced to labor in tandem with all the will of the Pharaohs and kept their heads down to the dust out of which they made bricks with straw. They ploughed the Pharaohs field. The direction the Pharaoh went, they went too, they were under that yoke. There was no deviation until God set them free from it. (Leviticus 26v13.) It is interesting to note a verse in Isaiah chapter ten, it is a popular one in certain Pentecostal and charismatic circles but is in fact rather difficult to translate, it is verse twenty seven where God speaks of the way He broke the Egyptian yoke from the necks of His people and He did it ‘by the anointing’ as some like to translate it, “it is the anointing that breaks the yoke” is the phrase many people use. Whatever the verse means, it certainly means that God loosed His people by an outgoing of His gracious power. However, we ought to note clearly that He brought them from under the Pharaohs’ yoke that they might come under His. Yet, His yoke was easy and His burden light. He led them out into the wilderness and there He joined them to Himself and they were linked with Him under His covenant law that they would plough with Him in His purposes and be His servant nation.
It is a beautiful picture, for some of those people His law was a great delight, it was like honey to them, a joyous burden and by faith they saw, understood and were brought right under that delightsome yoke to do His will. He, being the lead in the yoke took all the initiatives and they saw their calling, laboring with Him in what He was doing. When animals are yoked together they are yoked for work, for purpose and one is always the lead animal, so I have read anyway. One the lead and the other moves with that one and so the work is done. You will know that Israel, as a people, failed, they baulked at the yoke, chose other paths, and came under the Babylonian yoke of captivity for a season until the Lord brought them back to their land and they accepted His yoke again although His representatives intensified the yoke, reinterpreting His law, laying burdens heavy to be borne, upon the spiritual shoulders of the people. By the time Jesus came the yoke had become a series of religious do’s and don’ts that were a caricature of the true. Take a look at the things Jesus said to those Scribes and Pharisees in Matthew chapter twenty-three. They did not help the people at all and made God’s ways onerous to the point of madness. Legalism was a dreadful yoke upon the nation.
So, it is in this context that Jesus made His call, ‘come unto Me, all you who are weary and heavy laden”. We know the verses so well. The people were to come into His yoke with Him. His was a delightsome yoke too, joined with His Father in the yoke of His eternal purposes. Where the Father was going and doing His works, ploughing the furrow of His will in an unhurried steady way, so Jesus was right there with Him in that yoke. Jesus heart was in the yoke of His Father’s will, He found it easy and light for His Father was taking all the initiatives. The commanding invitation to us all is to enter His yoke, through Him to be joined to what it is the Father is doing in these days. Yes, it is not so much being yoked TO Jesus as being yoke WITH Jesus TO His Father. His is not the yoke of religious bondage that had been fashioned by the legalistic teachers of the day. Those who were taking it upon themselves to re-interpret and re-apply what God had given in former days. From that yoke we are to keep free says Paul in Galatians chapter five verse one. Teachers will try to bring us back under some kind of yoke; that is for sure. There are all kinds of church yokes, fellowship yokes, practices and interpretations, formulations and codes of acceptable behavior to which ministries will seek to bind us. This is true in our day, make no mistake about that; but still the Lord Jesus calls us into His yoke with His Father. It really is an easy yoke for in it all, the Father is taking the strain and we in that yoke with Jesus and by His Spirit share our part.
After the little meeting last Sunday I was asked to apply this to their circumstances by someone who very much desires to do God’s will. What were they to do? I simply said to them that they were to get in the yoke with Jesus and through Him to the Father and make sure that they were ploughing with Him, going with Him in His direction and taking up their place in His work and they would know immediately a release from the tensions of trying to get the job done. So, there were my three points, three yokes, the first, being yoked to the god of this world and ploughing his furrows, secondly being under a yoke of God’s will made heavy by modern religious legalism, straining and sweating to get God’s will done, or coming into Jesus and living through Him under the yoke of His Father’s will with its outcome of joyful service to Him.
Our God is in the field, He is about His business, so come into His yoke, He wants you there with Him.
