Focus: Take My Yoke!

Text: Mt.11:28,29

"Take my yoke upon you… For my yoke is easy…"

The Christian Faith involves carrying a yoke. The question is: Whose yoke are you carrying, the yoke of Christ or your own yoke? The Lord Jesus Christ specifically said, "Take MY yoke upon you." That means that He is not calling upon us to manufacture our own yokes. Instead He demands that we wear His own yoke.

There is a significant difference between His well-designed yoke and our own self-devised and self-inflicted yokes. He tells us, "For my yoke is easy." John tells us that "For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: AND HIS COMMANDMENTS ARE NOT GRIEVOUS" (1Jh.5:3). The requirements of Christ are not burdensome. 

Christ is not callous, cruel or wicked. Everything He demands that we do is for our own good. His yoke is not hurting or harming. It is well-designed and well-fitted for our necks.

Man's yoke is dangerous and humiliating. The Lord Jesus Christ says to the leaders of His day, "For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men's shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers" (Mt.23:4). Luke reports the same thing, "And he said, Woe unto you also, ye lawyers! for ye lade men with burdens grievous to be borne, and ye yourselves touch not the burdens with one of your fingers" (Lk.11:46). 

Christ is referring to the loads of legalism - yokes too heavy for the people to bear. These are legalistic yokes. Man has fabricated all kinds of yokes - life-sapping, energy-depleting and joy-diminishing yokes. We labor round the clock to no avail. The psalmist says, "It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows…" (Ps.127:2).

Many Christians want cross-less and yoke-less Christianity. We want all the goodies that God has to offer, but we want nothing to do with His kingdom demands on us. We want easy and convenient faith and worship that is totally devoid of sacrifice. 

All we see is that Christ died on the cross for us to conveniently wear crowns of gold on our heads, but we do not see that as His followers, that we too have a cross to bear.

Check and see if you have the yoke of Christ around your neck, or you are wearing some other yokes not designed by Him.

I pray that you embrace the yoke of Christ and get involved in what He is doing. I pray that you become useful in the hands of Christ and that you give your neck only to the yoke of Christ - not any other yoke! Christ says, "Take my yoke upon you…" Amen!

by Bishop Moses E. Peter