Daily Devotions
Take My Yoke
Reading for January 15: Genesis 47-50
Weekly reading for January 14-20: Matthew 10-14
"Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me..."
Matthew 11:29
Jesus' invitation to those all who "labor" and are "heavy laden" is for them to be joined together with him in a yoke. A yoke was a cross piece of wood used to join two work animals together. The purpose behind Jesus' call for us to be yoked to him is twofold.
First, he wants to provide rest through his yoke. We can take off the heavy burden of sin and put on the "easy" yoke and "light" burden of Christ.
The second purpose is that we learn from Jesus. Younger animals would be yoked together with older animals for the purpose of training. Being tied to Jesus in his yoke, we are forced to follow his movements and thus learn from him.
But this yoke is not really forced upon us. We voluntarily take it on and keep it on. There are times that our flesh rebels against the yoke and we're tempted to take it off. There are moments when we want to go our own way and we refuse to put it on.
The irony is that as soon as we take off the yoke (because we feel constrained by it), we're back to where we started before we came to Christ. We're burdened once again with that labor and that heavy load we had before.
The question for each of us is which yoke are we wearing right now?
Father God, help us to trust you and not ourselves, and learn from Jesus as we are yoked together with him!
