“For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”” Matthew 11:30 NASB1995
What does that actually MEAN?
I’ve always taken it in context, which is what we are “supposed“ to do, right?
But I’ve realized that when I do, it loses weight (pardon the pun)! It gains something significant when it stands alone, which I have missed.
Let’s start in context, and unpack it from there:
“At that time Jesus said, “I praise You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants. Yes, Father, for this way was well-pleasing in Your sight. All things have been handed over to Me by My Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father; nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him. “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”” Matthew 11:25-30
First, He starts with a huge, unexpected, counter-intuitive disconnect, by discarding the “wise and intelligent“ as inappropriate receivers, and instead He praises the Father for revealing “these things“ to “infants“.
Let THAT deflate your bubble!
Next, knowing the Father, and knowing the Son is a whole aspect of this passage for further exploration another day, but there is a LOT of concentrated truth there!
Then He says “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”
Been there, done that.
Basically, He’s saying “if you’re weighed down by the world, come to Me for relief. Whatever you may bear with Me is absolutely NOTHING, by comparison! … Easy Peasy!“
Or so I thought…
All that may be true, relatively speaking, but it is NOT saying “you will have NO burden, NO yoke”.
Far from it.
To help paint the picture of the lesson I’ve learned, the “something significant” which was essentially hidden from me (meaning that I guess I was “wise and intelligent“, and now I’m an “infant”…), we have to go to Proverbs 29:18:
“Where there is no vision, the people cast off restraint; But he that keeps the law, happy is he.” ASV
A yoke is a restraint. It’s NECESSARY, to connect the POWER of the oxen to the PRODUCTIVITY of the plow. Fortunately, our “beasts of burden“ don’t have much say in the matter, because you can bet they would probably rebel against the work if they could.
Just like people do.
But in Proverbs 29:18, WHY do the people “cast off restraint“? Because they don’t have a vision! They don’t have a goal! They don’t have a REASON for the discipline of the WORK!
It grieves me to report that has been an accurate description of me. For decades, I didn’t know what my calling was, apart from being a generalized and generic “disciple“, and having a deep-seated desire to use whatever talents the Lord had given me to communicate truth.
But exactly HOW to do that? No clue. I floundered with this and that, chasing one “easy“ pursuit after another, despising the day of small beginnings, and casting off restraint, INCLUDING the yoke Jesus had for me. And I had no idea I was doing so.
I think the message Jesus wanted to convey in Matthew 11:30 — which I almost entirely missed — was “you NEED to bear MY burden, and MY yoke, or you will NOT know ME, OR the Father OR your purpose! I will give you the vision, but you won’t know it until you know Me, and listen to Me. I’m not just handing it to you on a silver platter. You’re going to have to WORK for it, but let ME tell YOU: THAT kind of work has a much, MUCH greater reward than the yoke of bondage!“