Its A Good Yoke
Its A Good Yoke
Pentecost 7 1999
Matthew 11:25-30
In my five years of ministry here, you might have noticed that I rarely tell a joke. The reason is because I forget them just about as fast as I hear them. And there is nothing worse than a blundered joke. Right! But today I want to tell a joke. It goes like this: You might have heard how an unemployed, butter-fingered man, finally landed a job in a china warehouse. After just a few days on the new job, he dropped a large vase. He was immediately called to the manager’s office and told he would have to pay for this vase and that the money would be deducted from his wages each week. The man quickly asked, “How much did the vase cost?” “Three thousand dollars,” the manager replied. “Oh, that’s wonderful,” the man said. “This makes me happy. I’ll finally have a steady job.”
Okay, I said I wasn’t good at this joke-telling. And, you probably can tell a good joke from a bad joke. Well, in the same way there are good yokes and not so good yokes. Get it? Today our text speaks about a good yoke. But it’s a yoke many people despise. If we consider the troubles and burdens of life as another kind of yoke, there are two ways in which people tend to cope with them. They can become overwhelmed by them, or they can release them to the One who can help. One way leads to despair—the other to hope and joy. So, I have a question. Whom will you allow to carry your yoke?
1. There is a hopeless yoke. It’s carried by those who are weary of trying hopelessly to find peace within themselves. I remember telling one of my sisters that real peace doesn’t come from within us. It comes from outside of ourselves in God. You see, we can never be certain of ourselves. Just when we think we have things all figured out as to how to have peace, something happens that feels like life itself is being torn away. Trying to find peace within ourselves is a hopeless yoke.
Another hopeless yoke is carried by those who are burdened with the guilt of God’s Law. God’s law exposes our sinfulness and demands restitution for our guilt. When our children were younger they would try to deal with their guilt by lying, or pointing the finger at someone else. Sadly, this too is a hopeless yoke that only adds to our feelings of guilt and worthlessness.
Then there are those who hear the good news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ who says, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Unfortunately some reject this revelation of the easy yoke saying, “You don’t get something for nothing.” The result is a yoke clamped on the necks of unbelief. Hopeless.
A wrecking company advertised its work with this slogan: We could wreck the pyramids in Egypt. That may be a good slogan for a wrecking company but it is not a good principle for life. Yet, in so many ways, people today make that principle their own. They continue to be like the Jewish leaders of Jesus’ day. They labor under the presumption that they need to earn their salvation and that somehow they can. Their need to be in control of their own destiny becomes a heavy burden. In the process, they live under the yoke of destruction.
When we try so hard to find relief, yet cannot, then God invites us to stop our own efforts and turn to the relief found in the Gospel of Jesus. To all who have grown exhausted with effort to be accepted by God, to those who are sick and tired of trying to deserve God’s favor by leading a good life, to all who are weary of wrecking their own eternal future, the invitation comes, “I will give you rest.”
2. In Him we find the refreshing yoke. It is carried by those who have come to know God’s peace. That peace comes in the forgiving work of Christ. The yoke He bore in our place was the cross. The yoke He now gives is His own Resurrected Glory.
When my family and I served a congregation in Indiana, the church’s cemetery was our back yard. Bonnie’s sister thought it would be great for Halloween decorating. We didn’t. The noticeable thing in that cemetery was the weather-worn words on some of the gravestones. Some were beyond intelligibility, having been polished smooth over many years. But on one stone I saw a word that spoke of the yoke received in Christ. Still legible on the face of the fading stone, in letters that neither wind nor weather had erased, was the single word—“FORGIVEN.” What a glorious, victorious word—“FORGIVEN.” What a refreshing yoke. And that yoke is found in the written Word of God. Are you thinking that that yoke is too easy?
3. There is an easy yoke. But it began as a heavy load; a burden that would strike the blow of death to a man who had no sin. It was the cross carried first by the true Son of God for sinful humankind. From that yoke God overcame everything that keeps us separated from him, and fearful of the punishment of death. But it is through that heavy yoke that ours can become light and easy. From that yoke a sinner can cry out with the apostle Paul, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!
You see, since the hard work of salvation is already completed, we can now carry the easy yoke through faith in the resurrected Christ.
I heard recently that someone had cut, raked, and baled hay for another person, simply because it had to be done and the owner couldn’t do it. Can you imagine how that farmer felt when he returned home and found the work completed? His work for the day was made easy. I was told how thankful and happy it made him. So it is with our salvation. The work is complete. We can be about the business of the easy yoke serving Christ with joy and thanksgiving.
By his humbleness of heart, Jesus has shown the way by which we come to him and his Father. By his grace, we can humbly acknowledge the need we have for his mercy. By His grace He has carried the burden of our sin and guilt. The Word which He has caused to be written for us now leads us to the revelation of God’s love for us. And, through that Word His love becomes greater and more personal each and every day. He has exchanged his yoke of bearing our sin and our guilt for one that is now easy and light. It is truly a good yoke. No wonder the prophet of God, Zechariah, is enabled to say: “He will proclaim peace to the nations. His rule will extend from sea to sea and from the River to the ends of the earth.” Amen.