My Yoke is Easy 1975

From a distance, they look like two trees, standing alone in the wilderness and covered with almost total darkness, except for a beam of light coming down on one of them. And it was obvious that they were the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the tree of life. As one comes closer to them, and especially as one draws near to the tree of life, the image of it begins to dissolve into a vine going out in all directions.

And then the branches on this vine become people, men and women. And each of these people appears to be linked by a wooden yoke over the shoulders, like the kind of yoke they would put together two oxen with, yoked to one who looks like the son of man. And as they go forth in all directions, always in touch with the vine, they lift burdens from people and they encourage those who are down and bring comfort to those who are mourning and healing to those who are sick.

The spirit of the Lord is upon them as they preach good news to the poor and recovery of sight to the blind, setting at liberty those who are oppressed. Always like everywhere they go, they're lifting burdens. Then one turns and looks at this other tree, which is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and it's surrounded by a crowd of people who are busy plucking fruit from the tree and eating it.

And it seems the more they eat of this, the more greedy they become for more of it until the juice of the fruit runs down over their mouths, you know, and they just become more and more thirsty and hungry for this fruit. And as they eat the fruit from this tree, a strange burden begins to appear on the back of each person eating it. And the more they eat, the bigger the burden becomes.

And then suddenly a strange thing begins to happen. These people who are surrounding this tree of the knowledge of good and evil begin to have like a contest. They're running around trying to get the burden off themselves and put it on somebody else.

And as one is busy putting the burden on another person, someone comes up behind him or her and dumps one on top of him. And it's like chaos and madness. But as time goes on, it turns out, of course, that the weak and the aged and the infirm are absolutely weighed down and overcome with burdens.

And even when strangers are coming by, everybody runs up and dumps burdens on them too. And in the dim semi-light that surrounds the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, it appears that these two, these people as well, are linked by an iron yoke to one who has the form of a serpent. Then said Jesus to the crowds and to his disciples, the scribes and Pharisees sit on Moses' seat.

So practice and observe whatever they tell you, but not what they do. For they preach, but do not practice. They bind heavy burdens hard to bear and lay them on men's shoulders, but they themselves will not move them with their finger.

At that time, Jesus declared, I thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to babes. Yea, Father, for such was thy gracious will. All things have been delivered to me by my father, and no one knows the son except the father.

No one knows the father except the son and anyone to whom the son chooses to reveal him. Come to me, all ye who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and lowly of heart, and you shall find rest for your souls.

For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Now, if it's true that our Lord's burden is easy, his yoke is easy, and his burden is light, then why is it that so many people who appear to be his followers are so burdened down and so weary and so tired that they can hardly make it along the road, much less help anyone else? And why is it that so many people who appear to be following Jesus, instead of lightening the other man's load, are continuously dumping more weight on those with whom they have to do it? Every person they touch seems to be laden down with more burdens. You go into a house, and here they are sitting around in the living room, and if they were, you know, weeping for repentance, if they were praying for forgiveness, that might be all right, but what are they doing? They're sitting around like a bunch of zombies? They're numb! And on inquiring, you find out that brother so-and-so or sister so-and-so just left, or they were there last night.

How is it, you know, that so often people who profess to be following Jesus leave behind them a trail of condemnation? Now, if Jesus' burden is light, and if his yoke is indeed easy, why is it that so many people who claim to be following him are marching along this treadmill? And the treadmill goes round and round and round, and they're not getting anywhere, trying to work off their guilt, but the burden gets heavier and heavier. Now, it's certainly true that our Lord promises that if we follow him, we will carry a cross, and we will experience in this world tribulation, and there will be persecution, but he also promises that with all this, there will be unspeakable joy, continuous, unfailing peace, rest for our souls in the middle of whatever hassles we have to travel through. Now, if I'm following Jesus, it ought to be, you know, that I have joy in my heart just automatically.

If I'm under that yoke with him, if I'm carrying that cross, and even enduring persecution, there ought to be in my heart 24 hours a day, all the time, a living peace that passes understanding, which makes it possible for me also to touch other people's lives, not with condemnation, but with the mercy of God, so that when we touch people, we bring healing to them, and not more death and hell, and so that we can indeed set the captives free. If it happens that we who say we follow Jesus are all the time weary and irritable and negative and sour, this is a good indication that we are not under the yoke with Jesus, the Son of Man, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world, but that we have somehow come under a wrong yoke. One way or another, it is the yoke of slavery.

From that tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and from the serpent who always lurks near that tree, there is always being put, ever since the beginning of history, is being put a religious yoke on those who are not careful, those who are not truly listening to God's mercy, and a yoke that weighs them down and takes away all their freedom. It's religious, and it appears to be right, but it's nothing but death. That's what happened in Galatia.

Paul went to the Galatians and held up Christ crucified and brought to these people life and deliverance and freedom and joy and power. Paul was hardly gone before in behind him came all kinds of people who carried with them this other yoke, you know, and pretty soon the Galatians were burdened down with rules and regulations and death, and Paul writes to them, whatever happened to you people. And the same thing can happen to us if we fail to hold on and stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free and no longer submit, as he says, to the yoke of bondage.

Now this yoke of bondage, which is usually a religious yoke of some kind, takes various forms. For instance, it may take the form of self-idolatry, in which I may be saying all the right things, talking about Jesus, preaching the gospel, all this kind of thing, knowing my scriptures, and appear to be really alive in God from the things that I say. But my life and my inner thinking would indicate to the eyes of God and to anybody who has discernment, perhaps, that I'm not living as if God is the center of the universe.

I'm the center of the universe, and the only things in the world that count at all are the things that relate to me, and the only people who I really pay any attention to at all, or who I think at all are important, are the ones who do something for me, or acknowledge me, or respect me, or fit into my program. You know, and as I walk along this road of self-idolatry, the weight on me gets heavier and heavier until I finally find myself thinking along this line, and who of us hasn't? Everything depends on me. If I don't do it, it won't get done.

If I don't purify the church, the church will never be pure. And if I leave it, it'll fall apart. It was 29 years ago last summer, and I'll never forget this, I'm sure, throughout all eternity.

I worked in a hospital, and there was a patient who would stand at the edge of the day room with his back to the wall. He was an elderly man with a long white beard, and usually it was summertime, and he had his shirt on, and he would stand there all day long. His hand wouldn't touch his stomach, but it was going around like this, and he'd go, ooh, ooh.

You know, you walk up to him, and you say, what are you doing? And he'd say, I control all the radio stations in the whole world. And then he'd go back to his work. You know, and that sounds funny, but don't you know that man is a symbol of you and of me? And he's not very different from the rest of us.

You know, he believed that, you know, he had himself under this delusion that it all depended on him. And there are not a few of us in this room right now who are under that delusion, too. Or maybe it just doesn't just depend on me, maybe two or three of my buddies, or, you know, maybe our little community of true saints, the shepherding community, whatever I want to call it.

We're the ones. It all hinges on us. Then there's the yoke of legalism, which usually begins with the great insight that I have discovered the secret of the universe.

I have found the true principles on which all things revolve. And what happens is I take words that come straight out of the mouth of my Lord, which are true. What do I do with them? Instead of allowing those words of Jesus to draw me to him and in those words to receive spirit and life as I walk with him and obey him, Jesus, my Lord, I take the word, disengage them from Jesus and walk off here by myself and do what I want with those words.

What happens to the flower? You see the flower is blooming. It's beautiful. It's a symbol of life.

You cut the flower off and you staple it to the wall. Looks good for a little while. You come in the next day.

It's a symbol of death. And that's what we do. We take words that are good when they are connected with Jesus.

For instance, the command to love. If I love my brother by the power of God's spirit, because my Lord told me to do this, if I do it out of my love for him, see, then I'm doing it out of gratitude. And this becomes life.

And as I seek to love my brother, even if I'm having a hard time, I convey life. But if I love my brother as a rule disengaged from a relationship with my Lord, then I'm doing it as a means of justifying myself. I'm then merely going through the motions of love and my heart is whole.

If I feed the hungry and clothe the naked, because Jesus told me to, out of love for him, I do these things. This is life. But if I feed the hungry and clothe the naked as a principle disengaged from my relationship with Jesus himself, this becomes death.

Do I bestow all my goods to feed the poor? And do I give my body to be burned? If I have not charity, which comes only from Jesus, it profits me. Then there's the yoke of self-righteousness, which always begins with the discovery that I am somewhat better than my brother or my sister. And the minute I begin to think like this, I am into the bondage of comparing myself with others.

And when I do this, at first, I can find people that I can compare with favorably, I think. But always there will come along someone who will make me feel very uncomfortable because he's better than I am. You know, and instead of looking at my Lord, I'm looking at men and women around me.

And usually in his mercy, God permits me to really blow it someplace. And maybe not many people will see it, but somebody's going to see it. Maybe my wife or my children, you know, or my best friend or my chief enemy, somebody will catch me, you know, with my mask off.

And then I'm really, really upset. And we discover when we're living under the yoke of self-righteousness, God, I thank you that I am not as other men are, that we're inwardly all the time nervous, you know, and we're also impatient and sour in our relationships with those around us. Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and lowly apart, and you shall find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Now, why is his yoke easy and his burden light? Because the weight of that yoke does not rest on us, but on his cross.

Jesus is inviting us when he tells us to come out of the yoke, to come to a work that has already been done, a victory that's already been won, a miracle that's already been performed. When the Israelites finally went with Moses, they were now moving toward the Red Sea, and behind them were the troops of the Egyptians, and before them was this sea in which they could have been drowned. You know, there was absolutely no way that they were going to be preserved now but by God's grace.

You know, and at this point, after their lives had been disrupted, and after they had been shook up, and they have now begun to follow Moses, who is now the type of Christ for them, then God says, when they're in this high spot, stand still and see the salvation of your God. Now, I'm going to show you. All you have to do is stand there and watch, and I will fight your battle for you.

And basically, coming under the yoke with Jesus is just that. We get down under this yoke, and we discover that all our guilt, and all our sins, and all the stupid things we've done flow out of us, across the yoke, and down into his cross, and they're swallowed up. And we're at peace.

Be in good cheer. Your sins are forgiven, he says to us, and if there are those of us who say we're following Jesus, who today are burdened down, and you know, and just weighed under the weight of all kinds of things as we're seeking to do the will of God, and in patient with everybody around us, excuse me, this would indicate that somehow we got ourselves mixed up under the wrong yoke. There are believers in our midst who have found this to be the case, and that you're right now under a yoke of slavery.

Or if there are seekers in our midst who are trying to find some relief from the yoke that's on them, the Lord is simply saying, come to me, and I will give you rest. And that rest, the weight will go, the burden will fly away, and that rest will begin right now. And it will take two forms.

It will come in two ways. First of all, there will be immediate relief, instant relief. The burden just rolls away and goes down into that pool of blood and is lost.

And you find peace. This man who thought he was controlling all the radio stations in the world was weighed down under the burden of his delusion. And if we will bring to our Lord the delusions that have burdened us down, the same forgiveness will set us free.

But the second form this rest will take is that we will begin to learn every day to live as free men and women. We've been so in the habit of living in bondage that we don't know what freedom is. And those of us who think we're free are very often the most bound.

But now we begin to learn from him to live as free men and women. And the only one on earth who can teach us to walk as free people is Jesus. And he does it by teaching us to be like himself, which is to be like, to be meek and lowly of heart.

So that the minute I begin to experience that peace, I don't have to prove that I'm right anymore. I don't have to vindicate myself. I don't have to make sure that I'm somebody by getting attention in the eyes of others.

All I have to do is walk with him, knowing that he knows my name. And that's all that matters. And I begin now to experience peace.

And as I learn from him every day, I have to learn this every day. I have to learn it. And as I do, as I begin to take on myself, the mind of Christ, which is the self emptying, self-giving, serving mind, I then begin to discover that I have now the power from God to touch other lives with healing and to relieve my brother's burden and to open the eyes of the blind and to set the captive free.

Should there be in our midst right now, anybody who, as you search the truth of yourself, discovers that you're under the wrong yoke, the spirit of the living Christ extends to you right now, a threefold invitation. First, come to me, come to me the way you are, come to me with all your sin, come to me with all those mistakes, and I will give you rest. Second, take my yoke on you, exchange the yoke you're carrying that iron yoke from the light yoke.

Let your life. In other words, touch my cross afresh today. And third, learn from me to walk this earth as a free person.

Learn from me to be meek and lowly of heart, and you'll find rest for yourself. May God help us to turn away from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, gobbling up that fruit and increasing our burdens all the time. And to begin this day to eat from the tree of life and the way to the tree of life, which was guarded by that flaming sword, is now open through our Lord.

God help us to eat of that fruit, the fruit of the tree of life, who is Jesus today. Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and lowly of heart, and you shall find rest for your souls.

For my yoke is easy and my burden is life. Lord God, you know how this applies in each one of our lives. And if we just help ask for your aid right now, Lord, to concentrate on what you're telling us and where there is such discouragement or heaviness, weariness, fatigue, despair, guilt, loneliness, whatever it is, Lord, you know what it is, whatever aspect of death it may be or disease.

Encourage your children by the power of your spirit, heavenly father, to come to the cross of Jesus now and to find his peace before they leave this place today, before they leave this place today. I ask it in his name. Amen.