July 1: Message to the weary and burdened

“Come to Me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. All of you, take up My yoke and learn from Me, because I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for yourselves. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.   (Matthew 11:28-30 — Holman Christian Standard Bible)

The Jews in Jesus’ time were weary and burdened. Their religious “leaders”, the people that were supposed to lead them to God, were hypocrites that did not practice what they preached. They demanded: do this, don’t do that, don’t eat this, don’t touch that — and yet faith in God, miraculous deliverance from oppression, and closeness with God were issues they ignored. And to make matters worse, the Jews had been conquered by the Romans, a brutal, ungodly people.

When Jesus invited the weary and burdened to come to Him and find rest, He was referring to spiritual relief. Though He could have criticized many things about the Romans and Jewish puppet-rulers, he focused on people’s spiritual state. He knew that a person’s inner wellbeing determines everything. Many are physically free, but spiritually bound. But a spiritually free and healthy person has the power to change everything else — and that’s what Jesus came to bring them, and us.

A yoke is a wooden crosspiece that’s fastened over the necks of two animals and attached to a plow or cart, and we all know what a burden is. And so it’s surprising that Jesus mentions these two things right after saying that He came to help the weary and burdened — allowing someone to place a yoke over your neck seems to be the total opposite of rest, except in God’s world, His yoke and burden are not only easy and light, they are good a necessary. Freedom to do whatever we want is not true freedom. The devil constantly tells people it is, but it’s not. True freedom comes through obedience and self-denial. When we accept God’s yoke, and His burden, we find true happiness and rest.

Have you accepted His yoke and burden, or are you resisting it? If you haven’t, the sooner you do, the quicker you will experience real life.