Being Yoked to Jesus

Well, good afternoon again, brethren. Always wonderful to see all of you. Happy that you're able to be here. I know I talked to one man this past week who was interested in services and coming to church. I thought he might be here today.

I don't believe he is. But at least he was wanting to know, well, will we be talking about the kingdom of God? And of course, I tried to assure him, yes, at least in some way we'll be talking about the kingdom of God. Because, as all of us know, we're awaiting the return of Jesus Christ. We're awaiting the establishment of the kingdom of God on earth. We, in a sense, even take that for granted if we've been around the Church of God for some time. And we've had our kingdom of God seminars which have an emphasis on the kingdom and on how it is that God is going to install a kingdom that will actually work.

It will be completely different than the governments of this world. It's going to be based on much better laws, much more predictable laws, and yet we await that time. When's that going to happen? Is that going to happen next month? Is that going to happen next year? Well, I don't believe so. There are several things that the Bible says have to come to pass.

And I'm not going to go through all those things today, at least not at this time. But as we await Christ's return, and as we desire the establishment of the kingdom of God on earth, many of us, even as I mentioned in our prayer request earlier with the announcements, many of us are enduring hardship. I can think about myself with what problems I have, and I can think of many of you, whether it's health-related issues, whether it might be family-related issues, whether it might be just enduring to the end. Because all of us know that we're asked to do that.

We're required to do that. God calls us to endure unto the end. You can find that in Matthew 24, and Jesus' statement's about the end of the age. He says, I want you to endure unto the end. And I know that some of you have experienced losses here in the recent past, recent months, where you continue to endure affliction. And see, that's clearly what we're told to do.

And as Mr. McAlexander was encouraging us to make plans and to work toward a goal and strive toward the development that we need to do regarding our relationship with God and ultimately to win the race, as the Apostle Paul said, I've finished the course. I've kept the faith. I have done what God has asked me to do. And he wasn't ashamed of that. He was happy about that. He was glad that he had looked to God for help.

He had certainly been through all kinds of messes, shipwrecked and getting beaten over and over again. It doesn't look like he traveled in a good circle. He was always running into difficulty and problems and trials. And yet, even though some of our difficulties may not appear to be quite as dramatic as what the Apostle Paul writes about, we still do endure affliction. We endure affliction even for one another, in caring for one another.

If I don't hurt, then I'm concerned about those who do. And so, in a sense, that affects me. And I think the same thing is the case whenever we endure loss. Sometimes we can think about how blessed we are that God has given us whatever we have.

Certainly, as we go into the future here, I don't know what kind of economic, job-related uncertainties we may run into. Those all provide an adequate amount of stress to pull us down. And yet, I want to point out something today that I hope can pick us up. Because we will, we have been, and we will continue to endure some of these same things that I described here in the introduction to the sermon today. But I want us to look at what Jesus says in Matthew 11.

Because he tells us something quite remarkable. He tells us something that I know you've read before, and I certainly know that I've read it over and over again, and I've wanted to understand it. I've wanted to comprehend just what it really means. But what Jesus tells us is quite uplifting. It's quite encouraging. It's really quite moving. But it does involve me, and it does involve you. And yet, it involves us, well, let's just read it here in Matthew 11. You read in verse 29 where Jesus says, Take my yoke upon you. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me.

For I am gentle and humble in heart, or humble in meek in spirit, and you will find rest for your souls. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me. For I am meek and humble or lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. What does that mean, brethren? What does that tell us? Is there something that we can do, should do, should be doing, maybe more than we realized we should? Is this...

I've looked at the words of the second song that we were singing. It was talking about it, embracing all of the benefits that God makes available to us. This is one of those benefits. And I hope to be able to elaborate on that here or during the sermon today as we think about, take my yoke upon you. Who's saying this? Well, Jesus is saying it. What did Jesus know about a yoke? Are we burdened by the difficulties that we live with, or are we sharing those with the yoke of Jesus?

How can we better understand this? How can we utilize what God says for us to benefit from? See, what is it that you really even think of when you think of a yoke? What is a yoke? I know if you look through the Bible, you'll find the word yoke used a number of times. Most of the cases it is used where it appears to be, the term is used as a yoke, almost a bondage or a yoke of affliction or a yoke of oppression.

You see it described more in the Old Testament about people being kind of enslaved by other people. And that, of course, is one of the ways that the term is used. But you also see, and this is what I'd like to point out to you, and you find this in Luke 14, verse 19. I'll come back, of course, to Matthew 11 here as we go along. But in Luke 14, Luke 14, in verse 19, this is actually a description that I want us to think of. Luke 14, verse 19. This is in the parable of the Great Supper, Great Dinner.

And it says in verse 19, whenever these people were called, they were invited to this banquet, it says in verse 19, one says, Well, I've bought five yoke of oxen, and I need to go try them out. Please, excuse me. Please accept my regret. They were making an excuse for not embracing the dinner. And I'm not talking about this parable and what it's about. I'm just pointing out that the use of the word yoke, the use of the term, what I'd like for us to get in our minds is a yoke, most commonly, was a type of harness that connected a pair of animals.

In this case, it was a pair of oxen. Now, I know you have, you know, you've got all kinds of fancy harnesses and different types of, I guess, with horses. You have different harnesses and you can, you see the, at least the Clydesdales, you know, you see the Budweiser advertisement for them. They've got 14 different horses there, you know, all pulling a wagon. That's a little different. You know, they are all pulling the wagon, yes. But see, a yoke for oxen, say, was to just, it was a board.

It was a wooden yoke that is designed to link the two oxen, most of the time, could be donkeys, could be other, and beasts of burden. But a wooden yoke is used to link the pair together so that they can work more efficiently, so that they can do more work, so that they can do more labor, and they can do that together. They can do that in unison. They can pull, you know, put ones, you know, up there.

And I think of this, and again, I hope you can envision a yoke, a wooden yoke that is a wooden beam or bar that would go across the necks of, say, two oxen, and then would be hollowed out, where, you know, it would kind of go down on their, down on top of their neck and kind of around them. And then it would be held in place by wooden or leather fasteners, so that they are, in essence, teamed up.

They are working together. They are in unity or unison, and they're pulling, if they're pulling a plow or if they're pulling some other type of an implement. That's what I would like for us to get in mind. And I have to think, in just considering what Jesus did up until the time he was 30, we're told that he was the carpenter's son.

And I, as I understand it, you know, he would have been a woodworker of some type. He may have been more of a construction worker as far as building buildings or houses, but I think also building other wooden objects. And I can't imagine that Jesus never built even a yoke, which would take some crafting to take a beam, the right size and the right type of beam, and to kind of maybe hollow parts of it out and make it to where it would fit a pair of oxen to be able for the farmers around the rocky soil, around outside of Nazareth.

I can't believe he didn't make a few of those. Maybe he didn't. I'm just conjecturing that. I'm thinking, well, certainly he was familiar with what the use was. He was familiar with how that worked. And he maybe was very familiar, maybe more familiar than I would ever imagine.

But see here in this case, in verse 29 of Matthew 11, Jesus tells us to take my yoke upon you. And so I want us to think about that. I want us to contemplate, do I do that? Do I think about that very often? Do I even believe that might help me? Because I am pretty sure it would. I'm sure that it would help us as we understand this. Now, I know all of us are familiar with the verses and the statements that are made about our devotion to God, our commitment to God.

And we make this as we are baptized. And some of you have been baptized for five or ten years, and some of you have been baptized for fifty years. So maybe it's hard for you to remember. I know I can think back. I got forty-five years or so back to when I was baptized. I still remember that. I will never forget that because I so desperately needed to be and wanted to be baptized. And yet the commitments that I understood, even at a relatively young age, very young age, I was only two.

No, I was eighteen or nineteen. The commitments that I was making and that you made when you were baptized were, you know, we understood the sea over here in chapter sixteen of Matthew. I'll try to say in Matthew because I can go to either one, any other gospel. Most of this information is in several, although this section in Matthew about the yoke of Jesus is not in the others.

This is the only place where it is. But in Matthew sixteen in verse twenty-four, Jesus told His disciples, if anyone wants to be My disciple or follower, then let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow Me. And so this is the type of discussion and the type of thought that I'm sure was brought to your attention whenever you were making a commitment before God and wanting to be baptized, wanting to be forgiven, and then wanting to be a recipient of the Holy Spirit, wanting to have the power of God available with you to help you throughout the remainder of your life.

Now, we're familiar with that, and of course that tells us and tells us that, well, we want to obey the law of God. We want to follow the Word and the teaching of Jesus Christ. We want to hear His voice. We want to be attuned to what He has to say. We certainly want to abide in His words. We want to respect Him. We want to honor Him. We clearly want to appreciate His forgiveness. I know that was perhaps in my mind what I knew I needed more than anything was Christ's forgiveness.

The forgiveness that was going to come through the blood of Jesus was applied to me as I wanted to be baptized. But if we drop down here a little bit later, here in chapter 17, you go into a section here about the transfiguration. And again, I'm not wanting to read through that section and cover that material any more than simply in verse 5 where you see God saying, or a voice from a cloud saying, this is my beloved Son.

This is the Son that I love. And with Him I am very well pleased. But what does He add right after that? He says, listen to Him. Hear what He has to say. And of course, they were going to tell them a number of other things after that. But see, that statement, to Him. Hear what He has to say. Hear what He will focus on. Hear what He has to offer because He has a lot to offer.

He is an unbelievably powerful being. And we need to take advantage of that. So if we back up again in chapter 11, this is the section that I'm going to focus on. Chapter 11 of Matthew, in verse 28, what does Jesus want us to hear? What does He want us to be aware of? What does He want us to know? Well, what He says in verse 28, Matthew 11 verse 28, He says, come to Me, all of you who are weary and who are heavy laden.

Come to Me, all of you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. I will give you rest. He goes on to say in verse 29, take My yoke upon you and learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly in spirit, lowly in heart, and I will give rest to your soul. And in verse 30, He says, My yoke is easy and My burden is light.

Now, I've read that many times before, and I'm sure you have as well, but I don't know that I've understood what that means. I don't know that I fully comprehend what it means today, but I want to talk about it. I think it's important. I think it's significant, because here Jesus says, I'm offering you My power.

I'm offering you My help. I'm offering you My yoke. And He says that yoke is easy. That yoke is light. I'm able to be yoked together with you and to empower you and uplift you and to give rest to your soul. That's a remarkable, powerful statement. And yet again, it's just a matter of listening to what Jesus has to say. I'd like to point out how it is that this is talking to us. It's talking to people who are part of the Church of God. It's talking to those of us whose minds have been opened, who have been drawn by the Father to Jesus Christ.

If you back up in verse 25, He says, I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you've hidden these things from the wise and the prudent or the intelligent of the world, and you've revealed them to the babes. You've revealed them unto the infants.

See, this is the description He uses for those that the Father draws. Those that the Father draws to Him, He holds out, I want you, who are burdened and who are heavy laden and who have been given access to the Father, through Me, I want you to take My yoke upon you and I'll give rest to your soul. I will offer you help. I will offer you encouragement. I will lift you up. I will empower you in a way that you might never imagine. He goes on to say in verse 26, as He has revealed these things to babes, He said, Yes, Father, for such was Your gracious will. It was pleasing in Your sight that You would choose to do what You did in drawing people to Me.

And He goes on to say, and no one knows the Father. Verse 27, all things have been handed over to Me by the Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him. And then He immediately says, I want You to come to Me. Come to Me, You who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give You rest.

See, whenever I think about the ailments that we suffer, the losses that we endure, the difficulties that we struggle with, whether with job or whether economically, and whenever I think about the endurance that He expects us to have.

See, some of us are in our 70s. Some of us are in our 80s. And I know you intend to endure under the end. But what will you see? Some of us are in our 50s and 60s. What will I see? What will you see between now and the end of my life, or the return of Christ, which I hope comes more quickly?

What will I see in the time frame between now and when Christ returns or I die?

Well, I don't have any idea what that is. But I do know that I'm told by the Lord, I'm told by Jesus Christ, our Savior, that I want You to take my yoke upon You and learn of me, and learn what I have to offer, to learn how I can empower You. Now, I'm not in any way minimizing what the help of the Holy Spirit is, because we know that God has clearly given us the Holy Spirit. But Jesus is saying something here where He is willing to be yoked together with us, and the power, the might, the energy, the capacity that He has, if I truly am cultivating a relationship with Him on an individual basis. This is going to be an individual thing. It's not going to be a blanket thing. It's an individual thing that every one of us can embrace. Every one of us can do what it says in Matthew 11.29, where it says, Take my yoke upon you.

You, brethren, I desperately want to do that. I want to do that myself. I want others to do that, because I see that as being a real benefit. I see that as being a real answer. We draw back to John 6. We're familiar again with verses that are here, because Jesus is speaking about those that He would have drawn to Him by the Father. And here in John 6, verse 44, He says, No man, no one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me. No one will come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me.

And on over in verse 65, He says, For this reason I told you that no one can come to me, unless is granted by the Father. So here the terminology, Come to me, Come to Jesus, is used in a way that is connected with being drawn by the Father to have a close and intimate relationship with Jesus Christ, to be inspired and to be guided and led by the Holy Spirit to where we are in a very close communion with the one who is able to help us. If we drop back in verse 35, of course, Jesus is talking about, in this whole section, about being the bread of life. He's talking about being the true bread of life. And in verse 35, He says, Jesus said to them, I'm the bread of life.

Whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.

Again, those can just be words to you, or they can be tremendously powerful.

Of course, some of the people who were listening to Him didn't believe Him. They were scoffing.

They were not paying attention. Numerous Pharisees were there. They didn't even want to pay attention.

And He said in verse 36, I say this to you, I said to you that you have seen me, and yet you don't believe. And yet, in verse 37, He says, everything or everyone, or that the Father gives me, will come to me, and anyone who comes to me, I will never drive them away.

That He wants us to be united with Him. He wants us to be empowered by Him. He wants us to understand that He knows what it's like to be human. He knows what it's like. He knows the limitations of being human. Now, He was never flawed in that like all of us are, but that's why we need Him.

That's why we need what He has to offer. And beyond simply the forgiveness that we receive from His shed blood, He also provides comfort, and He provides strength to endure.

See, I want us to be mindful of that, to be aware that even though the mercy of God has been extended to us, and we've been forgiven, and the blood of Jesus cleanses us from our sins, He also tells us that He is compassionately and wonderfully caring for us. He wants to comfort us. He wants to lift us up when we're down. He wants to strengthen us when we know we are so very weak.

That's why He says, take my yoke upon you. Be willing to be yoked together. Of course, I guess initially we'd have to say the first thing regarding this, we would have to admit we need some help. If you don't need any help, then don't bother listening. Don't bother reading what it says.

But see, I need help, so I want to read it. I want to see what it is that He tells me. And then I want to accept His yoke, because I desire the unity and union with the Son of God that the yoke of Jesus extends. See, I want to be paired together with Jesus Christ. I want Him to share the load, because that's what a yoke was designed to do when you had two oxen who were pulling a pile behind it They were sharing the load, and one might even have been stronger than the other.

Or one may have been older and one newer, actually needing to learn what the older oxen would know. I know what we're going to do. I know what we're going to face. I know how we're going to need to do. But see, being yoked together with Jesus Christ is a tremendous blessing. It's a tremendous honor, but like I said, it's an intimate working relationship with Christ, truly knowing Him, and truly relying on His strength when we find that we don't seem to have much strength.

Relying on His ability to lift us or pull us when we don't seem to have the strength. So why is it? In verse 30 here of Matthew 11, if we go back to that, that's the primary verse I'm focusing on, or section. Why is it that He says, My yoke is easy? My burden is light. Why?

Why does He say that? Well, because He has all power. Because He knows, you know, no matter what kind of yoke is here, you know, I can pull the load. You know, the burden is light. I have a great deal of power. So I'd like for us to go back again to Matthew 11 and look at this in greater detail, because it's fascinating to me. It's uplifting. It's encouraging to know that He cares about us enough. And even when He knows that He has given us and we know our responsibility before God is to endure to the end, I don't want to endure alone. I don't want to endure or just suffer by myself. I want to share that suffering. I want to share whatever affliction I go through with Jesus Christ. Again here in Matthew 11, verse 28, we really listen to what He says. Where He says in verse 28, come to Me, those of you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

What a remarkable statement. What a fabulous offering where He says, you know, I want you to just come to Me and help. Ask for help. Request help. Request a union with Him. And of course, I think He implies whenever He makes that statement that you ask Him to help bear the burdens that you're bearing. See, He's pointing this out to those who are weary, those who are heavy laden. And we can say as we come into a relationship with God, we can certainly say we're burdened by our sins.

We're burdened by guilt. We're burdened... See, guilt is a pretty invisible thing.

It's a thought. It's an attempt. It's an understanding in our heart. It's still a burden. It weighs us down. And He can relieve that. He relieves that all the time. He is willing to extend that, but it's far more than that. It's not just that that burdens us. He says in verse 29, Take my yoke upon you and learn of Me. See, now, what does it mean to take the yoke that Jesus offers upon Me? See, I want to know what that means. I want to know how to do that. I want to know how that can help me. See, I believe that the yoke of Jesus is certainly not another burden. In most of the cases when you see yoke mentioned in the Bible, it's talking about some kind of burden, some type of oppression, some type of an enslaved condition. And being enslaved to Jesus, I wouldn't mind. That would be okay. But I don't think that's what He's implying here. He's implying that the yoke that I'm extending to you is easy and light because I'm helping pull the load.

It's not another burden that we have to bear, but it's a relief. That's what He's talking about here. It's a relief to our soul as we are paired together with the most powerful, compassionate, comforting being who ever walked the earth. And as I said earlier, it's not enough just to know about this. It's not enough just to read it. It's got to be something that comes alive.

Comes alive in our thoughts, in our heart, in our closeness to God, in our appreciation for what Jesus offers us. Because He does. He offers us His help. He offers us His strength. You can read the verses, and you're familiar. You probably can quote them about what He says He can do for us.

Let's see, I think we want to be mindful of what He says here about taking the yoke. Feeling that I am yoked together with Him and that His power, His help, is available to help me succeed. See, we don't want to simply rely on our own power, because we found in essence that that isn't good enough. We found that we can't achieve on our own power what we'd like. But we do want, with the power of God and with the closeness to Jesus Christ, to be able to be successful and to achieve all of the revolutions that Mr.

McAlexander was talking about. All the resolutions, if we resolve to do something and we set our goal to be a part of the family of God, which we clearly want to do, then we want to see what are all the tools made available to us. I guess a yoke in this case, a yoke of Jesus, would be a tool that could be to our benefit, that could lift our soul as far as what he says. He says, learn of me for I'm gentle and lowly in heart or humble in heart.

Now, what does that mean? Well, I think certainly one of the things I've thought that it means is, well, I want to try to become like that. I mean, I know Jesus is that way. I know that he is described in numerous places as having humility. Clearly the opposite of man, opposite of Satan and his arrogance and vanity, but he's humble and meek and even lowly. Now, that certainly is something we should emulate. We should strive to ask that God would give us those qualities.

But I think he's implying something even different, different than that, because he says, take my yoke upon you and learn of me for I'm gentle and humble in heart. Now, he was describing himself in the way that he really felt about other people.

You know, who was he, in essence, contrasting himself with? Well, he was contrasting himself with other people. He was contrasting himself with the religious leaders and the Pharisees.

Now, what type of individuals were they? Well, they were judgmental. They were harsh. They were overbearing. They were restrictive. You can't do this. You can't do that. And, of course, some of the things that Jesus did, they said, you can't do that. And, of course, he had to straighten them out and say, yes, I can. I can do what I'm doing because I'm the Son of God.

But, see, what he was pointing out, being meek and gentle, is that he's the one who can teach us. He's the one who can reach us. He's the one who can reach our minds. He's the one who can reach our hearts. He's a far better teacher than any of us will ever be. Some of you are teachers.

And many of us certainly think we would like to become a teacher, if not in this age in the world to come because we're told that we should be kings and priests and teach and serve other people.

But, see, what kind of outlook did Jesus have? Well, he was approachable. He said, learn of me for I am meek and lowly. See, he was willing to reach out to people. He was willing to reach out to the disciples. Who were the disciples that he surrounded himself with?

Well, they were clearly not to learn it. They were not the doctors of the law. They were not the people that you would have thought were of high society and who were wealthy and who were, you know, all the positive things that you could say about people in the world.

They were, for the most part, fishermen. Fishermen from Galilee. Fishermen who others thought, oh, you know, how crude are they? How sad are they? And yet, Jesus, very lovingly, very mercifully, very convincingly, worked with them, reached out to them, even with all of their flaws.

Now, take Peter. Anything wrong with him? Well, you know, you see a lot of things written about Peter. They're not very favorable. Said a lot of things he shouldn't have said. You know, Christ, even in one place, said, get behind me, Satan. You know, Peter didn't know what he was doing. He didn't know what he had. He didn't know the influence that he had on him as a human being.

You know, Peter, of course, denied that he would ever, you know, betray Christ. He did. You know, you'll deny me. Not just betray me, you'll deny me three times before tomorrow morning. See, Peter went through that. Christ realized that, well, he's a human being, and he needs help. He needs my yoke. Now, I didn't tell him that right then. He's telling us here in Matthew 11, he needs to be yoked together with me. You know, what about James and John? They're pretty prominent apostles. You know, they're calling down fire out of heaven to consume those who don't like them or who pass them along. And Jesus said, you don't know what you're doing. He was very tolerable of them. He knew that they needed help and that they needed even the Holy Spirit yet to receive that whenever they were going through these. He actually knew that all of them, and he had to realize all of them were going to forsake him and even betray him.

And beyond that, beyond his death and then resurrection, what about Thomas?

Thomas was one of the disciples. He knew all the stuff that Jesus had been doing. He wouldn't believe it. I won't believe it. You can't do that. You can't rise from the dead.

But, of course, we find later that Thomas became a believer. He became an individual who could believe something that was impossible to do humanly. But for God, it clearly was possible. It was clearly within the realm of the God family with the Father and the Son. It was clearly within the realm. And so he had to say, I need to give my life to you. I need to give my entire life to you in service because you have everything to give. You can do anything.

And so when you think about all the people that Jesus dealt with, and of course later if you read through the book of Acts, you see that Paul had a few problems to begin with. Of course, he was out killing the Christians. That was one of the first problems that we find Paul having noted.

And yet, whenever he came into contact with Jesus Christ, he realized, and of course he helped him a lot with a few days or weeks of blindness, to where he would come to see, I need help.

I need lots of help. And see, I mention all of these. And, of course, Paul even struggled in the church because of his background, because of what he had done, who he was, and he was actually educated. He was not like many of the others. He was highly schooled.

And yet, he also had plenty of flaws, clearly needed forgiveness, and clearly needed to be linked together with Jesus. And, of course, he made these statements over and over again. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. See, that was prior to the time when he got to the end of the race, and he says, I won the race. He says, I have been yoked with Jesus Christ through all these shipwrecks and messes that I've been in, and he has pulled me through every single time.

And so, I think it's fascinating to see how Jesus was able, when he said, Learn of me, for I'm meek and lowly. I'm able to help you. I understand how limited you are.

And I think it's good for us to learn how willing he is to help us, how willing he is to be compassionate, to be understanding of our weaknesses. Now, we may want to be quite powerful and mighty and quite impressive with our abilities, but we're still flawed, and we still need help, and we still need to learn of him. Because in verse 29, he says, If you take my yoke upon you, if you learn about me, if you learn the approach that I have, if you learn how much I love you, then I'll give rest to your soul.

See, what's that talking about? Well, you find that reference in the Old Testament, Rest to your Soul. It's in Jeremiah, at least one of the places that I saw.

But it indicated a connection with God. It indicated a soundness of outlook that as people we don't have quite a bit of the time. We struggle with difficulties. We labor over our own inadequacies, our own insufficiencies, which all of us have. We struggle with that.

Jesus says, I don't care if you take my yoke upon you, if you learn of me, and learn how much I love you, and how much I am concerned about helping you, I will give rest to your soul.

And I believe that having that yoke with Jesus, taking that yoke upon us, allows us to share our burdens, truly lightening our load as we take His yoke upon us, sharing with the yoke of Christ.

Now, I think it's fascinating to even think of what He would extend in this case.

He, of course, says in verse 30, and we could answer, you know, why is it so easy? Why is it such a light burden for Him? And yet, you know, we can easily read how that, you know, we have a high priest who is perfect, and yet, who clearly understands the weaknesses of humans. He understands how much we need help. He says in Hebrews 4, 15, we have a high priest who really knows what it is to be human, who knows what it is to have weaknesses, who knows what it is to be limited. And yet, when He says, my yoke is easy, my burden is light, He's saying, I have all power in heaven and earth to be able to help you. See, beyond forgiveness, what's it mean that He will give rest to our soul?

Well, I believe that often, even beyond our own sins and our own guilt, which we ask for forgiveness, and it is extended, and we can be relieved. As we labor in this life, you know, we can have anxieties, we can have worries. See, what He tells us when we take the yoke of Jesus upon us, is that in order to ease our anxiety, He offers peace to calm our troubled heart, our troubled mind. He's able to do that. He has that capacity. You know, we read in Philippians 4 verse 7 about a peace that passes all understanding. See, is He able to give rest to our soul, relieve anxiety? Is He able to give us peace? Well, clearly He is, and certainly we probably often even pray that He'll give us that peace. And yet, I think we need to realize that, well, that's how He gives rest to our soul. That's something I want to seek. That's not something that's a constant, that it's always there. I'm going up and down all the time, needing peace to be able to calm concerns and anxiety. You know, it's not too uneasy to run into times when we're discouraged. When we're discouraged or even depressed, when we're down and we're laboring with today and tomorrow, what does He tell us He has to offer? Well, He says He can offer joy to lift our soul. These are the types of giving rest to a soul that's available through the yoke of Jesus. To lessen our discouragement, He offers joy. Here in 1 Peter 1, you see this described. 1 Peter 1, verse 7, talking about the trials that we go through. Verse 6, 1 Peter 1, verse 6, and this you rejoice even as now a little while you are suffering various trials.

See, He knows that that's what we're going through. He knows that all the people that we're aware of who are sick or who need help, He knows about all of those. He says that's various trials that you're going through, but He says in verse 7, so that the genuineness of your faith, being more precious than gold that perishes, is tested by fire. And it may be found to result in praise and glory and honor when Jesus is revealed. Although you have not seen Him, you love Him, and even though you don't see Him now, you believe in Him and you rejoice with an indescribable joy.

Indescribable and glorious joy for you're receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your soul. See, here He talks about how that He relieves anxiety with peace and how He relieves discouragement and depression with joy. To remove fear and worry, He offers love that casts out fear. In 1 John 4, verse 18, 1 John 4, verse 18, it says, There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.

Again, I can read that and I think, well, I shouldn't be afraid of anything.

And yet, it also tells me I don't have perfect love. I don't have that yet. I know who does. I know who has perfect love. And I know that God is willing to help me with that. And Christ wants me to look to Him for that. And yet, that's how He says He can put aside the weary soul, the fear and worry to override our doubts. He offers hope.

Hope in this life, but hope even more so in the world to come.

See, that's what He told His disciples. Or actually, I guess, if we look in John 11, we see this is when He was about to raise Lazarus from the dead. In John 11, in verse 25, He says, I'm the resurrection and the life, those who believe in me. Even though they die, they're going to live. He offers hope. He offers assurance. He offers... Now, we tend to doubt or we tend to worry.

We tend to have anxiety over things that we can't control. There are a lot of things in this life that I wish I could control, but I can't. I can't or I just don't have the ability to do.

But here He says, He's able to override doubts with hope. I believe that this is how He is able to give rest to our soul. That comes from a unity, a union. It comes from a closeness. It comes from a communion with the one who has everything to offer, and the one who came to the earth for us, the one who was willing to die for us, the one who was willing to shed his blood so that I could have life, so that you could have life. But He didn't just set us aside and say, okay, you're on your own now. He said, I'll send the Holy Spirit and it will help you. It will comfort you. But He also said, what we read here in Matthew 11, that I want you to take my yoke upon you.

I want you to feel that you are working together with me toward eternal life.

And being the captain of our salvation, He kind of knows what's going to happen. He knows what's ahead. He knows what we'll run into. And He knows how to ease pain. That I don't know that any other human being knows how to ease. We might get solace or help from other people, and certainly we'd like to help each other and want to help each other. Sometimes we don't have any idea how to help someone else. We just don't have a clue. But Jesus does. He knows what it is to be weary and heavy-laden. That's why He addressed this to those that the Father had drawn to Him. The babes that He wanted to help. The babes that He was willing to extend this yoke. And His yoke. And when He says that the yoke is easy, I guess one way and one description that I read of that that makes sense to me is that sometimes you would think of a yoke, and that would be the only ones I've ever seen. If you look up pictures of this and see two oxen yoke together, it looks like a bar, maybe metal even, and then the wood that's often hollowed out. And yet it looks pretty hard.

Looks pretty, and it is stable. I mean, it's designed that way so that as you pull together that you are able to... But I have to say, and I think you could say that the yoke that Jesus is extending and why He says it's easy, is that it's lined with His love, with His concern, with His compassion in being able to help us, being able to encourage us along the way.

And so even though we all have been called to bear our own cross, and I know that suffering does, it does benefit us. There are numerous scriptures that talk about the values of suffering, but I think we should also temper that with knowing that Jesus Christ extends His yoke to us if we embrace it, if we accept it, if we appreciate it. And again, I'm only saying this, you know, not for me to use this on anybody else, but for to use it on me, because that's where it needs to be. It needs to be on me to seek the type of help that He makes available, where He says, I'll be able to pull the load. My burden is light. I can do it, and I can help you grow in the mind of Christ. I can help you grow in the nature of God. I can help you grow, and even endure affliction that you are at this point asked to endure, because my power is limitless. I'm able to help you. And so as we bear our own cross, I would say we don't want to do that alone. We don't want to do it alone, but together with the power of our Savior, our elder brother, and a high priest, we want to listen to what He has to say, and then we want to do exactly what He tells us here in Matthew 11, verse 29, where He says, take my yoke upon you, and I will give rest to your soul.