Of Yokes and Burdens

Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. (Matthew 11: 28 – 30)

We love it when our ease is at someone else’s expense.

No wonder motivation sells, especially the preaching aspect.

It is all about God doing this or the other and our part is receiving and allowing it to sink in

Any teaching on Deuteronomy 28 only focuses on the blessings without explaining the conditions.

But is that the truth?

Allow me, however, to get us to the verses above.

Like we do with many other passages, we have over the years overlooked the key provisions of that promise because we want to enjoy the bounty without paying the cost.

We are being overworked and overloaded when the invitation is being made.

We have therefore focused on being relieved of the burden and think that is the end of the story. But that is not true.

Christ takes the burdensome yoke off our necks and places His yoke on that same neck. In fact, the call is on us to willingly take His yoke upon us because He has released us from the burdensome one.

But we jump off because we are free of any yoke and start running around yokeless.

That however becomes more dangerous than the yoke we had because we attract the attention of other yoke givers.

When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest; and finding none, he saith, I will return unto my house whence I came out. And when he cometh, he findeth it swept and garnished. Then goeth he, and taketh to him seven other spirits more wicked than himself; and they enter in, and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first. (Luke 11: 24 – 26)

You see, God created us to have one yoke or the other. We are supposed to have a master to function right.

No wonder we are told that we cannot serve two masters since there must be a master one way or the other.

It is like we reason about animals.

Except probably in the places where they worship cows, there is no cow without an owner. There is no sheep without an owner.

Thou shalt not see thy brother's ox or his sheep go astray, and hide thyself from them: thou shalt in any case bring them again unto thy brother. And if thy brother be not nigh unto thee, or if thou know him not, then thou shalt bring it unto thine own house, and it shall be with thee until thy brother seek after it, and thou shalt restore it to him again. (Deuteronomy 22: 1, 2)

That is why a believer who has been freed from all yokes will soon find himself yoked by a worse master, who in effect is the former master enraged by his escape and guarding against the repeat of its recurrence.

You also realise that we are supposed to take Christ’s yoke.

This means it is an initiative on ourselves.

Christ offers the yoke and we decide whether we take it or not because only then can we be able to learn from Him.

One thing we need to realise it that a yoke does not become functional after placing it on our neck

Placing it on our neck is the first step in the process.

And I will take us to the farmer and his methods.

What is the most effective way for a farmer to train oxen?

He will yoke an untrained ox to a trained and much stronger one. Then they will get to the road or a safe place to break the resistance of the untrained ox. This is because an ox is very strong and powerful and will destroy everything in its way, from fences to vehicles blocking its freedom from that bothersome yoke.

They will be trained when they are very young because of that power they possess.

And I write this as someone who has seen a bit of that training.

It is after some training that he will yoke them to some work, either a cart or a plough. And even then, it will still be yoked to the same ‘trainer’.

That trainer will show the new yokefellow (haven’t you read that somewhere in the New Testament?) how to function.

The trainer will give the yokefellow the assurance and confidence to attempt new things.

And the trainer will show the yokefellow how to function in his new role as a productive worker as he shows him how to interpret orders and know his bounds.

Eventually, the young bull becomes a master of the game to the point that he can function without any trainer.

That is Christ’s method too. No wonder He talks about yokes.

Or do you not realise that it is what He did with His disciples?

And he ordained twelve, that they should be with him, and that he might send them forth to preach, (Mark 3:14)

He did not open a university or Bible School to train them. He did not start a Bible Study group to train them. He did not start a church congregation to get them off ministering.

Though I have nothing particularly strong against those institutions, it is very evident that what Christ did with His twelve in three years was able to produce a better and more lasting impact in the world than the whole conglomeration of institutions has been able to produce in two thousand years.

What I mean is that our discipleship methods are woefully inadequate in reproducing ourselves as Christ’s did.

Even our way of doing church falls flat in that reality.

The yoke dynamic has been replaced with the classroom and lecture theatre one; creating a superstar in a room of affirmation addicts since what most running those rooms are products of the system whose sole object is making the room compliant and very happy.

A yoke, however, is work. It is labour. It is intense exertion. It is pain.

One must learn to handle the pressure of the yoke as well as the pull of the burden.

Incidentally, even a yoke without a burden is its own burden.

And he said, Who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest: it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks. (Acts 9:5)

That prick, or goad, is the tool a farmer uses to train an ox on the yoke. And that because it is not a pleasant training.

That it was Paul who was told that after his conversion tells us that the yoke is not a pleasant thing to have on our necks.

No wonder Christ yoked him to Barnabas.

And this gets us to the discipleship I am pointing at.

And I pick Barnabas because he is to me the best representation of Christ’s discipleship methods.

He picks Paul when he was rejected by the church in Jerusalem and walks with him.

We later see him going all the way to Tarsus to get him when a ministry opportunity opens up.

They part ways when they disagree on his picking another discipleship project, Mark, when he was being rejected by this same Paul.

He appears to have disappeared because his disciples shone, or appeared to outshine him. But the success of his method is proven by the fact that we have their writing.

I am convinced he continued picking on other failures and rejects as yokefellows and raising their ministerial stature to that of the two I have mentioned.

We eventually see Paul taking after him when he picks his own partners.

Apart from Silas who was already ‘qualified’, he picks unknowns and raises their statures in ministry; Timothy and Titus are some examples.

But I believe that Onesimus is the prime example of his copying his discipler.

Which in time past was to thee unprofitable, but now profitable to thee and to me: (Philemon 1:11)

And he also treats them as his equals in all ways as he was treated by Barnabas.

Whether any do enquire of Titus, he is my partner and fellowhelper concerning you: or our brethren be enquired of, they are the messengers of the churches, and the glory of Christ. (2Corinthians 8:23)

Handing them responsibilities as they grew in handling Christ’s yoke.

These things speak, and exhort, and rebuke with all authority. Let no man despise thee. (Titus2:15)

Eventually allowing them to thrive on their own as Barnabas did to him.

This for me is what Biblical discipleship looks like.

And even in my story, the success stories I can quote are not the ones we had fruitful Bible Studies with but the ones (some who were rejects in one way or another) I simply walked with and gradually allowed to minister alongside me until their call to ministry materialised. Then I used my stature to open those doors for them to outgrow me.

And I didn’t know much of what I know now. I was just walking in simple obedience, sometimes even making enemies with my superiors because I was unable to let go of somebody they strongly felt was draining the swamp that was ministry.

Incidentally, after the yoking started bearing fruit, the same people who were warning me against the yokefellows I was picking would use every effort to snatch them from me by offering them good incentives and packages. They would even try their best to isolate them from me. They would then start boasting about their new sons.

But I never whined because I had done that as obedience to Christ and was not looking for acclamation from anywhere else.

I pray that we start looking at discipleship (and even mentorship) with those lenses.

Treat this post as a challenge to pray and consider whether what you are doing in Christ’s vineyard is what He would have you be doing.