Great Is His FaithfulnessSample

Day 4: God is Faithful to Bear Your Heaviest Yoke and Lighten Your Heaviest Burden

“Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” Matthew 11:29–30

That precisely is this easy yoke Jesus offers us. Jesus provided an answer to this question when someone asked him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” “This is the work of God,” he responded, “that you believe in him whom he has sent” (John 6:28–29). The easy yoke Jesus offers us is simply to trust him.

And in exchange, Jesus mercifully and faithfully removes our inconceivably and unbearably heavy yoke of sin’s condemnation and penalty and places it on his own shoulders. In bearing “our sins in his body on the tree” (1 Peter 2:24) he purchased not only our justification (2 Cor. 5:21) but also the fulfillment of every promise that makes it possible for him to give us the soul-rest we so desperately need.

“Come, take my easy yoke . . . and my light burden.” My goodness, who would not want to receive such a wonderful invitation?

But one thing we must keep in mind is that in offering us his easy yoke and light burden, Jesus isn’t offering us an easy, burdenless life in this age. He’s not implying that our vocational, parenting, and ministry labors, our relational conflicts, illnesses, persecutions, spiritual warfare, and many other struggles and suffering will no longer weary us. For Jesus did say, “The way is hard that leads to life” (Matt. 7:14).

In fact, in another great invitation, Jesus said, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23). This sounds very different from his offer to give us an easy yoke, light burden, and soul-rest. Is Jesus calling us to a life of refreshing rest, or to a life of sacrificial dying?

The answer, as you might expect, is both. These invitations aren’t contradictory, they’re complementary. Accepting Jesus’ invitation to receive rest for our souls is what makes it possible to accept his invitation to follow him on the hard Calvary road. For when our soul has been relieved of its unbearable yoke, and when “the God of hope [fills us] with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit [we] may abound in hope” (Rom. 15:13), we are able to view adversity and suffering on the hard way leading to life as “light momentary affliction . . . preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison” (2 Cor. 4:17).

Coming to Jesus for rest doesn’t shield us from afflictions. It transforms afflictions from fear-dominating, anxiety-producing, and hopeless to “light” and “momentary.” Hoping in the God of hope makes all the difference.

So, Jesus says to us, “Come to me . . . and you will find rest for your souls.” And when we do, he is faithful to make good on his promise. And because he does, he is able to say to us, “In the world, you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).

Prayer

Father, thank you for all that you and your faithful Son have done to give me the inexpressibly wonderful gift of removing my unbearable yoke and receiving Jesus’ easy one, which also now makes every other affliction I’ll ever bear in this age “light” and “momentary” in comparison to the eternal life you have in store for me. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Meditate More

Read 2 Corinthians 4:7–18 and reflect on how Jesus’ easy yoke made Paul’s significant afflictions “light” and “momentary” for him.