I. The Yoke — " Take my yoke upon you." II. The Lesson — " Learn of me." III. The Rest — " Ye shall find rest unto your souls."
I.
The Yoke.
" Take my yoke upon you."
1. When Jesus spoke these words He referred to the yoke He Himself wore ae Man. That was the yoke of a perfect surrender to the will of God, and absolute submission to His throne. To all who came to Him He said, " Take my yoke ; the yoke I wear is the yoke I impose upon you. As I am submissive to government,
1 A. Plumiuer.
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so also must you be, if you are to exercise authority." Said the Roman centurion, " I also am a man under authority, having under myself soldiers." The condition for the exercise of author- ity is ever that of submission to authority.
At the very beginning of His career Christ had to make His choice between self and God. The significance of the temptation in the wilderness is surely this, that Christ then deliberately chose to walk in God's way, and with His eyes wide open submitted Himself to the yoke of God's holy will. That is, indeed, the key of our Lord's life. Deus vult was His watchword. He pleased not Himself. It was His meat to do the Father's will, and to accomplish His work. He shrank from nothing which the will of God brought to Him. When it brought Him to Gethsemane and the cross, He said, " The cup which the Father hath given me to drink, shall I not drink it ? " And that is the yoke He is com- mending here to the people, the yoke He had all His life borne Himself.
2. It is not easy at first to lay aside every other yoke and accept the yoke of Christ. The yoke is easy when you have put your neck beneath it ; but to bring yourself to that point may involve a wrestle with self that almost tears the heart asunder. The burden is light when you have forced your reluctant shoulders to bear it ; but to do that may be the most difficult thing in all the world. There are some things that are easy enough to do, once you have made up your mind to do them ; it is making up the mind that is the straining, torturing thing. And easy as may be the burden that Christ imposes, calmly as the soul's experience may go on when once the soul has settled down to the Christian conditions, there remains for all of us the battle with stubbornness and pride, the coercion of the stiff and resisting will, before we pass into the Christian peace. It is a difficult thing to take up the easy yoke. It is a heavy task to make ourselves carry the light burden. And we need not, therefore, distrust the genuine- ness of our Christward desires because we are conscious of so much difficulty in driving our rebellious natures to the point of Christly submissiveness.
Tj " How hard it is to be a Christian," cried Browning in the opening words of his " Easter Day." To-day some people are trying ST. matt. — 18
274 REST UNDER THE YOKE
to make it more easy. So they are discreetly silent about the yoke, and the cross, and the denying of self, concerning all of which Jesus spoke so plainly — while they make the most of the joy, and peace, and comfort of the Gospel. The experiment does not appear to be very successful. Chivalrous souls would be more drawn by the spirit of adventure in response to a trumpet-call to battle than to listen to these soothing songs of ease. But if it did succeed, what would be the value of a Christianity so one-sided, so enervat- ing, so self-indulgent ? In fact, I do not see how you can call it Christianity at all. The ship is stranded at the bar of the harbour. What is to be done to float her ? You can throw the cargo over- board ; but then the very purpose of her voyage will be destroyed. It will be better to wait till the flood-tide, and then the ship will rise in the deep water and sail out to sea, cargo and all. It is vain to float our Gospel ship by throwing cargo overboard. The only wise course is to take Christ's full message. To have the yoke and the cross as well as the pardon and the peace.1
Tj Is there no difference when you are on your bicycle between bicycling with the wind, when you scarcely feel the wind and go smoothly and firmly down the road, and bicycling against the wind ? There is all the difference. In one there is peace and rest, and swiftness and progress. In the other it is beating up, beating up this way and that. You could hardly have a simpler and yet a truer illustration of the difference between being borne by the Spirit along the course of the will of God and trying to beat against the will of God and against the action of the Spirit. It is to fling ourselves into the tide of the Spirit — Jesus was driven by the Spirit into the wilderness — to yield ourselves to the action of the Spirit, and to pass down the will of God before the wind. That is peace ; that is rest. And there is no other in the world.8