What does it mean when Jesus says "my yoke is easy and my burden is light" (Matthew 11:30)?

If your experience contradicts His word, it has not been true Christian experience, and can we discover where it is wrong? I once saw a man labouring with a mule. His desire was that it should go one way, its determination was to stand still just where it was. It was hard for the mule and hard for the master, for their wills were in opposition. If your will is opposed to the Lord's will, it is hard for you and it is not easy for Him, but that clash of wills will cease if you yield yourself wholly to Him. Do you find that difficult? Pray then for the single eye. Take your eye off the world's tinsel and its unsatisfying prizes, cease to consider for yourself and look into the heart of your prince. Here lies the secret. It is easy to yield to perfect love, and if you will look into the Lord's heart you will gladly yield yourself to Him, for His love for you is perfect, and you will find that His yoke is padded with love, it will not chaff or irk you. He will not lay upon you any burden you cannot bear. He lifts the heavy burdens, and puts a joyous burden on the necks of those who look into His heart. The burden He lays upon them is witness for Him; He wants you to bear Himself in witness to the world, to show to men what He is and how blessed a thing it is to belong to Him. It has been said, "His burden bears those that bear it."

To be subject to His word settles all questions; and so Christ ever walked. Absolute submission to His Father's will makes it sweet for us. As He says, "Take My yoke on you and learn from Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest for your souls; for My yoke is easy, and My burden is light." My brother, do you accept it loyally? Oh how comforting! For what makes it easy? Nothing but Christ. If the eye be upon Him, His yoke is easy; if the eye be off Christ, whether on myself or on anything else, His burden becomes intolerable, and under unbelief one wholly breaks down.

Does it not seem a paradox — the yoke easy, the burden light? But the Lord is always right. If we are walking along with Him we find the yoke is "gracious," and the burden "light."

And this is His mind in Matt. 11:29-30 — "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." By this telling them what He Himself had already proved, that the path of a meek and lowly heart led the soul unto much rest, making the yoke easy and the burden light. And who of us, beloved, do not prove this?

It is an invitation to all, Jew and Gentile. The invitation is to those who labor and are burdened; it is to come to Him and He promises rest. How full it is! How inexhaustible in its meaning! The second part of His invitation brings us further. "Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart; and ye shall find rest for your souls; for My yoke is easy and My burden light."

The one who has come to Him and found rest is to take now His yoke upon him and to learn of Him. It means to follow Him, to be under Him as Lord. The yoke is not the law, but His own yoke, His loving restraint; and two belong into the yoke; we are yoked together with Him. And having Him, the One meek and lowly in heart, ever before the soul, rest for the soul is the blessed fruit. It is the whole Epistle to the Philippians in a nutshell. "Let this mind be in you which was in Christ Jesus." Coming to Him we have rest -- living in Him we find rest for our souls. May the reader meditate upon these words of our Lord till they become sweeter than honey and honeycomb. _234

The Lord speaks of two kinds of rest in Matthew 11, which it may be well to notice here. "Come unto me, all ye that labour, and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." This is the immediate gift of His love through faith in Himself. All who believe, without exception, have this rest. All our weary and fruitless efforts after salvation are brought to a close when we come to Jesus, and the heavy burden of sin under which we groaned is for ever removed. But the Lord further says, "Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest to your souls." Rest of conscience He gives through the forgiveness of our sins, when first we believe in Him. Rest of heart we find in obedience and subjection to His will. "Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me … and ye shall find rest" - rest and peace in every circumstance, however trying. This text explains why so many get into trouble of soul soon after the joys of conversion; and why, when difficulties appear, though they may know the forgiveness of sins, they are uneasy and restless. Subjection to Christ in the details of life, both socially and ecclesiastically, and learning of Him, are lost sight of. To be under the same yoke with Christ is to walk side by side and step by step with Him. "Take my yoke upon you." This would indeed be walking closely with the Lord and thus would we surely "find rest" for all our weakness would fall on Him. When two are yoked together, the strong one can help the weak one along; and surely, the most feeble Christian when under the same yoke with Jesus the mighty One, need fear no difficulties. Nothing can be a difficulty to Him. All needless fears would vanish from His presence, and our chariot wheels would move lightly through the deepest sand of the desert.

His yoke is easy in contrast to that of law (Acts 15:10). But He must have the authority. It is not, as some have suggested, that both the Lord and the believer are sharing the same yoke, pulling together; for Christ is "the red heifer without spot, wherein is no blemish, and upon which never come yoke" (Num.19:2). His yoke therefore is that which He rightly puts upon us, the restraint of which we need, as He did not, and which we willingly accept. The burden would speak Of spiritual responsibility also willingly assumed. But it is light: indeed the more wholeheartedly we accept it, the more light it Will seem.We have seen that Matthew groups events with a dispensational end in view, and chapter 12 shows a building up on Israel's part to a state of utter rejection of their Messiah. The expression "at that time" does not mean that this event took place at the some time chronologically, but "is a general term embracing connected events" (William Kelly). For the event actually took place some time earlier (Mk.2:23). But this is chosen by God to be recorded here in order to show that Israel's hostility was gradually growing against their true King, to culminate in the sin that could not be forgiven (vs.31-32).

Some think of His yoke here, as if it were a yoke He had borne that He gave us, or as if we shared it with Him. But the "red heifer" is His picture, "upon which never came yoke" (Num. 19:2): the doing of His Father's will was never that to Him. For a yoke implies restraint; and then there must be something to be restrained: and this for us is true, as for Him it could not be. He speaks both of a yoke and of a burden; but the yoke is not that of the law, but a gentle as well as salutary one; and His burden is light.

The careless and ungodly would not feel the burden, for man is naturally indifferent regarding God and His blessing, but the pious in Israel were labouring and heavy laden, and to such the words of the Lord would bring cheer and encouragement. Here was One who was able to remove the heavy load, and was willing to do it, to set the heart at rest from the burden upon the conscience, and to give rest in the knowledge of what He had brought of the Father's grace. God was no longer demanding from men; He was seen in Jesus as a giving God. The Scribes bound "heavy burdens and grievous to be borne" upon the shoulders of Israel, and would not move them with one of their fingers (Matt. 23:4), but the Lord Jesus came to relieve men, and to remove the heavy burden.

Freed from the yoke of the law, the Lord invited the godly to take His yoke upon them, and to learn of Him. He was not a hard Master, and had Himself come under the yoke of service to God, and in His service was "meek and lowly in heart." As the servants of the Lord they would find His yoke easy, and His burden light, and have rest for their souls. The Lord only asks us to do what the divine nature finds pleasure in, and what we see perfectly expressed in Himself.

The "labour" and "heavy laden" correspond to the "yoke" and the "burden." Animals draw, in places, with the yoke, but a burden is carried on the back. We must connect this with what precedes. If the Lord here is rejected as the King by the people among which He had been pleased to dwell, yet is there blessing for an even wider circle than Israel — "Come unto me all ye that labour," etc. He has rest, blessed be His name, for any who will but come to Him. "I will give you rest." It is all of grace.

What a blessed thing to be bound up with Him. "Take my yoke" (ver. 29). Naturally, the very opposite to Him, yet if His meekness and lowliness be produced in us, this is how we get it; and the one in whom it is produced will be himself unconscious of it.