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By Van Sprague

If someone hands you a 30-pound backpack and tells you it will make your trip easier, but you have to leave your own bag, what do you do? What if you think you are already carrying everything you need? What if you are exhausted and don’t even want to carry your load, let alone what this person offered you?

Do you tell them no?

Lo and behold, the backpack you turned down is a parachute, and you’ve got to jump out of a plane. All of the food, clothing, shelter, and money in your bag won’t save you from the collision that is coming!

Now, what do you think you should have done?

This is a good way to understand Jesus’ words in Matthew 11:28-30:

“Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 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.”

If His audience was tired and burdened, why would Jesus offer a yoke? A yoke was a harness placed upon an animal to attach it to a load or farming implement. How could that be easy? How can a burden be light?

The word translated “easy” can mean “better or useful.” These definitions might help us out. Jesus said his yoke was better. Better than what? The burden of sin they were carrying. The weight of a life without direction. The devastation of no hope beyond the grave.

It was useful and light. How can more weight be useful or light? Like someone would be helpless in a freefall, living in sin ends in death. On the other hand, the weight of the parachute helps them survive the fall, and salvation through putting on Jesus Christ is the only way to escape the crushing weight of sin.

Have you put on Christ? “For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ” (Galatians 3:26-27).

Are you continuing faithfully in the purpose for which He saved you, or are you trying to keep ahold of the old baggage of the world?

Strive to be like Paul. He said, “Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Phillippians 3:12-14).

Take what Jesus has to give you and be willing to leave anything that might weigh you down (Hebrews 12:1-2).

 

Van Sprague is an evangelist at the Church of Christ at Houston Park. He has a wife and three children. Come Visit! Sunday morning Bible class is at 9, with worship at 10 am and 5 pm. Wednesday night Bible class is at 6.