[29] 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.
[30] For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."
This post is on G Mac's discussion of Matthew 11:28-30, a much loved saying of Jesus so precious that even some Catholics have it memorized chapter and verse. To review, the first post dealing with MacDonald discussed the need to throw off sin to be able to pray. Next came a post on those making progress in sending away sin, those poor in spirit who experience a close relationship with God to whom they "cling" as their Father in heaven.
G Mac creatively discusses this Matt. 11 passage in the context of the father and child relationship, and in doing so he raises this issue: What help comes to the child from the Father?
Giving our Father the opportunity, he will help and not fail us. He is helping us every moment, when least we think we need his help; when most we think we do, then may we most boldly, as most earnestly we must, cry for it. What or how much his creatures can do or bear, God only understands; but when most it seems impossible to do or bear, we must be most confident that he will neither demand too much, nor fail with the vital creator-help.
George MacDonald, The Hope of the Gospel (Ward, Lock, Bowden & Co. 1892). All quotes highlighted in the green text are from The Hope of the Gospel.
God is "helping us every moment" as our loving father, and as creator of the universe he has the power to do it, to deliver this "vital creator-help." Psalm 121 ("our help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth") immediately comes to mind, and that has been the subject of a previous post. If God is helping every moment the yoke of daily life is easy and the burden is light. What exactly is this yoke and burden that Jesus calls us to?
Here is where G Mac surprised me. I have always thought of the yoke of Jesus in Matt 11 as a call from Jesus to those who would obey him in all ways, but G Mac does not read Matt 11 that way. Again, the focus is on the father and child relationship. Jesus calls us to give ourselves up to the Father. Jesus took that yoke upon him, and now he asks us to do the same:
When we give ourselves up to the Father as the Son gave himself, we shall not only find our yoke easy and our burden light, but that they communicate ease and lightness; not only will they not make us weary, but they will give us rest from all other weariness. ... 'The yoke I bear is easy; the burden I draw is light'; and this he said, knowing the death he was to die. The yoke did not gall his neck, the burden did not overstrain his sinews, neither did the goal on Calvary fright him from the straight way thither. He had the will of the Father to work out, and that will was his strength as well as his joy. ...
Whoever, in the commonest duties that fall to him, does as the Father would have him do, bears His yoke along with Jesus; and the Father takes his help for the redemption of the world .... ...
And taking on this yoke of Jesus the believer finds rest. G Mac the poet and visionary pictures Jesus saying:
I have rest because I know the Father. Be meek and lowly of heart toward him as I am; let him lay his yoke upon you as he lays it on me. I do his will, not my own. Take on you the yoke that I wear; be his child like me; become a babe to whom he can reveal his wonders. Then shall you too find rest to your souls ....
Yes, but the believer wants to know what the Father expects. He expects more than words, intellectual speculations and pleasant interpretations. God is looking for obedience in our deeds, the "doing" of his will:
These wise and prudent, careful to make the words of his messengers rime with their conclusions, interpret the great heart of God, not by their own hearts, but by their miserable intellects; and, postponing the obedience which alone can give power to the understanding, press upon men's minds their wretched interpretations of the will of the Father, instead of the doing of that will upon their hearts. ...
They are cautious, wary, discreet, judicious, circumspect, provident, temporizing. They have no enthusiasm, and are shy of all forms of it—a clever, hard, thin people, who take things for the universe, and love of facts for love of truth. They know nothing deeper in man than mere surface mental facts and their relations. They do not perceive, or they turn away from any truth which the intellect cannot formulate. Zeal for God will never eat them up: why should it? [H]e is not interesting to them .... ...
Their sagacity labours in earthly things, and so fills their minds with their own questions and conclusions, that they cannot see the eternal foundations God has laid in man .... ...
[Jesus] said,—'I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight.'
The next post will discuss the kinds of deeds that Jesus has in mind for those who would give themselves up to the Father.
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