<p>11:29&nbsp;<em>Take-&nbsp;</em>The same word is used in the challenge to &quot;take up&quot; the cross. To take up Christ's cross, to take on His yoke, is to learn of Him, to come to know Him. Yet do we sense any&nbsp;<em>pain</em>&nbsp;in our coming to know Christ? We should do, because the cross was the ultimate symbol of pain, and to take it up is to take on the yoke, the knowledge, of Christ. Clearly the knowledge of the Father and Son is so much more than knowing theological propositions about them.</p>
<p><em>My yoke</em>- The yoke metaphor was commonly used at the time to speak of a career or profession / daily occupation. Our 'career' is to be in His service, and any human yoke or career is to not be seen by us as our defining situation in life. We can't be 'career people' in the sense that many are in this world- for our career is with the Lord. And yet the yoke was also understood as &lsquo;teaching&rsquo;; for Sirach 51:26 has the sage inviting students to put their necks under his yoke and learn his teaching. The Lord Jesus is a yoke- He unites men together, so that the otherwise unbearable burden of the spiritual life is lighter (Mt. 11:29). If we do not let our fellowship with others lighten our load, then we basically have not been brought under Christ. To be in Him, under His yoke, is to put our arms around our brethren and labour together. The Lord paralleled &quot;Come unto&nbsp;<em>Me</em>&quot; with taking His yoke upon us, in order to have a light burden (Mt. 11:28-30). A yoke is what binds animals together, so that they can between them carry a burden which otherwise would be too great for them individually. The invitation to come unto Jesus personally is therefore an invitation into a community- to be lined up alongside another, and have a yoke placed upon us. Without submitting to this, we can't actually carry the heavy burden laid upon us. This heavy burden laid upon the believer must surely have some reference to the cross we are asked to share in and carry. We can't do this alone; and perhaps it happened that the Lord Himself couldn't even bear His own cross without the help of another, in order to show us the point. We can't claim to have come personally unto Jesus, somehow liking the idea of the Man Jesus, intellectually accepting His teachings on an abstract level- and yet keep our distance from our brethren. It seems increasingly true that human relationships are almost impossible to maintain at an intimate level- without Christ. He is the yoke which enables the psychological miracle of people pulling together, for life, in order to carry His cross. The most essential &ldquo;law of Christ&rdquo; is to bear one another&rsquo;s burdens (Gal. 6:2). Paul had this in mind when he described his brethren as 'yokefellows' (Phil. 4:3). For Paul, his joy and crown would be to see his brethren accepted into God's Kingdom at judgment day. David had the same spirit when he wrote of how he longed to &quot;see the prosperity of Your chosen, that I may rejoice in the gladness of Your nation, that I may glory with Your inheritance&quot; (Ps. 106:5). His personal vision of God's Kingdom involved seeing others there; there's no hint of spiritual selfishness in David. And he goes straight on to comment: &quot;We have sinned with our fathers, we have committed iniquity... our fathers understood not...&quot; (Ps. 106:6). David felt himself very much at one with the community of God's children, both in their failures and in their ultimate hope. Life with God simply can't be lived in isolation from the rest of His people. Our salvation in that sense has a collective aspect to it, and if we want 'out' with the community of believers in this life, then we're really voting ourselves out of their future glory.</p>
<p>The reference to having a heavy yoke lifted recalls the servant song which spoke of the need to &ldquo;undo the bands of the [heavy] yoke&rdquo; (Is. 58:6). Paul takes passages from Isaiah&rsquo;s servant songs and applies them to us. The servant who suffered and witnessed to the world was evidently the Lord Jesus. And yet Isaiah is also explicit that the servant is the whole seed of Abraham, &ldquo;Jacob&rdquo;, the slowly-developing people of God (Is. 41:8; 44:1). There are many connections within Isaiah between the servant songs, and the descriptions of the people of Israel into which the songs are interspersed. The Saviour-servant was to bring out the prisoners from the dungeons (Is. 42:7), so was every Israelite &ldquo;to let the oppressed go free... loose the bonds&rdquo;, and to &ldquo;undo the bands of the [heavy] yoke&rdquo; (Is. 58:6) as Christ does here (Mt. 11:28,29); His work of deliverance is to be replicated by each of us in our witness. Whoever is in Him will by this very fact follow Him in this work. In Isaiah&rsquo;s first context, the suffering servant was King Hezekiah. Yet all Israel were to see themselves as &lsquo;in&rsquo; him, as spiritual Israel are to see themselves as in Christ. &ldquo;He was oppressed&rdquo;, as Israel at that time were being &ldquo;oppressed&rdquo; by Assyria. As they were covered in wounds and spiritual sickness (Is. 1:5,6), so the suffering servant bore their diseases and rose again in salvation victory. Significantly, Isaiah 40-53 speak of the one servant, whereas Isaiah 54-66 speak of the &ldquo;servants&rdquo; who fulfil in principle the work of the singular servant. When the Lord speaks of a change of yokes for the weary and a granting of rest in Him (Mt. 11:28-30), He is using terms taken from Isaiah&rsquo;s restoration prophecies. The offer of rest was rejected by the exiles then; but is taken up now by all who accept Christ, realizing that they are in the same state as the exiles in Babylon.</p>
<p><em>And learn from me, for I am meek and lowly in heart</em>- Vine comments: &quot;The word for the Christian virtue of humility was not used before the Christian era, and is distinctly an outgrowth of the Gospel&quot;. To be able to say in genuine humility that one knows the state of their own heart, and that it is humble, is an essay not only in humility but in the acute self-knowledge of the Lord. The Greek translated &ldquo;lowly&rdquo; definitely means cast down, depressed, implying a bringing down from a superior position (s.w. 2 Cor. 7:6). This helps us understand the language of Phil. 2:5-11, which speaks of the progressive humiliation of Christ, culminating in the death of the cross. Even at this point in His ministry, the Lord felt that He had been brought down in mind- He felt the progressive nature of His humility. And in that passage, the appeal is to allow that kind of mind and process to be in us, which was in Christ.&nbsp;</p>
<p><em>And you shall find</em>- The yoke is&nbsp;<em>given</em>&nbsp;but we still have to&nbsp;<em>find</em>&nbsp;it by accepting the potential enabled by the Lord.</p>
<p><em>Rest for your souls-&nbsp;</em>He assures us that if we come to Him, we will find &ldquo;rest&rdquo; (Mt. 11:29); but the same word is only used elsewhere about the&nbsp;rest / comfort which our brethren give us (1 Cor. 16:18; 2 Cor. 7:13; Philemon 7,20).</p>