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In Christ, Mark
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The scriptures. May God bless the
reading of His holy word.
You have enlarged the nation and increased their joy; they
rejoice before You as people rejoice at the harvest, as warriors rejoice when dividing
the plunder. For as in the day of Midian’s defeat, You have shattered the yoke
that burdens them, the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor. Every
warrior’s boot used in battle and every garment rolled in blood will be
destined for burning, will be fuel for the fire.
Isaiah 9:3-5
This ends this
reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.
Today could be a sad day but it isn’t. My brother-in-law is
being laid to rest. It’s not that he’s not going to be missed because he will
be but you see, he knew and trusted in the Lord Jesus Christ and that is THE
ultimate game-changer in this thing we call life.
You see, Jesus alters everything because He is in the yoke
shattering business.
Now, the word “yoke” is not often used in present day
spiritual talk for the most part. In fact, if you spoke the word “yoke” most
people would think you were talking about that yellow part of an egg when it’s
cracked open but the problem there is that it’s not even the same word (the
part of the egg is spelled yolk). Such is the lack of understanding of the
concept of the yoke for most people. Of course, farmers, especially the old
school farmers, would be able to speak to you at length about yokes because
they have been used in the agriculture business since biblical times.
The yoke in that instance was a wooden crossbar used to join
together two animals who would in turn pull a cart or plow. Similarly, a person
could have a yoke fitted across their shoulders to carry two equal loads, one
on each side. The concept was that when yoked together, the power of the two
animals could be harnessed in such a way to get work done efficiently and
effectively. Ditto for someone who had to carry two loads to a place and didn’t
wish to make two trips.
Note that a part of the yoke concept is bearing the weight
of something while accomplishing a task. The spiritual application here is that
the life we are all yoked to can present circumstances that can weigh us down
and make it very difficult to walk through the days we’re given. Without
something to take away the yoke or relieve the weight upon us, we can find
ourselves weak and reaching a state of failure, unable to stand anymore under
the load we are trying to bear.
The people of Israel were about to find themselves in a
position where their burdens were going to be extremely heavy. For God’s
judgment was about to fall upon them, a judgment He had warned would come if
they chose to disobey and disrespect Him. Look at these words from the book of
Deuteronomy:
However, if you do not obey the Lord your God and do not
carefully follow all his commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these
curses will come on you and overtake you:
You will be cursed in
the city and cursed in the country. Your basket and your kneading trough will
be cursed. The fruit of your womb will be cursed, and the crops of your land,
and the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks. You will be cursed
when you come in and cursed when you go out.
The Lord will send on
you curses, confusion and rebuke in everything you put your hand to, until you
are destroyed and come to sudden ruin because of the evil you have done in
forsaking Him. The Lord will plague you with diseases until He has destroyed
you from the land you are entering to possess. The Lord will strike you with
wasting disease, with fever and inflammation, with scorching heat and drought,
with blight and mildew, which will plague you until you perish. The sky over
your head will be bronze, the ground beneath you iron. The Lord will turn the
rain of your country into dust and powder; it will come down from the skies
until you are destroyed.
The Lord will cause
you to be defeated before your enemies. You will come at them from one
direction but flee from them in seven, and you will become a thing of horror to
all the kingdoms on earth. Your carcasses will be food for all the birds and
the wild animals, and there will be no one to frighten them away. The
Lord will afflict you with the boils of Egypt and with tumors, festering sores
and the itch, from which you cannot be cured. The Lord will afflict you with
madness, blindness and confusion of mind. At midday you will grope about like a
blind person in the dark. You will be unsuccessful in everything you do; day
after day you will be oppressed and robbed, with no one to rescue you.
You will be pledged
to be married to a woman, but another will take her and rape her. You will
build a house, but you will not live in it. You will plant a vineyard, but you
will not even begin to enjoy its fruit. Your ox will be slaughtered before your
eyes, but you will eat none of it. Your donkey will be forcibly taken from you
and will not be returned. Your sheep will be given to your enemies, and no one
will rescue them. Your sons and daughters will be given to another nation, and
you will wear out your eyes watching for them day after day, powerless to lift
a hand. A people that you do not know will eat what your land and labor
produce, and you will have nothing but cruel oppression all your days. The
sights you see will drive you mad. The Lord will afflict your knees and legs
with painful boils that cannot be cured, spreading from the soles of your feet
to the top of your head.
The Lord will drive
you and the king you set over you to a nation unknown to you or your ancestors.
There you will worship other gods, gods of wood and stone. You will become a
thing of horror, a byword and an object of ridicule among all the peoples where
the Lord will drive you.
You will sow much
seed in the field but you will harvest little, because locusts will devour it. You
will plant vineyards and cultivate them but you will not drink the wine or
gather the grapes, because worms will eat them. You will have olive trees
throughout your country but you will not use the oil, because the olives will
drop off. You will have sons and daughters but you will not keep them, because
they will go into captivity. Swarms of locusts will take over all your trees
and the crops of your land.
The foreigners who
reside among you will rise above you higher and higher, but you will sink lower
and lower. They will lend to you, but you will not lend to them. They will be
the head, but you will be the tail.
All these curses will
come on you. They will pursue you and overtake you until you are destroyed,
because you did not obey the Lord your God and observe the commands and decrees
He gave you. They will be a sign and a wonder to you and your descendants
forever. Because you did not serve the Lord your God joyfully and gladly in the
time of prosperity, therefore in hunger and thirst, in nakedness and dire
poverty, you will serve the enemies the Lord sends against you. He will put an
iron yoke on your neck until He has destroyed you.
The Lord will bring a
nation against you from far away, from the ends of the earth, like an eagle
swooping down, a nation whose language you will not understand, a
fierce-looking nation without respect for the old or pity for the young. They
will devour the young of your livestock and the crops of your land until you
are destroyed. They will leave you no grain, new wine or olive oil, nor any
calves of your herds or lambs of your flocks until you are ruined. They will
lay siege to all the cities throughout your land until the high fortified walls
in which you trust fall down. They will besiege all the cities throughout the
land the Lord your God is giving you. Deuteronomy 28:15-22
Here we see the kind of yoke no one should want to have on
them, the iron yoke of the Lord. It is a yoke too difficult to bear, a yoke
born from His judgment which brings destruction and devastation and hardship.
The chosen people of God who were once so blessed and favored would be cursed
after disappointing God in the way they chose to live. Choosing to abandon Him,
they now would feel what it’s like to be abandoned themselves, hauled away to a
foreign land and immersed in oppression and hardship at the hands of their
captors for seventy long years, a length of time that would lead anyone to
repentance and to cry out to the Lord for rescue and deliverance, for Him to
remove the iron yoke He placed upon them.
The Lord God Almighty is a God of judgment and will send it
on anyone who decides to live in disobedience and ignore His commands and
decrees. We know this because He does what He says He’s going to do, speaking
nothing but truth in all He says. And so when His word proclaims coming
judgment, that judgment is going to happen.
But the Lord God Almighty is also a God of love and grace
and mercy and forgiveness. He is always prepared to lovingly welcome anyone
back home if they have gone astray and repented of their sinfulness. In other
words, the Lord is always prepared to shatter the yokes that we bear, whether
He placed them on us or someone else did. Looking at our scripture from Isaiah,
we see this truth come to life as the future of the Israelites is revealed:
You have enlarged the
nation and increased their joy; they rejoice before You as people rejoice at
the harvest, as warriors rejoice when dividing the plunder. For as in the day
of Midian’s defeat, You have shattered the yoke that burdens them, the bar
across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor. Every warrior’s boot used
in battle and every garment rolled in blood will be destined for burning, will
be fuel for the fire. Isaiah 9:3-5
Yes, God’s judgment was coming upon the people of Israel but
the good news was that it wouldn’t last forever. For a day of deliverance would
come, a day when the yoke that burdened God’s people would be shattered,
leading them once again to a place where they would rejoice before Him,
liberated from their oppressor. What a joyous day that would be as God’s people
would fully experience the peace and joy that comes from being set free by the
God who shatters yokes of burden. He did then and He still does so today
through His Son Jesus who provides us the ultimate yoke-shattering opportunity
through His death and subsequent resurrection. Death was not the end for Jesus
because He defeated it, conquering the grave before ascending in power to sit
at His Father’s right hand. With this, anyone who believes and trusts in Jesus
will find their yoke of death shattered, setting them free to live and love and
learn and serve the Lord in all they do. Ditto for the yokes of hardship,
affliction, and sin as we enter into the eternal life God offered through His
Son Jesus, a salvation that leads us to live with them forever. My
brother-in-law, Willie, has been set free, the yoke of this world taken off of
him completely as He enters into a place where there will only be light and
love forever with the Father and Son, a place where I pray all people will be
one day.
In the end translation, yes, this world can bring situations
that are hard for us to handle. Maybe those issues come in the way of finances.
Maybe they come in the way of relationship problems. Maybe they come when one
falls into affliction or addiction, dealing with disease or pain or temptation on
a constant basis. Whatever the case, it can leave you yoked to despair and
depression and hopelessness, wondering if things will ever get better. You can find
yourself yearning for anything that might take the pressure away and give you
peace.
Maybe you’ve been in a place like this. Maybe you’re there
now. Whatever the case, know and trust that you have had and will always have
hope in Jesus, the supreme yoke-shatterer who gave us this promise:
“Come
to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take My
yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you
will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”
Matthew 11:28-30
Amen.
In Christ,
Mark
PS: Please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it.
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