Come to Me
FEBRUARY 9, 2024

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.
Matthew 11:28-29

Recommended Reading: 1 John 5:1-3
When the prophet Jeremiah warned Judah and Jerusalem that God was about to submit them to the “yoke” of Babylon in judgment, he actually wore a heavy wooden yoke around his own neck to illustrate his words (Jeremiah 28:10-13). A yoke connected two oxen for plowing, but it came to symbolize submission and oppression.

Jesus pictured the religious oppression of the Jews as “heavy burdens, hard to bear, [laid] on men’s shoulders” like a yoke laid on the shoulders of oxen (Matthew 23:4). God’s commandments “are not burdensome” (1 John 5:3), but the religious leaders had made them a burden by adding their own traditions to them (Mark 7:13). So Jesus invited people to come to Him and take His yoke upon them and learn the ways of God and “find rest for [their] souls,” for His yoke—His way—is easy and light (Matthew 11:29-30).

The key to taking Jesus’ yoke is “come to Me.” Rest is not in religious requirements but in a relationship with Jesus.

Faith is reason at rest in God.
Charles Spurgeon