28 “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 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.”
–Matthew 11:28-30
I know these words of Jesus are familiar to you, but let’s refresh the context for a minute and see if you might see these words in a fresh light.
When Jesus spoke these words, God’s people had been under an oppressive religious leadership that had created tons of extra rules to keep from breaking the Law, the Torah. These extra rules, which established a system of religious performance, were often referred to as a yoke: Yoke of the Law, Yoke of Commandments, etc. The analogy of a yoke, the apparatus donned on oxen to help the animals pull a heavy load, was fitting. These rules became a system to measure spiritual performance in which good deeds must outweigh bad deeds for a right relationship with God. You can sense the burden of this type of yoke.
It’s against this backdrop of an oppressive religious yoke that Jesus said take My yoke, I am gentle, lowly in heart. He highlighted the fact that we will find rest for our souls, which is in contrast to the never-ending gerbil wheel of religious performance God’s people were on. And He stressed the nature of His yoke: easy and light.
But like the Pharisees and religious leaders of Jesus’ day, it is easy to create this same measuring game in our spiritual lives, and in our ministries. We attend a conference, or read a post or a tweet about a successful event or exponential numbers growth and we instantly ponder burdensome questions like: Why haven’t I gotten to that point? Why have I not pulled that off in my ministry?
We feel this guilt and immediately put ourselves on a gerbil wheel of spinning fueled by a picture of production and performance and accomplishment that we have just read about or heard about. It’s an oppressive yoke. It’s in this moment that we need Jesus’ words of an easy yoke and light burden more than ever.
As ministry leaders we seem susceptible to burdensome yokes:
- We measure ourselves against others’ success stories.
- We measure ourselves against some scale we’ve been given.
- We measure ourselves against a pile of expectations and metrics.
Further, we can subconsciously create measuring sticks and burdensome yokes for our students. Without knowing it, we might give off signals that say:
- You need to be doing these things to achieve a certain maturity.
- You need to participate in this to be seen as a leader.
- I need your involvement to feel your support.
Jesus says: Quit measuring your ministry, quit tasking people. His yoke is easy, His burden is light…to learn from Him is to create rest. If the way we encourage a gospel lifestyle doesn’t create rest, we are in danger of putting the exact yoke on people that Jesus was refuting.
I invite you to explore this topic, and Matthew 11:28-30, with your students. Below are three different types of Bible exercises to help students engage in the passage and explore the idea of a light yoke from Jesus that brings rest. Choose an exercise, share the background, and let the exploration begin!
BACKGROUND TO SHARE
Option 1, Blog post: Share the above blog post to set the background for students.
Option 2, Vlog: Play the three-minute thought vlog for your students
EXERCISES
- READ/EXPLORE/DISCUSS
Read Matthew 11:28-30 and invite students to do the following:
- Note every instruction Jesus gave.
- Write down every word that Jesus used to describe His yoke or Himself.
- Write down the benefits we get to experience when we follow Jesus’ instructions.
In what ways have you adopted a yoke of religion that’s not Jesus’ yoke:
Possible responses:
-adopting a performance-based yoke: I need to do a certain number of things to be right with God
-adopting a guilt-laden yoke: living with guilt from past mistakes
-adopting a fear-based yoke: thinking that God is out to get me, rather than help me
What adjustments can you make to adopt Jesus’ easy, light yoke that gives rest to your soul?
How can you know that you are carrying the yoke of Jesus rather than some other type of yoke?
Possible responses:
-I have a calm about my relationship with Jesus.
-My faith walk actually brings peace.
-I can face stressful situations and not be stressed out.
- ACTIVE/TACTILE LEARNING
Activity:
Collect two workout balls (or dumb bells) of different weight. It’s most helpful to have a noticeable weight difference between the lighter and the heavier weight, with the heavier being noticeably heavy (8-10 pounds?). Ask students to sit in a circle and pass both weights around the circle so students can get a feel for the different weights. Read Matthew 11:28-30 and then ask students to pass the heavier weight around.
Discussion:
As each student holds the heavier weight, have him or her share about the different types of religious yokes we tend to put on ourselves.
Possible response:
-adopting a performance-based yoke: I need to do a certain number of things to be right with God
-adopting a guilt-laden yoke: living with guilt from past mistakes
-adopting a fear-based yoke: thinking that God is out to get me, rather than help me
After several have shared, pass the lighter weight around and ask students to share about the lightness of Jesus’ yoke. They may want to address questions like:
What do you think Jesus is wanting us to learn regarding a religious yoke when He says “learn from me”?
What does it mean to you when you hear Jesus say, “I am gentle and lowly at heart”?
Why do you think Jesus made the point that his yoke is easy and his burden is light?
- YOUTH MINISTRY EVALUATION
Evaluate your youth ministry against Jesus’ words in Matthew 11:28-30. Seek to answer the question “How do we help students learn from Jesus and accept His light, easy yoke?” You may want to consider questions like this:
Does our youth ministry give off any kind of a wrong signal, such as:
- you need to be doing certain things to achieve a certain maturity
- you need to be seen as a leader and therefore need to participate in certain things
- your involvement is needed in order to show support for the youth pastor or youth ministry
Do students involved in our youth ministry operate with a sense of peace and calm or are students stressed?
What can we do in our youth ministry that allows students to experience the lightness of Jesus’ yoke and enjoy the benefit of resting in Jesus?