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. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

Matthew 11:29-20

As I mentioned yesterday, everyone carries a yoke of some kind and at the end of the day there is a life that leads to true human flourishing in Christ and every other yoke leads to eventual disaster.

Bob Dylan’s Slow Train Coming album holds up well after some forty-five years since it was released, especially the song, “Gotta Serve Somebody.”

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody
Yes, you’re gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the Devil or it might be the Lord 
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody.

Ultimately we live in a world defined by what is right and wrong, good and evil, light and darkness. In the same way, Jesus described the two kinds of life we can live in John’s Gospel –

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.

John 10:10

Our contemporary view of freedom is one without restraint and it is a curse in our culture. Expressive individualism – the kind of freedom defined by doing whatever I want without restrictions as long as I don’t hurt anyone else is not freedom but a path that leads to slavery.

Peter addressed this kind of thinking and false teaching in his second epistle –

They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption. For whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved.

2 Peter 2:19

Instead of being enslaved the person who takes on Jesus’ yoke finds freedom as the Psalmist described –

I will walk about in freedom for I have sought out your precepts.

Psalm 119:45