Sermon Illustrations

When I was young, my grandfather was plowing with a team of oxen. One was a huge ox and the other a very small bullock. That ox towered over the little bullock that was sharing the work with him. It seemed such a silly picture, and I asked my dad about it. He said, "I want you to notice something. See the way those traces are hooked to the yoke? Now notice that the large ox is pulling all the weight. That little bullock is being broken into the yoke but he is not actually pulling any weight." This picture comes to my mind whenever I come to this passage of Scripture where our Lord said, “Take my yoke upon you, learn of me …” In the normal yoking the load is equally distributed between the two that are yoked together, but when we are yoked with Jesus Christ, He bears the load and we who are yoked to Him share in the joy and the accomplishment of the labor but without the burden of the yoke.