Take My Yolk — Phil Beach Jr.

The Call to Hear Christ’s Word

Matthew chapter 11, beginning in verse 25. Now, Father, I thank you for just the fact that you're our sovereign God. And Lord, I thank you for enabling my own heart to sense a check on sharing what I wanted to share on since it's been so warm to my heart and it's been such a blessing to me.

But Lord, I thank you that there's something more that you wanna speak right now, right into our lives. So I'm asking, Lord, that you will give us ears to hear. Every single person here would hear this word from the Lord for us right now.

Matthew chapter 11, verse number 25. Listen carefully now. At that time, Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou has hid these things from the wise and the prudent and has revealed them unto babes.

Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight. All things are delivered unto me of my Father. And no man knoweth the Son, but the Father. Neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son. And he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him.

Christ’s Yoke and the Resistance of the Heart

Now, in particular, verses 28 through 30 is what the Lord is saying. And what I sense in the Spirit is there is a bucking up against the yoke that God wants to put in our life. There is a resistance of the yoke.

There is a resistance in the Spirit. There is resistance in our lives against the yoke that God wants to put in us. And as we were waiting on the Lord and meditating, the Lord wants us to repent and turn from the constant bucking up against the yoke that He wants to put in our life.

Now, does everyone here understand what a yoke is? In the Old Testament and New Testament days, a yoke was an instrument that was used in order to place two animals together. And they put their head, it was a long piece of wood, and there was a circular kind of a collar on one side and a circular kind of a collar on the other side.

And they were attached by a large beam of wood. And the animals put their head inside each of these wooden collars, and they were clamped closed so that the animals couldn't go their own way. They had to walk together.

They had to walk together. One couldn't do its own thing. They were yoked together, and they were under the dictatorship of the one who was steering them, the one who was driving them. And when Jesus speaks, as we're about to read in verse 28, this is what He is referring to.

Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Take my yoke upon you. So Jesus is inviting us to take His yoke upon ourself. So He was implying that He was yoked to something.

You see what I'm saying here? You see what the scripture's saying? Jesus had a yoke. Jesus was yoked to something. He was bound to something. And of course, the thing that He was yoked to was His Father.

He was bound to walk together with His Father in accomplishing the will of His Father. So He says, come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you.

Listen carefully. There is no rest for the weary. There is no place of tranquility for those who labor and are heavy laden apart from yoking or being yoked in the same yoke that Jesus Christ has. There is a fallacy going on today.

There is a lying spirit that is being sown into Christendom today, and that is, there is a rest being promised to the people of God. There is a peace being promised to the people of God that is not directly related to putting on the same yoke that Jesus Christ had on.

And it is a false peace. It is a false rest. Listen, you don't find peace and rest for your weary mind, your weary soul, and your weary body without yoking with the same yoke that Jesus had. We have to come to see that the words of Jesus take my yoke upon you and learn of me.

Rest Comes Through Surrender to Christ’s Will

For I am meek and lowly in heart and you shall find rest unto your souls. Listen, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Your yoke is hard and your burden is heavy because you are not yoked with the yoke that Jesus walked in.

There is weariness and heaviness and anguish within the heart and the soul even here today. And it is because we are trying to find rest, we are trying to find tranquility, we are trying to find peace, but we are not finding it by addicting ourself by faith to the yoke that Christ was yoked to.

You cannot find peace for your soul. You cannot find rest for your life unless you discover the yoke that Christ was yoked to. Let me tell you, Jesus didn't walk around and do what he wanted to do. Jesus didn't govern his own life.

Jesus didn't make his own decisions. Jesus didn't go into the world and seek to find peace and satisfaction by the things in the world. But Christ walked with an invisible yoke, not seen by the Pharisees, not seen by the Sadducees, not seen by the religious people of his day.

But Christ walked with an invisible yoke and he was yoked together with the Father in heaven. And wherever the Father led, he went. Wherever the Father moved, he moved. And he had peace and he had rest.

And he said that that yoke was easy and light. Therefore, God is saying to you and I, that when we feel the yoke that we're bearing is heavy and it's burdensome, that means that it's not the yoke of Christ.

There is a word that God wants to speak into our lives today and it is this. What yoke are you yoked to today? Who are you walking together with? Who are you joined with? Take my yoke upon you and learn of me.

For I am meek and lowly in heart and you shall find rest unto your souls. Rest, peace, lightness. The world is going crazy for it, aren't they? They're looking for it in everything. They're looking for it in money.

They're looking for it in drinks. They're looking for it in material possessions. They're looking for it in fleshly excitement. They're looking for it in success. They're looking for it in education. They're looking for it in everything.

Everybody has got a crisis. They don't know who they are. They don't understand why they're here. They don't have any self-worth. They don't have any feelings of I'm significant. There's such a crisis in the world today, and the reason why is because we have failed to hear the words of Jesus, take my yoke upon you.

The only call that Christ makes to a man and a woman is to take my yoke upon you. The yoke that Christ yoked Himself to was a heart and mind absolutely committed to knowing and doing the will of God. There was no question in the heart of Christ.

Now, when you're yoked, you can't go your own way. You can't do your own thing. You've got to walk together in agreement with the one you're yoked with. And here Jesus is telling us that the way to rest for our soul is to give up, to surrender our way and our will and our desires and our drives.

Surrender them to God and say, Father, give me the yoke that Christ walked in. The yoke that will lift my burden and make it light. The yoke that is easy. The yoke that brings peace. The yoke that brings comfort.

The yoke that gives me a song. There is no song in the church today. There's no song in the hearts today. The reason why is because we have taken the yoke of Christ and cast it aside. We have perceived it to be too burdensome.

We've perceived it to be too wearisome. We've perceived it to be without fun, without joy. But it's just the opposite. There's no joy in the church because the yoke of Christ is scoffed at. It cramps our style.

It cramps our style to be yoked with the yoke of Christ. We want our freedom. We want our joy. We want our life. But God says, you're not going to have a life until you give your life up. You're not going to have joy until you take your will and your heart's desires and cast them at my feet and begin to look to me that I might place the yoke on you that's on me.

Learn of me. The meek and lowly in heart. Jesus is meek and He's lowly in heart. And that's what enabled Him to bear the yoke that was placed upon Him. God has to give us a meek, lowly, humble heart if we are going to endure the yoke of Christ.

Because the yoke of Christ is a life that loses its independence. It loses its power to make its own choices and to determine its own destiny based on human understanding, based on what seems good to me, what feels good to me, what is advantageous to me.

The yoke of Christ is the sentence of death upon the totality of our independent actions against God. The yoke that Christ bore was a yoke signifying that He was a man born of a virgin, conceived of the Holy Ghost, whose purpose was to arise in the world and demonstrate to the whole world the way a man should live, yoked to God, yoked to God's will, yoked to God's purposes, dead to self, dead to His own desires, dead to His own aspirations, finding delight and joy and peace.

Thy will is my delight, Jesus said. Lo, it is written in the volume of the book, I have come to do Thy will. Thy will is my delight. Beloved, the will of God must become the delight of the church today.

You must come to where the will of God is your delight. There are too many delights in the church today that don't have to do with the will of God, but has to do with the imaginations of our mind. God wants us to delight in His will.

God wants us to awake and say, Oh God, today my delight is not to make my plans, not to make my ideas and go forward. My delight is to know Your will and to do it, to delight in the will of God. That is the yoke that Christ walked in.

Learning the Meekness of Christ Under Pressure

We need to learn of the meek Christ. Listen, when it got hot and pressure came upon the Lord Jesus Christ, and He was being threatened, and He was being tempted, and He was being pressed out of measure because of the meekness in His heart, because of the lowliness of His spirit, He did not buck out against the yoke, but He submitted to the will of God.

And let me tell you something, when it gets hot, when it gets tiresome, when it gets difficult and the will of God becomes something that you have to realize is the only thing that will please God, you've got to draw your strength from Him.

That's why we've got to learn of Him. You can't stay in the yoke that Christ has unless you learn of Him. And that's why He says, take My yoke and learn of Me. Because I'll tell you, the wise and the prudent and the strong-headed and the strong-hearted and the rebellious will look at the yoke, and they might even take it for a season, they might even by faith ask God to put it on their neck, but as soon as that yoke leads them contrary to their own desires, as soon as that yoke leads them contrary to their own way, they're going to buck up against it, they're going to pull their neck, they're going to take their hands and open it up and say, I want none of this.

And the reason why is because only the lowly in heart, only the meek in heart can endure the yoke of Christ. The Holy Ghost is saying to you and to me, what yoke are you yoked to? There is a resistance in the Holy Ghost in our lives.

The Holy Ghost is saying there's a resistance, a fighting up against the yoke that God wants to put on our neck. And let me tell you prophetically, beloved, Christ's yoke is easy and His burden is light.

You know what the burden there refers to? The will of God. And the will of God is not grievous. The commandments of God are not grievous is what John says. The commandments of God are not grievous. The thing that's grievous and the thing that's burdensome is when we decide that we know better than God.

We know better than God and we're going to yoke ourself with the spirit of this world. We're going to yoke ourself with the spirit of our own understanding. We're going to yoke ourself with our own wisdom.

We know better than God. We're going to seduce our minds with TV. We know better than God. It's not going to hurt me. Even though God says that in the word that we're only to set before our eyes that which is pure and that which is holy and that which is edifying and that which builds up, none of that's going on on television.

And 99 of the religious broadcasting isn't edifying God. It's building up some man. It's religious entertainment. I mean, it's a Christian alternative to rock music. What yoke are you joined to? Are you yoked to your own understanding?

Do you know better than God? Is your life a contradiction in certain areas? That yoke, being joined together with something other than a hot pursuit for the will of God, that yoke, be it your own understanding, be it your own judgment, be it your own dreams, your own wisdom, your own self-righteousness, that yoke is not easy.

It's hard. And that burden is not light. It's heavy. And that's why there is a fainting going on today in Christendom. That's why there is great heaviness and great difficulty because people, the Lord's people, have failed to see that the call to be a Christian is a call to yoke with the yoke that Christ had.

Whose yoke are you yoked to today? The Lord help us. And by faith, come unto me, Jesus said. The way, listen, the way out of being yoked to something other than Christ and God's will, the way out, come unto me.

The way out is to begin to cry out, O Lord, I want to come to you. I want to come out of the closet, out of the darkness. I want to come out of the sin. I want to come out of my self-righteousness. I want to come out of, Lord.

I want to come out of and come to you. Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden. To labor and are heavy laden, those words describe people who are yoked to the tyrant of human understanding, to the tyrant of human passion, to the tyrant of human wisdom, to the tyrant of greed and covetousness and love of money, to the tyrant of anger and wrath.

All ye who are heavy laden and working and laboring and you're full of burden, come unto me and I will give you rest. You say, how can I have rest for my soul? How can I be free from this burden? Take my yoke upon you.

The transition from being yoked to that which brings burden and heaviness, to that which brings rest and peace, the transition is an act of faith whereby you cry out and say, God, deliver me from my sin and my way and yoke me to the will of God.

Yoke me to the will of God. Make the will of God my delight. The psalmist says in Psalm 119, Thy precepts are my delight during my pilgrimage. What is it that is your delight? What is it that makes your heart leap for joy?

It ought to be the will of God. It ought to be communing with Jesus. It ought to be seeking Him every day and falling in love with Him and being filled with His love. There ought to be a song in the heart today, beloved.

A song. It's not something emotional necessarily. It's a song deep on the inside. Hallelujah to God. My Savior lives and I live because of Him and my delight is to do the will of God. Silver and gold have I none.

Oh, I don't care. I just need You. I want You. Lord, You are my portion. You are my delight. You are my joy. You are my everything. I don't care about houses and lands. I don't care, Lord, about being successful in the eyes of men.

I only care about knowing You and loving You and obeying Your Word and being yoked by the same yoke that You were yoked with and that is a heart and mind set on the will of God and delighting in the will of God.

The Yoke Before Spiritual Maturity

Now, this is exactly what God wants to do in our hearts this morning. We have the time? Very good. It's 1222. Now, I believe the Lord prevented me from sharing from the book of Hebrews this morning and in continuing on with this wonderful revelation from the book of Hebrews.

And basically, the Lord has opened up the book of Hebrews and has given me revelation and has begun to release me to share it because the book of Hebrews is God's heart to the church referring to His desire for spiritual maturity.

But I can see now why God wouldn't let me preach on that. There's no spiritual maturity. There's no growing up in God when there is a bucking against the yoke of Christ. I mean, the truths of Hebrews fall on dead ears when they are presented to a people who have not even come to delight in the will of God.

Who have not even come to understand the yoke. Who still feel they've got a life. I've got a life, praise God. My life. I don't need to be radical. Don't get too close to me. Give me room to breathe. Give me room to breathe.

What's God saying to that? Listen. Don't you know that that's the very attitude that's going to suffocate you? Give me room to breathe. And Jesus says, you're not going to breathe with that attitude. You're going to suffocate and die.

You want to breathe? Take your neck, lift it up to God and say, God, clamp that yoke on me. Do we want to hear the words of God in the book of Hebrews? Do we want to, as a body, grow together in spiritual maturity?

Do we, as a body, want to see a harvest of souls and a mighty revival? Do we, as a body, want to see this auditorium full? I do. I want to see it full. On our knees. Before a holy God. Saying, oh God, forgive me.

Help me, Lord, to be yoked to your will. Now listen. There is no going on with God in our lives. And you take this personal now. This is a personal word. There is no going on in your life or my life. Matter of fact, there is an inevitable decline in our spiritual life with God.

Listen, brothers and sisters. This is the heart of love. The heart of God's love. There is nothing but spiritual decline ahead for any person who will not come to Jesus, not simply so they can have their sins forgiven and then go on and do what they want.

But we must come to Jesus, not only to have our sins forgiven, but to realize that he has got a yoke to snap on our neck. I wish to God that I had two cattle right now and a yoke of oxen. I wish I had it so I could bring them in and walk them down this auditorium and put them before you so you could see with your physical eyes what a yoke is and how when you're yoked, you don't have your own life.

You don't have your own way. You're yoked to something else and you got to walk together in agreement. God, I wish I could do that. That is what the Savior is saying. That is why God prevented me from preaching out of Hebrews, which is the call of God to spiritual maturity, because he said before we can hear the cry of God for spiritual maturity, we've got to first come to him by faith and say, Lord, yoke me with that yoke that enables me to die to my own way and come to where my life is governed by your will.

Day by day. Every day. Now, what we're going to do now in the presence of God, I feel released in my spirit. I feel the Lord has enabled by his grace to discern why he would not let me preach. I opened my Bible to the book of Hebrews and I was looking at that word that was just so real to me.

I was, what's wrong, Lord? We got a short circuit here? Did the circuit break? There was no enabling. And I know why now. Because there's a yoke that we need to discover. Listen, I am in no way trying to minimize this.

You, by faith, yoke. You get into the yoke that Christ got in and let me tell you, beloved, listen carefully, you will lose your life. You won't govern your life based on your tastes and your understanding and your wisdom and what you want to do.

You get into that yoke and you've just lost it. Because when you're yoked with the yoke that Christ walked in, your heart and mind is set after one thing, the will of God. Your personal life is scrutinized until everything becomes subject to the will of God.

Your Christian liberty no longer is a license for you to do what you want and say, hallelujah, I'm not under bondage, brother. I'm free as a Christian. That's true, you are. But you're free from sin as a Christian.

That's what that means. You're not free to do what you want. You're free from doing what you want. And you become a slave to what? The will of God. So Christian liberty has nothing to do with doing what you want.

Christian liberty is the joy of being emancipated from sin and from self and from my own way and from my own tastes and from my own preferences so that I become addicted and a love slave to the will of God.

That's the yoke. We're going to close and I want to ask a question. Do you really want to mature as a Christian and go on with God and experience the unsearchable riches that are yet before us? If you do, then stop right now in your shoes.

Stop right now. Don't go any further. Come to grips with this fact. You will not go on unless by faith you stick out your neck. I request that your God and Savior clamp on you the yoke that He walked in.

The Invitation to Take Christ’s Yoke

And once that yoke is clamped on you, I admonish you in the name of the Lord that you find time to learn of Jesus and let Him put in you a meek, a humble, a teachable spirit because you won't endure that yoke without it.

But once that yoke goes, you're led. You don't lead. Hallelujah to God. Did you hear that? You are led. You don't lead. You are led by God Himself. And when you're led somewhere you don't want to go, what happens?

You either submit because of meekness or you fight. And you will fight. You will buck. But if you learn of Him, He'll change your heart. And you'll find that yoke becomes light and easy and it puts a song in your heart.

And you begin to rejoice. And you find it's safety. Father, I thank you and praise you for giving utterance this morning to share a very real word from your heart into our lives. I thank you, Lord, for the word, take my yoke.

That's what we're going to call this little message, take my yoke. Father, I pray for every single person here. If you're here today, beloved, listen carefully. If you're here today and you have heard God's word into your spirit and you realize that God is saying it's time to come to grips with the need to take the yoke of Christ and by faith ask God to clamp it on your neck.

If you feel God is challenging you to accept by faith this invitation and you realize that apart from His grace you can't do it and unless you learn of Him then you're going to buck up against Him when He leads you down a way you don't want to go.

But you know that He's offering Himself to you. If you're that person today, I want to ask you to, and I don't usually do this, but I feel a special kind of an opportunity and urgency from the heart of God.

I want to invite you to stand in your seat. Only if God is dealing with you about this. And as you stand in your seat, lift up your heart to God. And I believe God will meet you at that point. You want the yoke.

You know it means death to self. You know it means God will scrutinize your whole life. But it'll bring easiness and lightness to you. You're tired of bucking up. You're tired of being yoked to something other than the will of God.

It's not a light thing, brothers and sisters. Let's spend a few moments in quietness. As God moves upon your heart, I invite you to stand as a testimony before God and before the holy angels that by His grace you're saying, yes, Lord, in your strength, I want this yoke on my neck.

Thank you, Lord Jesus. Thank you, Lord.

Lord, I know that it'll mean I can't go my own way, but that way brings destruction. That way brings ruin. But your way brings peace and a song. Hallelujah. Thank you, Lord. Hallelujah. Thank you, Lord.

Let's just sing that song. All right. Hallelujah. As you continue to stand, most everybody's standing. I believe God has sovereignly met us this morning and is addressing something in our lives. And if we'll respond to him, our lives will be changed.

He is such a faithful Savior. Hallelujah to God. Everyone together, let's sing this song now, okay? As we sing this song, by faith, Lord, we're believing that even now, as we offer our necks to you, figuratively speaking, you're placing the clamp of your yoke around us, releasing us from the yoke of human wisdom, the yoke of human understanding, the yoke of sin, the yoke of our own way.

You're releasing us now in the name of Jesus. And by faith, Lord, we accept the yoke that says, I've come to do thy will and thy will alone. Give us a song in Jesus' name. Devil, every work and every bondage that is in our life because we were yoked to something other than the yoke of Christ, in the name of Jesus now, your power is broken.

Your power is broken. Every bondage that's there because of the old yoke, now because of the new yoke, it is broken in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Be free. Receive it, brothers and sisters. Be free in Jesus' name.

Hallelujah to God. Every bondage be broken. And with this new yoke, let there come a song. Let there come peace. Let there come rest. Hallelujah. Jesus, you are my treasure. Hallelujah to God. Yes, Lord.

We love your yoke, Lord. We love being yoked with you, Lord. May thy will be our delight. Praise the Lord. Now, brothers and sisters,.