Matthew 11:28-30
Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.
See Matthew 23:4 - (The Pharisees) tie up heavy loads and put them on men's shoulders...
Acts 15:10-11
Why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of the disciples a yoke that neither we nor our fathers have been able to bear?
No, we believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved.
Galatians 5:1
It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.
A.W. Tozer The Warfare of the Spirit
Freedom is liberty within bounds: liberty to submit to God's will, liberty to keep the commandments of Christ, to serve mankind, to develop to the full all the latent possibilities within our redeemed natures. True Christian liberty never sets us free to indulge our lusts or to follow our fallen impulses (which only leads to slavery).
John Flavel England's Duty, Sermon III on Revelation 3:20
No heart can truly open to Christ that is not made willing, upon due deliberation to receive Him with His cross of sufferings and His yoke of obedience. If thou judgeth not Christ to be worthy of all sufferings, all losses, all reproaches, He judges thee unworthy to bear the name of His disciple. So, for the duties of obedience—called His ‘yoke’—he that will not receive Christ’s yoke can neither receive His pardon nor any benefit by His blood.
Thomas Brooks The Unsearchable Riches of Christ
Lord, keep down my sins, and keep up my heart to honour you in all my troubles. Though my burdens are doubled and troubles multiplied, help me to honour you by trusting, waiting and submitting to you, and I shall sing my cares away and say, it is enough.
Ebenezer Erskine’s personal covenant, August 26, 1708
The Life and Diary of the Reverend Ebenezer Erskine; of Stirling
https://books.google.com/books?id=5J8DAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA116&lpg
"I offer myself up, soul and body, unto God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. I flee for shelter to the blood of Jesus. I will live to Him; I will die to Him. I take heaven and earth to witness that all I am and all I have are His."
John Gill
The phrase is Rabbinical. The Jewish doctors often exhort to “take upon you the yoke of the holy kingdom”, every day. They distinguish this from the yoke of the law, and say “a man must first take upon him the yoke of the kingdom of heaven, and after that take upon him the yoke of the commandment.” Their sense I take to be this, that a man must first make a profession of his faith in the God of Israel, and then live conformably to his law: agreeably to this, Christ exhorts such persons who come to him for rest and happiness, to profess their faith in him, to embrace the doctrines of the Gospel, to submit to his ordinances, and to walk according to those laws, commands, and orders, which he, as king of saints, has made, and requires obedience to: so those who come to him for life, and believe in him, as the Saviour of their souls, though they are not to trust in, and depend upon any duties performed by them; yet they are not to sit still, or lay aside the performance of good works, or live a licentious course of life, but are always to be doing the will and work of their Lord. And this he calls “his yoke”, in distinction from the yoke of the law of Moses, and of the traditions of the elders.
Adam Clarke
What a strange paradox! that a man already weary and overloaded must take a new weight upon him, in order to be eased and find rest! But this advice is similar to Psalm 55:22 "Cast thy burdens upon the Lord, and he will sustain thee." Trust thy soul and concerns to him, and he will carry both thyself and thy load.
John Geddie's parting message as he, his wife Charlotte, and his children, sailed from Halifax, Nova Scotia November 30, 1846 for Polynesia. Eleven months later, the ship landed in Samoa.
“In accord with the Redeemer's command and assured of His presence, we are going forth to those lands where Satan has established his dark domain. I know that suffering awaits me. But to bear the Redeemer's yoke is an honor to one who has felt the Redeemer's love.”
F.B. Meyer
"Our Daily Walk"
You cannot have all of God, or God in all, until you are willing to surrender your all.
“The Blessed Life” – Consecration and Surrender
https://www.gracegems.org/SERMONS/blessed_life.htm
The reason that so many fail to attain the Blessed Life is that there is some one point in which they hold back from God, and concerning which they prefer to have their own way and will rather than His. If you cannot GIVE all, ask the Lord Jesus to TAKE all, and especially that which seems so hard to give.
When we are willing that the Lord Jesus should take all, we must believe that He does take all. He does not wait for us to free ourselves from evil habits, or to make ourselves good, or to feel glad and happy. His one desire is that we should put our will on His side in everything. When this is done, He instantly enters the surrendered heart and begins His blessed work of renovation and renewal.
The Lord Jesus is willing to abide in the heart which is wholly yielded up to Him. If there are some things in our lives that make it difficult for us to surrender our whole nature to Christ, yet if we are willing to be made willing to surrender them, He will make us not only willing but glad.
All that we have to do is to maintain this attitude of full surrender, by the grace of the Holy Spirit. Remember that Jesus Christ offered Himself to God, through the eternal Spirit, and He waits to do as much for you. Ask Him to maintain in you this attitude. Use regularly the means of meditation, private prayer, and Bible study. Seek forgiveness for any failure as soon as you are conscious of it, and ask to be restored. Practice the holy habit of the constant recollection of God. Do not be eager to work for God, but let God work through you. Accept everything that happens to you as being permitted, and therefore sent by the will of Him Who loves you infinitely. And there will roll in upon you wave on wave, tide on tide, ocean on ocean of an experience fitly called The Blessed Life, because it is full of the happiness of the ever-blessed God Himself.
A.B. Simpson [Cast] all your care upon him; for he careth for you (1 Peter 5:7)
There are two cares in this verse - your care and His care. They are different in the original. One means anxious care, the other means Almighty care. Cast your anxious care on Him and take His Almighty care instead. No longer be overwhelmed by trouble, but believe God is able to sustain you through it. The government is on His shoulder. Believe that if you trust and obey Him and meet His will, He will look after you. Take His yoke upon you, and let Him care for you.
Let us not drag our burdens through the day but drop all our loads of care and be free to carry His yoke and His burden. Let us make the happy exchange, relinquishing ours and taking His. Let the covenant be: Thou shalt abide for me...so will I also be for thee (Hosea 3:3). In such abiding we lose our heaviest load - ourselves.
We must, like Jesus, meet conflict, not with a defiant but with a submissive spirit. He had to say, Not my will, but thine be done (Luke 22:42), but in saying it He gained the very thing He surrendered. The submission of Gethsemane is not a blind and dead submission of a heart that abandons all its hope, but it is the free submission that bows the head in order to get double strength through faith and prayer. We let go in order that we may take a firmer hold. We give up in order that we may more fully receive.
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, “Finally, What God Wants” on Matthew 7:21
We must realize that what God wants, and what our blessed Lord wants, above all, is ourselves – what Scripture calls our ‘heart’. He wants our submission. He does not want merely our profession, our zeal, our works, or anything else.
He wants us.
If we believe that Jesus of Nazareth is the only begotten Son of God and that He came into this world and went to the cross of Calvary and died for our sins and rose again in order to justify us and to give us life anew and prepare us for heaven – if you really believe that, there is only one inevitable deduction, namely that He is entitled to the whole of our lives, everything without any limit whatsoever.
That means that He must have control not only in the big things, but in the little things also; not only over What we do, but How we do it. We must submit to Him and His way as He has been pleased to reveal it in the Bible…
And when we don't understand God's ways, pray Matthew 11:26
NIV - Yes, Father, for this is what you were pleased to do.
NLT - Yes, Father, it pleased you to do it this way!
ESV - Yes, Father, for such was your gracious will.
KJV - Even so, Father: for so it seemed good in thy sight.
Fra Thomé de Jesu The Sufferings of Jesus, on Psalm 31:5
https://www.providencecrosslake.com/fra-thome-de-jesus-prayer-from-psalm-315/
Do thou, Lord God, receive me and make me to become what he, the divine Lamb, would have me to be. I commend, I offer up, I deliver over into thy divine hands, all my affairs, my cares, my affections, my success, my comforts, my labours, and everything which thou knowest to be coming upon me. Direct all to thy honour and glory; teach me in all to do thy will, and in all to recognise the work of thy divine hands; to seek nothing else, and with this reflection alone to find rest and comfort in everything.
F.B. Meyer Our Daily Walk
If you cannot say "Thy Will be done," say: "I am willing to be made willing that Thy Will should be done."
Meyer's prayer of consecration and surrender
Lord, I am willing to be made willing. I am desirous that Your will should be done in me and through me as thoroughly as it is done in heaven. Come and take me and break me and make me. Now I give myself to You: body, soul and spirit; in sorrow or in joy; in the dark or in the light; in life or in death; to be Yours only, wholly, and forever. Make the most of me that can be made for Your glory.
Submission is NOT passive resignation or reluctant acquiescence, but a positive affirmation and acceptance of God's will and of Christ's lordship. When we willingly surrender and obey, we put ourselves under His authority, provision, and protection - what better place could there be?!
G. Campbell Morgan “Spare Thyself!” on Matthew 16:21-24
We tell each other, and rightly so, that we are to submit ourselves wholly and absolutely to the will of God without questioning. But why? Because His will must always be will impulsed by love, and by light, and therefore will be of the highest and noblest and best. It is not mere blind submission to mechanical force, this yielding to the will of God.
It is reason linked with faith handing the life over to what must be the highest and noblest and best.