Be careful what and who you yoke yourself to

If you have been around the church for a while you have heard from the pulpit or from your parents not to be unequally yoked. Growing up I always wondered what that meant. The only yoke I knew about came from chickens. So, did the Bible mean that people should be careful about the kind of eggs in omelets? Maybe a cooking reference?? Ok surely, I gest, but for those people like me who had no earthly idea what that means, let’s talk about it.

“A yoke is a wooden crosspiece fastened over the necks of two animals and attached to a plow or cart. A yoke allows two animals to share a load and pull together.” Explains got questions.org, “Yokes were used in Bible times primarily with bulls or oxen to plow fields and pull wagons. The animals yoked together needed to be close in size and weight for the cart or plow to pull evenly.”

So, what happens when you have one animal who is sick, quick-tempered, self-willed or has no real desire to go the same direction as the other? Obviously, it will affect the other connected to the yoke. This is what happens when we as a believer yoke or partner with someone or something that doesn’t want to go in the same direction, we are going in.

It should also be of note that we can also yoke ourselves with values, media, entertainment, and lifestyles that are contrary to the teachings of Jesus. Typically, when we yoke ourselves with people or things that are contrary to what the Bible teaches, we have two choices, go in the same direction as the other thing or person that is pulling us away, or allow those other things to continue to weigh us down and eventually lead us to burnout, or lukewarmness. We know what the bible teaches us about being lukewarm (Revelation 3:16).

So… when 2 Corinthians 6:14 in the King James versions says: Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? It could probably be more easily understood in the NET version, “Do not become partners with those who do not believe, for what partnership is there between righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship does light have with darkness?

I am in the middle of reading the prophets in the Old Testament, currently Hosea. In the book, God illustrates God’s love for his people, but the damaging effects of what happens when we depend on other things other than God to save us, or when we entrench ourselves in the cultures and lifestyles of non-believers. He continues to show in the prophets the consequences when we give ourselves to those things we have no business giving ourselves to

Let’s be clear, yoking is not merely bearing one another’s burden or walking through discipleship with a young or non-believer. Yoking that is warned against is intimately partnering your life with that person who has no real desire to go in the same direction spiritually, practically, and emotionally. Those harmful yokes could mean the business partners you choose or the romantic relationships you choose to have.

One of my favorite verses is at the end of Joshua. After Joshua and the Israelites gained victory in their life and country, he warned them not to go back. Obviously, our battle now is spiritual, but the battle is still very real and very hard.

Joshua 23:6-13 encourages us to “Be very strong; be careful to obey all that is written in the Book of the Law of Moses, without turning aside to the right or to the left. Do not associate with these nations that remain among you; do not invoke the names of their gods or swear by them. You must not serve them or bow down to them. But you are to hold fast to the LORD your God, as you have until now.

“The LORD has driven out before you great and powerful nations; to this day no one has been able to withstand you. One of you routs a thousand, because the LORD your God fights for you, just as he promised. So be very careful to love the LORD your God.

“But if you turn away and ally yourselves with the survivors of these nations that remain among you and if you intermarry with them and associate with them, then you may be sure that the LORD your God will no longer drive out these nations before you. Instead, they will become snares and traps for you, whips on your backs and thorns in your eyes, until you perish from this good land, which the LORD your God has given you.