Tag: disciples

Endure

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“And you will be hated by all for my name’s sake. But the one who endures to the end will be saved.” – Matthew 10:22 (ESV)

Reality check: Genuine followers of Jesus Christ will have a rough time of it in this lifetime, and endurance is required. Jesus was speaking to His hand-picked group of twelve apostles when He warns, “And you will be hated by all for my name’s sake. But the one who endures to the end will be saved” (Matthew 10:22, ESV). Yes, God is brutally and lovingly honest with His own.

When Jesus alerted His followers of the persecution they would surely face because of their relationship to Him, Jesus had already been accused of blasphemy and of casting out demons by the power of Satan. The unbelieving world proved ferocious. The people were determined to discourage and destroy the Son of God, as they were fueled by their “father,” the devil. Certainly, Jesus instructed His disciples that we who follow Him will also come under direct attack of the powers of darkness working through people and circumstances. What is the response we are to have in the middle of this fierce hatred? Persevere to the end, and God will take care of everything in ways unimaginable.

My heart is thrilled by the terms our Savior uses here, “The one who endures to the end will be saved.” In other words, the end is not the end; it is essentially the beginning of a real and tangible salvation of our whole being. God saves us now from sin, then we endure through the persecution of the enemy during our brief lifetime, and finally God saves us completely and in all ways from every hint of destruction that sin promotes. As we have been saved from the power of sin, so we shall be saved from the possibility of sin’s damning effects and given the promise of the redemption of the entire universe.

For now, the battle rages. For now, the devil tempts us at every turn. For now, the light in our hearts is scorned by those in darkness. For now, we hear the words of Jesus and realize we must continue to bear up under every evil plot; and we are not alone. When encouraging the disciples not to be fearful in the face of confrontation, Jesus promised that “it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you” (Matthew 10:20, ESV). Clearly, God’s own Spirit residing in us provides the wisdom needed in what to say and the power needed to keep trekking forward through the forest of wickedness. With the Holy Spirit in us, where shall we find excuse to give in? With Jesus having given everything of Himself on our behalf, how shall we claim we are not loved deeply enough to go on? With the Father’s plan prevailing and ready to be entirely revealed, why should we give up?

Endure to the end – to the end of this age, because the end is the beginning of the fullness of God’s kingdom (Revelation 11:15). Persevere until the end – until death or His return. Can you see it? Can you feel it? Can you believe it? There it is, spoken by the Lord of All, “But the one who endures to the end will be saved.”

Blown Out of the Water

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One day long ago, Jesus told His disciples to travel with Him to the other side of the Sea of Galilee. They did. They left the crowd and got into a boat with Jesus Christ.

Since the disciples were directly following the will of Jesus, one might anticipate “smooth sailing” on the sea. Instead, a fierce storm arose, and their boat began to fill with the water of the vicious waves. Christ slept while all this ruckus took place. Imagine, omniscient Jesus had told His followers to go out to sea, and then He snoozed as they began to fear for their lives in a terrible storm!

Our God was up to something; He had a purpose for the squall. Our God is up to something in our lives, too, when He sends us into tumultuous waters. As Jesus demonstrated while napping in the stern of a boat, God is never unnerved by trouble surrounding us. He is in control, ready to use what appears as chaos to accomplish a vital work of the soul.

What happened next for the disciples was a dramatic, necessary shift in their understanding of Jesus Christ. As those men began to fear their demise in the storm, they awoke Jesus and said, “Teacher do You not care that we are perishing? (Mark 4:38b, NASB). Notice how they addressed Christ; they called Him Teacher.

To be sure, Jesus is a Teacher; but He is infinitely more! If Jesus is only a religious instructor, we are hopeless. Following only a moral teacher means trying to be saved by doing all the things prescribed in the body of teaching. Our problem is that “doing good” does not help us because we are dead inside. Spiritual death requires the prescription of a miracle – new life. New life comes because Jesus is God. His death pays for the sin of all who believe in Him, and His resurrected life enables us to live. I count His death as the payment for my sin, and I count His life as my Way to live (Romans 6:10-11).

The disciples needed desperately to realize that Jesus was more than their Teacher. When they cried out to Him in that storm, He told the sea to be still, and the sea listened! A complete calm ensued. Staring into the face of the new situation Jesus had wrought by His own power; the disciples “became very much afraid and said to one another, ‘Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey Him?'” (Mark 4:41). His followers’ notion of Him as simply “Good Teacher” was blown out of the water, if you will.

A new-found, vital reverence swept over the men as they became awakened to the true nature of Jesus. They must have thought to themselves, “This Jesus tells creation what to do!” I wonder if any of the disciples ever looked back to the Psalms to find what is spoken in chapter 33, verses 8-9, “Let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him. For He spoke, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast.”

Jesus is God. He is more than my Teacher. I have hope because He commands all of creation. I have hope because He gives me life when I can only offer death. I have hope because He can tell the swirling circumstances of my life to come to calm perfection when He sees fit.

Rather than appearing too dignified and declaring only, “Jesus is my Teacher,” I will stand with my mouth agape and proclaim, “This Jesus amazes me!”

Magnanimous Mercy

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One of the saddest sentences in the Bible is this one: “Then all the disciples left Him and fled.” (Matthew 26:56b, NASB) Wow. Just as Jesus was being arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane, His closest friends and followers abandoned Him.

Jesus had faithfully kept His word for three earthly years, serving alongside His disciples. Now, at this time of deepest despair – right when Jesus was about to begin this period of unimaginable suffering – His followers walk away. Shame on them! Should not they have realized what was happening? Should not they have understood that Jesus had predicted this event and its outcome? Should not they have stood by Him because of their love for Him? Should not their own fear and selfishness have been set aside for the sake of the Savior?

No, I cannot say, “Shame on them.” For each one of them is me. I walk away at times. I am faithless more often than I like to count. I abandon my Lord at various times of difficulty. I forget His promises. I am much like each disciple; I often fail my Jesus, though I hate the thought.

Thank God that “He Himself knows our frame; he is mindful that we are but dust” (Psalm 103:14). For though the disciples fled right before His crucifixion, Jesus still died for them.

Jesus did not choose to go back on His promise of redemption even though His closest friends abandoned Him right as He was about to embark on the darkest moments of His earthly life. We can barely understand that kind of love. However, finite understanding does not negate this love’s reality.

Forty days after His Resurrection, Jesus looked at the same disciples who had forsaken Him and boldly proclaimed, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.” (Acts 1:8)

A second “wow” is fitting here. The ones who had been faithless were now entrusted with the greatest task imaginable: being a witness to the world by the power of the living God inside of them.

God, may we, too – though we have failed you at times – be entrusted with Your calling. May we grasp the depths of your magnanimous mercy.

Those disciples went out more invigorated than ever because they experienced the profound forgiveness of Jesus. The ones who had fled the scene in fear now gave their own lives away for Jesus’ sake.

His mercy changes things – for the better.