Another Reminder
Matthew 26:1-5, NIV - When Jesus had finished
saying all these things, he said to his disciples, “As you know, the Passover
is two days away—and the Son of Man will be handed over to be crucified.”
Then the chief priests and the elders of the people
assembled in the palace of the high priest, whose name was Caiaphas, and they
schemed to arrest Jesus secretly and kill him. “But not during the festival,” they said, “or
there may be a riot among the people.”
Yet
again, Jesus reminds His disciples that things are about to happen that they
don’t want to hear. I think about
Matthew, a few decades later, recording the events after the resurrection,
ascension, Pentecost, and the massive growth of the early church. It’s almost like Matthew is reminding himself
that, “O wow, Jesus really did warn us SO many times that this was going to
happen and we never really heard Him.” The
reality is that they probably were not able to really hear Jesus before it all
happened. Jesus knew this. But he sets them up to remember later. That remembering is powerful; it will cement the
disciples’ faith and strengthen them for their mission.
What if
you could find a weather forecaster that was always right – every prediction
they made about tomorrow’s weather was spot on.
If they said it was going to rain, you’d take an umbrella out the door
when you left knowing you were going to use it.
If your big outside party was tomorrow and “Super Weather Guy,” said it
wasn’t going to rain, you wouldn’t even have a back-up plan. You would have developed this confidence over
weeks, months, or even longer seeing that the forecast was always 100%
correct. This is the link between memory
and confidence. You trust because you have
multiple memories that confirm that trust.
This is
what Jesus does for His disciples. He’s
constantly telling them what’s going to happen even though they will not really
hear Him in the moment. But later, the
memory will confirm faith and strengthen their resolve to build the
Kingdom. God still does the same thing
for us. I can’t tell you the number of
times I have remembered something that someone tried to tell me, but I was
obviously unable to hear in the moment.
Later, their words would become prophecy to me because I saw the truth
of their statement through experiencing that truth after they said it. Many things my parents tried to teach me
growing up did not become wisdom to me until my experience showed me the wisdom
in their words. In the light of my experience,
my memory of their words cemented the wisdom.
The truly amazing thing about that is that my Dad actually told me this
would happen. When I was eleven and
enduring one of my father’s lectures after making a serious mistake, he said
these words to me:
“Eric, right now, you think I’m
stupid. But as you get older . . . you
watch . . . I’m going to get smarter.”
My Dad was setting me up to remember his wisdom later,
knowing I was not really ready to receive it in the moment. Jesus did this for His disciples. God still does
for us, and occasionally, we do it for each other. Our wisdom, trust, resolve, and love grows as
we remember.
Question: What are
some examples of wisdom that someone tried to give you, but you didn’t realize
it until much later.
Prayer: Lord, we
trust that You have planted multiple seeds of wisdom, truth and faith in our minds
that we have not realized until we remember them later in the light of our experience. Thank you for preparing us for the future
with these seeds of the past. Amen.
Prayer Focus: Spend
time thanking God for the great teachers put in your life.
Song: Ancient Words –
Robin Mark
No comments:
Post a Comment