Prediction & Promise
After having spent three years with Jesus those twelve men must have felt pretty good about themselves. The Twelve Disciples witnessed Jesus performing miracles off every imaginable variety: healing the sick and lame, turning water into wine, calming storms, casting out demons, and the one that provoked the religious leaders the most… telling people they were forgiven for their sin(s).
The folks who do internships with big Wall Street firms and fortune 100 companies invariably pick up a swagger of confidence. The Twelve were no different. These dudes had some serious swagger goin on. My vivid imagination conjures up images like a modern movie trailer or high budget commercial…
The scene opens with a wide shot in super slow motion - party music to set the mood…
Jesus (in the middle of the Twelve) is dressed modestly, compassion in His eyes, and is fairly unimpressive to look at.
Meanwhile, the Twelve Disciples are strutting their swagger, wearing designer sunglasses, Armani togas, some with arms folded, others looking out at the crowd like “AHHH YEAH, you know who WE are!” One of them pointing at Jesus as to say, “That’s right suckas Jesus is my homie!”
I realize that’s a dramatization, but not by much. See in Matthew 26:31-32 Jesus said to them, “This very night you will ALL fall away on account of me… but after I have risen, I will go ahead of you into Galilee.”
Peter’s response vividly demonstrates both the group’s and his personal level of swagger - it was something the rest of them were all thinking, but Peter was always “that guy,” the one bold enough to say what everyone else was thinking… “Even if all fall away on account of you, I never will!”
Jesus is unimpressed with our self-righteousness, our posturing, and our spiritual swagger. Like a needle to a balloon, Jesus said to Peter “The truth is that this very night, before the rooster crows, you will disown me three times.”
Jesus isn’t so much concerned with our arrogance and our perverted self-image as much as He’s concerned with accomplishing the will of the Father in Heaven, i.e. conforming us into the image of Christ.
Peter was clearly wounded, so he did what any self-respecting arrogant, self-absorbed, egomaniac would do… he upped the ante. It quickly went from “I’ll never fall away!” to “Even if I have to die with you, I will NEVER disown you!”
How do I know they all suffered from the same malady of delusional self-worth and loathsome arrogant swagger? Because after Peter took offense to Jesus’ rebuke and injected correction in saying “Even if I have to die with you, I will NEVER disown you!” we read, in v.35 “And all the other disciples said the same.”
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Jesus knows that humanity is lost and utterly depraved.
He stepped down from His eternal throne of majesty to occupy the time and space that we destroyed in Eden.
He resolutely set out for Jerusalem and the Cross from before the foundation of the cosmos.
He knows that we’re broken beyond Oprah’s self-help techniques, beyond Dr. Oz’s medical miracles, beyond mega-church motivational speeches.
At the end of three years those Twelve Disciples were arrogant, self-absorbed, egotistical children. Jesus burst that bubble experientially when He was arrested in Gethsemane and they all fled just as He predicted… then, right before dawn - before the rooster blasted the final remnant of hubris from Peter’s twisted heart - Peter fulfilled Jesus’ prediction by adamantly demanding for the third time, “I don’t know the man!”
The guy who claimed he would DIE for Jesus was readily deterred with a few probing inquiries.
Jesus, God, could have left it there. The Bible could have simply recounted humanity’s sin in Eden, our failures and stubbornness in the nation of Israel, our rejection of the Messiah in Jerusalem, all of which affirming Jesus’ prediction that left to ourselves we have & always will - disown Him.
But He didn’t leave it there.
Jesus predicted our rebellion, abandonment, rejection, and denial. He also said, “But after I have risen, I will go ahead of you into Galilee.” Jesus didn’t leave it at a fatalistic prediction of denial and rejection - Jesus, God, interjected a promise of hope.
Jesus told these Twelve Disciples “This very night you will all fall away on account of me… BUT after I have risen, I will go ahead of you into Galilee.”
The Cross of Christ strips away all the swagger, arrogance, and hubris. It leaves us with an unshakable tension of our personal unworthiness and unshakable inherent value.
Judas selfishly focused on the unworthiness side of the equation and subsequently hanged himself.
The remaining Eleven Disciples held on to that redemptive promise “but after I have risen, I WILL go ahead of you into Galilee.”
Those Eleven guys were hanging on to what seemed like an impractical, improbable, and impossible promise from God. That’s all they had, but they were on the verge of finding out that’s all we ever need.
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At the close of Matthew’s gospel we read, “Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go.”
On that long road to Galilee I imagine there was a lot of time for reflection about what had transpired over the past three years. On that long road to Galilee there was no big budget ultra-slow motion strut, no Armani togas, no designer sunglasses, and no delusional “AHHHH YEAH!” swagger. There was a group of eleven defeated men bereft of all personal pride and egotism… hanging desperately to a promise from God.
That’s when Jesus - the RISEN LORD - chose to come to them because NOW that all the junk had been stripped away… Jesus finally had something He could work with. That’s when Jesus said, “Disciple all the nations” (Matt 28:19).
Blessings,
-Kevin
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