Tag: Following Jesus

Categories
Devotions

Daily Devotion July 20th

MONDAY 20th

John 2:1-12

NIV (v11) – ‘What Jesus did here in Cana of Galilee was the first of the signs through which he revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.’

ESV (v11) – ‘This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him.’

Have you ever wondered what it must have been about Jesus that caused the disciples to be willing to just walk away from their families, jobs etc to follow him for the three years that they spent with him.

Imagine if you were busy at your workplace, and suddenly this guy walks in who you may have seen but not spoken to, you may have heard about but not know too much about and he says to you, ‘Come on put your spray gun down take your overalls off, and follow me.’ (I have used myself as an example as I was a car sprayer) What would I have done, what would you have done? I would have thought about my home, my wife, my family, the mortgage, the bills and I’m sure I would have hesitated and to be perfectly honest I think I would have said something like ‘hang on a minute, I am pretty busy, I’ve got to get this car finished, and well there is my family to think about, come back next week, or next month and I’ll think about it.’  I would have wanted to enter some form of negotiation.

But when it comes to the disciples, we read that Jesus sees them, says ‘Follow me’ (John 1:43 Phillip, Matthew 9:9, Mark 2:14, Matthew) or ‘Follow me and I will make you fishers of men’ (Matthew 4:19-22, Mark 1:16-20, Simon Peter, Andrew, James and John) and they immediately leave what they are doing to follow him. What was it about Jesus that made them do this?

We know from John 1:35 that Andrew was already a follower of John the Baptist and as we saw in an earlier devotion he switched allegiance when he learned who Jesus was as ‘the Lamb of God’, so he was already aware of the cost of discipleship, but there must have been something that caused them to be drawn to Jesus. Was there something about who he was as a person, something in his voice that was compelling, had they seen something of his character and personality that drew them, maybe they had heard something of what had happened in the temple from when he read from the book of Isaiah, (Luke 4) or even had heard some of the message of the forerunner, John. They had seen how spectacular John was in his ministry and this one who was to follow was going to be even greater.

We could give a lot of speculative ideas and thoughts, but what is true is that they gave up their nets, the tax collecting etc and followed him. Now, when we get to the scene in John chapter 2, the marriage at Cana in Galilee, we can see that it is only a few days after Jesus had called the fishermen, (John 2:1) and at this wedding something was going to happen that would convince them that they had done the right thing, that following Jesus was worth doing. And even if they did not really understand too much about him, from then on, they would get to know him more.  For our text says, ‘This the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory. AND HIS DISCIPLES BELIEVED IN HIM.’

Jesus does call each of us to follow him, initially we do this by accepting him as our Lord and Saviour, by putting our faith and trust in him, that is what the disciples did when they responded, they trusted him entirely. He asks us to trust him, and then after our initial response he challenges us ‘If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it . . .’ (Luke 9:23-24) For most of us following Jesus won’t mean we leave our jobs and give up our families, we follow him from the comfort of where we are, others will have to give up, especially those who commit themselves to serving the Lord Jesus in mission and ministry. Some go abroad and live in completely different circumstances, some remain in what we call the homeland, but for a season, relocate, leaving what was comfortable to serve wherever God has called them, Discipleship costs, but the rewards are high! As you hear the voice of Jesus calling you to follow him, how will you respond?

Finally in Luke’s gospel we have more about the cost of following Jesus, it describes how I said I would have been at the beginning, full of excuses, it is Luke 9:57-61, but Jesus finishes it off by saying (v62) ‘No one who puts his hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.’ Today, if you have put your hand to the plough, that is you have chosen to follow Jesus, keep going, remain faithful, for he will honour you even if at times the going may be tough.

Categories
Devotions

Daily Devotion July 18th

SATURDAY 18th

John 1:43

NIV – ‘The next day Jesus decided to leave for Galilee. Finding Philip, he said to him, Follow me.’

ESV – ‘The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, Follow me.’

If I were to give this devotion a heading it would be ‘Finding and Following’. Jesus did the finding, and Philip did the following!

In Luke 19:1-10, we have the story about Zacchaeus, this was the first portion of Scripture I ever preached from, it was in a youth meeting in a Church in Hay-On-Wye. We were given opportunity then to give a ten-minute word in the youth meetings which were held every month. I am not sure if I managed ten! I was about 13 years old and just like Zacchaeus I had a stature problem, short! (I still have the same problem) My grandmother was there, and she said to me afterwards, ‘I enjoyed your  word, I could hear you, but I couldn’t see you!’ The platform dwarfed me even more. That is all beside the point at this moment, what I am leading to is that this short man met with Jesus and Jesus said to him (v10) ‘. . . For the Son of man came to seek and to save the lost.’ Zacchaeus was lost, not just among the crowd because of his stature but because of his sin. He looked for a vantage point to look for and to watch Jesus as he passed through the city, not realising that Jesus was looking for him!

We were all lost because of our sin, if you are reading this and do not know Jesus as Saviour, you are still lost, and Jesus came looking for you, you may have tried to hide, you may still even be trying to hide from him, but he knows exactly where we are. My grandmother could hear me but not see me, when I was a sinner the Lord Jesus could hear and see me, there was no hiding from him. And the same for you, no matter how hard you try to hide away, even perhaps to try and hide behind your sin, or run away from the convicting power of the Holy Spirit you will never get away, because the mission of the Lord Jesus Christ was and still is ‘to seek and to save the lost.’

For those of us who have been found, then we need to follow! In our text, Jesus was calling Philip to follow him, to become one of his disciples. Following Jesus is a life time commitment, it is a total surrender of who we are to become what he wants us to be, it is a leaving behind of everything that would easily beset us or hinder us (Hebrews 12:1-2) to follow in the pathway that he has prepared for us to walk in, it is a surrender of our will to his will, a conforming not to this world but a transforming renewal of our minds which will discern what is the good, acceptable and perfect will of God. (Romans 12:1-2)

In Johns gospel we read of some of the disciples who had a change of heart. It is in John 6:60-66 ‘When many of his disciples heard it, they said, this is a hard saying; who can listen to it? But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this, said to them, do you take offense at this? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe. (For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe, and who it was who would betray him.) And he said, this is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father. After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him.’ In the previous verses Jesus had been talking about their partaking of Jesus as the ‘Bread of Life’,  They had found some of what Jesus had said difficult to swallow (excuse the pun) and so they chose to walk away. Jesus then turned to the twelve and said, ‘Do you want to go away as well?’ Peter answered, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.’

If we have truly been found, we will want to follow, because once we have tasted of the goodness of God, once we have known what it is to be forgiven, once we have known what it is be to a part of the family of God and to call him our Father, where else would we want to go, or be, for he not only has the words of eternal life, he is that life and he has given it to us.

Remember the hymn, ‘I’ve found the Pearl of greatest price, my heart does sing for joy, and sing I must for Christ I have, Oh, what a Christ have I.’ –  I’ve found the pearl of greatest price, have you?  Or, he has found me? Whichever or whatever way you want to consider it, let us keep hold of the Pearl, lets follow in his footsteps, let’s make the choice, I have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back, no turning back.

Categories
Devotions

Daily Devotion July 16th

THURSDAY 16th

John 1:37-39

NIV – ‘When the two disciples heard him say this, they followed Jesus. Turning around, Jesus saw them following and asked, What do you want? They said, Rabbi (which means Teacher), where are you staying? Come, he replied, and you will see. So they went and saw where he was staying, and they spent that day with him. It was about four in the afternoon.’

ESV  – ‘The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. Jesus turned and saw them following and said to them, What are you seeking? And they said to him, Rabbi (which means Teacher), where are you staying? He said to them, Come and you will see. So they came and saw where he was staying, and they stayed with him that day, for it was about the tenth hour.’

I do not think that I have ever used these verses before to share from, but as I was reading them there was a thought that struck me which I will share. Verse 35 tells us that John was standing with two of his disciples. This means that the two were following John the Baptist, but as soon as they heard the declaration ‘Behold the Lamb of God’ his two disciples began to follow Jesus! This leads to the verses we have today, Jesus asks them ‘What are seeking?’ Perhaps today we may say ‘What do you want?’ and the two men replied by asking him ‘Where are you staying?’ I think that they wanted to know this because they wanted to find out more about this man who the Baptist had said was the Lamb of God. Jesus invited them to go with him to see where he was staying, they went and stayed with him that day.

The identity of one of the men is then revealed, he was called Andrew and he went immediately to find his brother Simon, saying ‘We have found the Messiah’. Simon went along with Andrew to where Jesus was and verse 42 tells us that Jesus changed Simon’s name to Peter.

In Luke 6:12-16 we read the list of those who Jesus chose and named as his apostles, ‘In these days he went out to the mountain to pray, and all night he continued in prayer to God. And when day came, he called his disciples and chose from them twelve, whom he named apostles: Simon, whom he named Peter, and Andrew his brother, and James and John, and Philip, and Bartholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas, and James the son of Alphaeus, and Simon who was called the Zealot, and Judas the son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor.’

The second name in the list is that of Andrew, and we know it is the same Andrew as is mentioned in John 1:40 as we are told it was ‘Simon, whom he named Peter and Andrew his brother’.

This was the thought I had, Andrew had changed his allegiance, in John 1:35 he was a disciple of the Baptist, now, he is a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Can I suggest in this devotion that once we have met with the Lord Jesus Christ our allegiance has to change!  Obviously, there was not anything wrong with Andrew’s allegiance toward the Baptist, but if it had remained there, he would have missed out on what God had got planned for him! Before we met with the Lord Jesus Christ there may have been many legitimate things that we were actively involved with, which took our attention that in themselves were not a problem, but once we have come to know Jesus they could become stumbling blocks in our walk with him and so we have to make a choice, to leave them, walk away from them and choose to wholeheartedly follow Jesus. Our allegiance must be towards him. Our allegiance towards Jesus is linked to our knowing him as Saviour as well as acknowledging him as Lord.

The second thought we can draw from this is that on finding the Messiah, Andrew went to tell his brother. And as we have found him, we need to be active in telling others!

Finally, we are not told anything else about the other one who was with him. Both he and Andrew had heard what the Baptist had said, they had both spent time with Jesus, we do not know if he was ever a follower of Jesus, or perhaps he returned to the Baptist. And we do not always know the response that an individual may make when we share Jesus, all we need to do his share him, point others towards him and leave the rest to the Holy Spirit.