AN INTENTIONAL SCATTERING

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

“A time is coming and in fact has come when you will be scattered, each to your own home. You will leave Me all alone. Yet I am not alone, for my Father is with Me.”

John 16:32

This ends today’s reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

As Jesus addressed His disciples for the last time before His arrest, brutal abuse and beating, and then His crucifixion, we find Him covering all phases of time for His followers: the past, present, and future.

He mentioned the past so they would always refer back to it and the time they had with Him, remembering all His mighty works of healing, the wisdom in every teaching He provided, and most of all, the deep love and caring He had for them. He had called them away from the lives they had and everything they possessed to set their feet on a path paved with uncertainty with challenges seemingly around every corner. And as Jesus spoke with His disciples after the final Passover meal they would share together, He did so with the knowledge that He had done all He could do to prepare the disciples for what was yet to come. The present was soon to be a springboard for the future.

Thus as Jesus finishes up His lengthy address in the present, we find Him turn the gaze of His followers toward what was ahead. We know because of His selection of words:

“A time is coming and in fact has come…”

These were words of warning to the disciples, not telling of a mere possibility but rather a harsh reality. Jesus had just finished telling His trusted followers that He was leaving them and returning to God, His Father and theirs. And in response, the disciples acknowledged their understanding of what Jesus said. They knew He had come from God and would return to Him, appreciating that Jesus was now speaking to them clearly vice figuratively.

So Jesus was getting His disciples ready for something that was coming and coming soon but what was about to happen?

We get the answer as Jesus continued, saying:

“…you will be scattered, each to your own home. You will leave Me all alone. Yet I am not alone, for my Father is with Me.”

Jesus was about to be betrayed and arrested, carried off to stand trial before the Sanhedrin. The disciples would see their Master hauled away like any other man would if taken into custody and He would not offer up resistance because He knew it was His destiny.

Still, the impact of Jesus’ arrest would have a different impact on the disciples. For Jesus made it clear that they would desert Him in this time of peril and scatter, each to their own home. From that point on, Jesus would be on His own to suffer mentally and physically, first at the hand of the Jewish religious authorities, and then the Romans. But note that He would not be distressed by the scattering of His faithful followers. This is because Jesus knew He always had His Father with Him and that would always offer Him encouragement and fellowship, even in His darkest times.

These were words of prophecy spoken by Jesus, words that predicted an intentional scattering and I say intentional because Jesus knew it was going to happen before it did. That made well beyond accidental.

So would the prophecy come to be?

Well, we can say with full confidence that would, without question or reservation, because everything Jesus said was perfectly true. But just to verify that what He said would happen did indeed occur, we go to these words from the gospel of Matthew:

In that hour Jesus said to the crowd, “Am I leading a rebellion, that you have come out with swords and clubs to capture Me? Every day I sat in the temple courts teaching, and you did not arrest Me. But this has all taken place that the writings of the prophets might be fulfilled.”

Then all the disciples deserted Him and fled. Matthew 26:55-56

This happening, the arrest of Jesus at Gethsemane’s garden was just mere hours after He had predicted what the disciples would do and as we see from the scriptural account, the disciples did scatter as they deserted Jesus and fled. On the surface, it may have seemed as a joint act of abandonment, leaving Jesus behind in His time of deepest need but keep the big picture in mind. For when Jesus’ followers scattered, it eliminated the possibility that they could be eliminated along with Him. In other words, Jesus needed His disciples to live on beyond what was about to happen to Him. He needed His disciples to stay alive and carry on His salvation work.

So indeed, have little doubt that this scattering was indeed intentional. Jesus foretold it and as we see, it did happen. It was one of many scatterings to follow as persecution served not to stop the flow of the gospel but rather to disperse it to the entire world. Such was the perfect nature of God’s perfect plan of redemption for all through His Son Jesus.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

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