63. Following Is Willingness to be Misjudged
Following Is Willingness to be Misjudged
What does it mean practically to follow the Lamb? I want to turn you, to answer that question, to three crises in the life of the Lord Jesus Christ. There were many crises in His earthly life, and you can study them at your leisure and see what it means to follow the Lamb; but I want to give you three crises that will just show what following the Lamb means in the details of the day’s life.
In Matthew 9:11 our Lord was sitting at meat in a house. Publicans and sinners were with Him and there was considerable criticism of His action on the part of the Pharisees. He said to them, “They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick. But go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance” (Matthew 9:12-13).
Notice that the Lord Jesus Christ again and again broke through the conventionalities of His day and braved the displeasure of the people, or rather of the religious people. Why? In order that He might do God’s will and bring salvation to men and women. Do you remember how He risked His reputation as a Jew that day when He was found talking to the woman of Samaria, and He risked His reputation as a teacher, as a prophet, when, in the house of Simon the Pharisee, he allowed the woman sinner to touch His feet? Here He risked His reputation as a proper-minded person, by taking dinner with publicans and sinners, the outcasts of society. He did it all to bring salvation to men.
I believe today that to follow the Lamb whithersoever He goes will mean for us that we have often to be in positions where we must be willing to be misjudged, and where, perhaps, we have to risk our reputation and be called names by the circle in which we move. But what the world is needing today is less conventionalism and more consecration on the part of Christians; less starch in religious life and more salvation. That is what the world is needing.
You know how people say, “Well, something is due to custom.” “You will offend people if you do this and do that.” “You will lose in business, you cannot afford that.” The question for you and for me is, are we prepared to be uncompromising and when the thing is right to follow the Lamb whithersoever He goes? That is the test of our discipleship. Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not be untrue to conscience or principle or God or nation, and he prospered. In the days of the Reformation there were men of different degrees of loyalty. Erasmus, for instance, said, “Yes, I will be true to God as far as the customs of the age allow me”; but Luther said, “Here I stand, I can do nothing else. God help me.” The question, as you and I go down from the holy mount is, “Will I follow the Lamb whithersoever He leads, although it means risking something, although it means my circle calling me names and labeling me with a certain label? Will I follow the Lamb? Oh, the world is waiting for some people who will show that they will follow the Lord Jesus Christ no matter what it costs. May you and I be among the number!