64. Following Is Going All the Way
Following Is Going All the Way
Let me turn you to another crisis, Matthew 16:22, where He was telling His disciples that Calvary was before Him. “Then Peter took Him, and began to rebuke Him, saying, Be it far from thee, Lord: this shall not be unto thee.” And Peter was astonished when he heard his Master say, “Get thee behind me, Satan.” He saw who was standing behind Peter, and who was egging Peter on to speak those words.
Here was the crisis in Christ’s life. It was the temptation to shirk the cross. “Far be it from thee, Lord. Spare thyself. Pity thyself.” Although He saw the source of it behind Peter, I am sure He felt it was very hard to have to speak to Peter as He did; and when that temptation comes it sometimes comes through those who are dear to us, and it is always hard when it comes through somebody you love and somebody who loves you.
I met, on the other side of the water, a splendid young fellow who was the leader of a Christian band in his university and who gave himself up to God for the mission field. One morning early, his father came into his room and said to him, “Your mother wants you.” He went into his mother’s room and his mother said, “If you go to Africa it will be over my grave.” He said, “Oh, well, mother, if that is how you feel I will not go.”
What was the result? The poor fellow went back, back, back, back, went into the world and was found standing with those who were waiting to get into the theater, this fellow who had been the leader of his Christian companions and who had given himself up to God. Thank God, just a few years ago he got to know the meaning of that lovely text, from that lovely message that Calvary means Victory, and it brought him back to God, and he is now just in the hands of God for anything. But, oh, it comes hard upon one when the temptation to shirk the cross finds as its channel the lips, the heart, the life of someone who loves you and whom you love.
Notice that Christ defines discipleship as He speaks to Peter, and He pushes the cross into the forefront, “If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me” (Matthew 16:14). We must go all the way if we are to be disciples. If we do not we will soon lose sight of the Master. He is going on. We must be prepared to go with Him through the garden with its shadows and its struggles, and through the judgment hall with its scourgings and its scoffings, and up to the cross with its shame and its scorn. When Oliver Cromwell was going into battle, his great soldiers, the Ironsides, waiting for his commands would look at him, and they would say to one another, “See, he has on his battle face,” and they too got the battle face as they looked at their leader, and they went into battle to win the victory for God and for country. The Lord Jesus Christ has still got His battle face. He is not done fighting. He is in the midst of a tremendous conflict in the heavenlies, and He wants you and me, before we go farther, to take a new look into the face of our leader and catch the light of the battle face, the face that was set steadfastly to go to Jerusalem. The face always speaks in the Christian of a character and a life that is in the grip of the divine power, and that is what you and I are needing, that means victory.
Oh, will you follow the Lamb, even though somebody tries to keep you back? Will you say, with true hearts, “Where He leads me I will follow, I’ll go with Him, with Him, all the way”?
I wonder if I am talking to someone who, at a previous convention, or somewhere else, yielded himself or herself to the Lord and said, “Yes, I will follow Jesus even though it means going to China?” Then there came the choice of two roads, and you took the lower, you chose the second best? There is time for you to catch sight of the leader’s face, and the Lord, I think, is saying to you, “Rise! rise and follow me.” There is time for you to undo the past and take a fresh step forward, and once again put your life into the hand of Him to whom it belongs. Will you do it?