Bruce Collins, Evangelist

The personal website of Bruce Collins

How Often do we Forsake the Lord and Flee?

Meditation for the week of March 17, 2013

Mark 14:50  Then they all forsook Him and fled.
2 Timothy 4:16  At my first defense no one stood with me, but all forsook me. May it not be charged against them.

This is the time of the year when we remember the crucifixion and resurrection of the Lord.  Psalm 30 verse 5 reminds us that weeping endures for the night but joy comes in the morning.  What we call “Good  (or Holy) Friday” was certainly not good for the Lord.  But on the Lord’s day, the open tomb, the angelic messengers, the appearance of the Lord to Mary and ultimately to all the disciples brought the joy of the morning to all those who had trusted in the Lord.  They hadn’t understood  that the Lord had to suffer before He could reign, but now they were experiencing something that they hadn’t thought possible.  A man who had died on a cross had come back to life.  That man was the Lord Jesus, our Savior, and the Jews Messiah.  He was and is the Son of God.  Now the man of sorrows was turning the events into a time of joy.  Joy had come in the morning. 

But before the victory, there was the taste of defeat for the disciples.  In the garden, when the mob came to take the Lord Jesus, they all forsook Him and fled.  Peter had said he would never deny the Lord and tried to honestly carry that out by removing the servant of the high priest’s ear with a sword (John 18:10).  But ultimately even he was among those who forsook the Lord and fled.  That left the Lord all alone except that He said He was not alone. In John 16:32 he says,  “Indeed the hour is coming, yes, has now come, that you will be scattered, each to his own, and will leave Me alone. And yet I am not alone, because the Father is with Me.”

What would we have done in these circumstances?  When we are put to the test and our lives are at stake, I think it would be easy to say that the wise would get out of there. I think Demas did that when he forsook Paul (2 Timothy 4:10).  I think it is hard for many of us to imagine the fear associated with an out-of-control mob or with an evil ruler.  When Paul stood before an evil ruler, all forsook Him as well. 

Easter is approaching and we will all get dressed up in our Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes and go to worship with others who claim to be Christians in nice church buildings where we can be very sentimental about the events of that Friday.  Our crosses will have nice shrouds on them to make them pretty.  Our songs will be practiced and perfect and we will come away from our services without ever really entering into the fear and suffering of that so-called “Good Friday.”  The Lord had agonized and prayed in the garden before Judas betrayed Him.  He had said that His soul was exceeding sorrowful, even unto death (Mark 14:34).  I am convinced that Satan was attacking Him like never before.  The disciples slept and were of no emotional help, but an angel came and strengthened the Lord (Luke 22:43).  Where would we have been if we had been with the Lord that night in Gethsemane when Satan was attacking and the mob was coming?   I am sure that I would have forsook Him and fled.

I wonder how often the fear of man and the fear of death cause us to forsake the Lord even today.  We all want to go to churches that are “blessed” and “big” and “growing”.  But the Lord wants us to take up our crosses “daily” and follow Him (Luke 9:23).  When we don’t, I am glad that the Lord is still seeking us out to restore our fellowship and usefulness like He did Peter and the other disciples.  The Lord knows our weaknesses and still loves us and even continues to use us. 

Shortly we will be celebrating Good Friday and then Easter.  Would we have forsaken the Lord and fled if we had been there?  Probably!  We live in a day and time when the persecution is subtle and where our lives are not in daily danger.  Certainly, those of us living in the civilized world today would never forsake the Lord and flee now would we?  Or would we?

Bruce Collins

No Comments »

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Leave a comment

XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>