Yeshua is the eternal Son of God and the Messiah whom God sent into this world to accomplish the most important things that were necessary for ruined humanity’s well-being. He successfully accomplished every aspect of His great mission. Then He left this world and ascended to the place of greatest honor – at the right of God. Now, as He was sent into the world, Messiah sends us into the world to take over His great mission. We must continue His life-saving work!
Messiah’s disciples had been with Him for a while. They heard Him teach. They saw Him do great miracles. Now they were prepared to take on more responsibilities and help carry on Messiah’s mission. In Luke chapter 9, let’s see what Messiah sent His first disciples, who are the foundation of His Holy Community, and whose example we are to imitate, to the cities of Israel to do: And He called the twelve together, and gave them power and authority over all the demons and to heal diseases. And He sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to perform healing. Removing demonic control from human beings, healing us of diseases, proclaiming the kingdom of God and helping people enter it were some of the purposes that Messiah was sent into this world to accomplish.
Here, those same things became the apostles’ purposes; and now those same purposes have become our purposes! We are to courageously go out into the world, and tell people the truth, and help liberate enslaved humanity from the dominion of darkness, and bring them into the life and light of the kingdom of God. We are to bring healing where possible. We are to bring human beings who respond to the truth within the community of Faith and nurture them and prepare them to go outside of the community, seeking the lost, telling the truth, helping and healing, and bringing new ones into the community, and repeating the process.
When we are close to God, and filled with the Spirit, we will have the desire and the power to have this mission-driven, this purpose-driven life. We will be mission driven people, and a mission driven community! That is so important for each one of us, and that is so much what we are to be about as a community! Is that you? Or, is your life driven by some other purpose or purposes?
The Lord instructed His 12 special emissaries and evangelists and disciples and foundational leaders to travel very lightly, depending on God and good people to sustain them in their God-ordained mission. When God asks us to do something, we can count on Him to supply the resources to accomplish what He asks us to do! And He said to them, “Take nothing for your journey, neither a staff, nor a bag, nor bread, nor money; and do not even have two tunics apiece. Whatever house you enter, stay there until you leave that city”.
Those special individuals who were traveling to bring the Good News needed, like the King they served, to travel lightly and get by with minimal resources. God would surely supply their needs to fulfill their mission. Their purpose was what was important – rescuing precious human beings, made in the image of God, from the powerful and destructive forces of Satan, sin and death – not pursuing wealth in a dying world that will not last. Do you agree? Are you living that way?
While this is a direct instruction for the 12 apostles, and primarily applied to them, the same principle holds true for evangelists in general, and in a sense for all Christians and Messianic Jews. All of us need to see ourselves as traveling evangelists on a very great mission to rescue people from the Satanic slave-market of sin and death. We are not to consider ourselves as permanent residents of this world focusing on building up our personal wealth here.
We are to travel lightly, focusing on going into this lost and dying world of human beings and tell them the truth that will save them from the Second Death. Tell them the Good News! But, also warn those who refuse to listen and join us that there will be bad consequences for rejecting us and the truth we bring. And as for those who do not receive you, as you go out from that city, shake the dust off your feet as a testimony against them.
Like the 12 Emissaries, we are the Lord’s ambassadors, God’s representatives to this world. Terrible consequences await those who ignore us and the One we represent. We don’t want to experience the smallest dust-like part of the punishments that they will suffer for rejecting the truth that will save them. That’s why the disciples were to shake off the dust from their feet – we are showing that we have no part in them and the judgment they have chosen by rejecting the Messiah and Savior.
This is also a very serious and clear warning to the wicked. After boldly telling people the Good News, the last thing we need to do to faithfully discharge our responsibility to them is to is to warn them of the terrible consequences of rejection. We must not be afraid to warn people about the sure punishment and judgment and Hell that awaits those who deny Messiah and reject the truth.
There had not been a prophet among the Chosen People whom God used to do miracles for hundreds of years, and suddenly there was Rabbi Yeshua, doing tremendous miracles! And now there were 12 more of His followers doing miracles – healing people and removing demons from individuals among the Holy Nation! Yeshua and the 12 were making a tremendous impact on all of Israel. People everywhere were wondering: What did this outpouring of the miraculous mean? Who exactly was Yeshua? Was he more than a rabbi from humble parents in Nazareth? Was the spirit of the prophet John, who had just been executed, risen from the dead in some way, and at work? Had Messiah’s forerunner Elijah finally appeared? That might explain some of these miracles. Had one of the other great prophets of old come back to life? Even a corrupt ruler like Herod wanted to know. But, intellectual curiosity without the willingness to repent, without the willingness to accept the truth no matter what the consequences, counts for little, and God is not impressed by that.
Yeshua’s 12 representatives returned from their successful short term mission, and Messiah knew that it was time for them to take a break. They needed to get away from the crowds and spend some time getting refreshed and renewed. And so they left to go to a desolate place. But the crowds found out where they were and followed them. Yeshua, ever gracious as He is, did not send them away. Their interest in Him and His message could not be denied, even if it meant sacrificing some much needed rest. And so He welcome the crowd who came to Him in that desolate place, and taught them about God and His great kingdom, and healed those who needed healing.
At the end of the day this crowd was out of food and far from the villages and cities. Instead of sending them away while tired and hungry, like the disciples suggested, Yeshua did one of His greatest miracles. After Yeshua prayed, God enabled 5,000 men to be fed from five loaves of bread and two fish, which miraculously kept multiplying in the hands of Yeshua. All 5,000 men ate the bread and the fish until they had enough to eat, and there was more food left over than they began with!
In a fallen world, hunger has been and is a reality for hundreds of millions. The Holy Spirit wants the world to know that Israel’s Messiah is able to and will overcome world hunger! This miracle of the multiplication of the bread and the fish in the hands of Yeshua foreshadows the golden age of mankind, when King Messiah will be ruling from Jerusalem over a renewed Earth, and there will be peace and prosperity in the world, and plenty of food for everyone like there was in the Garden of Eden.
When the nations of the world seek Him like this Jewish crowd did, He will respond and enable the entire planet to produce more than enough food to feed the entire world, and the vision of Amos will be a reality: The plowman will overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him who sows seed; the mountains will drip sweet wine and flow from all the hills; and every man will be sitting under his vine and under his fig tree. In the meantime, God the Father and Messiah the Son have promised to provide for our daily bread, and meet our basic needs, and make sure that we get our spiritual hunger for God, for truth, for meaning, for purpose, fully satisfied.
There are many important questions that you will be asked during your life. Who Is Yeshua? may be the most important question that you will need to answer correctly! If you want to have a truly meaningful and successful life, and get right with God, and be rescued from a dying species, and live forever, you had better answer correctly this most important question!
Yeshua Himself asked His disciples this most important question. And it happened that while He was praying alone (even though He was the Son of God, and always talked to God and heard clearly from His Father, Yeshua still spent special times devoted to prayer. How much more do we need to set apart times to devote to prayer!), the disciples were with Him, and He questioned them, saying, “Who do the people say that I am?” They answered and said, “John the Baptist, and others say Elijah; but others, that one of the prophets of old has risen again.”
Yeshua’s powerful teaching and healing ministry had made a tremendous impact on the nation. It was obvious that something supernatural – something over and above what is natural, was happening through Yeshua. The popular speculations reflect this – that John’s spirit had been resurrected and at work through Yeshua; that Yeshua might be Elijah, the great prophet who never died, and the forerunner for the coming of the Messiah; that Yeshua really was one of Israel’s great prophets of earlier times who had experienced resurrection. But, none of those were the right answer to this most important question that people need to answer correctly.
Yeshua wanted to make absolutely sure His disciples knew the correct answer. And He said to them, “But who do you say that I am”? And Peter, the bold spokesman of the group, and one of the leaders of the 12, answered and said, “The Messiah of God”. God’s Messiah, the God-anointed prophet, priest and king, anointed not merely with oil, but empowered by the Spirit of God; the God-approved prophet, priest and king that we have been promised since the disaster in the Garden of Eden; the ultimate prophet who hears crystal clearly from God, and tells us everything that God wants us to know; the ultimate priest, who brings sinful humanity closer to the holy God, and brings the holy God closer to fallen humanity; the ultimate priest who helps us meet our great need for atonement and forgiveness; and the ultimate king, who, endowed with salvation, will rule over Israel and the nations, bringing peace, prosperity and justice to the entire world. Rabbi Yeshua, You are the long-awaited, God-ordained Messiah sent by God!
And Peter was right! And, every other human being who wants eternal life and salvation and reconciliation with God, had better answer the question in exactly the same way as Peter did! Have you?
But, it was the predetermined plan of God for the Messiah to come twice – the first time to suffer and die to meet our great need – our desperate need for atonement, our need to be restored to a right relationship with God; and then the same Suffering and Rejected yet Victorious Messiah would come a second time as the triumphal and honored King to establish God’s kingdom on Earth.
But sadly, the Jewish people did not understand the two comings of the Messiah. We were not interpreting the Messianic prophecies about the Suffering Messiah correctly. We were not expecting for a Messiah who would suffer and die as the ultimate sacrifice for sins, making spiritual salvation possible. We were looking for a Messiah who would bring political and economic salvation, and overthrow the cruel pagan Romans. We had a deficient understanding of the mission of the Messiah, and so as not to confuse us further, Yeshua warned them and instructed them not to tell this to anyone, saying, “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed and be raised up on the third day”.
The rest of the nation of Israel didn’t understand the two comings of the Messiah, and the sufferings and rejection of the First Coming, but the disciples needed to understand that Messiah’s rejection and suffering and death would be followed on the third day with marvelous resurrection and vindication! But until that actually happened, they were not to proclaim to the nation that Yeshua was the Messiah. It would have been too confusing. It would have politicized the situation and made things more difficult for Yeshua and His followers.
“The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed and be raised up on the third day”. And, as much as we might dislike it, what is true of the Lord is to be true of His disciples. We are to carry on His great mission and ministry. We are to boldly and courageously and unashamedly preach a message of repentance and the need to turn to God and Messiah, and holiness.
And, just as He was rejected and suffered, if we are faithful to Him and His mission and His teachings, we will be rejected by a God-hostile world. Rejection and suffering are part of the normal Christian and Messianic Jewish experience. The world did not like our Lord; it did not like His message; the world will not like us, and there will be unpleasant consequences.
And He was saying to them all, “If anyone (anyone – not just leaders, apostles, evangelists, pastors and rabbis. This is for anyone, for everyone, including you) wishes to come after Me (to be My disciple, to join themself to Me and share My destiny, and enjoy the good things I offer), he must deny himself (give up his right to determine his life, and his personal goals and agenda, and give up his will, and he must submit his life and will and plans to God), and take up his cross daily (be willing to suffer rejection and death each and every day) and follow Me (follow My example, and take up My mission).
If you want to run your own life, and do your own thing, and do what you think is best for you, and live for yourself and what you want, and choose to ignore the Messiah’s great mission, you are probably not a genuine child of God. You are probably still in rebellion against God. You are self-willed, not God-willed. You are self-directed, not God-directed and not led by God.
For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake (for My sake, for Me, to accomplish what I want, to do what I want done), he is the one who will save it. And, believe me, you want to save your life! You want protect your life, and live forever with peace and contentment and happiness with God the Father and Messiah the Son, and the holy men and women of all the ages, and the angels and cherubeem and serafeem and the living beings near the throne of God, in the new yet eternal Jerusalem!
To drive home his point, Yeshua asks a very practical question having to do with comparative values of a kind of business deal. For what is a man profited if he gains the whole world, and loses or forfeits himself? Let’s see, a comfortable pleasant seventy or eighty years in this doomed world, or a life of hardship and rejection by the world, but a life with closeness to God and my fellow disciples, followed by eternal life and unending happiness? There is no profit if a person becomes the richest and most powerful person in this doomed world, if that is followed by the Day of Judgment and the Second Death in the Lake of Fire. That is a very very bad deal.
What will help us choose the better part of this deal, and reject the allures of the world, and be willing to deny ourselves, and be willing to suffer in this life as one of Messiah’s committed followers? We need to really believe that the Bible is true, and that Yeshua is who He is, and He will do what He says He will do – give eternal life and rejected and punish those who remain part of this world. Do you?
What does it mean to lose your life, to live for the sake of the Messiah, to pick up your cross and follow the Lord? It means to boldly and unashamedly go out into the world, and tell the truth, and speak for Messiah, and about Messiah. What does it mean to save your life yet lose it? One of the things it means is sparing yourself rejection by not witnessing to others. For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when He comes in His glory, and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.
Do not be intimidated by the fear of man. There are greater things to fear! Don’t worry about the sufferings and shame the world can inflict. There is a greater depth of suffering and shame that can come to you. Don’t worry about missing out on the good things in this life. There are far greater and more lasting things that can be missed! Don’t be impressed by the world and the honors that it can give, and the success it can provide. There are far greater honors that can be lost.
The Messiah, who is far greater and worthier than we are, suffered, and suffered much, and suffered willingly. We are asked to endure suffering. But the Messiah’s sufferings and rejection were temporary, and will be forever followed by great and lasting honor and power and happiness – and that will happen to us too if we remain faithful to Him and His mission!
We need that vision of the Messiah victorious and powerful and eternally alive and happy! And, Lord willing, we will consider that next week, where Luke records one the of greatest spiritual experiences that happened to the disciples – Yeshua’s transformation on the mountain, which is a foretaste, a foreshadowing of the King in His eternal glory!