February 13, 2025

GOD’S WORD FOR TODAY:

“The Lord GOD has given Me the tongue of discipleship, to sustain the weary with a word. He awakens Me morning by morning. He awakens My ear to listen as a disciple.” (Isaiah 50.4)

REFLECTION ON GOD’S WORD FOR TODAY:

Matthew records the final words of Jesus’ earthly ministry highlighting the purpose given to all believers. Jesus said before His ascension into Heaven, “All authority in Heaven and on earth has been given to Me. With that authority I now send you. Go into all the world and make disciples of all the nations. Baptize the in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. Do so with the surety that I AM with you always even to the end of this age.” (Matthew 28.20) What precedes this instruction is His crucifixion and the brutality of it as well as His resurrection and the glory of it. Let’s take a look at this threefold revelation blending the prophetic word of these events as well as the projection of the certain future which exists for all believers.

FATHER. As I mentioned, before Jesus empowers His disciples with the content and the context of the ministry for which they had been trained, He was brutally assaulted, falsely accused, tormented and bullied and horribly crucified. What we read in Isaiah is the prophetic word from God of this reality. It is summed up in Isaiah, chapter 50, verses five and six. In a summary statement, we can accept verse 6 as the validation of it: “I offered My back to those who struck Me, and My cheeks to those who tore out My beard. I did not hide My face from scorn and spittle.” Jesus bore it willingly even when He knew of the excruciating pain and suffering it entailed. He did so wrapping God’s promise around Him to protect His heart, mind and soul. His purpose was to be God’s disciple. He was prepared for that moment so that His disciples would be prepared for their own moments as His disciples. That “tongue of discipleship” is intended to be our own. It represents the Word of God which is given for our instruction and encouragement. It is also the Word of God which we will speak to others for the same. It is the Father’s will to break a broken world so that healing may ensue and joy restored.

SON. What is significant about the “tongue of discipleship” is introduced in Isaiah 53.7, “He was oppressed and afflicted, yet He did not open His mouth. He was led like a lamb to the slaughter. As a sheep before its shearers is silent, so He did not open His mouth.” What I mean about that is that the calling of discipleship which was given to Jesus by God instructed and empowered Him to speak when it was needed and to be silent when it was necessary. Imagine if Jesus had cried out, complained, whined and cursed those who cursed Him. What would the effect have been? Have you never heard “The guilty always profess their innocence and the injustice being doing to them.“? He accepted the judgment and the penalty because in those moments He “was guilty.” He had taken upon Himself all the sins of the world. The penalty for sin is death. His death was in obedience to His discipleship. We hear His teaching on this when He said, “No greater love is there than this- that a person lay down His life for the sake of another.” (John 15.13) The course of His life, however, was not merely the cross of sacrifice. It was the obedience to the Word of God which had been declared before this time in His life which carried the promise. It was the promise given by the Father to the Son. It was the promise of resurrection, restoration and return. That return was not only to sit at the “right hand of God” but the fulfillment of the promise to allow His spirit to return to earth to dwell among all people and to be recognized by those who would believe in Him and His Word.

Holy Spirit. When Jesus instructed His disciples to make disciples, He sent them out in the names of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In order for them to receive the fullness of the Holy Spirit they had to be emptied out of their words, their actions and their spirit. Before they could move forward and engage the mission given to them, they had to be God’s people and not just a people of God. The difference would be, as it was for Jesus of Nazareth who is the Christ of God, the indwelling and the on-dwelling of the Holy Spirit. The empty cross and the empty tomb made it possible for the fulfillment of life through the Holy Spirit to become theirs. Without such spirituality, the mission would fall short and those who said they believed would fade into the background of the world which remained broken. It is here that we can remember the call to “…preach Christ and Him crucified,” but we also preach resurrection “…if He is still dead, then all we say is a lie.” The truth is we speak the truth and the evidence of it comes in lives emptied of the world, the worldview and the spirit of the world and filled with the Holy Spirit of God as it was in Christ.

This is “tongue of discipleship.” It is the instruction and the instructing of God’s Word in its past, present and future tenses. We speak of the Christ who was and is and will always be. He is the same yesterday, today and forever. It allows us to speak the truth, bear the truth and be justified by the truth. There is no other truth by which we can be known. It is this truth and this truth alone by which we are set free to become who we were always intended to be: shepherds of God’s Word and God’s people, fishers of “men,” and disciples who are disciple makers.

TODAY’S PRAYER IN RESPONSE TO GOD’S WORD:

Father, in these days we are finding the need to believe even more than ever before. We all have known trouble, some in greater ways than others, but You are offering us the assurance that we will not be consumed by it forever. Regardless of the “time” we are in and the “time” we have been given, we ask for Your Holy Spirit which Jesus asked You to share with us, to lead and guide and direct us in the paths we should go. Teach us what we still need to learn. Empower us to put that learning into action. Bless our actions not as a works righteousness which we know is folly but righteous works which declare Your glory and further witness the truth that can set all who believe free from death. So may we live by the name of Jesus our Christ. AMEN.