In the wake of our last teaching I want us to look at Jesus’ defence system. Did He fight back and defended Himself? “He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth,” (Isaiah 53:7). This is Isaiah’s prophecy of what was to happen during Jesus crucifixion.
“Meanwhile Jesus stood before the governor, and the governor asked him, “Are you the king of the Jews?”
“You have said so,” Jesus replied.
12 When he was accused by the chief priests and the elders, he gave no answer. 13 Then Pilate asked him, “Don’t you hear the testimony they are bringing against you?” 14 But Jesus made no reply, not even to a single charge—to the great amazement of the governor,” (Matthew 27:11-14).
Why didn’t Jesus defend Himself? Wasn’t He innocently accused of many things and didn’t He know He only did good on earth? If we were in His position, what would our immediate reaction have been? Jesus never focused on Himself. He only defended His Father’s interests and those of the ordinary people. How about us?
Jesus trusted His Father and knew He would defend and protect Him when necessary and even if He didn’t protect Him, He knew He would have the grace to go through with it. Like with the example we used yesterday of Elijah and Paul, Jesus also stood His ground during His ministry for the sake of the Kingdom, but never to save His own skin. Paul stood his ground only because the Holy Spirit led him to, since it glorified God and put him in a position to preach to King Agrippa and Festus. Standing his ground with the latter opened the door for him to end up in Rome and reach those people.
This is what it means to walk in the Spirit. We need to do what the Lord guides us to do. We don’t know where it’s leading to and what the future holds, but if we trust the Lord He’ll accomplish His purposes with our lives and will look after us. There’s no need to defend ourselves, which is why we read in Mark 13:11: “Whenever you are arrested and brought to trial, do not worry beforehand about what to say. Just say whatever is given you at the time, for it is not you speaking, but the Holy Spirit.” The same applies when we have hard times elsewhere in life. We just need to be quiet, trusting the Lord to defend us and then He gets the glory. In fact we are tested and trained with small issues brought against us, for if we can learn to trust the Lord in them and not defend ourselves, we’ll be ready for the greater issues when they come.
I'm reminded of five missionaries linked to Mission Aviation Fellowship who had to die so that their wives could get access into the Indian tribe that actually killed them. They had guns to defend themselves at the time, but felt they had places in heaven, but the Indians not. Afterwards some of the wives lived among the killers of their husbands and the killers all got saved and became church leaders. The daughter of the missionary pilot flew all the way to the Amazon as a teenager to be baptised by one Indian who killed her dad. Who could have fathomed these results at the time when the men in their youth were killed? ‘They could still have meant so much for the Kingdom’, we would have reasoned. But God had other plans.
Lord, help me not to be concerned about myself, but to rest in you.
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