The Scribe
Read Matthew 8:19, 20 (see also Luke 9:57, 58). What is the point of this story? What message is here for us? What principles can we take from it?
Here is a case of someone who, not specifically called by Jesus, volunteered instead. Notice, too, just how intense his profession was. He would follow the Lord anywhere. It is easy, even for a true follower of the Lord, to make all sorts of pronouncements about being faithful (Luke 22:33); it is not so easy, however, to follow up on them (vss. 55-61).
When was the last time you made some bold promise of faithfulness to God that you later broke? What lesson did you learn from that experience?
What also is interesting about this encounter is that the person who came to Jesus with that profession was a scribe, one of the educated elite in Israel. They were men of "culture, education, and station in life"—The SDA Bible Commentary, vol. 5, p. 365. Few scribes identified with Jesus; they were too upstanding. They followed Him, not to be influenced by His teaching, but to entrap Him. Yet, here was a scribe who was touched by Jesus' teaching to the extent that he volunteered to become a disciple.
Yet Jesus knew the heart, and His response shows that, perhaps, this scribe's motives were not pure. He may have wanted to join himself to Jesus in hopes of gaining worldly advantage. Christ's response, however, quickly should have disabused him of any such notions. In the end, the text does not tell us what the ultimate choice of this scribe was. From what Jesus said, it is not hard to imagine the scribe turning away.
How do we understand what was happening with this scribe and with, for instance, Christ's words in Mark 10:30? Are we not promised some immediate advantages in following Jesus now? If so, why is it not wrong to want those advantages? Or is it?
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