Luke 22:35-38 (NIV) Then Jesus asked them, “When I sent you without purse, bag or sandals, did you lack anything?”
“Nothing,” they answered.
He said to them, “But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one. It is written: ‘And he was numbered with the transgressors’; and I tell you that this must be fulfilled in me. Yes, what is written about me is reaching its fulfillment.” The disciples said, “See, Lord, here are two swords.”
“That is enough,” he replied.
While Jesus was alive, He was the protector of His disciples. Even when they were away from his direct presence, His intercession for them ensured that they would be safe from the hands of men, and that they would have everything that they needed.
But here Jesus is underscoring the fact that He would be taken from them almost immediately. He would be absent from them for nearly three days (although they had not been open to hearing this time period any of the numerous times that He had talked about it), and in that space of time they would be on their own. God would, of course, be watching over them even then, but they would feel abandoned, and be so uncertain of the future and of their own safety that they wouldn’t think to turn to God Himself for what they needed.
This lay behind Jesus telling them that, unlike when He had sent them out ahead of Him with no provision except for what God would provide through the people they met on the road (Luke 10:3-8), now they were to see to their own food needs, as well as their need for protection. Jesus used the imagery of swords for this, but was surprised when they took His words very literally and produced two swords, asking if that was enough, or if each one of them needed their own sword. Jesus’ short answer, “That is sufficient,” was delivered with a bit of disappointment. Out of all that He was trying to communicate to them in those last precious hours, the call for swords was what they had keyed in on!
But they were missing the real key to the events that lay ahead of them: it was all happening exactly as God had foretold in the scriptures, down to the last detail. That fact gave the disciples a map of the events that lay ahead of them if they wanted to follow it. But it also told all who had ears to hear that things were not spinning out of control, no matter what it felt like to them. God was still in control and would be holding all things in His hands through the next dark seventy-two hours, even them.
Father, this is a key for us as well. Even though we don’t have to watch our hope be taken away, beaten, and killed, we still end up walking through dark times as we live as ambassadors of light to this sin-darkened world. And knowing that things are still in Your hands, and that events are playing out as You orchestrate them, or at least that You are with us in the midst of all that You allow to happen, is a LOT more comforting than the idea that we have to go through these things alone, with only weapons of the flesh with which to protect ourselves. Thank You, Lord, for your grace and Your power. Amen.
Today's Scripture 