Finishing Well - Mark 14:10-16
This is the beginning of the last term at college for a large number of you. You will be encouraged to ‘finish well’. But how do we ‘finish well’? I confess that I’m not entirely sure. You are here to train for future ministry, and I believe that part of your finishing well is to have a continuing desire to stay on track on active service for the Lord and be discovering what that might be. When my wife and I were heading towards leaving our Bible college in England in 1987 we had no idea as to what we were about to do. We did not even have a place to live after the end of term … so this morning I thought we might look at how the disciples finished their training with Jesus.
On Saturday I was reading Mark 14 for my own personal devotions and came across this strange mixture of events as Jesus and his disciples prepared for the Passover.
Mk 14:10 Then Judas Iscariot, who was one of the twelve, went to the chief priests in order to betray him to them. 11 And when they heard it, they were glad and promised to give him money. And he sought an opportunity to betray him.
12 And on the first day of Unleavened Bread, when they sacrificed the Passover lamb, his disciples said to him, “Where will you have us go and prepare for you to eat the Passover?” 13 And he sent two of his disciples and said to them, “Go into the city, and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him, 14 and wherever he enters, say to the master of the house, ‘The Teacher says, Where is my guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?’ 15 And he will show you a large upper room furnished and ready; there prepare for us.” 16 And the disciples set out and went to the city and found it just as he had told them, and they prepared the Passover.
What contrasts we see here! Treachery is set alongside simple obedience and desire to serve. Judas, a man who had witnessed the greatest miracles which had ever happened on earth – even seen great miracles worked through his own hands – turned against the holy, innocent Son of God just for money. It goes without saying that Judas finished his training with Jesus very badly. Without trying to trivialise what he did, Judas failed to graduate and walked out with an ‘F’ to his name and received the worst possible references which have endured for 2,000 years.
In contrast, there are the other disciples as they approach the end of their training in Jesus’ mobile training college (and not knowing that they were at the end of their training), who desired to serve their Lord and find a place of service: “Where will you have us go and prepare for you to eat the Passover?” So Jesus gives instructions to two disciples who walked over to the city of Jerusalem opposite Bethany to prepare the place of the Passover meal.
Finding a place to eat Passover was always a problem in Jerusalem because of the huge influx of pilgrims from outside into the city for the feast. In fact the city was one great big inn at Passover time. Where to begin to find a place big enough for 13 people to eat the Passover at the last minute? And it looks as though it had all been left it a bit late.
So how did they find their place of service? Jesus gave them instructions. “Go into the city, and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him, 14 and wherever he enters, say to the master of the house, ‘The Teacher says, Where is my guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?’ 15 And he will show you a large upper room furnished and ready; there prepare for us.”
We know that Jesus could have just spoken a word and a brand new room might just appear out of nowhere with a table laid and ready. But God chooses to use ordinary men and women in what is sometimes called ‘instrumentality’ in his work and that includes in guidance. So Jesus chooses to use a man carrying a water jar to lead them to someone else with an upper room available for the Passover meal. There is just enough of the supernatural in the story for us to realise that this was a truly wonderful providence of God. The wonderful providence of God that put me in a boarding school dormitory in England next to a boy who, five years later, would lead me to the Lord. Ordinary things which when added together become extra-ordinary, even supernatural, things.
Where to next? I know some of you are very organised and clear about what you’re going to do. But I also know that some of you are less clear. Some of you do not know where you are going to live after the end of term; or which agency you will serve with; or which country you’ll work in; or what your ministry might be in that country. Perhaps you’re crying out to God for guidance even after your chat with Joyce our guidance counsellor.
So what? He is sovereignly in control. He will guide you, sometimes by some very ordinary means and ordinary people which when you look back on them afterwards you will see that they had the hand of God on them. You will realise like Jacob awaking at Bethel – Surely this is the House of God and I knew it not!
Do not despise those ‘trivial’ encounters in life, and finish well at this college. Pray that God will arrange that “… a man carrying a jar of water will meet you.”