This message will involve three passages from the twenty-sixth chapter of Matthew. The first starts at verse 31. Then Jesus said to them, “You will all fall away because of Me this night, for it is written, ‘I will strike down the Shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered.’ But after I have been raised, I will go before you to Galilee.” Matthew 26:31, 32.
Picture what the Lord did, the lonely difficult time He had. Have you ever been lonely in a crowd? Not long after He had spoken these words—only a matter of minutes and hours, not a matter of days—within the same evening, when the Lord Jesus was in a special place of prayer, they came like a lynch mob against a thief. The disciples all fled. He was all alone. How can you describe a mob with one lonely man in the midst of it? There was no one to really understand Him. One impetuous disciple had drawn a sword and took a swing, but fortunately, his aim was not good, and he only cut off a man’s ear. The Lord healed that. The disciple whom Jesus loved was following close, and when the crowd went to seize him, he got away but without any clothes. They grabbed his clothes, as he ran off.
What was it like to stand with the mob shouting, to watch them plan and manipulate His death, the maneuvering figures behind it, and to know He had said this one thing of real importance: “But after I have been raised, I will go before you to Galilee.” Matthew 26:32. After He had been through all of it, He came forth from the grave to a lonely walk that no one records or says anything about, the walk from the empty tomb north into Galilee. He had faith that if the sheep were scattered when the Shepherd was smitten, they would all come back together again.
This passage is important when we realize there can be a lot of failures, yet we can anticipate that in time they will come through. We do not even take too much account of the problems or the weaknesses. The Scripture says, “For the joy that was set before Him, He endured the cross, and He despised the shame” (Hebrews 12:2). We must do the same as the Lord did. We must anticipate the coming unity of the Body and the great company of brothers who will be walking, not breaking ranks nor thrusting one another through (Joel 2:7, 8). We must be like the Lord. When we have come through a time of travail, it will be all right; we will flow together. That unity has already started. God is looking on us and blessing us. A few of us are having the wisdom to see what God is doing, and maybe we could have the same faith that Jesus had. He was facing everything, and He knew what He was facing. He knew He was facing the most humiliating death: the most painful thing a man could suffer. But He said, “When it is all over, I will walk out on the road ahead of you, and I will meet you in Galilee.”
There is a faith God is putting in us for something to come. It came from Him. He is the forerunner; He is the example of everything we are to do. We are going to believe for that unity. We will look at one another now and see all the different personality traits and peculiarities. That will not bother us a bit. We are going to walk right on into that unity. With unity we will walk in the greatest thing God has ever done in the history of the world. We will walk together. I believe for every one of us; we should believe for ourselves. We will not miss it.
But Peter answered and said to Him, “Even though all may fall away because of You, I will never fall away.” Jesus said to him, “Truly I say to you that this very night, before the cock crows, you shall deny Me three times.” Peter said to Him, “Even if I must die with You, I will not deny You.” All the disciples said the same thing too. Matthew 26:33–35.
But when they were at Gethsemane, verse 55: At that time Jesus said to the multitudes, “Have you come out with swords and clubs to arrest Me as though I were a robber? Every day I used to sit in the temple teaching and you did not seize Me. But all this has taken place that the Scriptures of the prophets may be fulfilled.” Then all the disciples left Him and fled. Matthew 26:55, 56.
There it was: everyone fled. He knew it was going to happen. He said, “The Shepherd will be smitten, and the flock shall be scattered,” but that did not alter His promise: “I will walk before you.” I wish I could start all over again, knowing what I know now. I wish I had always had faith for men that God has put in my heart. There is nothing I could want more than to do what the Lord Jesus did.
The world really needs a leader. God’s people need a leader. They need someone who will lay it out plain to them and bring a word from the Lord and then not pay as much attention to what the people go through as to have faith in what God will do for them. I think I have that now, but I wish I had had a long time ago the faith that does just what the Lord did. He was prepared. When He went through it He was going to do one thing—walk out there first and believe that the disciples would be gathering there to meet Him. There He was going to give them the commission.
What do you think it would be like to have gone through the most nerve-racking time that you have ever been in and then to be making a trip to Galilee because that was the instruction? There was not one disciple who did not have a sense of utter failure. As they walked over the hills, making their way up to Galilee, there was not one of them who did not say, “What in the world am I here for?” They had run like scattered sheep; they had denied Him. They did not intend to. They did not really mean to turn away. They had seen Him again and again, and they knew that He was alive, that He was their Lord, but it could not take away from what they had done. They were only a matter of a few weeks, or a few days away from the greatest outpouring of the Spirit, the greatest event that had ever happened in the world. What was it like for the disciples to walk down that road toward Galilee knowing how they had failed? They had denied Him.
Have you ever failed the Lord so much, and you did not know what to do about it? I will give you a little picture if you like. One of the things that had happened was that Peter had taken a few fishing. It seemed like a good idea. The Lord was crucified, and everything was over. The days were very hot in that land, which meant the nights many times were foggy. The fishermen knew what it was to fish through the night fog. It took a while for the sun to burn it off. Jesus was standing there on the shore, and they heard His voice, “Have you anything to eat?” It had been a hot night, and the morning was still sultry. They said, “It’s the Lord.” Previously, Peter had denied the Lord. He cursed and swore, “I never knew Him. I don’t know the man,” and he went out and wept bitterly for he did not know what to do. However, this time when he saw Jesus he simply jumped overboard and started swimming as hard as he could. He arrived, and he still did not know what to do, so he just knelt at the feet of the Lord. The rest of the disciples came, and of course there are more details to the story, but now we are coming to the important point.
There are times when you fail deeply, and you do not know what to do. But He has it already planned in His mind, as He did when He said to his disciples, “When I have risen from the dead, I will go before you into Galilee. I have a meeting up there for all you failures, for those of you who have been promised so much and you can’t break through. I am going to meet you and give you a commission. I am going to send you to the ends of the world. I will send you out to preach My word, to do My will.”
I have been living this: how the Lord is gathering His failures together; what He is ready to do for them; how He is ready to love them. The Spirit of God is drawing us together for this one announcement: “He has gone before all of you.” There is a sense of failure in many of you. Some of you have been through things within the last few days or hours, and the Lord makes this your Galilee. He has gone before, and He has said, “Come and meet me here. I do not care how much you have failed. I will be waiting for you when you get here, because I have something for you to do.”
It is His to choose to bless and help us. There will never be a man in this Walk who will stand for long with a sense of success, feeling as if he has made it. This is the gathering of the maimed and the halt and the blind. These are the weak who are going to confound the mighty. These are the foolish who have been redeemed out of their folly to confound the wise. These are the ones who did not have enough in the hour of testing and they turned and fled. How do we reconcile this with the fact that he who looks back is not fit for the Kingdom (Luke 9:62)? I do not know, except that I think we have been brought to the place where God is analyzing, and He says, “Follow Me. You are prepared to go and not turn back. You have had your share of stumbling. You have had your time when you had promised so much and you could not fulfill.”
Then they spat in His face and beat Him with their fists, and others slapped Him, and said, “Prophesy to us, You Christ; who is the one who hit You?” Matthew 26:67, 68. This is a true passage. It is just like it is happening today. We are being hit all day long. We are going into a time of assault, oppression, and harassment, while the world is sitting by and saying, “Okay, you can prophesy since you have so much revelation. Who’s hitting you?” It is as if we have been through all this before and there is nothing new. We are walking again through the days of humiliation. The only difference now is that these are the days of the promise that He will come to us and be glorified in us and be admired in us and not to go through the same humiliation again (II Thessalonians 1:10).
Now Peter was sitting outside in the courtyard, and a certain servant-girl came to him and said, “You too were with Jesus the Galilean.” But he denied it before them all, saying, “I do not know what you are talking about.” And when he had gone out to the gateway, another servant-girl saw him and said to those who were there, “This man was with Jesus of Nazareth.” And again he denied it with an oath, “I do not know the man.” And a little later the bystanders came up and said to Peter, “Surely you too are one of them; for the way you talk gives you away” (in other words a Galilean accent). Then he began to curse and swear, “I do not know the man!” And immediately a cock crowed. And Peter remembered the word which Jesus had said, “Before a cock crows, you will deny Me three times.” And he went out and wept bitterly. Matthew 26:69–75.
Jesus had said something to Peter a little earlier: “Satan hath desired to have you that he might sift you as wheat, Peter. But I have prayed for you. When you are converted, when you are turned again, strengthen your brethren” (Luke 22:31, 32). It is as if the Lord knows we are all going to stumble, but we have to be prepared, as soon as we get on our feet, to help our brothers.
Something I feel so deeply is the coming ministry of the failures. Perhaps you say in your heart to me, “I feel you don’t trust me. I’ve failed so much. You’ve given up on me. You’re holding something in your heart about me because of what I’ve done.” That is not true. I would not be in the place I am if I did not know what the grace of God meant. I may preach to you as hard and straight as I can, trying to hold you steady, but as John wrote: “These things I write unto you, little children, that ye sin not. But if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous (I John 2:1). There is always that strong drive to keep men on their feet, but there is no abandonment of the one who has stumbled. It is out of this intense sense of failure that there will come the greater works. They will not come out of people who have arrogance in their hearts. It will not come from that. What God is going to do in the earth will come from people who have been broken and crushed and have humbled themselves before God.
Years ago the Lord spoke to me, “Thou shalt have faith for every man that I bring to thee.” That is what it is all about. I have not given up on anyone since. Not that I have not felt in my own judgment that there was a lost cause sometimes, but I would begin to pray, and the Lord would put it in my heart again: “Don’t give up. Have faith for him.” I am glad for that because He would have given up on me if I had not been obedient, many times. We are preparing to be that people the Lord has prophesied would come. This is the way it is done.
One of the disciples had a vision long ago. He was caught up, and he saw strange and marvelous things. He saw the great host standing around and the great scrolls of human destiny that were sealed, and the panic cry went up: “Who is worthy? Who is worthy to open the seals of the book?” (No one is ready to trigger off the fulfillment of all the things God has planned.) “Who is worthy?” The answer came back as that disciple stood in amazement and wonder: “The Lion of the tribe of Judah.” It is like great anticipation. “The Lion will do it, the Lion of Judah.” The disciples turned and looked to see who had spoken and what it was all about. He looked for the Lion of the tribe of Judah who is worthy to unlock all the destiny of men, and everything that God had ever planned, and to open the scrolls of the book. When he turned to look, he saw the Lion of the tribe of Judah; he saw a Lamb as though it had just been slain (Revelation 5:2, 5, 6). That is the way it is.
We are getting ready to see kings and priests. Who will unlock the Kingdom? Who will open the doors of destiny in this hour? The kings and priests of the Lord will. Take a look at them and see what they are. When you see them, you see yourself. Heaven is going to be filled with a lot of praise. But it will be because the humble are rejoicing. He brought down the proud and the rich and the arrogant. The rich He sent away hungry. The poor and needy He has exalted. He has taken the poor of this world and made them rich in faith and heirs of the Kingdom which He has promised (James 2:5). He has taken the misfits and the failures and said, “You are the ones.” I wish we could get a new vision of the grace of God. I wish we could understand how much He loves us. That love He expressed, the day when He said, “When I have been raised from the dead, and after you have fled, forsaken Me, and gone through all those things, I will meet you in Galilee. I will be there, because that is the place where I am going to commission you.”
I feel this message so deeply. If God had sent, by the angels, a special engraved invitation: “I have a message for you,” it could not be any more personal. Nothing can wipe out the sense of failure. I am not intending to make you heavy. I am trying to encourage you with the only kind of encouragement there is.
We do not need cheerleaders in the Walk. We need the message of grace. We have had enough of the cheer: “Go on, get in there and fight.” It is not a matter of the old college try. Mountains have to be removed and cast into the sea. Babylon’s walls have to crumble and come down. Babylon has to release her captives. Principalities and powers and the unseen hosts have come and preyed and hit the people of God like vicious harpies snatching away every word God gave them, every bit of food God had for them. Who will beat that? Only the grace of God will. God says, “I have chosen you.” You may have failed. I do not know how deep that sense of failure is with you, but you are not going to escape it because it is something that has to be worked in you in order to become that spiritual circumcision. Read Philippians 3:3: For we are the circumcision, which worship God in the spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh.
We have been through that route. We have failed enough, and we will carry that with us. We will sing the psalms and sing the praises. We will do the greater works that He has for us to do. We will minister in His name. But we will always carry with us our own unworthiness.
The Lord spoke to me to always have faith for every man. Believe for me the same way because I live with that same sense of unworthiness every day. The Lord has His hand on you, and you cannot get away from Him. He has the hook in, and maybe there is a real sense of failure and you have flopped around a lot, but all you can do is just look up and say, “You’re the Lord. It’s Your show all the way. I surrender to You, Lord. I’m through fighting.”
I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day. II Timothy 1:12b. Why did Paul say that? That is a poor translation. One time, I decided I wanted to find out what the Greek word translated “committed” meant. It was a compound of two words. One meant “drawn from,” and the other was “a sheath.” It referred back to the old traditional way that when a beaten general surrendered he pulled out his sword and handed it to the conqueror hilt first. The conqueror took it, and if it pleased him, he cut him down. If it did not please him, he took him as a prisoner of war. It was an unconditional surrender. I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed—drawn from the sheath—“All the fight is out of me. My life is His. I am not holding anything back. I’m not going to fight it. It’s His will. I’ve committed it unto Him against that day.”
Do you need to draw your sword and turn it over to the Captain of your salvation? Say, “Lord, I’m a failure. I have a need, but I’m making a new surrender to You, right now.” Say, “Yes, this is the time that I make my surrender to the Lord. This is the time God gets one more failure that He’s going to use. This is the time that I’m going to lay this rebellion and everything right out before Him. Here it is Lord. Kill me or use me, but I surrender it all to You.” Is God dealing with you especially? This message is for everyone. Believe for each other. If you have faith for every man, you have faith for yourself and faith for your neighbor.
It is mercy and grace, Lord, that we seek from Your hand. With deep worship in our hearts we join the throng that eternally praises Your name. You have loved us, You have met us, and You have redeemed us from our sins and called us to be Your people. We know we stand on the brink of such great things in the earth. We are not worthy to be the ones You use. We almost wish we could believe in some rapture that would catch us all out, and we would not have to face anything, but we know we are going to face something that only Your grace can enable men to walk in. We are believing You to help us.
Say in your heart, “Lord, forgive me. Look in my heart and see real repentance. I give You what You want, a broken and a contrite heart. I have no defense. I have no excuse. I have only that faith in Your mercy, and I know that You love me. Meet me Lord. Meet me again. Amen.”
We believe the Lord is going to turn again the captivity of Zion. We go forth with weeping, but we will come back bearing precious sheaves. We humble ourselves before the Lord, and He will turn again and leave a blessing upon us. We rend our hearts and not our garments. We call the solemn assembly. We pray and we seek the face of the Lord. The time is ready. There are works God has prepared for us to walk in, but we are still too arrogant. We need to humble ourselves before the Lord, but with faith, aware that He has chosen us, and then we move in our unworthiness with real faith.