Save Us
Then he got into the boat and his disciples followed him. Without warning, a furious storm came up on the lake, so that the waves swept over the boat. But Jesus was sleeping. The disciples went and woke him, saying, “Lord, save us! We’re going to drown!”
Matthew 8:23-25
The word for “save us” in the Greek here is “sozo”, the same word meaning to save from sin and hell, to heal, and to deliver. The disciples were asking Jesus to rescue them from death. What the disciples couldn’t see, beyond the clouds, beyond the winds and storm, was the real realm of God and destiny, over both their Teacher and themselves.
Jesus passed through crowds unharmed, simply because it was not his time to die. Jesus found ways to hide himself at other times. Other times, the Spirit would not permit Him to go up to Jerusalem, simply because it wasn’t His time.
Jesus didn’t die on the cross as a last option, but by simple choice and surrender. He could have defended Himself, as He said, there were twelve legions of angels ready for dispatch from the throne of heaven to be at his beck and call. But, He chose obedience to suffer rather than the quick road to glory.
A man with something to prove or something to save has to defend Himself. A man under threat has to worry about what will happen. But, that man wasn’t Jesus.
A man’s riches may ransom his life, but a poor man hears no threat.
Proverbs 13:8
Jesus knew who He was. He knew where He had come from, and He knew where He was going, back to the Father.
There was nothing left of Himself holding out for his own. Oh, it tried. That night before the cross in the garden, He prayed earnestly that that cup, that bitter suffering and wrath, might pass from Him if it possibly could, but in the end, He submitted His spirit every time, and said, “but not my will, but thine be done.” (Luke 22:42).
When you have allowed the Gospel to do it’s work, when you have heeded the words of the Sermon on the Mount to the letter, and you find yourself unmoved by the storms, only wet on the outside, as many other structures that were poorly built around you come crashing down, you can only look, bow your knee, and thank the Lord who has brought you. It is His Mercy, it is His Grace, and it is none of yours.
The disciples were still looking for someone to save us. We do look to Jesus, and still cry “Save us!”, and He rescues us from sins, and gives a new heart and a new nature. But, not everyone who cried out “Lord Save!” got commended.
In Matthew 14:30, when Peter was sinking, he also cried out “Save me!” because he was drowning. The Lord did save Him, but asked him, “Why did you doubt?” In the story above, Jesus replied, “You of little faith, why are you so afraid?” (Matthew 8:26). And then He rebuked the waves and it was calm.
Jesus, with a pure heart, with none of Himself, with all the power in the universe to call to the Father and say, “Save me!”, didn’t. He had a higher mandate, a higher mission. He knew that to save His life was to lose it, just as He had taught. Just as Peter tried to save His on the waves and resulted in a chance of drowning, the very thing he feared.
When we have left everything and followed Him, and have nothing left, nothing else can touch us. As above, the poor man hears no threat. There is no threat you can put on someone who has lost everything, including his own volition of suffering and death. Until you get there, you are never really free.
Jesus died, and gave His entire life so that we could live forever for Him. Forever is enough for me, and I don’t need this life to be anything to prove it to anyone, including myself. If God chooses for me to be blessed in this life, fine, but I will serve Him with it all, I will “buy friends on the other side” (Luke 16:9), I will feed the poor, clothe the naked, and spread the Gospel so that it kills me. So that people hate me. So that I bring division between the half-ways and the all-the-ways. But, if my life ends tomorrow, it is gain. Galatians 2:20.
Jesus didn’t die in the mobs of angry Israelites because it wasn’t His time to die. Jesus didn’t get found because it wasn’t His day to be found. But, when it was, God had already provided Judas to be the one to let Him be found, and had already provided a night for his assailants to hide. God did.
And, in the midst of it, the words from the Mount of Transfiguration must have been running through His head. He had seen his suffering. He had seen His glory. And, for the joy set before Him, He endured the cross, despising its shame (Hebrews 12:2). Because He had been told to (John 5:19), He endured the brunt of the Father’s wrath, for us, in obedience.
Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
Philippians 2:5-8
Philippians 2:9 says it was because of THIS that God exalted Him.
There is no shortcut to the glory, and there are no other ways than the willingness to interpose one’s life at God’s behest between the living and the dead. If our highest cry stays forever at “Lord, Save us!”, and not, “Lord, Save Them!”, we have not yet made our way up the mountain of the Lord.
If you try to save your life, you will lose it (Mark 8:35). But, we are counted as sheep for the slaughter (Romans 8:36).
Let this mind be in you, that was also in Christ Jesus. Lord, Save!
