3
and walked out of the office immediately he
was called. “They immediately left the nets
and followed him… they immediately left the
boat and their father and followed him” (Mt.
4:20,22). The way the Lord called people in
the midst of their daily lives, and they imme-
diately “left all and followed Him” is surely
recorded to set a pattern for all future
response to Him. Those fishermen who left
their nets had heard the message some time
earlier, but the record is framed so as to stress
the immediacy and totality of response to
Him, in the midst of daily life. In a day when
the complexity of modern living can become
an excuse to justify almost anything as an
expression of discipleship, we need to
remember the starker simplicities of Jesus’
first call: “Follow me”. And the immediate
response which was made to it. In this sense,
Jesus through His word that makes Him flesh
to us, i.e. an imaginable person… still walks
up to fishermen, into shops, accountants’
offices, school classrooms: and bids us
urgently and immediately leave behind our
worldly advantage and follow Him in the way
of true discipleship.
The theme of immediacy of response
continues with the speed at which people
were baptized in the Acts. In the midst of the
aftershocks of an earthquake and possible jail-
break, the prison keeper said “Yes, straight
away”: “At that hour of the night… immedi-
ately he and all his family were baptized”
(Acts 16:33). There are other examples.
“Haste” characterized the Abraham family,
the rock from which we are hewn. Abraham
ran to meet the Angelic visitors, and then ran
to get a calf to prepare for them (Gen.
18:2,7). The narrative of Abraham’s servant
finding a bride for Isaac is full of the language
of immediacy and speed. He runs toward
Rebekah, and she runs to fetch water for his
camels and thence runs to tell her family
(Gen. 24:17,20,28); Laban runs to the well
(Gen. 24:29). Rebekah, representing the bride
of Christ, immediately responded: “I will go”
when her family wanted her to take ten days
to think it over. The same Hebrew word is used
in all these references. Abigail is likewise
Editorial | “Yes, straight away”
described repeatedly as ‘hasting’ to do things
in response to David (1 Sam. 25:23,34,42)
In Preaching
The need is the call. And we encounter others’
spiritual needs all the time. Straight after his
baptism, Paul “immediately in the synagogues
proclaimed Jesus” (Acts 9:20). He later
reflects that when he was called “that I might
preach him among the Gentiles- immediately
I conferred not with flesh and blood” (Gal.
1:16). Submission to human structures so often
impedes our immediacy of response. What will
they think? How might she take it? Am I
authorized to do this by the committee? What
will the Jerusalem ecclesia have to say about
this? In contrast, “When he had seen the
vision, immediately we sought to go into
Macedonia, concluding that God had called us
to preach the gospel to them” (Acts 16:10).
The Lord justified His immediate attention to
a needy person on the Sabbath, and His unilat-
eral operation outside of the existing religious
structures, on the basis that “Which of you
shall have an ass or an ox fall into a well, and
will not immediately draw him up on a
Sabbath day?” (Lk. 14:5). Immediacy of
response to God, and His immediacy of
response to us, is all part of ‘walking in step
with the Spirit’. Submission to human struc-
tures militates against this.
In Forgiving
There is an immediate urgency for us to
forgive. But too often there is a lag time
between the offence and our forgiveness,
which can drag on all our days. For the
passage of time often doesn’t heal, it only
entrenches perceived hurts and positions. We
must agree with our adversary quickly, for we
are on our way to judgment (Mt. 5:25). The
call of the Gospel is effectively a call to go to
judgment. If we truly perceive this, and our
coming need for the utmost grace, we will
settle our differences with our brethren-
“quickly”. We are living life on a knife edge.
The Lord saw men as rushing to their destruc-
~ continued ...