“Now while he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, many people saw the miraculous signs he was doing and believed in his name. But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all men. He did not need man’s testimony about man, for he knew what was in a man.” (John 2:23-25NIV)
Why would the Lord not entrust Himself to the people of His time, even those who claimed to believe in His name? As we see in our opening text, one main reason for that was that He knew what was in them. And what was in them? Deceit!
The bible says, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” (Jer 17:9NIV) Whose heart is the Lord describing here? It is the heart of the natural man, the heart of the man that has not been recreated. And the Lord is saying that his heart is deceitful and incurable. In other words, you cannot trust or rely on what is coming out of his heart. Otherwise, you may end up regretting it.
You can now understand why our Lord Jesus would not entrust Himself to the people of His time. He knew that He could not rely on them to always believe in Him and to always stand by Him. And was He right about them or not? He was right about them.
At least, from what we see in Scriptures, when He was arrested and unjustly tried and condemned to death, most of those who claimed to believe in Him and who used to praise Him were nowhere to be found. Only the voices of those who wanted Him to be crucified could be heard. And if He, for any reason, had thought or expected that He would have some people to stand with Him and speak in His favour, He would have been grossly disappointed. But He was not at all disappointed because He never expected any of them to stand with Him and for Him on that occasion. He was prepared to stand alone, knowing that God would not leave Him, even if everyone else forsook Him. (Cf. John 16:32)
In like manner, don’t for any reason entrust yourself to people, especially those who do not know God. Instead, always rely on God. That is because people, including those who know God, may forsake you when you are seriously counting on them. They may forsake you because their hearts have never been with you. Or they may forsake you because they see your circumstances as too frightening or overwhelming for them.
To say the fact, you too may have in the past forsaken certain individuals counting on you. You may have reasons that seemed legitimate to you for doing so. But that will not change the fact that you failed someone that was relying on you to stand with them and for them. And only God can speak of the extent to which that must have affected the person.
In any case, the point I am making is that human beings are not naturally reliable but naturally unreliable. Yes, those who have been recreated by God among them can be reliable because God is at work in them. But it is not every time that all of them yield themselves to God to make them reliable. So, if you entrust yourself to them, they may fail you. And where that is the case, you may become terribly disappointed and even bitter.
That, by the way, is why some people find it hard to forgive certain individuals who have failed them in life. They entrusted themselves to them instead of entrusting themselves to God. And when they failed them, they could not handle the hit, the disappointment. So, they became horribly bitter and unforgiving. Sadly, there have been cases in which it was the bitterness that such people harboured in their hearts that destroyed them, not even the challenges that they actually faced.
All of this is why you must not entrust yourself to anyone but to God alone. That is because only He is ever reliable. And as long as your dependence is in Him, you will not be disappointed or bitter, if men should fail you. Instead, you will know that you will be sustained by Him, irrespective of what you are faced with. Then, like Jesus, you too will be able to say, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”
Suggested Citattion
Lawal J.O. (Feb 19, 2025). Don’t entrust yourself to them. Youth For Jesus Series, 7(41).
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