Hello, thank you for joining me today for Give Him 15.

The title of today's post is The Advantage.

It's to your advantage that I leave, Jesus told his disciples.

Can you imagine a more ridiculous sounding statement?

They'd traveled with him for three years, listening to

him expound on life, the ways of God, the kingdom of God. His words carried such wisdom

authority that even his enemy said, never is a man spoken in the way this man speaks.

Disciples had watched him cure blind eyes, open deaf ears,

heal paralytic, cleanse lepers, raise the dead. Once when he needed money, he got it from the mouth of a fish on another occasion when he needed to cross a lake and didn't have a boat handy, he just

walked on the water. And when storms tried to mess with him, he knocked the wind out of them

with the power of his words. Then he has the audacity to tell these men, I'm going to leave you, and it's for your own good.

One can only imagine the shock and disbelief of the disciples. He's leaving us. This is good? We don't think so.

Two understandings will help us embrace why Christ said,

it's to your advantage that I go away.

The first has to do with his use of the word advantage,

or as the King James says, expedient.

The Greek word is Sumferro, which means literally to bring together.

Since bringing the right things or people together produces benefits or advantages,

this Greek word was used for the concept of expediency or gaining an advantage.

Christ was telling his disciples, my departure, will cause a new connection,

soon pharaoh, to take place for you.

This bringing together will be of great benefit to you, more so than even my physical presence.

...