Learning From Others’ Mistakes
There's a line in a Billy Joel song that says "You know I don't like watching anybody make the same mistakes I made".
It's a song where a man is busy telling a younger man how to take care of the woman he loves. Later in the song again he says "Listen boy, it's good information from a man who's made mistakes."
All of us make mistakes in life, of course. I'd like to think, firstly, that we would learn from our own mistakes. I hope that we are mature, wise and self-disciplined enough to learn from our mistakes and make changes to avoid repeating them.
I hope too that our mistakes might be able to serve as a warning for others, to help others avoid the mistakes we've made.
Learning From Biblical Examples
I think this is one of the ways that God can use evil to bring about good - He can use bad things as warnings to help others avoid the same mistakes.
In fact take a look at what Paul said to the Corinthian church. He started to tell them about their Israelite ancestors who had wandered in the desert for years and turned away from God. He said "Now these things occurred as examples to keep us from setting our hearts on evil things as they did... These things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us, on whom the culmination of the ages has come. So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don't fall!" (1 Corinthians 10:6-12)
Paul was saying learn from their mistakes! They were written down so that we could avoid them!
The Bible, you might say, is a series of history lessons in which we can view the mistakes and sins of our ancestors and keep ourselves from falling into the same patterns.
Lessons From Jesus' Arrest
After the Last Supper, Jesus spent some time agonising in prayer in the Garden, asking the Father to make another way instead of Him having to face the cross, if possible. He was so stressed that He was sweating great big drops that looked like blood, and an angel was sent to help strengthen Him. Before long He was arrested, and the people around Him all did some silly things as it all unfolded.
I want to suggest that Jesus is still being "arrested" today in a sense, still being "pushed around" and disrespected by a culture that despises the things He stood for.
The question is: how will we respond to our world's hatred of Jesus? Will we make the same mistakes as the disciples did? Or will we learn from their mistakes and avoid them?
Be teachable, would you? Because if you're not willing to learn from the mistakes of others, you might just fall into the same traps they did.
In the last hours of Jesus’ life, the people around him made some awful mistakes. Let’s not fall into the same traps.