Jaw-dropping Jewels about Jesus
Rarely does Jesus, God the Son, do exactly what we expect of Him. It seems odd that He so frequently surprises us, given that He never changes. Hebrews 13:8 makes this absolute statement: “Jesus the same yesterday, and today, and forever.” Still, though He is blessedly consistent in His goodness, Jesus does unforeseen things. Even when He does what is expected, He does not always do it in the way that we anticipate. Let us join with Jesus on a jaw-dropping journey. (I will be using this opening paragraph for each of the brief messages in this series. The following material will change daily.)
I admire true steadfastness: the young athlete who is the least talented on the team but the hardest working, the grandparents who raise their grandchild, the police officer who goes to work every day in the face of leftist hatred, the soldier who chooses to defend our country. The greatest example of this most admirable trait is, of course, Jesus. Luke 9:51 says, “When the time was come that He should be received up, He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem” to die for us. In so doing, Jesus refused the easy way of popularity. When He entered Jerusalem, He said that He could have made the rocks cry out in praise (Luke 19:40). The crowd would have loved that! He could have answered the taunts of the religious “rulers” and come down from the Cross (Luke 23:35). The people (and Satan) would have loved that! Instead, he did the hard and necessary work of salvation. He did the right thing, not the popular thing. He exemplified Philippians 2:3b: “Let each esteem other better than themselves.” Jesus, clearly better than us, did His steadfast work on our behalf and dealt with our eternal needs. May we praise Him so that the stones do not have to.