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.)
We have spent several days in the first part of Isaiah 59, a Messianic passage that reveals that Jesus, the Messiah, loved life and gives life because He is the Life (John 14:6). He knows what this old life is like and is “displeased” (verse 15). We have made a mess of things, and the first fifteen verses provide a detailed and distressing picture of man’s penchant for the “backward” (verse 14), the “falsehood” (verse 13), and the “destruction” (verse 7) rather than the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Then we come to verse 16a, and – oh no, man’s mess just got worse! God “saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no intercessor.” In other words, we are helpless to help ourselves, and there is no helper. On our own, we are spiritually dead, dead at the bottom of the Dead Sea, “dead in sins” (Ephesians 2:5). What we need is a Helper Who can give life. Do we see now why the absolute claim of Jesus to be “the Life” is an absolute necessity? He is “the Way,” the only Way, absolutely the only Way, and the absolute truth is in Him because He is “the Truth,” as demonstrated in His fulfillment of Messianic prophecy. Even our absolute depravity cannot prevent His offer of absolute salvation.