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.)
Following the miraculous feeding of thousands, Jesus quickly withdrew from the teeming throng: “And straight way He constrained His disciples to get into the ship, and to go to the other side before unto Bethsaida, while He sent away the people. And when He had sent them away, He departed into a mountain to pray” (Mark 6:45-46). The parallel account in John 6:14-15 provides additional context: “Then those men, when they had seen the miracle that Jesus did, said, ‘This is of a truth that prophet that should come into the world.’ When Jesus therefore perceived that they would come and take Him by force, to make Him a king, He departed again into a mountain Himself alone.” Moses had predicted in Deuteronomy 18:15, “The LORD thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto Him ye shall hearken.” Thus, the multitude was correct in this assessment of Jesus as the fulfillment of prophecy. However, their attempt to make Him king was incorrect: we cannot make Jesus anything, for He is God. The very next day, Jesus revealed the crowd’s wrong motivation: “Ye seek me, not because ye saw the miracles, but because ye did eat of the loaves and were filled” (John 6:26b). Their desire to control Jesus was sinful and obscured the truth of what He was offering – eternal life. May we flee from any thought of trying to manipulate our Savior, for such an effort must fail.