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 return to Mark 9:2 and the account of Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration: “And after six days Jesus taketh with Him Peter, and James, and John, and leadeth them up into an high mountain apart by themselves: and He was transfigured before them.” The inclusion of only three of Jesus’ disciples is not an example of favoritism. He was following the divinely-ordained principle of Deuteronomy 19:15b: “At the mouth of two witnesses, or at the mouth of three witnesses, shall the matter be established.” This authentication rightly focuses attention on Jesus; the naming of the three disciples was not to promote them but to provide historical detail in support of Jesus’ claims to be the Messiah. Furthermore, we should note that all of the disciples shared in many of Jesus’ miracles and in His public and private teaching; all were fully included in His work. Moreover, the disciples all (with the exception of the deceased traitor Judas Iscariot) witnessed the greatest manifestation of the glory of God – the resurrected Jesus. In fact, “He was seen of above five hundred brethren at once” (I Corinthians 15:6a) and even by Paul of the Damascus Road – and he was not a believer at that time but was actively persecuting Christians! When we consider these truths, we see that there is no favoritism in God’s good plan. Each Christian is an heir of God the Father and a joint-heir with God the Son, Jesus Christ (Romans 8:17).