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.)
Jesus continues His staunch defense of Mary of Bethany in Mark 14:7: “For ye have the poor with you always, and whensoever ye will ye may do them good: but Me ye have not always.” This is not a cavalier dismissal of the needs of the poor. Two things can be true at once (unless they are contradictory): thus, both the poor could be helped and Jesus could be anointed. As we studied Wednesday, black-hearted Judas did not care about the poor and instead was stealing money intended for them (John 12:4-6). (Of course, he also did not care about Jesus.) The disciples could help the poor at any time, and the early Church did a good job of aiding the needy, especially widows and orphans. We are to do the same: “Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, ‘To visit [help] the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself from the world’” (James 1:27). In this anointing of Jesus, we must not lose sight of the great fact that He was about to take care of mankind’s greatest needs: divine forgiveness for our sins and divine provision for eternal life in heaven. All of us are poor spiritually; in fact, we are utterly impoverished: “As it is written, ‘There is none righteous, no, not one: there is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God’” (Romans 3:10-11). Thus, Jesus was tending to the poor even as He was preparing to endure the Cross.