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.)
Nearly every day I run, walk, or snowshoe past our family cemetery. On a Saturday, when the local quarry is not usually in noisy operation, it is quiet. However, it cannot match the shocking silence of Jesus’ tomb on Saturday of Holy Week. For His disciples, the death of Jesus was also the death of hope. A dead man is not the Messiah; a still corpse is not the Savior. As I Corinthians 15:19 says, “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable”; in other words, if Jesus remains dead and buried, there is no Savior and no salvation. That was the sorrowful situation on that Saturday. However, Jesus had made a precise promise: He would rise from the dead the third day (Matthew 16:21; 17:22; 20:18). He fulfilled that prophecy: “But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept” (I Corinthians 15:20). Unlike the despondent disciples on that sad Saturday, we know the end of the story, and we know that it is endless.