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.)
In Mark 2:21-22, Jesus employs an extended metaphor to capture the crowd’s attention: “No man also soweth a piece of new cloth on an old garment: else the new piece that filled it up taketh away from the old, and the rent is made worse. And no man putteth new wine into old bottles, else the new wine doth burst the bottles, and the wine is spilled, and the bottles will be marred, but new wine must be put in new bottles.” These “bottles” were goatskin bags, prompting me years ago to begin a sermon on these verses with a question: “Are you an old bag?” One elderly lady, a woman of humor and self-deprecation, immediately raised her hand. She understood what Jesus was saying in these verses, that each one of us must accept from Him the new life that He offers. The old wineskins would explode because they had lost their elasticity (making me wonder, as an aside, how long it will be before my face blows up). Similarly, the old religious traditions of the Pharisees and others could not simply absorb and assimilate the new news of life found in Jesus. Instead, each individual had to recognize the need to make a definitive decision to break free of the shackles of ritualism and receive instead a real relationship with God. Each one of us must do the same by taking from Jesus, God the Son, what He desires to give – His eternal salvation, new life forever.