Thursday – March 16, 2023

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.)

Is Jesus fair in dispensing judgment, including during the Tribulation period? “The Revelation of Jesus Christ” (1:1) provides an emphatic affirmative. The whole book is a sobering, detailed warning of the inevitable and tragic consequences of rebellion against the eternal goodness of God. Revelation 9:13-21 closes with this unfathomably sad assessment: “And the rest of the men which were not killed by those plagues yet repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship devils, and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and of wood: which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk: Neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries [always involving drug use], nor of their fornications, nor of their thefts.” What more can Jesus do? II Peter 3:9 states, “The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some men count slackness, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” We have nearly 2,000 years of that “longsuffering” as ample evidence that Jesus is remarkably restrained in His righteous judgment. On the day that Jesus was crucified (probably Friday, April 3, A.D. 33), the people clamoring for His death screamed, “His blood be on us, and on our children.” Immediate, absolute judgment thus would have been completely appropriate. Instead, all of those people and all of us have been given the blessed opportunity to repent and receive everlasting salvation.