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.)
Mark 3:31-32 returns us to the erroneous concerns of Jesus’ family as recorded in verse 21, where they decided that He was out of His mind: “There came then His mother, and, standing without, sent unto Him, calling Him. And the multitude sat about Him, and they said unto Him, ‘Behold, Thy mother and Thy brethren seek for Thee.’” Having traveled a long distance from Nazareth (about thirty miles), they now approach Him in Capernaum. Their fears seem to be confirmed by the fact that they could not even get near Him; the message of their arrival has to be passed from person to person until those nearest Jesus could relay the news to Him. The family think that no sane man would want to be in the center of such a tumultuous maelstrom of mixed motives, including the murderous malevolence of the religious leaders (verse 6). What we observe consistently in the ministry of Jesus is that He is misunderstood. Rare are the individuals who seem to grasp Who He is and what He is doing (the prophet Simeon and Mary of Bethany come to mind). We now have the full story in the Gospels, making it much easier for us to grasp that Jesus is reaching out to all people. However, we do not have the full story of our lives and do not always understand what He is currently doing. We can be certain, though, that the reliability that He demonstrates then is the same now, for “Jesus Christ [is] the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever” (Hebrews 13:8).