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.)
I preach frequently about the beauty of God, the attribute of attractiveness that draws us to a saving knowledge of God the Son, Jesus Christ (John 6:44). It is compelling that God seeks to enfold us even though “all we like sheep have gone astray” (Isaiah 53:6a) and do our best (our worst?) to evade Him. Psalm 110 is an overtly Messianic Psalm; in fact, we could call it the Jesus Psalm or the Song of Jesus. It is quoted in the New Testament eighteen times, more than any other Old Testament passage. This short Psalm was written nearly 1,000 years before the coming of Christ Jesus and thus becomes fulfilled prophecy. In verse 1, we have something of a seeming conundrum: David’s “Lord” (Hebrew Adonai) is spoken to by “the LORD” (Hebrew YAHWEH). Who could be David’s Lord? He was king of all Israel, of God’s chosen people; no mere person could be greater. Jesus answers this perplexing problem in Matthew 22:41-46 (a passage we considered several weeks ago when we were marveling at the way that Jesus speaks specifically to all people). The Messiah had to be a descendant of David to fulfill the promise of the Davidic Covenant (II Samuel 7:12-16) and, in so doing, had to be fully human to be a substitute for our sins. Of course, to be our perfect substitute, the Messiah also had to be fully God. The religious experts were dumbfounded (verse 46), for who could have thought of this unique joining of the completely human and the completely divine? Certainly not David! No, the Author of Scripture, God the Holy Spirit (see Acts 2:32-35), inspired David to write this predictive Psalm, and God the Son fulfilled it, all to attract us to Him. Jesus is beautiful because He is fully God and also became fully man.