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.)
One of my wife’s favorite movies is Fiddler on the Roof. I have never watched it, philistine that I am, for musicals do not interest me. However, I do know that one of its songs is titled “If I Were a Rich Man.” Because Jesus is rich, we do not have to sing that song, for we are rich in Him. In Ephesians 3:8, Paul writes, “Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles [non-Jewish people] the unsearchable riches of Christ.” The designation “Christ” is the New Testament equivalent of Messiah, or Savior. Jesus is God the Son Incarnate, the promised Anointed One. We cannot overstate the importance of the doctrine of Jesus’ Incarnation, His coming to us as fully human. We should marvel that He came at all, for our planet is the last place in God’s infinite universe that anyone would want to visit (with the obvious exception of hell). Hatred, hubris, disease, death – these evils dominate our world. No one would choose to vacation amidst such horrors. Jesus, of course, came to work, and work He did, on our behalf. We should never lose the wonder of Who Jesus is and what He has done, for His richness is truly “unsearchable.”