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.)
For the third time in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus predicts His imminent death: “And He took again the twelve, and began to tell them what things should happen unto Him, saying, ‘Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and the Son of man shall be delivered unto the chief priests, and unto the scribes, and they shall condemn Him to death, and shall deliver Him to the Gentiles: and they shall mock Him, and shall spit upon Him, and shall kill Him; and the third day He shall rise again’” (10:32b-34). The detail is profoundly sad but also compelling in its historicity. As we discussed yesterday, Jesus specifically delineates “Jerusalem” as the place of His death. He states that the religious leaders will be directly involved in killing Him and that this process will include legal proceedings (“condemn”) – proceedings which were conducted illegally, of course. His deliverance to the Romans (“Gentiles”) indicates that the means of execution would be crucifixion; although Jesus never used “crucify,” “crucified,” or “crucifixion” in His predictions in Mark (He did in Matthew 20:19), the Roman method of capital punishment was crucifixion, and “the twelve” would have immediately understood. The mistreatment of Jesus before His actual death is well catalogued in Scripture (for example, Mark 15:16-20) and is consistent with the cruel practices of the Romans. All of these details were precisely fulfilled – and all of these details were in the mind of Christ Jesus: He knew what was coming, and He still “stedfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem” (Luke 9:51).