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.)
As we began to study yesterday from the fifth trumpet judgment in Revelation 9, Jesus is fair in judging those whom He judges. Verse 1 speaks of Satan, as confirmed in verse 11 and in Isaiah 14:12: “How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!” Isaiah 14:15 then adds, “Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.” Part of the fulfillment of that Old Testament prophecy is found in Revelation 9:2: “And he opened the bottomless pit, and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit.” The literal rendering of “the bottomless pit” is “the shaft of the abyss”; other uses of this expression are found in Luke 8:31; Revelation 9:11; 11:7; 17:8; 20:1, 3; and Romans 10:7. Of particular note is Luke 8:31, where demons plead with Jesus not to be cast into “the deep,” the place of confinement for some demons. This information is important as we interpret Revelation 9. Comparing Scripture to Scripture, then, we see that Satan is releasing confined demons at this time of the Tribulation. He is permitted to do this (“to him was given the key of the bottomless pit” – verse 1), but his actions confirm his ongoing rebellion. Most assuredly, then, our Lord is just in dispensing judgment against our “adversary, the devil” (I Peter 5:8).