Today’s Podcast
Today’s Bible reading plan:
Read it in a year – 1 Chronicles 10-14
see the whole year’s plan [here](http://www.bible-reading.com/bible-plan.pdf)
Today’s Devotional
Mark 10:33-34
Jesus (taking the twelve aside): Look, we are going up to Jerusalem, and there the Son of Man is going to be delivered to the chief priests and the scribes. They shall seek His death and deliver Him to the outsiders to carry out that sentence. Then people will mock Him, spit upon Him, whip Him, and kill Him. But on the third day, He will rise again.
What do Jesus’ words mean for us today?
We look back to those last days of Jesus with 20/20 hindsight. We sometimes think we would like to have been with Him during that last week to sit at His feet and hear all these teachings come directly from His mouth. We think we would like to have witnessed His triumphal entry into the city, watched Him empty the temple of the money changers, eaten His last supper with Him. We think it would be neat to spend some of those last moments with Him to see the love He poured out on the people of Jerusalem as they ended Hi life and ushered Him toward His sacrifice for us.
But if you put yourself back in that time and think about the words the disciples heard for perhaps the first time, I’m not so sure we would want to be there. Jesus pulls His disciples apart from the crowds that continue to follow Him. He just recently became the intense target of the religious leaders of the day. These men held the power of life and death in their hands. No, they couldn’t carry out a sentence of execution, but they could make life impossible for those who failed to follow their decrees.
As a Jew in a Jewish community, if you were excommunicated from the group, you suddenly found yourself with no livelihood, no means of family support, no entrance into the temple or synagogue. You were cut off physically, emotionally, and spiritually from the community in which you grew up. Those were difficult times for the followers of Jesus.
Yet these men followed Him. They believed what they heard. They embraced His message of God’s love for them. But now Jesus pulls them aside and says He will be turned over to those who had been their teachers and leaders. But it wouldn’t stop there. These people plotted to kill Him. So this man who they followed for three years, who cared for them and taught them, now told them He would die. What kind of leader would do that? What kind of teacher would lead people along and talk about love and God’s goodness, peace, mercy, forgiveness, and then tell those who followed Him that He was about to be killed?
This wasn’t a very good pep talk. This wasn’t what Jesus’ followers wanted to hear. They were headed to Jerusalem for the final showdown with the religious leaders of the day. They wanted this Messiah to deliver them from the oppression they were under. How was He supposed to do that if He was dead? Jesus wasn’t supposed to be talking this way. He was supposed to be talking about victory, triumph, overthrow of the Romans, right?
Would you still follow Him? Would you still go with Him when the story changed from one of love and healing and forgiveness to one of capture and beating and execution? At the hands of those who were the leaders of your faith? Imagine the radical turn of events. Imagine just how difficult these words must have sounded to Jesus’ disciples as He spoke to them that day.
You know when Jesus spoke these words, I expect His last words didn’t even register with His disciples until Mark was recalling the conversation. I expect they were so numbed by His prediction of the abuse He would take from the religious leaders and His impending death, they probably didn’t even hear Him say He would rise again on the third day. I expect it was only later they remembered His words as they just couldn’t believe they were marching toward Jerusalem to His certain death and perhaps their own.
Was this really happening? Could they continue to follow Him? Were they dedicated enough to follow Him to the cross as He said they must do if they were truly His disciples? Did He have to talk so much about death and the cross and giving up your life for Him?
I’m glad we get to hear these words from this side of the cross. I’m glad we can look back over the centuries and remember the promise He made that on the third day He would rise again. I’m glad we can know the outcome of that awful, wonderful, terrible, glorious week. I don’t know for sure if I could have heard those words like the disciples did and followed Him to Jerusalem. But I’m glad they did. I’m glad Mark recorded His teachings for us. I’m glad they stayed true to Him so we can have the story today and know that Jesus was indeed the Messiah and what He said He would do happened. I’m glad He rose again and lives forever so we can live forever, too.
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