Hungry for God: Beyond Understanding

“And He began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again.”
—Mark 8:31

The plans and purposes of God are beyond our understanding. Consider today’s verse, Jesus is speaking to the disciples about what awaits Him. He is telling the future and He’s not shying away from it. He is heading to Jerusalem to die. He is God’s determined Son. Luke describes it this way: “When the days drew near for Him to be taken up, He set His face to go to Jerusalem”—Luke 9:51. In fact, Isaiah the prophet said it like this in His prophecy of the coming Messiah:  

“But the Lord GOD helps Me; therefore I have not been disgraced; therefore I have set My face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame”—Isaiah 50:7. 

Once he “set His face like flint,” Jesus was bound and determined to get to Jerusalem to bring about our salvation.

Jesus is also teaching that God’s action involved deplorable suffering. He says that He is going to be handed over to the chief priests, scribes, and then delivered over to the Gentiles. They will mock Him, spit on Him (a sign of utmost disdain), and then flog Him. Such a thought was incomprehensible to the disciples! Jesus would suffer? If He was to be the coming ruler—the Messiah—then how was He to suffer?

Not only would Jesus suffer, but we see that there would be a deadly sentence. He would be killed. Jesus is telling His innermost circle of companions whom He had traveled and conversed and worked with for three years that He was going to die. It was unthinkable, but it was true. However, He concludes it with a definite surprise. He was going to rise from the dead. Such thoughts were unimaginable but true. Such talk had never come from someone in their right mind before. Many nut jobs say that they are going to rise from the dead, but none actually do.

On June 12, 1994, Rabbi Menachem Mendel died in New York City. For most people that is not that big of a deal, because people, including rabbis, die every day. What was strange about it was that he was the head of the Chad Hasidic movement, and they believed that he was the Messiah. They also believed that he would rise from the dead after three days. So devoted were they that many slept by his grave for three days, wanting to be the first to see him rise from the dead. But nothing happened. When the time passed, like Harold Camping has done several times, they changed their tune and said the dates were wrong. In fact, it’s been 18 years, and there are still some who are waiting for him to rise from the dead. Allow me to say this—it’s not going to happen, because he’s not the Messiah. He will rise again all right, but it will be to judgment, not as God’s Messiah. Only one person has risen Himself from the dead and that was another Rabbi, Jesus of Nazareth!

Jesus did rise from the dead. He was a determined Son who came to die so that we might live. He went through deplorable suffering, experienced a deadly sentence by dying a criminal’s death in our place, and capped it off with rising from the dead—a definite surprise.

God’s ways are beyond our understanding. The disciples couldn’t understand His purposes, and there are times when we will experience the same thing—we may not understand what God is calling us to do. From a human perspective it may not make sense, but God doesn’t operate in man’s ways. He wants us to follow Him, to walk by faith, not by sight, doing what He has called us to do. And when we do that, we will see God’s hand at work, accomplishing greater things in us and through us than we could possibly imagine.

So today, shake off any unbelief you may have. Embrace the suffering that God has allowed into your life, and let people see Jesus in you through it. Because when we suffer for doing good, God’s name is glorified, the devil is terrified, and we experience joys that are multiplied. Amen.