Our Weekly Devotionals

Jesus' Mission Impossible

How the Jews misunderstood Jesus’ Mission Impossible.

As I mentioned in part 4 of these series, when the Old Testament ended, the Israelites were looking for the promised Messiah, but they did not fully understand man’s biggest problem. They thought their saviour or Messiah would deliver them from what they thought was their biggest problem – oppression and slavery from their physical enemies like Babylon and later the Romans. They did not realize that God had a bigger solution in mind – freedom from internal slavery, the problem of sin.

Jesus came primarily as a spiritual liberator, not a military one and so “poor Jews”, they were seeing the wrong side or face of Jesus’ Mission Impossible! Jesus himself announced his mission as follows:

““The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has chosen me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free the oppressed and announce that the time has come when the Lord will save his people.” Jesus rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. All the people in the synagogue had their eyes fixed on him, as he said to them, “This passage of scripture has come true today, as you heard it being read.”” Luke 4: 18-21.

In another place, when asked by a teacher called Nicodemus, Jesus summed up who he was, and his purpose for coming to the earth as follows:

“And no one has ever gone up to heaven except the Son of Man, who came down from heaven.” As Moses lifted up the bronze snake on a pole in the desert, in the same way the Son of Man must be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.

For God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not die but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to be its judge, but to be its saviour. Those who believe in the Son are not judged; but those who do not believe have already been judged, because they have not believed in God's only Son.

This is how the judgment works: the light has come into the world, but people love the darkness rather than the light, because their deeds are evil. Those who do evil things hate the light and will not come to the light, because they do not want their evil deeds to be shown up. But those who do what is true come to the light in order that the light may show that what they did was in obedience to God.” John 3: 13-21.

If Jesus was good and perfect and came to solve the sin of the world, why did he die? Why did he need to be “lifted up” as he told Nicodemus?  Had his mission failed by dying? Why did God keep the real purpose of Jesus’ death a secret from Satan and the spiritual rulers of this evil world?

To be continued.

Your brother in the Lord and a servant of Jesus.

D E Wasake.

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