Insightful Musings on the Scriptures

by

Raymond P. Sparre
Northwest University class of '67

Good morning, dear people.

I’ve spent some time in a dentist chair. Do you know what it’s like to have a dental tech person ask you a question when they have both hands in your mouth? Have you ever been tempted to bite their fingers?

Just now I picked up an emailed report of blood test results from blood drawn on Monday morning. I’ll wait to hear how the pro people interpret it.

I face a lot of sign design and production to do, but after lunch I think I need to crank up the sawmill too…with a need to kick out 1500 lineal feet of 1x3 and 400 lineal of 1x6 before the weekend.

Have a blessed rest of the day.

Love, Dad/Ray.

How could Jesus’ words be any more clear? How could a prediction of future events be much more specific? What were the odds that these specific details could have been fulfilled on their own? I would estimate slim to none. But what in the world were the disciples doing when Jesus made this clear pronouncement? Reading the funny paper? Playing a video game? Drawing pictures? Daydreaming? Whatever they were doing, the unfolding evidence demonstrates that their brains were not in gear. They had ears to hear, but they were not hearing.

Evidence can be gathered from the very next section to show how these very hand-picked disciples of Jesus were not really paying attention—and proceeded to behave like immature kids that still have a lot to learn. It kind of makes me wonder if a mistake was made in the hand-picking.

The disciples have to be aware that things are heating up around Jesus—it has to be coming to a dramatic climax. But we have this problem—not only did they have selective hearing when it came to Jesus’ announcement of His death, they had selective reading of the Old Testament prophets relating to the Messiah. They seemed to embrace easily enough the description of the “Conquering Messiah,” but prophetic indications of a “Suffering Messiah” had to no place to lay their head. In an attempt to have an edge in jockeying for superior position in the up-coming Messianic Kingdom of their imaginations, I can only suppose that James and John put their mom up to approaching Jesus on their behalf with a request that they be given high positions—higher than the other disciples. I doubt very much that she conceived of this idea on her own. Notice that this act of selfish immaturity is followed by more. “When the ten heard about this, they were indignant with the two brothers” (20:24). Why? Because they thought it was such a stupid request? No. It was because the brothers beat them to requesting the very thing they lusted for—position and power. Good grief! But before I get too carried away with criticizing these disciples, perhaps I should pause to recognize that this account indirectly offers me encouragement—if Jesus can use these guys, there may be some hope for me.

Is there any chance the disciples did not recognize that Jesus was speaking of Himself when He made reference to “the Son of Man?” That’s doubtful. But that title is highly significant—especially with the two nouns capitalized. It’s a title Jesus used for himself “some eighty times,” according to my Unger’s Bible Dictionary. I cite this sentence from that volume: “It portrays Him as the Representative Man.” And that makes awesome sense to me—that no other man could have filled the role and function of “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). Wow! I feel another worship coming on.