You Don’t Want to Know!



Matthew 20:17-19
17And as Jesus was going up to Jerusalem, he took the twelve disciples aside, and on the way he said to them,
18“See, we are going up to Jerusalem. And the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn him to death
19and deliver him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified, and he will be raised on the third day.”

Now for the third time Jesus tells His disciples that He is headed to Jerusalem to be killed. (The other two times are Matthew 16:21 and 17:22–23.) And when we read the passage in context we find that the disciples are probably still in the dark regarding His immediate future. Either they just don’t understand, or they don’t want to hear it. Oddly enough even though He also tells them of His resurrection it seems to fall on deaf ears as well.

How often have we looked at the Lord and requested information regarding the future. If we’re going to be honest we all have to admit that there have been times in our lives when we want to know what’s coming. While hindsight is 20/20, gazing into the future will pull up only darkness. Only God knows what is coming for us and He’s not talkin’! Here in these 3 verses, we find Jesus giving the disciples a clear indication of what is coming for Him and for them as His death and resurrection changes all of them forever. And yet they don’t hear Him! A clear future had been laid out and they don’t get it. Maybe our efforts to gaze into the future are harmful for us.

If I know what’s coming the chances that I’m going to try and control it are fairly great. We already know that Peter tries to stand in Jesus way on a couple of occasions during Passion Week as he begins to see where all of this is leading. If God laid out all of His future plans for us, we would inevitably run ahead of Him and mess up everything. But you have to admit, here at this one time when Jesus lays out the coming days with clarity, they don’t hear Him. It’s an interesting dichotomy.

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