Reflective Bible Study

Near the end of our last podcast episode, we briefly looked at the last two verses in Mark’s longer conclusion, and saw tucked within it, a reference to where Jesus would go in Heaven after His ascension. However, since the conclusion of Mark’s gospel has some controversy surrounding it, I thought it would make sense to focus one episode on the specific idea of Jesus being seated at God’s right hand, since this idea has both a connection point in the Old Testament, and it is referenced numerous times in the New Testament.

To remind us of the passage we concluded our last episode with, instead of starting with the Old Testament passage like we have typically done so far this year, let’s instead start briefly in Jesus’ ministry before looking back on the passage that serves as the foundation for this idea.

In our last episode, the last passage we looked at was in Mark, chapter 16, and we read it from the New American Standard Bible translation. Starting in verse 19, the author of this conclusion wrote:

¹⁹ So then, when the Lord Jesus had spoken to them, He was received up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God. ²⁰ And they went out and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them, and confirmed the word by the signs that followed.

In this conclusion, when Jesus is received into heaven, He takes the favored position of being at God’s right hand. While some people might understand why this would be, other people, including many religious leaders living in the first century, could not comprehend this thought.

However, we are in luck because during Jesus’ ministry, He has an opportunity to draw this topic into the open, and He does so in a way that silences the religious leaders’ vocal opposition.

Part way through the week leading up to the cross, several groups of religious leaders approach Jesus with challenges for Him to solve. The first group to bring a challenge to Jesus were some Pharisees who had temporarily allied with a group known as the Herodians and they came to Jesus with a seemingly unsolvable dilemma related to paying taxes.

Next, a group of Sadducees came to Jesus with a logical and very difficult challenge focused on the validity of the resurrection framed within a dilemma focused on marriage and remarriage.

After Jesus had answered the Sadducees, a religious expert appears to throw Jesus an easy question about what the greatest commandment was, but before this full challenge had finished, it appeared as though Jesus derailed His challengers with a question of His own.

In Jesus’ question to all the religious leaders present, He quotes from the following psalm. Reading from Psalm, number 110, starting in verse 1, we discover that:

¹ The Lord says to my Lord:
“Sit at My right hand
Until I make Your enemies a footstool for Your feet.”
² The Lord will stretch forth Your strong scepter from Zion, saying,
“Rule in the midst of Your enemies.”
³ Your people will volunteer freely in the day of Your power;
In holy array, from the womb of the dawn,
Your youth are to You as the dew.

⁴ The Lord has sworn and will not change His mind,
“You are a priest forever
According to the order of Melchizedek.”
⁵ The Lord is at Your right hand;
He will shatter kings in the day of His wrath.
⁶ He will judge among the nations,
He will fill them with corpses,
He will shatter the chief men over a broad country.
⁷ He will drink from the brook by the wayside;
Therefore He will lift up His head.

Here at the beginning of this psalm, David writes about the Messiah being seated at the right hand of God. Three of the four gospels include Jesus’ challenge to the religious leaders and the quotation He uses to stump them. Let’s read Matthew’s version of this event.

In Matthew, chapter 22, starting in verse 41, we read:

⁴¹ Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them a question: ⁴² “What do you think about the Christ, whose son is He?” They said to Him, “The son of David.” ⁴³ He said to them, “Then how does David in the Spirit call Him ‘Lord,’ saying,

⁴⁴ ‘The Lord said to my Lord,
“Sit at My right hand,
Until I put Your enemies beneath Your feet”’?

⁴⁵ If David then calls Him ‘Lord,’ how is He his son?” ⁴⁶ No one was able to answer Him a word, nor did anyone dare from that day on to ask Him another question.

In this event, Jesus sets up a seemingly impossible-to-reconcile situation where David is shown that one of his descendants had existed before Him. While someone who believes in reincarnation would not see this idea as being strange in any way, nothing in the gospels, or even in the Bible, points to this as a logical probability. While some verses have been pulled out of context to make the Bible appear to support this idea, as well as a lot of other fringe ideas, the fact that these religious leaders are stumped by this dilemma is evidence that reincarnation was not something they gave any weight to.

However, in a strange twist, the idea of Jesus being seated at God’s right hand, as this quotation from the Old Testament suggests, ends up being used as one major foundation for condemning Jesus, after Jesus has been betrayed, arrested, and condemned by the religious leaders. In a fascinating way, Jesus’ impossible to reconcile framing of this psalm with the other prophecies about Jesus being David’s descendant becomes the foundation for putting Jesus to death. While the religious leaders could not do anything publicly to answer Jesus’ challenge, they saved their hostility towards this challenge and frame until they clearly had the upper hand.

But these religious leaders could only reject this Old Testament psalm, and by rejecting Jesus, they not only discount David’s prophetic insight into the Godhead, they also subtly reject the other big prophetic idea present in this psalm, specifically that the Messiah would be a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek. While there are no shortage of ideas for what this means, I suspect that David wants to draw attention to God having priests and people worshiping Him in a world prior to the Jews being freed from Egypt, and that being a priest of God is something that is not necessarily part of one’s genealogy.

If we stop to think about this idea for a moment, we will realize that this is a great thing. God is more than able and willing to welcome people into His family who might not have any shared genetic or ancestral connection to God’s chosen people. Jesus being a priest in the order of Melchizedek, who lived hundreds of years before Moses and Aaron, and who was someone who had no recorded beginning or end draws our attention to Jesus being someone who can bring us into a future that may have a beginning, but one that clearly has no end. Jesus, our Priest, has done everything for us to prepare the way for our salvation, and His sacrifice on our behalf opens the way for God to forgive our sins while remaining just.

God promised to elevate the Messiah’s role to be at His right hand, and the Messiah, Jesus, the Son of God, was granted this status when He ascended to Heaven. While there is plenty to debate about in Mark’s conclusion that we don’t have time to cover, don’t for a moment question where Jesus ended up when He entered heaven, because that truth is amazingly clear.

However, following Jesus’ return to Heaven and Him being seated at God’s right hand, Jesus had promised the disciples He would do something for them, and this promise will be our focus for our next episode.

As we come to the end of another podcast episode, here are the challenges I will leave you with:

As I always open by challenging you in one way or another, intentionally seek God first in your life. Choose to accept Jesus as your High Priest and as your Redeemer, and let His sacrifice for you be everything you need to be saved for eternity.

Also, continue to pray and study the Bible for yourself to grow personally closer to Jesus each and every day. Choose to let Jesus lead and guide your life, mind, and heart, and intentionally step forward each and every day with Jesus as you move together towards eternity.

And as I end every set of challenges by saying in one way or another, never stop short of, back away from, chicken out of, or give up on where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!

As we continue through Luke’s gospel, we come to the night Jesus was betrayed and arrested. However, before this happened, Jesus wanted to eat the Passover meal with His disciples. However, they don’t have a place prepared beforehand to eat this meal.

While this is a problem from our human perspective, God had a plan. Let’s read what happened, and how Jesus solves this challenge.

Our passage is found in Luke’s gospel, chapter 22, and we will read it from the New Century Version. Starting in verse 7, Luke tells us that:

⁷ The Day of Unleavened Bread came when the Passover lambs had to be sacrificed. ⁸ Jesus said to Peter and John, “Go and prepare the Passover meal for us to eat.”

⁹ They asked, “Where do you want us to prepare it?” ¹⁰ Jesus said to them, “After you go into the city, a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him into the house that he enters, ¹¹ and tell the owner of the house, ‘The Teacher says: “Where is the guest room in which I may eat the Passover meal with my followers?”’ ¹² Then he will show you a large, furnished room upstairs. Prepare the Passover meal there.”

¹³ So Peter and John left and found everything as Jesus had said. And they prepared the Passover meal.

Pausing reading briefly, I am amazed that when Peter and John have the dilemma of where to prepare this Passover meal, Jesus simply gives them a very random but specific set of instructions and they find everything exactly as Jesus had described.

This sort of detail tells me that Jesus clearly knew the events of that weekend better than any of the disciples did, and Jesus also knew Judas Iscariot’s betrayal even better than Judas did.

From this passage that draws our attention onto the preparation of Jesus’ last supper prior to His death, we can clearly learn the truth that Jesus knows the future. Jesus knows the future and He is not scared by it. Since Jesus knows the future and He is not scared by it, we can confidently move forward in our own lives with Jesus knowing that He has the solution to the problems we face.

Continuing reading in verse 14, Luke then tells us:

¹⁴ When the time came, Jesus and the apostles were sitting at the table. ¹⁵ He said to them, “I wanted very much to eat this Passover meal with you before I suffer. ¹⁶ I will not eat another Passover meal until it is given its true meaning in the kingdom of God.”

¹⁷ Then Jesus took a cup, gave thanks, and said, “Take this cup and share it among yourselves. ¹⁸ I will not drink again from the fruit of the vine until God’s kingdom comes.”

¹⁹ Then Jesus took some bread, gave thanks, broke it, and gave it to the apostles, saying, “This is my body, which I am giving for you. Do this to remember me.” ²⁰ In the same way, after supper, Jesus took the cup and said, “This cup is the new agreement that God makes with his people. This new agreement begins with my blood which is poured out for you.

²¹ “But one of you will turn against me, and his hand is with mine on the table. ²² What God has planned for the Son of Man will happen, but how terrible it will be for that one who turns against the Son of Man.”

²³ Then the apostles asked each other which one of them would do that.

In Luke’s passage describing this portion of Jesus’ Last Supper with His disciples, two big things stand out to me. While it is tempting to focus on the bread Jesus breaks and on the grape juice that Jesus shares, let’s save looking at those details for another time.

Instead, two different phrases stood out to me. In these two phrases are a promise and a warning. However, even within the warning is a powerful promise that is worth remembering.

The first phrase is a clear promise. Verse 16 records Jesus telling the disciples “I will not eat another Passover meal until it is given its true meaning in the kingdom of God.” This is a promise that we can hold on to because this means that Jesus is waiting in heaven for our arrival before He eats another Passover meal.

Also, while many people believe that the Passover was fulfilled that weekend when Jesus gave up His life, Jesus describes the Passover meal as having future significance. Reading this with you now prompts me to wonder if the great meal we all will eat with God in His kingdom following Jesus’ return will be a meal celebrating the big theme of the Passover. The great theme of the Passover is that God’s people were trapped in slavery, and that an Innocent Being gives up His life to redeem His people.

With this huge theme, we see that the entire story of history is contained within the great Passover truth. When we as Christians celebrate the Lord’s Supper, it seems small when compared with this grand, eternal message. While celebrating the Lord’s Supper is in no way wrong, let’s remember the big picture and what this event points forward to in our own future even while it pointed forward to Jesus’ death.

Also in this passage is a warning. In verse 22, immediately after Jesus reveals that this group of twelve disciples has a betrayer present, Jesus says, “What God has planned for the Son of Man will happen”.

As I read and think about this phrase, perhaps a warning is not the best way to frame it. While it sounds like a warning on one level, we also see the clear picture that Jesus was following God’s plan for His life. Jesus followed God’s plan which lead to and through death, and while there was pain involved in God’s plan for Jesus’ life, we ultimately wouldn’t want it any other way.

When we follow God’s plan, don’t be surprised if our lives include some level of pain. However, know that just like Jesus, when we look back on our lives, on the pain and on the joy, we ultimately would not want our lives to have gone any other way. While our lives on this earth are tainted by pain, sin, and death, the ultimate plan God has for our lives is eternal life with Him in a sinless recreated new heaven and new earth.

Our brand new life with God can start today, and when Jesus returns to bring us home, we will all celebrate the ultimate Passover meal together with God and all of God’s people who He has redeemed!

As we come to the end of another podcast episode, here are the challenges I will leave you with:

As I always challenge you to do, continue seeking God first in your life and choose to let God lead you on His plan. Place your faith, hope, trust, and belief in Jesus and what He accomplished for us on the cross and look forward to the day when we will enter God’s kingdom and eat the ultimate Passover meal with Him and all of God’s people together.

Also, continue praying and studying the Bible for yourself to learn and grow closer to God each and every day. Through prayer and personal study, discover a God who gives up everything to redeem His people out of sin and a God who loves us more than we can even imagine!

And as I end every set of challenges by saying in one way or another, never stop short of, back away from, chicken out of, or abandon where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!