Luke 18:31-34

18:31-34 Jesus took the Twelve and said to them, "Look you--we are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that was written through the prophets about the Son of Man will be fulfilled. He will be handed over to the gentiles; and he will be mocked and cruelly treated; and spat upon; and they will scourge him and kin him; and on the third day he will rise again." But they did not understand these things; this word was hidden from them; and they did not grasp what was being said.

There are two kinds of courage. There is the courage of the man who, suddenly and without warning, is confronted with some emergency or some crisis, and who unhesitatingly and even recklessly flings himself into it. There is the courage of the man who sees a terrible situation looming ahead and knows that nothing short of flight can avoid it, and who yet goes steadfastly and inflexibly on. There is no question which is the higher courage. Many a man is capable of the heroic action on the spur of the moment; it takes a man of supreme courage to go on to face something which haunts him for days ahead and which, by turning back, he could escape.

In a novel a writer paints a picture of two children walking along the road playing their children's games. One said to the other, "When you're walking along the road, do you ever pretend that there is something terrible just around the next corner waiting for you; and you've got to go and face it? It makes it so exciting." With Jesus it was no game of let's pretend. It was the grim truth that there was something terrible waiting for him. He knew what crucifixion was like; he had seen it; and yet he went on. If Jesus was nothing else, he would still be one of the most heroic figures of all time.

In face of Jesus' frequent warning of what was to happen to him in Jerusalem, we sometimes wonder why, when the cross came, it was such a shock and such a shattering blow to his disciples. The truth is that they simply could not take in what he was saying to them. They were obsessed with the idea of a conquering king; they still clung to that hope that he would let loose his power in Jerusalem and blast his enemies off the face of the earth.

Here is a great warning to every listener. The human mind has a way of listening only to what it wants to hear. There are none so blind as those who refuse to see. There is a kind of wishful thinking which believes that the unpleasant truth cannot really be true, and that the thing it does not want to happen cannot happen. A man must ever struggle against the tendency to hear only what he wants to hear.

One thing more we must note. Jesus never foretold the cross without foretelling the resurrection. He knew that shame lay before him, but he was equally certain that glory lay before him, too. He knew what the malice of men could do, but he knew also what the power of God could do. It was in the certainty of ultimate victory that he faced the apparent defeat of the cross. He knew that without a cross there can never be any crown.