Jesus was happy. Truly, genuinely happy.
Which, if you think about it, and as you will hear in this PODCAST, is a most remarkable statement.
As you know, and as we have chronicled over the now 3½ years of this Jesus in High Definition study, Jesus was (to quote Isaiah):
“despised and rejected by men, a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.”
Never will that become so heartrendingly obvious as in the days immediately preceding His crucifixion. You want to talk about HD, we’ll soon see His rejection, sorrow, and grief in all of its gripping detail.
Jesus was a Man of whom it was written, “Jesus wept.” But the fact is, as we have seen and will see as His crucifixion approaches, Jesus wept often, convulsively, with a sorrow that penetrated down to His very bones.
Had we seen Him, up close and personal, we would have looked upon a Man who looked like He carried the weight of the world upon His shoulders… because He did.
But as you are about to hear, here in Luke 10, this is the one and only time that this was recorded in any of the four Gospels:
Jesus was truly happy.
In order to capture this poignant moment, frozen in time, Luke employed a particular word, used of Jesus only here, that literally means to leap for joy, to exult, to show one’s joy by leaping and skipping. A word that denotes ecstatic joy and sheer delight.
We could therefore properly translate Luke 10:21 to read,
“At that same time, Jesus jumped for joy.”
Given the rarity of such an emotion in Jesus’ storied life and ministry — punctuated as it was by the highest of highs and the lowest of lows — I want to know why Jesus jumped for joy.
Don’t you?
And in fact, if you read Luke 10:21 carefully, the whole of the Trinity got into the act:
“At that same time Jesus was filled with the joy of the Holy Spirit, and he said, ‘O Father…'”
Why? What caused Jesus to experience such a bounding joy? So much joy that the entire Godhead — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — shared in His joy?
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God bless you richly as you listen.
Dewey Bertolini 