Mark 10:32-33

CHRIST’S FOREKNOWLEDGE OF SUFFERING

‘And He took again the twelve, and began to tell them what things should happen unto Him, saying, Behold, we go up to Jerusalem; and the Son of Man shall be delivered unto the chief priests and unto the scribes; and they shall condemn Him to death, and shall deliver Him to the Gentiles.’

Mark 10:32

It concerns us to remember that all His sufferings were fully known to Christ long before they became matter of history.

I. Christ’s perfect foreknowledge.—Men, through the great mercy of God, know not what of pain and suffering and loss the future has in it for them.

(a) It extended throughout His whole career. We cannot, of course, trace it in the obscurity of Nazareth and Capernaum, but from the commencement of His public life, and while that life continued, we can discern its presence.

(b) It was unbroken throughout His career. There were no seasons of intermission and forgetfulness. On the Mount of Transfiguration, radiant with His glory, enjoying, as it seemed, a brief respite from the toil and sorrow of His life, ‘He conversed of His decease at Jerusalem.’

(c) He regarded His sufferings not as a possibility, but as a certainty. To His mind the Cross was as certain as the manger, Calvary as certain to be as Bethlehem had been.

(d) It was definite and full. This passage reads like a record of the past, rather than a prediction of the future.

II. Some features in Christ which His foreknowledge of suffering reveals:—

(a) The intensity of His sorrow. His whole life was a daily crucifixion. Of a truth He could say, ‘I die daily.’

(b) The moral majesty of His nature. He bore unflinchingly the burden which this knowledge imposed.

(c) The supreme compassion of the Saviour’s heart. This knowledge of His own sufferings did not affect the exercise of His compassion.

Illustration

‘Men hope to the last, and refuse to accept as certainties events that appear inevitable, and in whose shadow they already stand. The men who rode the mad battle charge at Balaclava, saw at a glance, as they stood in their stirrups that morning and swept the ground before them, that death was almost inevitable, that the many, the most must fall, yet not a man accepted death for himself as a dread certainty. But to Christ the Cross was certain.’