AUGUST 20 THE JESUS QUESTIONS
JQ#24
“Is the power and authority of baptism
from heaven or from men?””
(Matthew 21:25)
LIVING FOR JESUS Daily Prayer
Jesus, Your grace is sufficient for all our needs, Your Love covers
all our sins and iniquities — Your Resurrection has forever sealed
the promise of God to His Creation therefore our Eternity is
secure through our belief in the shed Blood of the Lamb of God!
God has gone through such great efforts to supply our needs,
both physical and spiritual as we read about God’s efforts
and promises in the Holy Scriptures,
“In the beginning God created
the heavens and the earth”
(Genesis 1:1)
and from Genesis to Revelation the Scriptures document all the
faithful promises of God and His great work in His Creation so
that the Scriptures close with
“The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ
be with you all. Amen”
(Revelation 22:21)
Indeed You Lord are the Alpha and the Omega and Your Mercy
and Grace is all we need from the beginning to the end.
So this believer also looks forward to the last promise
“Surely, I am coming quickly.”
and I pray
“Even so, come, Lord Jesus!”
(Revelation 22:20)
AMEN
THE JESUS QUESTIONS
Jesus is addressing the greatest problem of every generation
that ever lived, from Adam and the forbidden fruit to our modern day
worldly desires to “do our own thing” — we are self-serving and
are constantly declaring that it is our “right” to control our own
destiny but in our self indulging demands we all make the
universal mistake of failing to honestly ask ourselves,
“Who and where does the Supreme Authority
to declare ‘right and wrong’ really come from?”
Then when we are confronted with the
Truth of God
that He and He alone has already established and maintains
“righteousness” and has already given mankind a set of commands
by which we can know “right from wrong”, mankind rebels and reverts
to making up our own self-serving rules and doctrines. We are
all guilty, every generation looks with lust at God’s Power and Authority
and each of us fall to the temptation of listening to the Original Great Lie
of the serpent as we hear,
“For God knows that in the day you eat
[of the forbidden fruit and decide for yourself
what is “TRUTH” that] your eyes will be opened,
and you will be like God…”
(Genesis 3:5).
Each of us in our desire to have “authority and power” look to be
like the
True Power and Authority which is God
and fail to see that with great power and authority comes great
responsibility and that is where we fail miserably, for we all desire to
be “God-like” and desire in our fallen heart to wield the “power”
and look grand and glorious in our self assumed “authority”. We assume
it is our “right” and then immediately we abuse both “power and authority”
and end up short of meeting our responsibility to the world and
others as we blindly serve our selfish desires and lusts. Jesus asks the
“from-heaven-or-from-men-true Authority Question”
to each of us in order to make us stop and consider what
we see in the world for there is sin and death all around us — we
recognize that there is “evil” that consumes everyone and everything
yet we do not recognize the
Truth of God
that
God Alone is Sovereign in His Creation
and that
ALL POWER AND AUTHORITY is from GOD!
Simple Spiritual Blessings of God that we encounter in our daily lives like
“Forgiveness”, “Love”, “Repentance”, and “Grace”
are not bestowed upon us by the “doctrines of men” but we know
they exist therefore we must acknowledge the
True Spiritual Source!
Therefore Jesus is pointing out the “simple” Truth
that mankind ALWAYS falls to the temptation
to assume personal “power and authority”
for our selfish needs
and each fallen generation tries to justify
our weakness by proclaiming the
Great Lie —
“If there is no God,
then there is no ‘right’
but that which our “selfishness”
declares as ‘right’!!!”
We however, by choosing to partake of the forbidden fruit,
fail to recognize the Truth that it is God Himself that declares
that the fruit is “forbidden” and it is God Himself
Who declares the “consequence” of our actions
— we have the “right to choose” our actions only because God Himself
has granted us “Free Will” [see A. W. Tozer “Knowledge of the Holy”]
— but the
Truth of God
is that
God as the Supreme Power and Authority has given
His Creation the “right to choose” but He also through
His Supreme Authority has reserved His Divine Right
and Authority to determine the Consequence
of our actions and choices —
we are free to choose but God determines the consequence
of our choice
{{THE DIVINE LAW OF CHOICE AND CONSEQUENCE}}
— the only way we can ever truly “be like God” is to choose to live
our lives and make our choices based upon the “choices and standards”
of God through His Holy Word in which God Himself has declared
already the acceptable way to live, and has provided for us the
Perfect Example in His Only Begotten Son, Jesus,
who is reminding us with this Question on “power and authority”
that we must decide for ourselves if we are going to usurp God’s
position or are we going to let God be God and provide for our
daily physical needs and our eternal spiritual needs —
if we stop and think, we will have to admit,
we cannot create “the heavens and the earth”
nor do we have any control over “eternity”
so what makes us think we should have
“power and authority” over them?!?!?!?
