LIVING FOR JESUS --- Daily Devotional
APRIL 25
365 Prayers to JESUS
Jesus, Lord I give You and the Holy Spirit Praise for the wonderful lesson on evangelism that You taught in our 3rd Grade Sunday School class using John 3:16. Lord it is so exciting to see You move and as the teacher of these really bright young Christians I feel blessed to be learning with them. Lord, may I never lose sight that You and the Holy Spirit are the Master Teachers and always keep me aware when You take over so that I will not get in the way of Your Lessons, especially one that taught 3rd Graders both “how” and “why” they should “share” the Good News! Lord, how my heart leaped as each one took their turn being an “evangelist” and shared so powerfully, all Praise, Glory, and Honor to the Holy Spirit for empowering them!
The Jesus Questions
JQ#11 — “What are your spiritual expectations of Jesus?” Matthew 11:7. The actual question Jesus asked was a series of questions asking the same thing as we read these questions in Matthew 11:7-9. The important context of the question was that the disciples of John the Baptist had come to question Jesus with the intent on determining if Jesus was the “Coming One” that John the Baptist had been preaching about. The multitudes had been traveling out into the wilderness to hear John the Baptist teach “Repentance” and the soon coming “Christ”. John was considered a prophet and even the Jewish priests and leaders acknowledged that John was preaching in the Power of God! We read in John 1:19-20 “Now this is the testimony of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, ‘Who are you?’ [John] confessed, and did not deny, but confessed, ‘I am not the Christ’” From this we can determine that John had been preaching that the kingdom of heaven was at hand and that the long awaited Christ was “coming” and John’s message was so powerful that everyone was talking again about the “Coming Messiah”. God’s prophets had been silent now for about 400 years so John appears on the scene and now everyone is “expectant” that the Messiah has come as the prophecies had promised! After John had “confessed” that he was not the Christ, John then quoted the prophet Isaiah: “[John] said: ‘I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘make straight the way of the Lord’” (John 1:23 & Isaiah 40:3) So when Jesus lists His earthly accomplishments to the disciples of John, Jesus was in effect telling everyone that He was the “Messiah” that they had been expecting. The important thing to note here is that Jesus lists the events that proved He was indeed the Messiah but immediately asked the question to the multitudes “What did you expect?” As we read the Gospels and throughout the entire New Testament Jesus is doing everything the prophecies said the Messiah would do and yet it took His death, burial, and Resurrection before even Jesus’ own disciples believed that Jesus was the Son of God, the Messiah. The same problem today exists in the Church as we declare like a modern day Thomas : “…unless I see in His hands the print of the nails…I will not believe…” (John 20:25) Jesus knew there would be doubt and He is teaching in JQ#11 that our expectations of Him will be guiding our belief about “who” Jesus really is! There is nothing more Jesus needs to do to prove He is the Messiah so the problem is “us and our unbelief” and Jesus is teaching “us” here that if we are “expecting” a knight in white armor we may actually miss the “real deal” — and the fault does not rest with God, the fault rests entirely on our “expectations of Jesus” — Jesus IS the Son of God - what are your “expectations”?
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