JUNE 24 JQ#17-5 “How many loaves do you have?” (Matthew 15:34) The Jesus Questions

LIVING FOR JESUS --- Daily Devotional

JUNE 24    JQ#17-5 “How many loaves do you have?” (Matthew 15:34) 

365 Prayers to JESUS 

Jesus, Thank You Lord that “our sin” took top priority in Your concerns. The more I study and see the mighty works of God accomplished in the life of this sinner and read of the mighty miracles God orchestrated among entire nations of sinners, I am overwhelmed with how much “effort” that the Father God, His Only Begotten Son, and the Powerful Spirit of God has expended on the correction of man’s greatest problem, sin. And to think that man volunteers to sin so easily and to recognize that man has brought the curse of sin upon himself, it makes Grace that much more Merciful! God who is uncreated and does not need us for His Self-existence, has chosen to address the “sin problem” for us and has gone to extreme lengths to provide “atonement” for our sins and a path by which we can attain His Forgiveness, and we fail to recognize that God has had a plan all along, from the first words God spoke after creation to the last words He will speak before time itself comes to an end — all His efforts have been to address sin in our lives! Praise God, for without Him what would life be?        AMEN

The Jesus Questions

JUNE 24   JQ#17-5 “How many loaves do you have?” (Matthew 15:34) Just like all questions Jesus asked, the question is for our learning benefit and not to provide information or knowledge to Jesus. If we find ourselves lost on a journey we stop and ask directions but we know with all certainty that Jesus is NOT LOST so the questions that He asks are actually to give information to us. Jesus teaches us by asking questions that make us reflect on our “common knowledge” and He encourages us with the questions to “reason within ourselves” by using the intellect that God has bestowed on everyone, and thereby Jesus teaches that if we will but stop and look at the world around us and use our God-given faculties to consider the Truth of God that He reveals to us with our day-to-day experiences, that we will come to an “understanding” that will lead us into the knowledge of God and the beginning of wisdom. This lesson Jesus is teaching on “bread” is one such lesson where Jesus uses something everyone of every generation and culture can relate to — bread. We can easily tie many teachings of God together using bread such as this passage which is specifically  built around bread, and when Jesus mentions “leaven” our thoughts should turn to the Passover when God demonstrated His Power to “free” His people from our “slavery” and the greatest thing that enslaves every generation is “sin” so the Passover is significant because of the command of God to eat unleavened bread as the death angel passed over and those that had done as God commanded survived! Then King David ate the “Showbread” as he went about doing the work of God. Jesus in this passage is recognized as the “Son of David” and Jesus is also using “bread” to accomplish His Work for the Kingdom, and soon the culmination of the entire ministry of Jesus will be summed up as Jesus takes a loaf of bread and “breaks bread” and declares “this is my body which was broken for you” (Matthew 26:26) and Jesus specifically stated: “For the Son of Man has come to save that which was lost.” So we can easily see that bread has been used by God and that God has been “planning” our salvation from the first words God spoke, “Let there be light” which was to address the darkness and emptiness of the world which we all know is a picture of sin. The entire Bible is God executing His Plan for His chosen people to free us from our selfishness which expresses itself as “sin” as we reject God, yet God parts the sea and provides for our safety even in the worst storms and then to seal-the-deal, God out of His Love for this sinful world, “gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes in [Jesus] shall not perish but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16) If we will but listen to the Master Teacher we can learn the Truth of God and apply even the simplest things, such as the eating of bread, to remind us of the Great Love of God and turn from our sin and as the multitudes did when Jesus healed them, we will marvel at His Grace, we will worship at His feet, and we will glorify the God of Israel. Don’t you think that is a pretty good plan?