SEPTEMBER 12 JQ#24-8 “Is the power and authority of baptism from heaven or from men?” (Matthew 21:25) The Jesus Questions

LIVING FOR JESUS --- Daily Devotional

SEPTEMBER 12   JQ#24-8 “Is the power and authority of baptism from heaven or from men?”  (Matthew 21:25) 

365 Prayers to JESUS 

Jesus, my Lord and my God, all my Praise and Glory is raised to You! You Lord are beyond any description and Your Greatness is more than can be compared! O Lord, words alone cannot express Your Glory, Lord it takes the Pure Holy Spirit to fully Praise You.  We are not yet what You have purposed us to become and I certainly have much work to done in my life to achieve Your Purpose for my poor wretched soul which is still growing in Your Spirit each day. I suspect that it will be a wretched soul until my wretched body decays into the wretched earth, but Lord Jesus, grant it Lord that I will die each day to my wretched self that Your Love, Peace, Joy, and Righteousness will increase in my life surrendered to You.     AMEN

The Jesus Questions

SEPTEMBER 12    JQ#24-8  “Is the power and authority of baptism from heaven or from men?”  (Matthew 21:25)   Jesus addressed the “indignant” chief priests and scribes that were in the temple of God in Jerusalem watching Jesus do “wonderful things” (that could only be accomplished by the Messiah) by rebuking them with the very scripture they themselves were supposed to be teaching to the multitudes instead of endeavoring to make political and economic gain for themselves in God’s temple in Jerusalem! (Matthew 21:12-16) After Jesus rebuked the “indignant” chief priests and scribes that had seen Jesus executing the duties of the “Office of the Messiah” right before their eyes in the temple of God in Jerusalem, Jesus “left them and went out of the city to Bethany, and He lodged there.” (Matthew 21:17) The chief priests and scribes in the temple in Jerusalem had been executing the duties of their offices with rulings handed down to them from the Sanhedrin Supreme Court located just outside the Eastern Gate of Jerusalem in Bethphage on the Mount of Olives for hundreds of years. The curse that slowly but surely overcomes all men seeking “power and authority” overtakes the power seeker when he tries to assume the “power and authority of God” and even the strongest of men succumb to the “power curse”! Each man that “succumbs” then contributes to the decay of the “command of God” as they inject personal opinion and personal desire to what they would like to see as a “command” and thereby the “command of God” is defiled bit by bit and eventually what surfaces as “legal” becomes the “doctrines of men” and bears no resemblance to a “command of God”. The transition from the “command of God” to the “doctrine of men is slow and subtle and is most often shrouded in “entitlements and after successive (or more accurately in today’s terms, “progressive”) rulings of each “Supreme Court” are handed down, there eventually comes that time when in order to make room for more “personal” interpretation in the interest of “self-promotion” and “vote-buying entitlements”, the “command of God” must in some cases be eliminated altogether! If you think this has not happened in America, look at the Supreme Court decisions and plot them on a time line with the moral decay milestones our society has experienced from the time that we were the greatest country on earth to our present 3rd world status in 2016! What one must conclude when the Truth slaps you in the face is that Jesus knew something and that indeed each society and every generation must address His question: “Is the power and authority of baptism from heaven or from men?” (Matthew 21:32  JQ#24) because you cannot answer that question without realizing that each society is ruled by a “government” and the important question is not “Who the government rules?” but the really critical question is “Who rules the government?” At one time when our society was a majority Christian nation and took active part in the American government, there was a Godly meaning to “a government of the people, by the people and for the people” but now that we are “no longer just a Christian nation” and prayer has been removed from our public schools and the sacrifice of the unborn to the “commercial endeavors” is endorsed by our “supreme court” and is the “law of the land”, “We the People” no longer has any valid meaning before the eyes of the True and Only Supreme Judge.  It is truly important that we as a society, we as a family, we as the Church, and we as individuals give an honest answer to this question and admit to ourselves what we truly believe about “baptism”, “power and authority”, “heaven”, and how they all relate to “Jesus”, “Faith”, the “doctrines of men” and the “command of God”!?!?!?!?!?