APRIL 07 THE JESUS QUESTIONS JQ#13 * Is your life a plus or a minus in God’s kingdom?* “How can you, being evil, speak good things? ” (Matthew 12:34)

APRIL 07  THE JESUS QUESTIONS  JQ#13 * Is your life a plus or a minus in God’s kingdom?*  “How can you, being evil, speak good things? ” (Matthew 12:34)

LIVING FOR JESUS  Daily Prayer

JESUS, Lord and Master, my Redeemer and the Lover of my soul, Praise be to the Lamb of God, the Light of the world. Lord we cannot begin with our limited words to express or to give to You the Glory due to the Son of God in whom the Father is well pleased. For how can man’s mortal words express from our defiled heart words to compare to expressions from the Divine Holy God who has entrusted all that the Father has to the Beloved Son? No words can express Your Glory but let these three be spoken, JESUS IS WORTHY!!   AMEN

THE JESUS QUESTIONS

Jesus addressed the “legalism” issue with the Pharisees with JQ#12 “Who determines what is legal, God or man?”. Matthew then noted the response from Jesus to the next confrontation Jesus had with the Pharisees, “Then the Pharisees [after seeing Jesus heal a man on the Sabbath] went out and plotted against Him, how they might destroy Him.” (Matthew 12:14) further proved Jesus is the Messiah! Even when threatened again by these “legalist” that were plotting to have Him killed, Jesus in the face of this evil plot responded as He always did when threatened by evil — by doing the will of His Father in Heaven openly and in public view which demonstrated to everyone that Jesus was indeed fulfilling the Holy Scriptures as written in the Isaiah 42:1-4 passage: “But when Jesus knew it, He withdrew from there. And great multitudes followed Him, and He healed them all.” (Matthew 12:15) So when Jesus was threatened by the Pharisees and they sought to “destroy Him” because He had healed a man’s withered hand (see Matthew 12:10-13) Jesus simply withdrew from the “evil” and continued to do “good” to those who followed Him — Matthew makes a powerful statement when he wrote, “…and [Jesus] healed them all [that is … all who followed Jesus and believed He had the “Power and Spirit” of God upon Him to heal]…” (Matthew 12:15b) Jesus publicly lived this passage from Isaiah to demonstrate that His Lessons, Lifestyle, and His Parables were fulfillment of prophecy about the Messiah, God’s Chosen One: “Behold, My Servant whom I have chosen, My Beloved in whom My soul is well pleased! I will put My Spirit upon Him, and He will declare justice to the Gentiles. He will not quarrel nor cry out, nor will anyone hear His voice in the streets. A bruised reed He will not break, and smoking flax He will not quench, till He sends forth justice to victory; and in His name Gentiles will trust.” (Matthew 12:18-20 from Isaiah 42:1-4) This set up another confrontation with the Pharisees when Jesus then healed a mute and a blind man and His followers asked, “Could this be the Son of David?” (Matthew 12:23) but “…when the Pharisees heard it…” (Matthew 12:24) they again attacked Jesus and made false accusations against Him and plotted yet again how they might “destroy Him”! Just as soon as Jesus Teaches one Question/Lesson He immediately ties all the previous Lessons together and introduces the next “precept” and draws the next “line” in the sands of our life and we begin to understand that this Infinite Knowledge being shared by the Master Teacher will never be exhausted! Therefore let us “Stay the course” and continue to “Run the race and fight the good fight” as we look at the Foundation of Faith built on the Rock and know that we are building a “house” that the storms of life will not prevail against if we but continue to build our wall of Faith “line upon line” and  “precept upon precept” as Taught by the Master Teacher, Jesus Christ! In the last few JESUS Questions/Lessons we can see Jesus moving our consciousness in a controlled and specific direction towards knowing God the Father and it becomes obvious we could not have arrived at our answers and insights without this Divine Guidance. In JQ#10 Jesus made us stop and consider “What is your Spiritual value?” and in JQ#11 He next asked us “What are your Spiritual expectations?” and to keep us headed in the right direction towards the kingdom, Jesus asked us in JQ#12 “Who decides what is legal, God or man?”. When we can finally declare to Jesus that our Spiritual value is proportional to our Spiritual life and declare with honesty that our Spiritual expectations were formerly directed towards “self” (for we had mostly seen Jesus as an historical figure who went about doing good and never as “The Living God”), and then truly concede that God is the One, the Only, and the Final Authority and Judge — then and only then can we see that Jesus is the Son of God who is Teaching us to follow His Perfect Example and live our own lives for the good of others and not for self promotion.  Jesus then makes us see that we are not just supposed to “talk the talk” but we must for the kingdom’s sake “walk the walk” as He asks JQ#13 “Is your life a plus or a minus in God’s kingdom?”  The context for JQ#13 is all of Matthew up to JQ#13 which specifically starts at Matthew 12:22 and runs through Matthew 12:45. Just as in previous Lessons, Jesus always makes an opening statement that shifts our focus to a new topic and with JQ#13 Jesus again grabs our “Spiritual attention”  as He addresses the Pharisee’s new accusation that Jesus “cast out demons…by Beelzebub” (Matthew 12:24) — Jesus replies to this devilish accusation with this Universal Truth of God that: “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and every city or house divided against itself will not stand…” (Matthew 12:25) The relevancy of these Question/Lessons and topics as they so directly apply to our world today should be proof to us that Jesus is the All-Knowing Living God, for I cannot read these two verses without thinking about the great division in our nation and in our world today and the news is full of ongoing desolation and wars and there is no denying that our nation has turned from God!?!?  There  clearly is no “unity” of “Spirit” throughout our secular/new age nation!  Don’t you think that maybe Jesus has “Struck another nerve in our spiritual consciousness“ and we should prepare to learn  what Jesus has to Teach us about “a kingdom divided”?