MARCH 06 THE JESUS QUESTIONS JQ#08 “Why do you think evil in your hearts?” (Matthew 9:4)

MARCH 06  THE JESUS QUESTIONS  JQ#08 “Why do you think evil in your hearts?” (Matthew 9:4)

LIVING FOR JESUS Daily Prayer    

JESUS, all Praise, Glory, and Honor to the King of kings, who by His Great Sacrifice for all mankind has earned that Praise, Glory, and Honor from all mankind for there is no other name but the Name of the One that lived a Perfect Life before God the Father, even our Lord Jesus Christ! Only the Perfect Life of the Son of God was the Acceptable Sacrifice demanded by the Perfect Father and only through the Perfect Sacrifice of the Son of God can sinners be made Perfect before the Father. Lord Jesus, I BELIEVE, make me Perfectly Acceptable to God!    AMEN

THE JESUS QUESTIONS

JESUS always Taught us the “Truth of God” and Jesus demonstrated the Power and Greatness of the Father both in His earthly life and His Divine Death, Burial, and Resurrection!  The world teaches mankind, “Do as we say, not as we do” but when Jesus came to reveal the TRUTH of the FATHER, Jesus Taught men, “Do as I do for I reveal the Truth of God but what a man does on his own is in opposition to God’s Truth.” JQ#08 is the first time in the gospels that Jesus directly challenged the “legal” authority that mankind had usurped from God. Some background here on the “scribes” is helpful ——— the scribes were used by the prophets and religious leaders of Israel to write down the words of God therefore, by their association with the Holy Scriptures, the scribes were considered very important in Israel.  The Pharisees used scribes to write down man’s interpretation of what the Pharisees “thought God meant” when He spoke His Word. This is very similar to the situation today in America where we have a “Constitution of the United States of America” that was written down by our founding fathers but now there is a “supreme court” where officials appointed by the ruling political party write “opinions” of what they think the “Constitution” and America’s founding fathers really meant to say?!?!? It should be understood also that “blasphemy” was defined during the time Jesus Himself walked the earth, as taking from God the Unique and Divine authority “to forgive sin”.  Nowhere in the Old Testament writings studied by the Pharisees contemporary with Jesus had the Pharisees given even the Messiah Himself the “right” to “forgive sin” so when Jesus spoke to the paralytic, “Son, be of good cheer; your sins are forgiven you” (Matthew 9:3) the Pharisees started quoting their interpretation of God’s Law (as the Pharisees had determined what God had “really meant to say”) {see paraphrase of Genesis 3:1 “Now the [Pharisee] was more cunning than any [religious leader in Israel] which the LORD God had [put in authority] and [the Pharisee] said [to Israel] ‘Has God indeed said…’ (Genesis 3:1)} — the Pharisees declared that Jesus, by “forgiving sin” had called Himself “God” because according to the Pharisees interpretation of the “law” in Holy Scripture and written “officially” by the scribes, only God Himself had the Authority to “forgive sins”. Do you not see that Jesus is confronting “legalism” here and in Truth Jesus is revealing that the ones that are condemning Him of “blasphemy” are really the guilty ones for usurping the authority of God from God’s Law and making man’s law the “law of the land” that the people must live by? When I read passages like these, the Holy Spirit stirs me to ask my contemporaries; “How is our modern laws on abortion which usurp the authority of God, any different from the law of the Pharisees which condemned our Lord Jesus Christ of “blasphemy and to death on a cross?”   If we as Christians believe that Jesus is the Son of God who was sent by God Himself and promised by God that if we will believe that God sent His Son to us as a gift that we would not have to “perish but have everlasting life” — then how can we support a “man-made law”  made by the “opinion” of man that denies the unborn their right to receive God’s gift of life? An “aborted unborn” has “perished” and man’s legalism is responsible for taking God’s authority and Gift of Life away from the unborn, and the “legal” death of the “unborn” can be interpreted as nothing but modern day blasphemy by America’s lawmakers resulting in the taking away of the unborn’s God-given right to life!!! Jesus confronted the legalists of His day and the TRUTH is that not only did Jesus demonstrate the Power of God over the “physical” by healing the paralytic, He also healed the paralytic “spiritually” by “forgiving” his sins and the “verdict” of a “jury of the (paralytic’s) peers” was that “the multitudes saw [Jesus heal the paralytic and heard Jesus say that He could forgive sin], [and] they marveled and glorified God”. (Matthew 9:8)  Let TRUTH be our judge and jury as to the “Consequence” of our “belief” that Jesus is the Son of God! More importantly, let TRUTH guide the way we live our day-to-day lives and treat the unborn with all the dignity we demand for ourselves!  Being “unborn” does not give anyone the “legal authority” to deny the “unborn” their  “God-given” Right to  Life!!!