OCTOBER 04 THE JESUS QUESTIONS JQ#30 “Do you not see all these things?” (Matthew 24:02)

 OCTOBER 04  THE JESUS QUESTIONS   JQ#30  “Do you not see all these things?”  (Matthew 24:02)

LIVING FOR JESUS  Daily Prayer    

JESUS, Lord thank You for the answered prayer for the family and for the opportunity to “witness” to two of our granddaughters yesterday by “living Christ” — Lord I thank You for the moving of the Holy Spirit in our family and thank You for the vision of how You are going to bless the “parents” through the “faith” of their “children”! Lord Jesus, I pray that Your Holy Spirit will always keep me aware of how important it is that we live our daily lives for You — for yesterday I saw first hand the fruits of following You day-in-and-day-out with our daily lives because the grandkids are noticing Jesus in our home and are now wanting to come to You, all because of the blessing that You have given us with our weekly family night! Jesus, praise, glory, and honor to Your Holy Name and Your Holy Spirit!!!   AMEN

THE JESUS QUESTIONS

Jesus uses every circumstance to take us to a new level of “understanding” the Truth of God. Jesus has just a couple of days left to Teach before He will be crucified as “The Lamb of God” and has just spent the last few days addressing the problem of “hypocrisy” in the nation of Israel. Jesus exposed the “source” and clearly identified the “fruit” of “hypocrisy” and then Jesus did not “pull any punches” as He announced that by “appearing” to worship God on the “outside” yet on the “inside” we are actually “rejecting” God and that we ourselves are guilty of “hypocrisy” which is the main problem with every generation!  Jesus made it clear that “rejecting God” was “self condemnation” and the penalty for “rejecting God” was “eternal separation from God” and “eternal separation from God” is the True Definition of “HELL!”  (Be careful what you ask for - for you just may get exactly that!) Jesus never leaves one circumstance without tying it to the next circumstance and demonstrates that God has a PLAN and that nothing is happening or will happen “randomly” but everything is part of the PLAN of GOD!  Jesus has been spending His Last Week on earth in Jerusalem and so far Jesus has made His Triumphal Entry on Palm Sunday and His first order of business as the Messiah upon entering Jerusalem was to “clean” the temple in Jerusalem. Jesus then spends the next couple of days addressing the problem of the nation Israel following the “doctrines and traditions of men” instead of following the “Commands of God”. Jesus summarized the main problem as “hypocrisy” among those in authority over the nation but the bigger problem was that the nation itself had embraced the “[defiled] doctrines of men” and as individuals they were themselves guilty of “hypocrisy” and were “condemning themselves”. Jesus made it clear that there was “no escape” from “self-condemnation” and the verdict (God’s predetermined and published “Consequence”) of being “Guilty” of the sin of “hypocrisy” will result in eternal separation from God and “condemnation of hell.” (Matthew 23:13-36) Now Jesus is using that context to Teach His disciples about what is going to happen to the nation and to the temple because of the collective  national sin of “hypocrisy” as we read, “Then Jesus went out and departed the temple…” (Matthew 24:1a) which was a “prophetic” gesture of the future of the nation of Israel. Jesus showed when He “went out and departed the temple”  that the verdict of “Guilty” had been passed by God and the previous Words of Jesus now made more sense to His disciples for Jesus had just Taught them in His Parable Lessons: “The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone…” and then because of the “rejection” of Jesus by those in “authority” Jesus pronounced, “Therefore I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken from you…” (Matthew 21:42-43) Jesus “departing” from the temple foreshadows Israel’s future and is the beginning of Jesus giving details and prophecy about the temple which history tells us was completely destroyed 70 years later and the nation Israel was taken into captivity by the Babylonians. Jesus always uses His “Questions” to focus our attention on His next Lesson and so we must look at the present context of Jesus “departing” from the temple and His disciples call His attention to the beautiful buildings that “men” have built and in my mind’s eye I can see Jesus shaking His head in disappointment because His disciples had not noticed that Jesus had “departed” the temple! Instead of seeing how God felt about the temple being defiled on the “inside”, His disciples only saw the “outside beauty” of the buildings. Jesus had just Taught about “whitewashed tombs” being full of “dead men’s bones” and the disciples could not see that this was a “whitewashed” temple and was full of “dead men’s bones”! Jesus then turned to His disciples as they were admiring the “works of men’s hands” and at that point Jesus asked: “Do you not see all these things?” (Matthew 24:2a) and to make sure they focused on His Lesson, Jesus immediately said, “Assuredly, I say to you, not one stone shall be left here upon another, that shall not be thrown down.” (Matthew 24:2b) If the disciples could not see the prophetic truth of Jesus as He “went out and departed from the temple” they surely could not miss the message Jesus gave them when He clearly drew a prophetic “Word” picture of the temple being completely destroyed and “not one stone shall be left here upon another…”?!?!? We should stop here at the start of a new Question Jesus is asking and ask ourselves, "What has Jesus been Teaching and showing us about the sin in our lives that we are missing because of the blindness caused by us rejecting the LIGHT and walking in the darkness of the world?” His disciples had been with Jesus all week listening to Him pronouncing a guilty verdict on the hypocritical rulers of Israel and the temple in Jerusalem and then when His disciples looked at the temple from the “outside”, they could not see that God was no longer there and had left the “inside” empty which is a “Word” picture of our lives and our nation without God! Pray that the Holy Spirit will open our spiritual eyes so we “[can] see all these things”  that Jesus is painting in our lives and what Jesus is trying to show us about the kingdom of God!?!?!?!